Otsï
Otsï returned after my father died.
He left in the Summer of my ninth year. The Summer of the big wind, when all the houses on Bergen street lost their roofs. Stripped of their slate clad coverings and sturdy, red brick chimneys they resembled nothing more than a row of glum, naked pated gentlemen, their finery forfeited to the elements. Down below, amongst the denizens, gardens were strewn with smashed slates and broken brick. Mrs. Endercrine’s dog, Millie, was crushed by a falling chimney pot and Jamie Fenster’s ten speed bike mangled beyond repair.
But there were other casualties far more pressing to my nine year old eyes. At the bottom of our garden, amidst the tangle of blackberry briars and scutch grass stood the Grey General. Ancient in years beyond counting, his huge arms and mighty roots girt the green world of my childhood. Our silent sentinel my father called him. Otsï called him the Grey General. ‘Morning General,’ he would say, leaning his broad blue furred shoulders against the oak’s wide trunk. ‘I have an itch today, right there. Can you reach it? Oh yes, that’s it, right there, aahh,’ and he would scratch himself back and forth letting out little sighs of satisfaction.
The night of the big wind the storm finally retired the Grey General from his time honoured post. With a mighty crack his oak heart broke and spilled his life into the eye of the storm. Down he came, a wooden avalanche, sending his long wide body crashing through the glasshouse and the fish pond and smashing flat the long, low roofed den where Otsï lived.
In the morning, when the wind had died to a howl and the air was filled with torn leaves and brickdust, I ran, bare kneed, into the wreckage of the garden. Mother followed, clucking with concern, calling out to me, ‘mind for falling slates, it’s not safe.’ I ran on, deaf to her cries, my eyes drinking in the chaos and destruction of the General’s passing, my heart crying in anguish at each new discovery. The swings were gone, shouldered aside by the storm, they lay in a heap of tangled metal. Worse was the glasshouse, torn asunder by the General’s broad trunk, the windows smashed and shattered, driven into the earth like sharp glass tears, the delicate plants within crushed. As I rounded the muddy pond, dark with torn roots, fish flapping in the newly made shallows, I saw my father.
‘What is it Papa?’ I said, as he appeared from beneath the base of the General’s gnarled roots, double headed axe gripped in his strong hands, his blonde hair plastered to this head in sweaty strips.
‘My little one, I am sorry, our General has taken a great toll upon of our sanctuary. None have been spared.’
And I saw he was right, my little den of sticks and secrets where Otsï slept and played was smashed all to flinders. Not a scrap remained. I saw and my eyes filled with tears, my chest tight with wracking sobs.
My father scooped me up in his strong arms and whispered in my ear, ‘Now, now, little one do not cry. We can build new forts and new treehouses. From the bones of the Grey General himself I will raise you a mighty wooden house, I promise.’
‘But Otsï, lived in my house,’ I cried through sobs, inconsolable.
‘Otsï? He will be fine little one, do not worry. When your new house is built he will return to play. You’ll see.’
But Otsï did not return, not later that day after the big wind emptied itself over the town, nor the next day, nor the next. Not after my father took a chainsaw with cruel, hungry metal teeth that devoured the corpse of the grey general and fashioned me a great wooden fort to play in. Nor after I waited there one night until the moon was high in the sky and I shivered beneath it in thin cotton pyjamas waiting for Otsï to come shambling out of the night like he always did, hallooooing to the moon and the stars.
And as the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months I stopped waiting for Otsï to return and in time as all children must, I left him behind with my wooden fort, buried beneath the bones of the Grey General.
—
My father died in the Summer, tending to his garden. Across the great stump of the General where he had raised the wooden fort and later a small Summer house they found him in his favourite chair, a clay pot in his hand, his fingers stained brown with rich dark earth, he was smiling.
In the city there is not so much time for gardening and not so much time for thinking. In the haze of grief and ritual that follows death I mumbled prayers and thank yous and all the things a son must do. And when it was done and the house was finally empty, I sat in the garden and thought. I thought about the endless childhood days of Summer, the sun hot against our faces as we raced through green woods and hid in the cool branches of trees, Copper and beech and ash, and the shadow of the Grey General over all. I thought of my father as he moved about the garden, the vigor of youth still on limbs, tending to his plants and stirring mounds of compost. Planting green shoots in his red clay pots, pruning the unruly thickets of hedgerow and cursing gently at the tenacity of persistent weeds. And yes, I thought of Otsï, my long lost childhood friend, blue bear, protector and companion.
I returned at last to the city and it’s all consuming needs.
—
The meeting was long and tedious. An hour had gone by, lost to endless flowcharts and spiked graphs. I sat with my workmates, bulled into submission by waves of statistics, our presenter unveiling each new slide with an absurd pride. My eyes wandered about the room, but found only the blank eyed stares of my companions, walled in their own apathy and there at the window was Otsï.
He was bigger now, much bigger, towering twenty feet high, but there was no doubt, it was Otsï. Those big, black, mournful eyes, the long inquisitive snout, and teeth that smiled. His blue furred head filled the window frame, blocking out the sunlight. Bringing up a large padded paw ending in a long curving claw, he tapped gently on the glass. ‘Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.’
‘Excuse me,’ I said, rising from my seat, ‘I have to leave, duty calls.’
‘Duty Peter?’ said Magda, irked at this interruption.
‘Yes duty, a…call of nature,’ I smiled. No one else could see Otsï, only me. Nevertheless one could not simply ignore a twenty foot blue bear, even if you were the only one who could see him.
When I emerged from the lobby, Otsï was waiting in the parking lot, scratching his broad blue back against a lamp post.
‘It’s not the same,’ he lamented.
‘Hello Otsï,’ I said, shading my hands in the glare of the late Summer sun to gaze up into those dark eyes.
‘Hello Peter,’ he replied.
‘You came back,’ I said, ‘I was not expecting that.’
‘You called me back.’
‘Did I?’ I said. ‘I don’t remember?’
‘Yes, you called me back and now I am here,’ he said, with an air of finality, sitting back on his great haunches and considering the slow moving clouds scudding across the pale blue sky.
‘Papa is dead,’ I said, ‘he died in the garden.’
‘I know,’ said Otsï.
‘Why have you come back?’
‘I told you, you called me back. Why did you call me Peter?’
‘You never came back before, not after the night of the Big Wind. Not even when I stood sentry all night beneath the cold sky and almost caught pneumonia.’
Otsï regarded me with those dark black eyes.
‘I am here now.’
‘You’re bigger now,’ I said.
‘So are you.’
It was a fair point.
‘So what do we do now?’ I said.
Otsï grinned with his smiling teeth.
‘Now? Now we have fun. I have a hankering on me to see the curling tops of the white waves at Lykammer and take a long roll in the yellow sand dunes. I like the way the sand tickles my feet and it’s been too long since I saw the green sea and greeted her with my smile. Hop up on my broad blue back Peter and we’ll fly.’
I hesitated a moment and looked back towards the grey, glass shod building behind us, imagining the dull, stuffy room filled with my suffering compatriots and Magda’s never ending graphs.
‘Well, just this once then,’ I said, grasping a handful of Otsï’s soft blue fur and hauling myself up onto his broad back.
‘It’s good to have you back Otsï,’ I said, scratching him behind his great furry ears the way he always liked.
Otsï twisted his head around and gave me a long grin.
‘It’s good to be back Peter,’ said Otsï and then we flew.
——————–
This weeks Ficktion is a strange beast, that said I’m quite happy with this piece. It feels finished in the sense it conveys the tone I wanted. I have found, more often than not, recently that my reach exceeds my grasp in the stories I wish to tell, but slowly, slowly, gradations appear in the work. Those are the nights when it’s good to be alive.
This weeks photo is brought to you by Flickr user Altamons. More Ficktion can be found over on our website.