While I will be returning periodically to post short stories, my new Cambodia-focused blog EXHAUST and INCENSE.wordpress.com will be my primary online outlet.

Keep in mind, you can still enjoy the fiction and non-fiction on this site. You can also browse through all 44 stories in the archives.

Always your friend,
Daniel

Not one to be discouraged by such a setback, Barnum had Gaylord continue his search for a white elephant. Now offering two hundred thousand dollars, Gaylord was able to purchase a royal white elephant from King Thibaw Min of Burma. Originally christened Toung-Taloung by the monarch, for the purposes of his travelling show, Barnum renamed the elephant “Buddha.” Toung-Taloung arrived in England in January 1884 and was displayed at the Royal Zoological Gardens in London. In the 1888 edition of his autobiography, Barnum writes:

This absolutely unique curiosity was accompanied by a Burmese orchestra and a retinue of Buddhist priests in full ecclesiastical costume, the sacred animal being surrounded by the same attendants and the like paraphernalia as during the performance of religious ceremonies in his native country.

Scientific American described the elephant as “seven feet six inches high, and of a piebald color. His face, ears, the front of his trunk, and his front feet, and part of his breast are of a pinkish flesh color; the rest of his body is of light ashen hue.”

The spectacle garnered much curiosity, but overall, according to Barnum, “a large portion of the public, having expected to see a milk-white elephant, were disappointed.” In March of that year, the elephant was shipped to New York where it was first shown in a private reception to

several hundred naturalists, scientists, Eastern travelers, scholars, leading physicians and clergymen, editors of New York and other papers, and other persons, whose closest scrutiny I invited, but who none of them doubted that the animal was what he was described to be, namely, a genuine white elephant from Burmah.

Among those in attendance were Frank Vincent, Jr., author of the travelogue The Land of the White Elephant (1874), and Colonel Thomas W. Knox, “the only American to whom the King of Siam has ever presented the Order of the White Elephant.”

Toung-Taloung’s stay in America, however, would be short-lived. In November 1887, with the exception of thirty elephants and a lion, Barnum’s “entire menagerie perished in the flames” that engulfed his circus’ winter quarters in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Amongst the dead was Toung-Taloung. Barnum writes:

The white elephant determinedly committed suicide. Liberated with the rest of the elephants, he rushed back into the flames. Driven out again and again, each time he returned until the keepers were forced to abandon him to his fate. In the fiercest of the flames he was seen wildly thrashing his trunk in the air, then with one loud cry fell and was seen no more.

Barnum, who had already experienced four other devastating fires, was unfazed. In his 1891 book, The Wild Beasts, Birds and Reptiles of the World: The Story of Their Capture, Barnum writes: “Like the public, I was greatly disappointed in [Toung-Taloung]. He was as genuine a white elephant as ever existed, but, in fact, there was never such an animal known. The white spots are simply diseased blotches… I cant say that I grieved much over his loss.”

If Barnum did not grieve over the elephant, it is certain that Burma’s King Thibaw Min did. In late 1885, not quite two years after selling his white elephant, the forces of the British Empire invaded Thibaw’s kingdom in Upper Burma, starting the third (and final) Anglo-Burmese War. Within three weeks, Mandalay, Thibaw’s capital, would fall, and Upper Burma would be become part of Great Britain’s Indian Empire. The defeated king was forced into exile in India, and only a few months later, Toung-Taloung leapt into the flames. Thibaw Min was the last king of Burma.

* Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from The Life of P. T. Barnum

WORKS CITED

The Land of the White Elephant by Frank Vincent, Jr., 1874.

The Life of P.T. Barnum: Written by Himself by P. T. Barnum, 1888.

Scientific American, March 8, 1884.

The Wild Beasts, Birds and Reptiles of the World: The Story of Their Capture by P. T. Barnum, 1891.

Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Shawn Otis

“Canada,” I said. “Where are you from?”

She laughed. “Vietnam!” She told me her name was Phuong and that she taught French in Hanoi. I asked her where she was going and she said, “To home village for wedding.”

“Are you getting married?”

“No,” she said. “My cousin get married. Are you married?”

“No.”

Phuong’s eyes lit up. “Where you going?” she asked.

“Ninh Binh.”

“Then you come with me.”

“To Ninh Binh?”

“To wedding.”

“In Ninh Binh?”

“Near Ninh Binh.”

Now, this is the moment: you randomly meet someone with a friendly proposition in a poor country and you hate yourself for being so jaded, for wondering the unavoidable, which is: are this person’s intentions good?

While Phuong’s teeth were crooked, her coal eyes looked sincere so said, “Great. I’ll come.”

Two hours later, we arrived in Ninh Binh where limestone karst formations hang stark grey cliffs over rice paddies, their summits a tangle of verdancy. At the station, we hired motorbikes and drove past the market, through the crumbling French town, then onto a pothole-riddled road, my rucksack jolting against my spine. After a few minutes of farmland, we turned onto a dirt path, went through a gate, and arrived at a cluster of low pastel houses. We dismounted and paid the drivers. Phuong said, “Follow me.”

We entered a courtyard shaded by the overhanging limbs of fruit trees: papaya, banana, mango… Inside, a mangy dog slept on a blue-tiled floor, surrounded by the house’s only furniture: two beds, a table, and an altar cluttered with Buddhas and family photographs obscured by winding plumes of incense. Phuong pointed to one of the beds and said, “You sleep there with grandfather.”

“With grandfather?” I asked.

“With grandfather. Grandmother sleep there,” she said, pointing to the other bed.

I told her I could just sleep on the floor and she looked offended so I said, “Never mind. I’ll sleep with grandfather.”

Just then, a stooped man in faded olive drabs entered: Phuong’s grandfather. We bowed, shook hands, and smiled. While Phuong told him about me, I took off my jacket, and like lightening, a dozen flies found my bandaged arm. The old man spoke and Phuong said, “He ask what happen.”

“I was driving a motorbike in Sapa,” I said, miming. “It was my first time. I crashed into a waterfall.”

“What is waterfall?”

“You know,” I said, “water falling, like on a mountain.”

Phuong translated and the old man looked at me like I was a fool. Clucking his tongue, he pulled a wooden trunk from under his bed and began rummaging.

“My grandfather fought the French,” Phuong told me. “He was captured, tortured: they broke his knees with bottles.”

The old man straightened up, and I have to admit, when he came at me with a tattered Vietnamese flag and a large rusty machete, I felt afraid. Then, he put a corner of the flag in his semi-toothed mouth, held another in his left hand, and with the machete, he cut away a long strip of red cloth. He dropped the machete and fixed me with his cataract-clouded eyes. Then, smiling, he tied the cloth around my wounded arm and spoke.

Phuong translated: “France, America, Canada, Vietnam—there is no difference. Grandfather says we are all good friends now.”

Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Shawn Otis

The club was thumping boom boom boom and I sat alone at the bar, watching the pretty girls in their miniskirts dance boom boom boom, wanting them, dreaming, not drunk enough to lose myself, to have fun. Arms stretched over me, men shouting for drinks, their noisy shirts stained with sweat, their sweat filling my nostrils, making me gag, chasing the gag with my shot of rye, then ordering another and another. Soon to be ripe, I was getting ready to dance, my head bob bob bobbing to the obnoxious beat, my foot tap tap tapping, the gorgeous bartender watching me with a smile. Boom boom boom. I downed my shot, ordered another. The bartender grazed my hand as I gave her change. She grazed my hand and looked me in the eye and pursued her lips so I gave her a two dollar tip. Boom boom boom.

All right, I was saying to myself. All right. I always have to give myself courage like this, always have to talk myself into adventure. I was in a new city and I wanted to get laid. I wasn’t going to get laid sitting on a barstool. So there I was, working up the courage, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see a fleshy mouth moving and I shouted, “What?!”

“Is anyone sitting here?” the man said, pointing to the stool beside me.

“No.”

He propped his bulk onto the vinyl stool, ordered a vodka cranberry. He leaned close into my ear and his hot breath said, “Having fun?”

“Sure.”

“What are you drinking?”

“Rye.”

“Straight?”

“Straight.”

“Let me buy you another one.”

Of course I said yes: I never turn down a drink, even if it’s being offered by an overweight, olive-skinned guido in a multi-coloured shirt. The man ordered, lit a cigarette, and I thought about his greased-spiked hair catching fire. He took a few puffs, then offered me one. I accepted.

“New in town?” he asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Your shirt,” he said. “It’s too plain.”

“Is it?”

“If you want to score here, you need a better shirt.”

“I’ll go shopping tomorrow.”

“And what’s that?” he said, pointing to the vermillion string around my neck. He reached over an oily finger, slipped it down my collar and pulled out my pendant. “What the fuck is that?”

“It’s the Buddha,” I said—I didn’t like people touching it.

“The Buddha? Oh, shit.”

He called the bartender, ordered me another drink.

“What do you have against the Buddha?”

“Where did you get it?” he asked, avoiding the question.

“In Thailand.”

“Tell me about Bangkok,” he said. “Is it as crazy as I hear?”

“All the rumours are true.”

“Shit,” he said again, looking thoughtful.

“So what do you have against the Buddha?”

“That fucking Buddha,” he said. “I know all about it.”

“Yeah?”

“I know all a-fucking ‘bout it.” He sipped his drink, looked over the bar, then said, “I’ll buy another round if we sit somewhere quiet.”

Now, I was feeling a little heady from the shots, and a good quiet sit-down would do me some good, clear out the booze, help me with the courage I needed to hit the dance floor. That’s what I thought: courage. And nuts to this old fag, drunk-me thought, a drink is a drink—just watch his hands so nothing’s gets mixed in.

“Make it with ice.”

The drink came and I followed him across the strobe-lit room and through a clear, swinging door. A few couples were making out on leather couches; in others, clubbers swam in their own vomit. Someone moaned from a dark corner and there was no telling if it was sickness or sex. I took a seat next to the man, sipped my drink. They had the music piped in through speakers, but soft. Still, the man shouted when he said, “That fucking Buddha.”

One of the couples looked our way. A girl hissed. The man picked his teeth, then said, “That fucking Buddha ruined Vinnie’s life.”

(to be continued)

Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Shawn Otis

“Yeah,” I say. “I like it fine.”

He copies the information from your passport and visa, then tells you to wait for the other passengers. You stand amidst a group of nervous uniformed boys who cradle Chinese-made automatic rifles. When everyone’s cleared, you get back on the bus, and twenty minutes later… another checkpoint.

*          *          *

The worst bus in Burma was a rusty shit bucket with holes in the floor and hard seats placed so close together that I was forced to chew my knees for the entire eight hour ride from Mandalay to Shan State… Mist rolled thick and heavy in the valleys below as we chugged up a pass. Then the bus slowed and stopped: another fucking checkpoint.

Trucks lined the side of the road, their open beds filled with sacks of rice and vegetables. Soldiers in olive drabs mounted the trucks with menacing two-metre-long steel spears. The soldiers straddled the sacks and plunged their weapons deep into the cargo, piercing through produce, looking for what? Refugees? Weapons? Rebels?

A soldier came onto our bus, young and nervous like all the rest. He held his rifle in one hand while he glanced at our papers. He peeked at the crates and bags stuffed in the back of the bus, then called out the window. Another soldier boarded, this one with a spear.

Goddamn him, I thought, if he punctures my rucksack I’ll… But my anger lapsed. Better my rucksack than some poor rebel soul on a mission to topple tyranny.

The soldiers poked around then left—my bag and all the others were left intact. The bus chugged into gear and we rounded the summit.

*          *          *

In Maymyo we stopped and were surrounded by women with baskets of strawberries—a remnant of imperialism? In other towns, women sold rice cakes, cool bottles of Star Cola, slabs of mysterious meats, fish with sugar cane rammed down their throats…

I bought plenty, shared with the other passengers and they shared their food with me. When language allowed it, they also shared stories.

I heard about the horrors of their military government. I heard how the people suffer and bleed while their fat leaders live in mansions and drive imported cars.

“I can tell you this,” one man said, “because you are a foreigner. I know you won’t talk. But my own people? The Burmese are dying to stab each other in the back.”

*          *          *

Back to the bus:

“Burma,” an old man in a worn Nike golf shirt and tattered skirt-like longyi says, pointing to himself. He then points at me.

“Canada,” I say.

He looks confused.

“Canada,” I repeat. The man shrugs and goes back to his window, back to the rolling tragedy of his country.

Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Shawn Otis

Like I said, we were sitting and eating, not really talking, when this woman came from the darkness, brown with sun and filth, a dirty baby tied into her rags. She could have been thirty or fifty—I don’t know. She showed us her betel-stained teeth, the palms of her hands. Her eyes said hunger.

In a country like Burma, you can’t help but stand out. Tourist-free, impoverished and oppressed, we became well-acquainted with the palms of people’s hands. What could we do?  I fumbled in my pocket for kyat and R. laughed and said “Check it out! She’s dancing!” With a wide, shit-eating grin, he got up from his seat and started in on the Chicken Dance, singing, “Doo doo du-du du-du doo, doo doo du-du du-du doo…” R. flapped his wings and the baby started crying. The woman didn’t move. R. finished the song, sat down, took a pull from his beer and went back to his dinner.

The waiter was staring at us, the men at the other table were staring at us, and the woman’s eyes had shifted from hunger to hate.

Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Shawn Otis

“Me and my girl like to wrestle.”

He laughed and waved me into America.

I was drunk, oh god, nineteen years old and on a trip across America. We had crossed into Juárez on foot, into a world of tejano music, drugs (illegal and prescription), burritos, discount dentists, señoritas and waterfalls of sweet golden dollar-a-bottle Corona. What did we know? Juárez was just another town. Sure some pint-sized street rat tried to nab Murphy’s wallet, but our waiter scared him off with a knife. Things always worked out like that: dumb fucking luck. And besides, gang wars and abductions mean nothing to kids looking for fun, and I’ll tell you this much—we found it (our waiter found a tip to smile about) and several hours later, we found ourselves on a little bench in El Paso, Texas, holding our swimming booze heads.

“Oh god,” Murphy said.

“I know,” I said.

“Our flight is tomorrow,” Oxeberry said.

“I know.”

“Dallas is twelve hours away.”

“I know.”

The bustle of traffic beating in my skull, the sun blazing hot even at five. I could just hear the sound of an accordion wafting over the brown churnings of the Rio Grande as we crossed the street for bottles of water and cola.

“This dilute you,” I said to Oxeberry. We’d elected him driver because Murphy looked the worst (and I didn’t have my licence). Oxeberry guzzled the drinks and instead of sobering up he just got bloated, drunk and very queasy.

Well, we got in the car. What could we do? Oxeberry squinted over the wheel.

“I can’t do this,” he said.

There were some minutes of dusty stop and go, and then we were in open scrub desert. Oxeberry kept the car straight, drove fine. I turned up the stereo, blared Chuck Berry loud and wild.

Murphy said, “Turn down that fucking music,” and I said,

“We got to stay alert.”

There was an hour of this before we saw the checkpoint.

“Oh shit,” Oxeberry said.

“Take it nice and slow,” I said. Murphy wasn’t saying anything—he was trying to keep from puking.

We rolled up to the gate, to these pistol-armed Agents in armour with razor toothed (and nosed) dogs. A swollen, sunburnt Agent with a sunglass tan said, “Where you going?”

“Dallas.”

“Where you from?”

“Canada.”

“ID.”

Oxeberry fumbled for his wallet. The Agent eyed the card. The dogs sniffed the car. Then he said, “Well boys, do you hear this whimpering dog? Do you hear the sound he’s making?”

I didn’t hear anything, but said, “Yes, sir.”

“Well, this here dog’s telling me that your trunk is loaded with cocaine.”

Oxeberry looked some kind of panic fear and the Agent looked at us all for a few seconds, then said, “Nah, I’m just messing with ya’. Enjoy your time in America.”

Oxeberry hit the gas and we zipped onto wide Texas tarmac.

“How are you feeling,” I asked Oxeberry.

“Drunk.”

“Stay up with me, all right Motis?” he said.

“All right.”

I watched the sun streak the amber beginnings of night behind us and before I knew what was happening, it was long past dark and Oxeberry was shaking my arm, saying, “I gotta stop. I feel like shit.”

I looked at the map, said, “Where are we?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know? You’re the goddamn navigator.”

We turned into the next rest stop, bought coffees, and Murphy took the wheel. As soon as we were back on the highway, Oxeberry fell fast asleep.

“How do you feel?” I asked Murphy.

“Like shit.”

The road was long and wide with darkness only interrupted by the headlights of massive tractor trailers burning American-made midnight oil. I watched the stars, the world go by, drifting, dozing until Murphy hit the brakes and skidded across the highway.

“Oh god!” I screamed. Murphy got the car under control and brought it to a stop.

“Shit. Shit. Shit,” he kept saying.

Oxeberry stirred in the backseat, “Why did we stop?”

“I thought I saw someone running across the road,” Murphy said.

“Oh shit,” it was my turn to say. “Are you ready to drive?” I asked Oxeberry.

“Fuck no.”

“Well what are we going to do?”

A tractor trailer roared by, blaring its horn.

“I don’t think it’s legal to stop in the middle of the highway,” I said.

“Why don’t you get your goddamn licence, Motis?” Murphy said.

“Why don’t you pull onto the shoulder?”

Murphy did as he was told and I picked up the map and said, “the next stop is a picnic area, six miles ahead. Can you drive that far?”

“I guess so,” Murphy said.

“Fuck you,” Oxeberry said. “I’ll drive Betsy.”

Well we drove to the picnic area, which was nothing more than a single lane about five metres  from the highway, a thin layer of burnt grass and a few picnic tables under wooden gazebos surrounded by a half-dozen parked trucks with generators humming thunder into the night.

Murphy and Oxeberry stretched out in the front seats of the car, and I stuffed my ears with cotton, took a blanket and my knife, and camped out on one of the tables (snake, spider, scorpion fear), the highway rush and trucks singing my lullaby.

Out like a light.

Then, first orange in the sky and Murphy shaking my shoulder, saying,

“Let’s go.”

I blinked, wiped the crust from my eyes, stretched the stiffness from my back.

“Did you sleep?” I asked—Murphy looked terrible.

“No.”

“Well, I did.”

“That’s fucking grand.”

“Sorry.”

We woke Oxeberry up and he climbed into the driver’s seat. Murphy lay down in the back and said, “In the middle of the night, a pack of dogs came out of nowhere and circled your table.”

“Well, at least a trucker didn’t rape me.”

“Bwa haha,” Oxeberry said. “You would have liked that.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

“Fuck you, Motis,” Oxeberry said.

“Fuck you both ‘cause I wanna sleep,” Murphy said.

Oxeberry laughed and hit the gas and we drove into the rising sun. Fuck all of us, I thought. Fuck us all. Fuck us and our dumb lucking fuck.

Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Shawn Otis

Little novice monks in dirty saffron robes dart between people’s legs in the bustling decrepit market. Their heads are scarred from dull razor shaves; their bare feet are hard and dirty. One of them sees me and they swarm the plastic-stool café where I’m having a breakfast of chai tea and fried Chinese bread. Buddha’s children raise their battered alms bowls and look up at me with hungry imploring eyes. I surrender the bag of mandarins I just bought and they dart back into the ragged morning bustle.

The man who shares my table smiles, his face and teeth the same yellow-brown. He takes out a little notebook that’s filled with testimonials from his former customers.

“My friend see you get off bus and call me,” he says in his halting English. “Very easy to find white man here.”

He wants to take me trekking to the surrounding hill tribe villages. Past adventurers finding themselves in this sleepy little town attest that he can take you anywhere.

“Last week I take two Russia man to Mogok,” he says.

“I thought foreigners can’t go there.”

“We take motorbike. I know back road with no army stop. They go to buy gemstone. Paid two thousand dollar for big ruby! Crazy Russian. They have big bag with glasses to look and make test. No buy fake gemstone.” Two thousand dollars, I think. The average person in Burma makes less than a dollar a day.

I randomly flip open his notebook and read a Canadian couple’s testimonial: “We had to hide from the army in the jungle. Please don’t ask him to take you to the opium fields. If we would have been caught, he would have been killed.”

“I hate government,” the guide says proudly. “My family is Shan. We fight always government. In nineteen nineties we make peace and give our guns because they promise election and freedom. But almost twenty year and no freedom: they still kill us. They say, ‘Later, later. Election later.’ But no election. I have video of army burning village, killing women. I hide guns in jungle. We wait for twenty-ten election, and if fake, we fight.”

Myanmar staged its sham election in November of last year. I read about the protests in Yangon that followed the military junta’s overwhelming victory. No news, however, came out of the northern states, and all I could think about was my Shan insurgent guide, armed with his wide smile and a rusted World War Two carbine, firing single shots into the massed forces of Myanmar’s Chinese-equipped soldiers.

Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Shawn Otis

Forget you Castro and Guevara with your stationary hips and bearded jabber jabber about the capitalist decadence of dance: forget you. From the baby shimmying in his crib to the wrinkled señora tapping on the table, the country is in motion. A packed metro bus: girls shaking against poles and old men bobbing their heads to the grating electric boom boom of reggaeton that comes muffled through the P.A., the same song I heard a week ago in a crossroads Santa Clara disco where every night young bodies in busy shirts bump and grind, bump and grind in simulated dance floor sex. Too drunk to remember how I got there. Something about a rickety Lada racing down country roads, holes rusted into the floor, a crease in a shaved head smiling in front of me, a girl in the passenger seat jabbering in Spanish. And what was her name? How many beers? How much rum? One more mojito? Sure, what the hell: they only cost a dollar. This round is on me, Jessica—en español, Hessica. Was that it? That’s what I called her, and she didn’t seem to mind, but looked bored as hell as I stumbled over my own big feet. How many rounds? I asked myself the next morning, feeling my empty wallet and churning stomach, looking at the tangled bed covered in the neon phosphorescence of my own bile. How many rounds? Outside my window, the sweet heavy beats of a rumba band, like knives in my skull. This country: bands playing on every corner; old men with guitars, young guys rapping harmonies, topless black men pounding wild santera drums, hundred-strong orchestras filling old city squares with classical masterpieces and the madness of mambo, lone cornet players splashed on sea walls, women singing Spanish ballads, keeping rhythm to the clack clack of their own heels, accompanied by the bustle of the city. Music pours from street to street, melting into a cacophony of sounds that hook the arms, necks, heads, breasts, legs, and hips of people, young and old, who shake and shimmy in ways I never knew humans could bend. And me? I can dance, or at least I thought I could, but I never felt so lost as I did that night at Havana’s Casa De Musica, a 15-piece salsa band blaring horns, while I, a gringo wallflower, watched women and men, black white yellow tan brown, fluid and beautiful, and my own sideline movements so goddamn clunky that the no one but hookers would dance with me.

Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Shawn Otis

“The Germans are the bad guys,” my father told my little brother and me. “Your grandfather was in Europe trying to kill them during the war because the Germans were trying to kill the Jews. The Germans killed all of your grandma’s family and she only survived because a Christian family hid her in their attic in Belgium, except they weren’t very nice: they robbed grandma of everything she had. When the war was over, your grandpa met your penniless grandma in a Belgian synagogue—it was the first Rosh Hashanah service in years and years. They got married soon after, and grandpa brought grandma back to Canada.”

“But why did the Germans want to kill Jews?” I asked.

“Because everyone hates the Jews and Hitler was crazy.”

“Who’s Hitler?” my brother asked.

“Hitler was Germany’s boss.”

“Is he the weird-looking guy with the funny moustache?” I asked—I had seen photos of him in my father’s history books.

“You got it,” my father said. “I told you guys: he was crazy.”

“Crazy?”

“Crazy,” my father said. He suddenly raised his right arm, and shouted, “Heil Hitler!” then said, “that’s how Germans say hello to each other. Crazy, eh?”

“Like this?” I said, then stuck out my arm and shouted, “Heil Hitler!”

My father scowled and said, “If I ever catch you doing that again, you’ll be in big trouble.” With angry eyes, he looked me over, then my brother who raised his little right arm and said,

“Heil Hitler!”

“I told you never to do that!”

“Sorry,” he said. “I wanted to try.”

“Well never again, all right?”

“All right,” we said.

“The Germans are the bad guys, and don’t you forget it.”

“We won’t.”

“Good,” my father said. “The Germans were so bad, grandma won’t even let me buy a BMW.”

“What’s a BMW?”

“A fancy German car.”

“And you want one?” I asked.

“Sure,” my father said, “But I wouldn’t want to upset your Grandma.”

“Me neither,” I said.

“Daddy,” my brother said. “Is Hitler dead?”

“No one knows.”

*          *          *

Gertrude was in her early thirties, and with her blonde hair, ice-blue eyes, and full figure squeezed into a skimpy pink uniform, even boy-aged me thought she was fantastically beautiful. In addition to changing my mother’s dressings and helping her move around, she was also charged with the task of giving my brother baths.

I was standing on a stool by the sink, brushing my teeth while five-year-old Andy sat in the tub. Gertrude kneeled over him, the front of her uniform splashed and splattered, and shampooed his fair hair. Andy just sat there with this stern look on his little face and stared at the wall.

In her halting English, Gertrude asked, “Andy, is something wrong?”

My brother took a deep breath and looked her right in the eye. “Germans are the bad guys.”

“Excuse me?” Gertrude said, taken aback. “Who told you that?”

“Daddy said so.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because you wanna kill Jews and I don’t wanna die.”

I rinsed my mouth, spat, then said, “Gertrude, why do you want to kill Jews?”

“I don’t want to kill Jews.”

“Are you telling the truth?”

“Of course I am.”

“Daddy said that all Germans want to kill Jews.”

“But that isn’t true.”

“Did anyone in your family kill Jews?” I asked.

Gertrude’s beautiful face choked and changed, and she took her hands from my brother’s head.

“It was a dark time.”

“You didn’t have lights?” Andy asked.

“That’s not what I mean.”

“So what do you mean?” I asked

Gertrude stood up, looked at us, tears coming to her eyes.

“I mean it was bad time, and many people were crazy and others not crazy enough to do anything about it.”

“But did your family kill Jews?” Andy asked.

Gertrude sniffled, tried to hold back a sob, then walked out of the room, leaving my brother’s head covered in suds. I could hear Gertrude crying in the hallway, so, using the small Batman bucket, I helped Andy finish washing his hair.

“Daniel, why is Gertrude sad?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe she feels bad about killing Jews.”

My brother came out of the tub and I wrapped a towel around him. We went into the hall and Gertrude was nowhere to be seen.

Then we heard my mother scream, “Boooooys! Come here this instant!”

We went to her bedroom where she lay in her body cast, surrounded by magazines, a TV remote, bottles of pills and a backscratcher. Gertrude sat in a chair beside the bed, her face covered with her hands.

“What did you boys say to Ms. Schmitt?”

“Who’s Ms. Shmitt?” I asked.

“Gertrude,” my mother said. “What did you say to her?”

“Andy said that Germans are the bad guys”

“Is this true?” my mother asked.

Andy looked at the floor and said, “Yes.”

“Why would you say such a thing to such a nice person?”

“But Germans are the bad guys,” I said in my brother’s defense. “Dad told us so.”

“Your father shouldn’t have said that.”

“No?”

“No.”

“So Dad lied?”

“Your father didn’t lie, but—”

“He told the truth?”

“Yes.”

“Germans are the bad guys! Germans are the bad guys!” Andy started to sing.

“Andy!” my mother shouted, then I joined in:

“Germans are the bad guys! Germans are the bad guys!”

My mother yelled for us to be quiet, but we kept singing, louder and louder while Gertrude stared, jaw slack and tears streaming down her face.

“I have a headache!” my mother finally screamed. “Go to your rooms!”

“Germans are the bad guys!” we sang as we left, smiling and proud.

When my father came home from work he had a good laugh when my mother tried to chastise him—he was very proud of us.

We never saw Gertrude again.

Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Shawn Otis

Hidden by high, yellow walls from Havana’s art deco Vedado neighbourhood is the Necrópolis Cristóbal Colón: a 57 hectare cemetery that has been home to Cuba’s most illustrious dead for nearly 150 years. Marble angels spread their delicate feathered wings above graves, cracked Christs lie on their sides over vine-covered tombs, María clings to her cross and mourners cling to rosaries, mouths shaping Spanish prayers. The graves of heroes and martyrs, poets and the forgotten. Exhumed and looted graves belonging to rich families that fled the revolution; the polished, flower-adorned graves of saints and the country’s liberators.

I see a black 50s Chevy parked under a tree, and near it, a group of people watching men work. There are no sculptures in this part of the cemetery: only long rows of identical, unmarked graves. Two of the men, bareheaded in the blazing sun, pry the heavy stone lid off one of them. They reach in with long hooked poles, pull out a crumbling plywood coffin, then another and another until they have five. They throw them all roughly to the ground where this large muscular man, black skin glistening in the sun, peels off the tops, looks in and smiles. A woman in the crowd screams. Another sobs. A man looks away. Another smokes. The tobacco barely covers the sour, musty stench.

A supervisor checks something off on a clipboard, and then with a brush, paints a name and date on each of the five shoebox-sized cement receptacles at his feet. He says something to the smiling man, who spits before reaching into a coffin barehanded. He grabs a corpse: yellowed bones, clumps of hair, pieces of green-grey-black flesh exposed through a worm-eaten floral dress… laughing, he grabs this mother, daughter, wife, child, friend, and begins snapping the bones like last night’s lobster dinner—it’s illegal for locals to eat lobster, or so I’ve been told—snapping them into fragments of unrecognizable nothing, stuffing the pieces into one of the cement boxes. Family members watch wide-eyed or indifferent, but all pale. Some look away. The man wipes his hands on the front of his pants before getting to work on the next coffin. “We need to make room,” an English-speaking guard says, coming up to me. “We do this after three years.” He looks me over and frowns. Does my face show horror? “Don’t worry,” he says, “It happens every day.”

Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Shawn Otis

Otis Stories will not be updated for the month of December.

Why?

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
- Herman Melville (from Moby Dick)

I hope that explains it.

See you in the new year!

(and, in the meantime, you can find 35 deliciously scandalous stories in my archives)

Charles was out. Where? I don’t know. He had a habit of disappearing for hours on end, finding safety and solace in solitude, no doubt. It was a cool, dreary day and most of us were in the cabin, reading comics, playing cards. Our counsellors tried to talk us into heading over to the arts and crafts centre where the cutest girl counsellors worked, and when we refused to spend the afternoon making gay bracelets, they smoked a joint and went without us.

As soon as they were gone, Mitchell took out a box of matches and began setting plastic spoons on fire. Plastic pearled, and dripped, dripped, dripped fireballs to the floor, filling the room with a sour, choking stench.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Mike, the cabin bully, said.

“What does it look like?”

Mike grabbed the matches and Mitchell started crying.

“Oh come on,” Mike said. “I just wanted a turn. Besides, you’re stinking up the cabin.”

Mitchell was always treated well because, 1) the others considered him far too small to justify bullying, 2) his uncle was a semi-famous sports broadcaster, and 3) he had a ridiculously hot sister who worked as a swim instructor. Oh god, imagining her firm breasts under her bikini, I pretended to be a terrible swimmer just to get her attention. “Listen,” she’d say, hand under my back. “Floating is easy.” She’d pull her hand away and I’d let myself sink. “Are you even trying?” she’d say. “Yes.” “He sinks because he’s fat,” someone piped in. “Actually,” she had said, dirty blonde hair, wet, snaking around her shoulders, “it’s easier for fat people to float.”

Mitchell was still crying and Mike put an arm around his shoulders.

“Hey buddy,” he said. “I know what’ll make you feel better.”

Together, they walked over to Charles’ bed. His was the top bunk—Rob slept underneath him.

Mike climbed onto Rob’s bed to get a good look at Charles’. Rob, playing cards on the floor said, “Get off my fucking bed.”

Mike ignored him—Rob wouldn’t do anything about it.

“Jesus, this stinks,” Mike said. “Anyone ever see Charles wash his sheets?”

“No,” someone said.

“It’s a fucking health hazard, that’s what it is. It smells like shit.”

Most of our attention was on Mike now—we watched him preach from his pulpit.

“What do you guys think we should do about it?”

“I’m not going to do his laundry,” someone said.

“Yeah,” someone else said, “I don’t want to touch his filthy shit.”

“We gotta do something,” Mike said. “We can’t have his shit stinking up the cabin.”

“Yeah,” someone said.

I watched Mike. He had that wild flicker, the fire in his eyes that told me he was about to hurt, destroy.

“I got an idea,” he said, waving the box of matches.

Delicately, he took one out, struck it against the side of the box, watched it sputter to life. We all looked on, holding our breaths as he dropped the match on Charles’ bed.

The wool blanket sizzled, and without bursting into flames, a smoking hole quickly spread across its surface with a smell like burnt hair.

We watched, mesmerized, the slight flames dancing off Mike’s teeth.

When half the blanket had been consumed, one kid said, “We better put it out.”

“Who’s side are you on?”

“Yours, Mike. But we’ll all be in shit if we burn down the cabin.”

Smoke billowing from the bed, we started coughing. Mitchell ran to open the windows, and the flames leapt. Ian casually left his card game, filled the filthy mop bucket with water in the little cabin sink, and doused the flames, dripping water onto Rob’s bed.

Rob started crying—no one paid him any attention.

When Charles returned from his excursion, he took one look at his bed, then left the cabin again.

That night, our red-eyed counsellor sat us all down.

“You little shits. Do you know what kind of trouble I’ll get in if this gets out? Fuck all of you. I had to give Charles one of my own blankets. What’s the matter with you?”

We all looked at our shoes. Charles sat off to the side, perfectly erect, the faintest grin curling his lips. This little admonishment would be the only revenge he’d ever get.

“Why do you guys keep harassing Charles? Huh? What did he ever do to you?”

No answer.

“Well, I’ll tell you. He hasn’t done anything. You’re a bunch of sadistic little fuckers.”

“What does sadistic mean?” Mitchell asked.

“I know,” Mike said. “It’s when you fuck a man in the ass.”

“Shut the fuck up Mike.”

Mike scowled.

“But what does it mean?” Ian asked.

“Enough. Now tell me, who did this, huh? Tell me who did this.”

No answer.

“Mitchell, who did this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah fucking right. Where were you then?”

“I was having a nap.”

“Bullshit. Otis, who did this?”

“Not me.”

“Then who?”

I looked at the floor. I hated lying. I hated covering for Mike. “I don’t know.”

“You little shits. If anything like this happens again, I will personally beat the shit out of all of you.”

Empty threats, of course. We all knew that he wouldn’t risk losing his job.

“I don’t want to hear any of you talking about this. If this gets out, we’ll all be in shit: you’ll get sent home and I’ll be out of a job. So, promise that this stays in the cabin.”

“We promise,” we said in unison.

“Good,” he said. “Not one fucking word.”

I looked at Charles. His smile was gone.

Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Shawn Otis

Stripped to their waists, the youngest village girls wrung cloths soaked in warm buffalo milk onto the white elephant, their budding breasts glistening in the last light of the day. In circles around them, old men played drums and bamboo flutes while the women parroted orange-robed monks who chanted passages from the elephant’s three carved tusks. I walked around, rifle slung behind my back, watching the girls, the old weathered faces, the children running and screaming, the elephant melting under the girls’ touch. The Agent was off to the side, next to a ribbon-adorned shrine, sitting in full lotus, eyes closed, hands resting on his lap.

“Sarge told him to watch the goddamn elephant,” I muttered.

I was going to shake him when I noticed a group I hadn’t seen before sitting apart from the villagers. They were all young men, brutally maimed and burned, collectively missing all the parts you need to make several human beings. One guy’s armless body was a mess of scar tissue; another’s chest was caved in; several were blind. Their faces (or, at least, the faces of those who had them) were yellower and more angular than those of the villagers. I approached and the only three with legs scurried away. When one of the men put a burnt mitten-hand up to me and spoke, I knew that they were Vietnamese. There were thirteen of them: casualties of war.

“Viet Cong?” I asked, pointing my rifle.

They chattered amongst themselves and all started shouting, “Không Viet Cong! Không!”—No Viet Cong! No!

Keeping my gun on the trembling cripples, I walked backwards and shook the Agent.

“Who are they?”

The Agent opened his almond eyes, frowned, took a deep breath, and went over to an old man in the circle. They talked and the Agent came back.

“Twenty wounded Vietnamese soldiers were left here last spring. Those are the survivors.”

“Which Vietnamese?” I asked. It was a stupid question.

“Cộng sản—communist. They are from the north.”

I strode back to the casualties, flourishing my rifle.

“Viet Cong, không!” I shouted, “Không, Viet Cong? Cong san, motherfucker! Same-same Viet Cong.” I started laughing and kicked dirt in mitten-hands’ eyes. “Không Viet Cong, cong san.” The three with legs watched from the trees, the others tried to drag their pathetic selves away. “Cong san, không? Viet Cong!”

I was about to knock out mitten-hands’ teeth with the butt of my rifle when the Agent put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Enough.” The Agent looked into my eyes, didn’t look away. Anger? Fear? I don’t know, but I started to cry. I turned away and he grabbed my arms and smiled. I was shaking. “I know,” he said. The tears came harder. The Agent put his hands to my face and wiped the tears away with his thumbs. “I know.”

Then the Agent stopped. Sarge was watching us.

Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Shawn Otis

Charles Yoon was the only Asian kid in an all-Jewish overnight camp. Uncircumcised and unacclimatized, his life was made a living hell.

Before Charles came, I was a prime target: fat, awkward, four-eyed, and overly sensitive, I’d break down in choking tears if someone so much as scowled at me. Shark-like, the meaner kids could smell my weakness, my fear. I’d return from the tuck shop and get pelted with water bottles; wake up to find toothpaste in my nose, Tabasco sauce scorching my lips. My only consolation was the melodramatic letters I sent home. What did my mother think when I told her I hated everyone? What did she think when I described the other kids’ cruelty? Why didn’t she rescue me?  I became an anxiety-ridden wreck, that is, until Charles Yoon arrived.

Charles was a nice kid, shy and awkward like me; like me in a lot of ways, except for the colour of his skin and his halting English. At first the others didn’t know what to make of him: he was a pure anomaly in the Semitic fabric of our society. But our counsellors reminded us that the camp, despite its Shabbat services, was not exclusively Jewish: the Mercedes-driving director would take in any kid whose parents could afford the four thousand dollar price tag. How Charles’ convenience store-owning parents afforded it is still beyond me.

Very quickly, Charles went from being ignored to being the cabin’s favourite target: he’d wake up to find mustard in his hair, lake water in his clean laundry, burrs in his bed.

One day, in a last ditch effort to curry favour with our cabin, Charles presented us curious and horny twelve-year-olds with Playboy and Hustler magazines that he had stolen from his parents’ store. Pouring over the pages, we all thought him a hero until Mike said, “Hey Chaaaw-wools. Chaaaw-wools Yoon. You like poon?”

(Thanks to Mike, a drawn-out lisping “Chaaaw-wools Yoooon,” had recently become the chorus by which the boy was greeted.)

“What is poon?” Charles asked.

Mike pointed to the shaved vagina of a fake-titted blonde.

“Oh,” Charles said, blushing. “I like.”

“Chaaaw-wools,” Mike continued. “You like to masturbate?”

Charles didn’t say anything—he looked confused.

“Masturbate,” Mike said, pumping his fist above his crotch. “You like to whack off? Touch your dick?”

Charles turned crimson, looked away.

“What’s wrong, Chaaaw-wools? You don’t have a dick?”

Charles didn’t answer.

“I have a dick,” Mike said. “How about you, Ian?”

“I got a big one,” Ian said. Ian was my best friend from Hebrew school. I wasn’t happy with Ian. Late one night, I had confided in him about the girl I had a crush on. The next day, I found him making out with her in the boys’ shower.

“Do you have a dick, Charles?”

Charles still didn’t answer.

“Do they have dicks in Korea?” one kid asked.

“You idiot,” someone said. “They have dicks everywhere. Even Otis has a dick.”

They all laughed.

“Can we see your dick, Charles?”

Charles moved towards the wall. Mike pursued.

“What’s wrong Charles?”

Charles looked at his feet, shaking.

“Maybe he doesn’t have a dick,” Ian said.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out.”

Before anyone knew what was happening, Mike had yanked Charles’ pants down to his ankles. Charles tried to run, tripped, and Ian was behind him, pinning him in a bear hug. While Charles howled and screamed, Mike pulled off Charles’s frayed briefs, revealing his small yellow penis.

“What the fuck is this?” Mike said. Like the rest of us, he had probably never seen an unchopped knob. “It looks like a friggin’ ant-eater.”

Charles was crying, shaking. Ian tightened his hold.

“So you like poon, huh?” Mike said, opening a magazine to its centrefold. “Show me how you do it: show me how you jerk off.” Even if Charles had wanted to comply, there was no way he could have with his arms pinned. “Chaaaw-wools Yoon likes poon! Well fuck, you dirty Korean bastard, do you like this?”

Mike tore the centrefold from the magazine and started shredding it.

“Hey,” one kid said. “What the fuck are you doing? Save that for us!”

“You want to be next?” Mike said, eyes aflame. The kid backed off, and Mike’s attention went back to Charles. “You’re a filthy little fucker Chaaaw-wools. Don’t you know it’s wrong to look at this stuff?” Mike was flipping through the pages, tearing them out, shredding them, throwing the bits of paper over Charles’ quivering thighs.

Charles kicked and flailed to get free. The rest of us kids watched, mouths gaping, no one helping.

“Mike,” another kid said. “You gotta stop.” We all looked at him. “That shit is valuable.”

Mike didn’t reply—he was in a tearing frenzy. No one dared to stop him: he was bigger than any of us. When Mike had destroyed the magazines, he gathered the scraps, walked outside, and threw them into the bee-infested trash bin. Back inside, Ian had let Charles go. Tear and snot-streaked, Charles tried to get his pants on, couldn’t because of his shaking.

Mike said, “Oh no you don’t,” and kicked Charles in his side. The boy gasped, and Mike said, “Charles is a filthy little bastard. A dirty fucking kid.”

“Yeah,” someone said.

“You got a weird dick, Charles. A filthy weird dick. You’re a dirty kid. We oughta clean you up.”

“Yeah,” someone else said.

Charles scanned our faces, looking for help. He looked me in the eyes and I looked away.

“I think Charles could use a shower,” Mike continued. “He’s filthy.”

“He stinks,” someone added.

“He smells like shit.”

“Grab him,” Mike said. Immediately, the boys had Charles by the arms and legs, had lifted him up.

“To the shower!” Mike commanded, and off they marched with the pantless boy, across the yard, to the shower house, where they threw him into a stall, covered him with soap and shampoo, stinging his eyes and mouth, before turning on the freezing water.

Horrified, I stayed behind. I didn’t want to be caught in the frenzy; I didn’t want to be the next victim. I stayed behind and sifted through the trash bin, rescuing the least-soiled pictures, then hiding them under my bed. I wasn’t picky—I cherished what I could find: half a woman, a single boob.

Charles never tattled: not before, not that day, not even when the others set his bed on fire. Tattling would have escalated the others’ violence… Not tattling gave them carte blanche to continue.

I felt bad for Charles Yoon because I knew what it was like. I felt worse on the last night of camp when he put his arm around me and told me that I was his only friend, the only reason he would come back next summer. But I never felt bad enough to stick my neck out and stand up for him. Since Charles arrived, I’d been able to sleep peacefully. Charles Yoon made me free.

Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Shawn Otis

Slow traffic. Shoppers walking along: old men in Armani, their wives in miniskirts, purses with ratdogs. Their daughters…

A tap on my shoulder and I nearly leap out of my skin.

He’s standing there, cool, calm. I’m sweating in the cold. He’s wearing a navy pea coat, Ralph Lauren slacks and a Burberry sweater. His leather boots are worn.

“It’s done?”

He smiles his perfect little teeth at me, the little bastard. He must have jumped to touch me.

“It’s done.”

“What did you do with her?”

“Sheesh,” he says, trigger finger to mouth, “Somewhere quiet.”

I follow him to a small park, a wrought iron bench. The hitman takes a cigarette from a gold case, lights it with a gold lighter. His featureless face: gold. He smokes without offering.

“What did you do with her?”

“Don’t worry,” he says. “It was clean.”

“It better of been.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Where is she?”

“I said, ‘don’t worry.’”

“If you want your money, you’ll tell me.”

“I’ve got her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve got her. At my place.”

“Hold on one fucking minute,” I say. “The agreement was that you’d dump her.”

“I’m going to.”

“When?”

“Soon,” he says. “Real soon.” I didn’t like his smile. I didn’t like what I had to do: I didn’t like it at all. Buying a hit on a woman was low, real low. It was the kind of thing you should do yourself, especially if she’s family. But Dad was on the way out, and we wanted a stake; we didn’t want to see his fake-titted bitch made rich. Sid said it had to be done. It had to be clean, he said. Clean, he kept saying, cleeean. If it came back to us, the operation would be fucked. Besides, he knew a guy, a short guy. A guy that wasn’t cheap.  “Why don’t you meet him?” I’d said. “Because you’re doing me a favour. I’ll write the suicide note.”

She was supposed to be on the bottom of lake two days ago.

“What are you doing with her?” I ask the hitman.

“Waiting.”

“For what?”

“My brother.”

“Fuck,” I say. “I can’t believe this.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Don’t tell me not to fucking worry. I thought you said his boat would be ready to go.”

“Listen,” he says, hard, no longer appeasing. “I’m working on it.”

“I’m not giving you the money.”

His eyes narrow. “I’ve been straight with you this far. I told you I got her. I’m a man who keeps promises. I’m getting that money.”

What could I do? Stand up to a killer? He went home with the briefcase and I got my promise. That was the last I heard of it, for a while at least.

Years later, I was sprawled naked on an antique sofa in my father’s old mansion, watching the news on a new flat screen television. A story came on about this guy who was arrested. His condo neighbours had complained about a smell. The police investigated, found the bodies of several young women in various stages of decay. There was a shot of the suspect in handcuffs: no mistaking the golden little bastard. Time for a little trip, I thought. Maybe to the Caymans? The story ended, saying that the condo association was filing a class action lawsuit against the building’s developers—they had promised sound and smell proof units.

Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Shawn Otis

“But this one is very long!” Minsoo complains.

I narrow my eyes at the kid and he continues reading.

“I am so boring,” Bona says.

“You are bored,” I say. “The story is boring.”

Bona stares back, blankly.

The new textbook for my ESL reading/writing class opens with Mildred D. Taylor’s short story “The Gold Cadillac.” After reading it, we discuss the plot: the story of a black man in segregation-era America who buys a gold Cadillac, then, despite the warnings and protests of his family and neighbours, sets to drive it from his Ohio home to the Deep South. I have to explain to the kids that a Cadillac is a big, expensive, American car.

“Teach-a?” S.Y. asks (I call him S.Y. because my white tongue can’t bend around his name), “What mean this word?”

“What word?”

“Lynch,” he says, saying it like ‘lunch.’ He spells it out: “L – Y – N – C – H.”

“Lynch?”

“Yes. What mean, ‘Lynch’?”

To lynch someone, I explain, means you are torturing and killing that person. I tell the class that in the American South, black people were often lynched by white people for no reason, that is, aside from irrational hate. I explain that white men would kill black men, and then not have to go to jail. This was because the people in power—police, judges, politicians, etc.—were racist too. As immigrant teens, I figure the students can relate.

“Teach-a?” S.Y. asks again, “What mean ‘ee-rash-nail’?”

Irrationality, I explain, is a lack of thought or reason.

Sitting in the front row, Jaeho looks troubled.

“Is everything okay?” I ask him.

He frowns, says, “I am confusing.”

“You are confused,” I correct him. “You find the story confusing.”

“I find?”

“Yes, you find. What’s the problem?”

“This story.”

“What about it?”

“I am confusing.”

“Confused.”

“Confused,” he parrots.

“Why?”

“How does black man buy nice car?”

“What do you mean?”

“I no understand. Sometime I see black man in nice car. How he buy?”

“I know,” Minsoo says. “He play basketball!”

“Not every wealthy black person plays sports,” I say.

“What mean ‘wealthy’?” S.Y. asks.

“‘Wealthy’ means ‘rich.’”

“Oh.”

“So how black man buy?” Jaeho asks again.

“With money,” I say.

“But, how he get money?”

“How does your father get money?”

“He work.”

“So,” I say, “Black people work too.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“But I never see.”

“Listen,” I say. “Who’s Barack Obama?”

“He is America president.”

“Right. And do you know what he did before becoming president?”

“No.”

“Well, he was a lawyer. He went to Harvard. So you see, black people can have big fancy jobs, just like anyone else.”

“Really?” he asks.

“Really.” I say.

“But, my father say black man no have work. He say they do many bad thing. He say to me, no talk with black man.”

Jaeho’s parents both live in Korea. He is here, living out his lonely teen years with a host family—a family that receives thousands of dollars a month to house and feed kids; a family, that I know, has six of them living in bunk beds in their basement. Lucrative business.

“But Jaeho, this is Canada. Here, black people can get good educations and high-paying jobs.” He looks at me like I’m crazy. “In Canada,” I add, straight-faced, lying, “everything is equal.”

Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Shawn Otis

They stood on the platform of a small hovercraft, elevated high above the square kilometre slab of cement that was CLASSIC CHARLIE’s used car lot.

The father focused his electric binoculars and shook his head.

“That’s not it.”

“What exactly are you looking for?” the salesman asked. His silver suit, like the thousands of cars below—like his bare, waxed scalp—glimmered in the afternoon sun.

“Something like the blue Toyota I had in high school.”

“I believe we have some old Toyotas,” the salesmen said, pressing a button on the hovercraft’s control consol. The hovercraft glided to a far corner of the lot.

“Japanese cars were all the rage: cheap and reliable,” the father explained to his son. “But that was before China dropped the bomb.”

“Was that the Big One?”

“Yeah, the Big One.”

“What kind of Toyota was it?” the salesman asked.

“It was a Corolla.”

“They’ve been off the market for forty years.”

“I know.”

“A car of that vintage won’t come cheaply,” the salesman said, grinning. “And you’ll be hard-pressed to find petrol for its engine.”

“Can you convert it to hydrogen?”

“Sure,” the salesman said, “We can install an H-engine in any classic.” The hovercraft lowered next to a row of a dozen Corollas. “They sure don’t make them like they used to,” the salesman continued. “I love the sleek curves on the old cars. They’re nothing like the big boxy ones they make today.”

“They sure are beautiful,” the man said, staring past the row of ancient machines to some twentieth century memory.

Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Shawn Otis

Rush hour Toronto subway, packed like sardines. The door closes and a teenager pulls a gun. He’s South Asian with new baggy clothes matching high top shoes and a cap for some faraway basketball team. A girl with headphones doesn’t notice, an old man doesn’t look from his newspaper, another’s eyes are on someone’s ass who’s scrutinizing an advertisement for the path of Christ, etc., but the wrinkled gray-haired lady reading some hot Swedish thriller definitely notices—is this too real for you?—and jolts upright.

My eyes are on the gun, then the yellow emergency button that stops the train—the last thing I want is to be trapped here. I edge my way to the door.

More people notice and with gasps, a circle widens around the gunman; the seats beside him vacate. The gunman just stares at his weapon, smiling. It’s a pistol, heavy, boxy and black like a cop’s. The subway chimes, “Next stop: Rosedale Station,” where my high school sweetheart lived with her mother and two rat dogs that pissed on the floor. This girl had turned me on to rock and roll and the fun of spontaneous madness, but she wouldn’t take off her shirt. She hated her body. For what? I didn’t care about the scars running down and under her left breast, the remnants of the implant that made the two equal in size, but not in touch—the scarred one so numb that she hated my caressing it because, she said, it had no feeling. No feeling. Prom night, she left me sitting by myself while she danced with her friends. At the hotel after-party, she told me that she wouldn’t share the room I had paid $200 for. I spent that night drinking and smoking out my sorrow, alone. I met her years later on the street. She was so emaciated. She told me about dropping out of school. I couldn’t recognize her. I feel like she’s destined to live and create tragedy.

Tragedy.

I’m at the door and the gunman pops his clip.

Time.

But it’s not like any clip I’ve ever seen. It flips up sideways from the hand grip. The gunman reaches into his pocket, pulls out two shiny metal canisters, pushes them in. More gasps and a scream as we roll into the station.

Jesus, I think. Pellets are going to fly. I don’t want my glasses chipped.

The door slides open and I bolt to the next car. Rosedale Station’s splashed-green tiles weren’t always this colour, that girlfriend’s adult sister had told me: they were brown before being oxidized by the elements.

Only a few people exit. The gunman stays, and I’m willing to bet that a lot of people on the train have no idea that it’s an air gun. I know those canisters, you see, on account of wasting an undergrad night with our floor nitrous junky. N₂O and CO₂—same little canisters. That brain burning high…

The train keeps smooth and quiet—hundreds of people, as always, not talking—and I take out my book, read, then stop, wondering and hoping that no one has called the police—I don’t want to be late for work.

Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Shawn Otis

Towards dawn we crossed a river and picked up on a footpath. The Agent went ahead while we waited in the dew-heavy brush. In the coming morning light, parts of Ozark’s skull showed through his boiled mess of a face.

The Agent came back shaking his head.

“They don’t want us,” he said. “Pathet Lao came two days ago, took their rice and boys and elephants. They say, ‘Americans kill our children.’”

Sarge grunted. “Two weeks ago they loved us. Let’s move in.”

The Agent protested and Sarge pushed him to the ground. Sarge and I stepped through a giant tripod spirit-gate, then into a village of a dozen scattered bamboo huts on stilts where children, hogs, and chickens ran around while a group of topless old women with withered brown breasts spat betel and screamed—another group of old men and young women stood with brand new AK-47s pointed at our chests.

Sarge and I held our rifles at our waists, ready to spray, waiting for someone to make a move.

One of the men looked a little above us, dropped his weapon, fell to his knees; then another and another and the clatter of falling rifles and everyone bowing before us. The Agent had emerged with the white elephant. In the light, its flesh was the softest pastel pink, its bristles as white as snow. It trumpeted and the villagers averted their eyes.

“Tell them we need help,” Sarge said to the Agent. “Tell them we need to eat, and we have a wounded man.” The Agent did as he was told and a black-toothed old woman in an elaborately embroidered vest and silver-beaded headdress came to examine Ozark.

“Ngu how pleuk,” the medicine woman finally said, looking up at us with sad, moist eyes.

“I know it’s a fuckin’ new-how-pluck spittin’ cobra,” Sarge said, “but is there anything you can do about it?”

The Agent translated and the woman told us to bring Ozark to the shade of her hut where she beat a stinking concoction of juices and creams in an old, rusty Japanese infantry helmet. Ozark groaned as she applied it to his face.

“Where am I?” he croaked.

“Gooksville, soldier,” Sarge said, looking over where the emaciated villagers prostrated themselves at the elephant’s feet, chanting and praying, while the animal stripped the village’s banana plants to their stems. “And you’re staying for a little R and R.”

Ozark said nothing.

“Ozark, brother,” Sarge said, his face softening, “You got yourself a million dollar wound. When we cross the border, I’ll have air cavalry scoop you up, but until then, you have to stay here. Even if I could call them in now, I wouldn’t want to compromise our position.”

“Sarge,” Ozark lisped from his melted lips, “I can make it.”

“No you can’t. You’re with friendlies here. Without eyes, you could get us all killed.”

The village headman agreed to hide Ozark and provide us with a guide in exchange for Ozark’s boots, the promise of a dozen air-dropped rifles, and the privilege to fill a gourd with the elephant’s urine. He could offer us no more than a little rice, though, insisting that the communists had taken most of their food. Ozark groped for our hands when we said goodbye and I’ll never forget the helpless look on his awful face—it was the last time I ever saw him.

Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Shawn Otis