Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, I just kidnap 'em from Alliance now and again. Please don't sue.
Warning: While an otter was harmed in the course of this story, it was an act of fiction. No real otters, alive or dead, were injured, tormented, or killed (this latter applies only to live otters since I'm not sure you can kill a dead otter) during the writing of this story. Please don't arrest me.
Okay, so I seem to be developing some sort of obsession for Fraser, Sr.
*Sissy.*
Standing beside his bed, he could hear the taunts echo through the years. It wasn't as if he hadn't heard them before, for he had listened to them daily since he'd reached school age.
His parents had been no help. When he told them what the other children called him, they told him to be a man, to not let it show if it hurt. They simply didn't understand what his life was like. His mother was a sort of hero--heroine--to the Inuit and a legend among the whites. She might have saved those children so long ago, but she hadn't done much to save him. "Don't let them push you around, Robert," she would snap. "Don't be weak. The weak don't survive here." She would then hand him a book, something about Theodore Roosevelt or Sam Steele or the innumerable saints who persevered in the face of hardship. The point had been for him to overcome his weaknesses and gain strength, but the result had been a book flung aside unread.
His father was a quiet man, and if there had ever been a man who appeared weaker or more ineffective, Robert didn't know who he might be. His father, though, was anything but weak. He was the first man called in a moment of crisis, whether it was a fire, flood, or lost child. Like his wife, Robert's father was a librarian, a former teacher, and the two of them inherited what the Americans had taken to calling the "pioneer spirit." They believed in going to new places to tame the land through spreading knowledge. Unlike many pioneers, they had a great respect for the native peoples and assimilated themselves into the local culture as best they could.
After they married, they traveled, taking their books and their knowledge from one village to another. They hadn't ceased their travels even after Robert was born, but as the years passed and they grew older, the moves became less frequent. As Robert started school, they began to stay in one place for longer periods of time. Then the names began: Sissy, Momma's Boy, Book-boy. There had been other less-polite names, and through it all Robert gritted his teeth and held his fists in check. His parents didn't approve of violence, but he longed to lash out, longed to strike back. The first time he called a bully a "Neanderthal ruffian with an overactive pituitary gland," the other children laughed even harder at him. After that, he simply tried to ignore their taunts. It didn't pay to try and be erudite in one's insults with children who valued action as a better past time than reading.
His attempts at nonviolence backfired, both among his peers and with his parents who began to despair of him ever being a man. Late at night he would hear his parents discuss what they ought to do with him. His father would suggest sending him to his aunt Rachel's in Sudbury. His mother would counter with his uncle Edward in St. Phillips. She felt a year or two fishing off Newfoundland with her brother would toughen him. Robert wanted nothing to do with either of them. He liked the Territories, and he liked the friends he had. He liked the wide-open spaces, the quiet save for the wind, the crunch of snow in the winter, and the sight of the caribou migrating in the summer. He had no desire to go back east.
And so he endured the name-calling. He didn't start fights, and he didn't respond to attempts to force him into one. he was a skinny boy, and he knew the bullies would pound him to pulp. They were older and bigger, and unless he was more cunning, they would win. It wasn't always a successful strategy, though. He often came home with torn clothes, a bloody nose, and once with a broken arm. His mother would frown at him while she patched him or his clothes and lecture him yet again: "You're going to have to stop them, Robert. Stand up for yourself. If you don't they'll simply continue to beat you."
His father would just sit in his chair and shake his head over his book.
And then there had been the most humiliating incident of all. When he was twelve, one of the older boys caught an otter. The boy brought it to school where he showed it to the other children on the school grounds. The bully grabbed the animal, not fully grown, and chased the younger children with it. Robert saw that the animal was frightened, and he didn't blame it--he was too. When the other boy came toward him with the creature, he didn't move. Robert stood his ground though he was terrified and watched the boy run toward him with the otter. When he didn't move, the boy went around him.
For one brief, glorious moment, Robert felt a lick of triumph. He'd stood his ground and caused the other boy to turn aside. Surely they couldn't call him coward now. The boy came around for a second pass, and Robert once more stood still, holding his face carefully immobile, but he couldn't hide the hint of a smile when the boy again turned aside and went around him
Apparently the smile did him in. Instead of coming around him again, the boy swung the otter around and smacked Robert from behind with it. Hearing the otter scream, Robert had begun to turn toward it, but he had merely deflected the blow rather than avoided it. The impact knocked him sprawling, and he would have a scar for the rest of his life. The otter eventually died from the injuries it received when its head struck Robert's shoulder blade.
Expecting his parents to be happy he'd stood his ground and not struck a blow in defense, Robert had been disappointed at their reactions. Anyone would have thought he'd killed the otter. In hindsight, perhaps he had, but had he not turned, the impact of the otter might well have done *him* in. His father had gone to the local magistrate, and before anyone knew what was happening, an ordinance against swinging live otters had been passed. Robert's humiliation had then been complete.
From that moment on, the other children delighted in calling him Otter Boy.
Now eighteen, his parents wanted to send him off to university. Without consulting him, they had requested applications from several colleges and universities, all of them in the east and one in the States. Robert had at one point considered a degree in philosophy, but he'd changed his mind. He knew what he wanted to do, and neither of his parents would be pleased. They wanted him to become a teacher or perhaps a librarian. They felt he was too weak and ineffectual to do anything else, and perhaps they felt he might be able to take over for them. He had other ideas.
In the past two years he'd befriended a local constable, liked the idea of helping people, of being appreciated without having to go in with guns blazing and fists flying. He liked putting his wits to the test. Pulling the envelope from his pocket, he turned it over and stared at his name in the stark black letters.
The letter from Regina had been waiting for him this morning. He'd begun collecting the mail shortly after sending his letter of inquiry, and now he stood in his room afraid to open it. His hands shook slightly as he turned the envelope over. He bit his lip and looked at the sealed flap of the envelope. The worst they could do was reject him, in which case he'd let his parents choose him a university.
He said a brief prayer and ripped the envelope open.
END
Leigh A. Adams
adderlygirl@yahoo.com