Who is Otto?

You are a little heavy this morning Kicky. I will have to think a bit...

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John Otto truly one of the more eccentric characters to have found employment with the National Park Service. Tried three times for insanity (and found sane on each occasion), accused of attempting to assassinate the Governor Colorado (and later exonerated), and often dressed in a green shirt with colored stars for buttons. An early women's rights advocate, he was married briefly and later awarded alimony. From a tract published by The Watch tower suggesting he go east, John Otto hit the road landing in East Orange New Jersey but found it lacking so he took up the foul habit of codeine. Which, of course, led to harder stuff such as Thunderbird and Mellow Nights wine as well as Kent cigarettes. John Otto is a sad reminder of a man that could have been an outstanding bell ringer for the Salvation Army.

If the bandana is still knotted, why is he ODing?

"Did I say he was ODing? Pay attention, jackass!"

Otto went on angrily, clearly aggravated. "God, don't you ever f*cking pay attention? Ajax, man, Ajax!"

Otto was a paramedic. A great paramedic. The best. His new partner, however, Doodad, was a goddammed jackass. They'd been working together for exactly twenty-eight minutes now, and Otto had already decided there was no way around that fact.

Another fact that there was no way around was that this guy with the bandana around his bicep was going to die. Otto knew that as well as he knew his own name. It was the fourth junkie they'd picked up out of this neighborhood this week, and this guy was much worse off than the ones they'd already tried unsuccessfully to save. Somebody'd been selling Heroin cut with ajax to these poor suckers. Some twisted joke.

Otto glared at his slow-witted new partner through alert, caffiene-jittery eyes as they pushed the stretcher up into the back of the ambulance. The junkie's body twitched a little, and then was still.

"Jeez, sorry. I didn't remember," drawled Doodad as he shut the back doors of the ambulance.

Otto headed toward his side of the ambulance on the right. "F*cking jackass," he mumbled to himself as he got in on the passenger side, "Why do they always stick me with these jackasses?"

Otto was tired but not sleepy when he headed off to bed. He knew if he didn't get to sleep soon he would hear the baby crying in the next apartment and then the whole night would be lost.

Hearing that baby cry made Otto crazy. That baby reminded him of everything he had walked away from and how his life might have been different if he had stayed. Maybe he would have married Janet and they would have bought a house in the suburbs and maybe he would have gotten a good job and coached little Ottos pee wee football team.

Hearing that baby cry made him think about little Otto, surely not so little now, and wonder what ever happened to him. Little Otto would be a man now. A man with a good job and a pretty wife and a house in the suburbs. He sure hoped so. Everyone wants something better for their kid, right?

Sleep was always a relief.

Simultaneously stepping on the gas and turning the wheel, Otto failed to notice the curiously dumpy-looking private investigator walking next to the ambulance and knocked him head first into the dumpster. The silly looking hat was even more deformed, though more colorful, with the gumshoe's brains running out of it.

"I'd have thought cancer was gonna do him in," Otto reflected.

1.

Otto signed up for a safari through his browser and saved his pennies to buy the right jacket and hat to ride in the jeep through the wilds. He had to wear that hat on the aeroplane since he didn't succeed in stuffing it into his carrion duffle bag.

He didn't sleep on the plane and didn't sleep the first night at the Safari Inn in the Congo, so he snoozed in the jeep. The ride was bumpy and the thickets dense. The convoy came to rest at a quiet swampy area for the evening, and the lads pitched silk tents for the overnight stay. The tents were white, made of old parachutes, just like from Catch 22. As the moon rose, the tents shimmered as the few shafts of light alit.

Sleepy as he was, Otto had jet lag, and so when he woke up in the wee hours of the high moon, he didn't know if he was dreaming or seeing a real white rhinoceros.

As it turned out, it was real and not fibbing. The rhino's horn seemed to be swaying as the rhino, whom he named "Larry" to avoid repeatedly saying rhino, wallowed in what was effectively a rhino lap pool. Larry moved toward him at a slow bubbly pace. Otto decided he needed to go.

Go where? Well, pee. So he scoped out the possiblities and selected just the right Bouma tree... and so developed what we now know as

Otorhinolaryngoscopy........

Thought cancer (snicker)

that would be really bad.

Osso, thats a REALLY big word. I had to come back 3 times just to spell it right to google it. I hope it's woth the work...

Ooh, I like these Ottos so far. Anyone else? Rockhead? Chai, perhaps? Anyone? Who is Otto?

Ima little slow, Kick, but I'll get there. Cookin some serious chow at the moment.

I learned that word young, as a reservation clerk at a hospital... I was something like eighteen, in love with medical words.

I'll get something later, my brain isn't working anymore today.

i'll be bock.

I got something for ya, Icky Pan, said Otto.

Something you been asking for, for some time.

I been looking for ya, high up in them mountains and I been searching
for ya low down in the dirt valley.

It's taken me 2 years ta catch up with ya, but now my hun'in' days are over.

You been asking for it all over the county. Word's gotten back. Well here I am.

I seen you over there, pretending you don't know me. That's fine. I can bide my time here a while.

I heard that sheriff tell ya, 'Otto's looking for ya.'

My my, you should have seen your face.

(By the way, it wouldn't hurt to look in a mirror once in a while
with a razor in your hand… boy oh boy, you ain' changed a bit).

I heard you say, 'Who is Otto?' - ha…

That's okay my friend - I understand if you want to keep this
between the two of us. A private deal.

Yeah, we've got our differences, you and me.

I'm a pipe man and you smoke cigars -
You know how to dress for the cow trail, and I know how to dress for the ladies
- but when it comes to getting higher than a frog on hot tarmac,
we share a preference for what you been asking for -
what I came all the way out here to deliver.

Yep … all the way from Mexico. And my saddle bags are full.

So, lead me to the saloon, partner. I'm getting off my f*ckin' face tonight. Line 'em up, you son of a dog.
We've got a room waitin' for us at the local jail come dawn and I intent to puke in it.

We are gona show this town a good time.
I'm packing - and I ain't talking about these guns.

Ah, yes, Otto, I hadn't heard from you in quite a while.

The last time I saw your name, it was written on a tombstone. It seems that you are a ghost, no? No matter. A man like me is used to dealing with ghosts. And a ghost that comes with gifts, yes, that is a ghost I will always welcome.

So come now, my old friend, and let us indulge ourselves on the finest whiskey and women that this old town has to offer. Later we will also sample the contents of those saddle bags of yours.

So who else? Nobody? Nobody gives a **** who Otto is anymore?

Heartless sons o' bitches...

Otto flops and flails, panicked and surprised by this new environment. His gills struggle to find water, but there is only air and the soft berber carpet that he lies on. If he could, he'd kick himself for trying that jump. But then, how could he know that this world had no water? It all looked the same to him from in the aquarium. His mouth gasps and his large round eyes look up at the aquarium that until moments ago was his home, his life, his sustenance.

His buddy, Jack, a shiny, flat-sided silver dollar cichlid swims frantically back and forth at the front of the aquarium in horror and anguish. Without a miracle, it looks like his friend Otto will not be returning to the fish tank that they have shared for the past year.

Otto, a dark-striped zebra cichlid, had begun mooning around recently and asking Jack over and over again, "Who am I? Who is Otto?"

Jack, a literal-minded fish, had always just looked at him funny and responded, "Otto. You are Otto, and that is that."

But Otto wouldn't stop. He was having a real identity crisis here. And then, one day, he'd floated down to where Jack was lying under the little algae-encrusted plastic bridge near the algae-encrusted plastic scuba diver and said, "Hey, Jack, I'm thinking of jumping."

Jack had trembled at the sound of those words. He'd seen one other fish jump. It hadn't ended well. Why was it always these zebra cichlids, he thought, why do they have such restless spirits?

He'd been swimming in a herky-jerky manner trying to dislodge a long streamer of fish poop when he'd seen Otto go over the edge. It was a beautiful leap, and he could see the determination in Otto's little face as he broke the plane of the water at the top of the tank. For just one moment he hung suspended in air and yelled out, "WHO AM I? WHO IS OTTOOOOO..."

And now there he is on the dry carpet, dying. It appears there will be no miracle to save him.

Jack can no longer watch. He knows how this story ends. "Who is Otto?" he asks the plastic scuba diver as he swims slowly back to his favorite spot under the plastic algae-encrusted bridge.

Uh kicky
What are you smoking

Otto? Our Otto? You have to be either kidding, or someone has made a mistake. Otto isn't home right now, but come on in and wait. You'll see that our Otto couldn't possibly be involved. He's such a quiet, polite little boy, and always has been. Even as a baby he was quiet; just sat and watched everyone and everything with those big brown eyes of his. Otto was slow to wean, and didn't begin walking and talking for a long time. He wasn't stupid, you understand, just slow and deliberate even as an infant.

Here is a photo of him. You'll notice his big smile. Otto always seems to be contented and smiling, even when others might be making a fuss. I remember once when some bad neighborhood boys tortured Otto's pet kitten and left the remains on our back porch. Otto hid his face in my apron, and then went back up to his room and turned on his music so loud that I couldn't hear his crying. Otto is such a considerate child

Perhaps Otto would have been more extroverted if his Dad had lived. Otto's Dad died long before his son was born, but I'm sure he'd have been proud of Otto. Whenever I'm feeling a little blue, its Otto that comes to comfort me. I don't know how I'd have managed all these years without him. Sometimes I think that Otto is the strong one, and I'm sure one day he'll make a mark on the world. He's always telling me how someday he'll be rich and powerful and then he will buy me a palace with hundreds of servants to take care of me. Isn't that sweet?

No, we haven't lived here very long. Otto has wanted to attend Zeno High School since he was in elementary school, but we couldn't afford to live over here. A few years ago, our apartment building burned down and the insurance money made it possible to rent this apartment. Don't you think it's nice? Otto has his own room here, but now that he's in High School he doesn't like me going in there when he's away. You know how teenage boys are, especially with their Mothers. Boys like their privacy, and he keeps his room as neat as a pin. Why, he even brings his laundry down all sorted and ready to wash. Describe his room for you? Certainly, it's a large room with a lot of light from a window that looks down on our street. He has the usual posters of action heroes scotch taped to the walls. He has a large desk where he does his homework and plays with his computer. He uses the computer for homework and to play games with his friends on-line. Otto likes things to be neat and orderly, so there isn't much to see in his room.

I tell him that he should go out more and spend more time with classmates. He just laughs and laughs and tells me that he'd rather spend time at home with me. I'm sure that once you've met Otto, you'll agree that he couldn't possibly have any connection with those boys who terrorized the school and killed so many children last week. Those aren't the sorts of boys that Otto would even know, much less be friends with. No. I'm certain that Otto won't be able to help your investigation in the least. There's been some terrible mistake. Not our Otto. There must be some other Otto who planned that terrible thing and sent those boys out to kill. Not my Otto, my Otto is a sweet, kind boy who wouldn't dream of hurting anyone.