Octavius the 1st

Chapter 14

134 Octavius the 1st Chapter 14 Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did. —Dr. William Butler He awakened, if he had been asleep, wherever and whoever he was, to panicked voices, many, or, as he came around, two that he could distinguish, and others, muted, distant somewhere, the GD—he recalled what he was now, and where, although the why remained more elusive—and, pounding up the steps, the QM. “OCTAVIUS! OCTAVIUS!” He had already sensed disaster and had more or less jerked and stumbled into his sweatpants before she came into sight. At worst, she caught a flash of dimpled buttocks. And after all, this was catastrophe, the GD face down in an ashtray, the house in flames, the escaped convict holding court with a handmade gun of silverware, candle, and matchstick. He wasn’t too far off the mark. 135 Gaylord Brewer The QM was screaming from the top of the stairs, her distance communicating that each second wasted on an unnecessary gesture could spell . . . could spell something or other, something bad, and spell it damn straight. “YOUR MEE-MAW’S LOCKED IN HER ROOM! SHE CAN’T GET OUT! SHE’S CAN’T BREATHE ! ! ! HOW DO I CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT? !” Octavius was awake now, and without comment—“Deeds, Not Words!” plucked suddenly from some remote but simmering subconscious pool, an ROTC class he’d once had to attend for a single meeting before a registration error could be corrected—he grasped the loose elastic at his waist and followed her down the steps at a run, or at any rate, by anyone’s account, certainly a brisk-joggy-sort-of-purposeful hop. “MEE-MAW,” he called to the faux grain of the plastic door, from beneath which a wisp, an ominous tendril, of smoke insinuated itself. “OTTO TROTTER, I’M TRAPPED ! ! !” the door answered. “MEE-MAW, TRY TURNING THE THINGY ON THE KNOB.” “I’M TRAPPED! YOUR MEE-MAW CAN’T BREATHE! HELP ! ! !” 136 Octavius the 1st He heard her cough, along with the faint, choking, fading, disparate (desperate?) chorus of apparently the rest of the pinochle club trapped in there and failing (flailing? foundering/floundering ?) at her side. He even heard, or imagined he heard, a dimly swelling dramatic score of (synthesized) strings. “HANG ON!” Octavius put his hand on the shoulder of the hovering QM and (as that and the accompanying frown seemed to play alright ) added a grim nod intended to convey his Aristotelian(?) assurance of character-as-action as he scurried back upstairs to recover the 3-in-1™ and, with a prescience that impressed him, the dusty toolbox his father Septimus had once put together as birthday gift for his son. He charged back down in something like a flash—“Keep that animal out of my way!” the Alpha belched boldly over his shoulder—and bounded out the front door into the bright, brisk chill of morning and around the house to the window of the GD’s room. He looked in, but instead of any horrific apparition of kin sprawled prostrate and unconscious saw an old woman sitting on a bed smoking a cigarette and watching television. “MEE-MAW!” She looked up, rather wildly and inexplicably, toward the ceiling. 137 Gaylord Brewer He accompanied a second call with a hearty knock on the glass, and although she seemed, to his mind, surprised to see him there, she possibly recognized him and even displayed a faint recollection of their conversation moments earlier. She took a bolstering drag, stood up, and promptly enough approached him. “OPEN THE WINDOW,” he instructed. “IT’S JAMMED! IT’S LOCKED! I’M TRAPPED ! ! !” “MEE-MAW, CALM DOWN. FLIP THE LOCK HERE ON THE SILL!” The GD clamped her cigarette between her lips, frowned, and with both hands initiated a flurry of animated fiddling that Octavius couldn’t clearly follow. “OK?” he ventured after an hour or so, as the GD, as far as could be ascertained through the haze, stood staring vacantly somewhere into the sky behind him. “OTTO TROTTER, IT’S STUCK! I CAN’T BREATHE ! ! !” She murdered the last of a mangled cigarette and lit another with the glowing stub. Although the angle was a bit high for him and his position between brittle skeletons of hydrangea tenuous, Octavius managed , through perseverance, ingenuity, and good-old-Amurrican grit, by God, to place the heels of his...