Tails of Wonder and Imagination

TIGER IN THE SNOW Daniel Wynn Barber

Justin sensed the tiger as soon as he reached the street. He didn’t see it, or hear it. He simply… sensed it.

Leaving the warm safety of the Baxter’s porch light behind him, he started down the sidewalk that fronted State Street feeling the night swallow him in a single hungry gulp. He stopped when he reached the edge of the Baxter’s proper line and looked back wistfully toward their front door.

Too bad the evening had to end. It had been just about the finest evening he could remember. Not that Steve and he hadn’t had some fine old times together, the way best friends will; but this particular evening had been, well, magical. They had played The Shot Brothers down in Steve’s basement while Mr. and Mrs. Baxter watched TV upstairs. When the game had been going well and everything was clicking, Justin could almost believe that Steve and he really were brothers. And that feeling had never been stronger than it had been this evening.

When Mrs. Baxter had finally called down that it was time to go, it had struck Justin as vaguely strange that she would be packing him off on a night like this, seeing how he and Steve slept over at one another’s homes just about every weekend. But this evening was different. Despite the snow, home called to him in sweet siren whispers.

Mrs. Baxter had bundled him up in his parka, boots, and mittens, and then, much to his surprise, she had kissed his cheek. Steve had seen him to the door, said a quick goodbye, then hurried away to the den. Funny thing, Steve’s eyes had seemed moist.

Then Justin had stepped out into the night, and Mrs. Baxter had closed the door behind him, leaving him alone with the dark and the cold and… the tiger.

At the edge of the Baxter’s property, Justin glanced around for a glimpse of the beast; but the street appeared deserted save for the houses and parked cars under a downy blanket of fresh snow. It was drifting down lazily now, indifferent after the heavy fall of that afternoon. Justin could see the skittering flakes trapped within the cones of light cast by the street lamps, but otherwise the black air seemed coldly empty. The line of lamps at every corner of State Street gave the appearance of a tunnel of light that tapered down to nothingness; and beyond that tunnel, the dark pressed eagerly in.

For a moment, Justin felt the urge to scurry back to the Baxter’s door and beg for sanctuary, but he knew he should be getting home. Besides, he wasn’t some chicken who ran from the dark. He was one of the Shot Brothers. Rough and ready. Fearless. Hadn’t he proven that to stupid Dale Corkland just the other day? “You scared?” old zit-faced Corkland had asked him. And Justin had shown him.

At the corner, Justin looked both ways, although he knew there wouldn’t be many cars out on a night like this. Then he scanned the hedges along a nearby house, where dappled shadows hung frozen in the branches. Excellent camouflage for a tiger—particularly one of those white, Siberian tigers he’d read about.

He kept a close eye on those hedges as he crossed the street. Snow swelled up around his boots and sucked at his feet, making it impossible to run should a tiger spring from behind the mailbox on the far corner. He stopped before he reached that mailbox, listening for the low blowing sound that tigers sometimes make as they lie in ambush. But all he heard was the rasping of his own breath (“You scared?”) Yes. Tigers were nothing to be trifled with. They were as dangerous as the ice on Shepherd’s Pond.

Justin had stared at that ice, thinking about the warm weather they’d had the past week. Then he had looked up at Dale Corkland’s face, three years older than his and sporting a gala display of acne. “You scared?” And Justin had shown him.

But that was then and this was now; and weren’t tigers more merciless than ice? Oh, yes indeed.

Justin gave himself a good mental shaking. He tried to summon those things his father had told him at other times when this tiger-fear had come upon him. (Don’t he such a baby.) At night, when he would awaken screaming after a tiger nightmare. (It was only a dream.) Or when he felt certain that a tiger was lurking about the basement. (There are no tigers in the city. You only find tigers in the zoo.)

Wrapping himself snug in these assurances, Justin tramped past the brick retaining wall at the corner of State and Sixteenth without so much as a glance toward the spidery line of poplars where a tiger might be hiding. He rounded the corner and marched on. Heck, he had walked this way dozens of times. Hundreds, maybe.

But tonight the usually comfortable features seemed alien and warped out of reality under the snow, and finding himself in this strange white landscape, Justin suddenly felt the tiger-fear return. It bobbed up and down within him until he could almost feel the tiger’s nearness, so close that the hot jungle breath seemed to huff against his cheek.

He was half-way down the block when he saw a shadow slip effortlessly from behind the house two doors up. It seemed to glide dream-like across the snow, then disappear behind a car parked in the driveway. It was just a shadow, but before it had vanished, Justin thought he caught a hint of striping.

There are no tigers in the city.

Justin watched and waited—waited for whatever it was to show itself. He even considered turning hack, rerouting around Rush Street, but that would put it behind him.

Come on, he scolded himself. You only find tigers in India. Or the zoo. Or behind parked cars. Nonsense. Tigers don’t stalk kids from behind parked cars in the middle of an American city. Only little kids let themselves be scared by shadows in the night. Not one of the Shot Brothers. Not a kid who had dared the ice on Shepherd’s Pond. Not a kid who was only two years away from attending Rathburn Junior High, where you get to keep your stuff in your own locker and change classrooms every hour and eat your lunch out on the bleachers. Kids at Rathburn didn’t go whimpering and whining because they saw a shadow in the snow—probably thrown by a branch moving in the wind.

But there is no wind tonight.

Justin swallowed hard, then started forward. He walked slowly, never shifting his gaze from the tail light of that parked car. If only he could see around it without getting any nearer. If something were crouching back there, it would be on him before he could cover the first five feet. And then…

… teeth and claws, tearing and slashing.

You scared?

You bet.

When he had drawn even with the driveway across the street, Justin stopped. Two more steps, maybe three, and he would see if his father and the kids at Rathburn Junior were right, or if tigers do indeed lie in wait on winter streets. Of course, there was still time to turn back.

Perhaps it was the idea of turning back that propelled him forward. If he were to retrace his steps, he would never know; but if he looked and saw no tiger behind that car, then the tiger-fear would be banished, and he wouldn’t see them anywhere. Not in bushes. Not behind trees. Not between houses. Just three steps, and he could lay tigers to rest forever.

Justin took those three steps the way he had walked out onto the ice on Shepherd’s pond. Old zit-faced Corkland had dared him, and he had faced it.

One—two—three.

He turned and looked.

Nothing. Nothing behind that car but an old coaster wagon lying on its side. No tigers. No lions, bears, werewolves, or boogie-men. Just an old wagon. His father had been right all along.

He covered the last block and a half with steps as light and carefree as those of a June day, when the air smelled of new-mown grass and the sun baked your skin brown. But, of course, it wasn’t June, and as he sprinted up his porch steps Justin realized that he had reached home without a moment to spare. He could scarcely see his breath at all. Much longer out in the icy cold and he thought his lungs might have frozen solid.

As he stepped into the familiar warmth of his own house, he heard voices coming from the living room. It sounded as though his folks were having a party, although the voices seemed rather subdued—much the way they sounded on bridge nights when the evenings began quietly, but noisied up as the hours grew old.

Justin tip-toed down the hall, thinking it wise not to interrupt. And as he passed the living room, he caught a snatch of conversation. It was a man speaking, “…bound to happen eventually. They should have put up a fence years ago. I’ve a good mind to…”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Gordon,” a woman said. (It sounded like Aunt Phyllis.) “This isn’t the time.”

That was all he heard before hurrying to his room.

When he flipped on the light, he was greeted by all the treasures which reflected his short life in intimate detail. The Darth Vadar poster, the Packers pennant, the Spitfire on his dresser, the bedspread decorated in railroad logos.

And one new addition, sitting in the corner on great feline haunches.

For the briefest instant, Justin felt the urge to run—to flee into the living room and hurl himself into his mother’s arms, as he had done so many times in the past. But as he stared transfixed into the tiger’s huge, emerald eyes, he felt the fear slipping from him like some like dark mantle, to be replaced by the soft and gentle cloak of understanding.

“It’s time to go, isn’t it?” he said in a voice that was low, but unwavering.

The tiger’s eyes remained impassive, as deep and silent as green forest pools. Warm pools that never froze over, the way Shepherd’s Pond did.

In his mind, Justin heard again the pistol crack of ice giving way beneath him, and he felt the chill water closing over his head. It really hadn’t hurt that much, not the way he would have thought. Not much pain, just a moment of remorse when he realized he wouldn’t be seeing his folks anymore—or Steve…

…had it all been a dream, this last wonderful evening together with Steve? Would Steve even remember?

Justin looked at the tiger, searching its peaceful face for the answer; but those fathomless eyes kept their secrets.

“Did you follow me tonight?” Justin asked.

Whiskers twitched as the tiger’s muzzle wrinkled into a slight grin.

“Yes,” Justin said softly. “I thought it was you. You’ve been following me all my life, haven’t you?” He turned to close his bedroom door, and when he turned back, the tiger was crouching to spring.