The First Installment of Otis Wellington

(This post is much longer than is needed for a weekly post simply because I have had more than a week to ready this fella'. My next posts will be closer to one page of work. Mos' def.)

Untitled work on the character of Otis Wellington
by Andrew LeTellier

Chapter One
In which we meet our hero, however young, our hero’s father, however simple, and our hero’s cat, however unusual.

On Otis Wellington’s first birthday, he received a globe from his father. The axis squeaked, and paint was chipping from around Japan. It had the look of being passed down from owner to owner for generations, the same charm that fills attics and keeps you rummaging through your grandparents’ dusty chests for entire afternoons. Its colors were not blues and greens, as you might be used to seeing on a globe, but those of an old, well-used parchment. The continents appeared to be rusted, with coastlines of a darker, burnt shade, while the oceans shown a pale, golden color. Having spotted it at a neighborhood yard sale, Mr. Wellington told his wife that he thought it would make a lovely decoration for Otis’ bedroom. Mrs. Wellington on the other hand, a beautiful yet practical woman, thought the whole thing rather silly. As she explained to her husband, not only was Otis too young to use such a thing, but also what little boy would have any interest in a squeaky, round map? No, a model truck or stuffed dinosaur would have been much more fitting for a one-year-old. At least, she said, a triceratops would have given Otis something to chew on.

Maybe it was because he didn’t want to waste the eighty-eight cents he had paid to take it home; or maybe it was because he saw the twinkle in his son’s eye when he set it on the floor; or just maybe it was because he himself had a secret love for squeaky, round maps; but whatever the reason, Mr. Wellington began spending a great deal of time with Otis and that old globe. Every night before tucking Otis into bed, Mr. Wellington would waltz into the nursery sporting the same tattered fisherman cap. He was a handsome man (though he didn’t belong acting in movies) and his face was long with small, kind features. He was so tall and so thin that if you were to dress him up, all in one color, he could easily be confused with a writing utensil. Mr. Wellington claimed, despite his wife’s defiance, that this very fisherman cap once belonged to the captain of the legendary Saint Dumais, a ship whose voyages somehow never made it to the history books. At the heels of Mr. Wellington, following him into the nursery, often trod Sylvia, the Wellington housecat, who always seemed to know when it was time for Otis’ evening milk.

From his pocket Mr. Wellington would take a small, homemade fez and squeeze it onto Otis’s soft head. This, he had said, was a token of gratitude given to him by an Egyptian prince, whose daughter he had rescued from a gang of thieving gypsies. Over a shared bottle of warm milk, Mr. Wellington would sit Otis on his lap and ready themselves for the night’s activity. Night after night however, Sylvia would gaze at them with envious eyes, cooing and purring from her place at their feet. And so it was that Mr. Wellington, not knowing whether it was the warm milk or the ridiculous headwear that she coveted, finally decided to make an even smaller fez that fit nicely between Sylvia’s sandy ears, tied snuggly with string under her chin.

When the bottle had been drained of its contents (thanks to father, son, and cat alike), the absurd trio would settle around the great globe with reverence and anticipation. Presently, Mr. Wellington would give the thing a swift spin.

“The year is 1600, my little explorers,” Mr. Wellington had whispered over the globe’s whir. “Queen Isabella of Someplace Far, Far Away has chosen us—you and me, Otis. You too, Sylvia—to go out and see the world for her. To discover new things. New people and creatures. Lost cities. To where will Her Majesty send us tonight?” With this, Mr. Wellington would stop the spinning globe with his index finger and look to see where it had landed. This would be their assignment. Some nights the Queen would send the three of them to survey the deepest, densest jungles of the Amazon, where they would paddle, dodging darts from native blowguns, through vines that hung down like flowery, fraying hammocks. Other nights would put them on a rickety dogsled in Greenland, where they would cut through ice and snow at the bottom of towering glacial canyons, in pursuit of the elusive bearded seal. The Queen’s orders took them over the sand dunes of Morocco and along the ridges of Kilimanjaro. They rode camels, elephants, donkeys, and even a tiger on one of Mr. Wellington’s more adventurous evenings. The unlikely trio soon found that with the ancient globe and a little imagination, no place was too distant; no notion too far-fetched.

Of course, for the first year or so, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Wellington was quite certain Otis was even interested in these stories. He was unable to do anything more than babble and dribble in response. Sure, Otis appeared to be amused with his father’s rambling, but couldn’t it have been Mr. Wellington’s nose hairs that made Otis so giddy? Couldn’t the red fez have been tickling his scalp? Mrs. Wellington, convinced that her son would be just as charmed by normal boy trinkets, continued to bring home a multitude of toys for Otis. He drooled fondly on the tractor, gnawed well on the cardboard book about trains, and put his signature teeth-marks in the autographed baseball bat, but still Otis seemed most captivated by that silly old globe! Every bit of doubt, however, vanished one afternoon when Otis decided that he was tired of babbling and dribbling, and he wanted to give words a go.

“Ant,” murmured Otis nonchalantly between bites of sweet potato puffs.

Mrs. Wellington, who had been feeding her son, gasped with joy and set aside the box of puffs. “What’s that, Otis? What?” She looked at him as though she were a dog that was just promised a steak. “Honey! Otis is talking! Come quick! I think he said ‘ant!’”

Seconds later Mr. Wellington, all arms and legs, comb-over flapping (for he was not wearing his fisherman cap at the time—that was saved for adventures!), charged into the room. In one hand he gripped a pencil, and in the other he carried a book upon which “Captain’s Log” was printed in his best handwriting. The log had been created at his son’s birth to take the place of a lasting dream. As a boy Mr. Wellington had longed to sail into uncharted waters, plot and record the voyage in a leather-bound journal, and thereupon return home a hero to singing, dancing, and a great deal of merriment in his honor. Unfortunately, this had not come to be, mostly on account of school, followed by marriage, followed by Otis—a variety of pesky things (though he had undoubtedly grown very fond of the boy)—and now it was too late. So instead of documenting the exciting enterprise of an ocean voyage, he allowed the compromise of documenting the exciting enterprise of fatherhood—which, as it turns out, is a highly exciting enterprise indeed.

“Ant?” said he, rushing up to them and opening the log.

“Yes, ant!” said Mrs. Wellington. “Isn’t it wonderful, dear? Our little Otis likes ants! Oh, Otie! Do you wanna say it again? Do you want to say ‘ant’ for Mamma?”

“Go ahead, Son,” Mr. Wellington said as he scratched the date at the top of the page and poised the pencil for his entry. There were only inches between his nose and Otis’. “Say what you said before. Don’t be shy; no one’s watching.”

Otis let out a giggle from all the attention he had drawn and presently spoke clearly and proudly, “Art!” Sylvia, aroused by the commotion, had found her way into the room and was now gliding about under Otis’ high chair, playfully weaving in and out of the chair legs.

Mr. Wellington crinkled his brow and lowered the pencil a bit. “I thought you said he was saying ‘ant,’ dear. I’m no expert, but I heard ‘art.’ That’s still a word, though, eh? ‘Art’?”

“Icka!” Otis squealed. “Icka! Icka!” Otis beat his open palms on the chair top.

Sighing deeply, Mrs. Wellington backed away from the huddle. “I’m sorry, Honey. I thought this was it. I thought he knew what he was saying.” She started again for the box of sweet potato puffs. “I’ll make sure next time, before I start a fuss. Here, put away your silly book.” She reached over and took the pencil from her husband’s fingers.

“Ant,” Otis continued, raising a finger to his globe in the corner of the room.

“No, Otie,” began Mrs. Wellington, “that’s not—”

“Art. Icka!” He finished. Mr. and Mrs. Wellington silently looked at one another. “Ant art icka! Ant art icka!” Sylvia, that lovely, graceful cat, had moved again and was now across the room, circling the globe with some importance.

It was Mr. Wellington who first broke the hush. “Is he…?”

“Antarticka.”

Without taking his eyes from Otis, Mr. Wellington reached back toward his wife and gently plucked the pencil from her hand. All the while Sylvia remained at her station, pawing at the lower hemisphere, a bit unnervingly near to earth’s most southern continent.