The Otter and The Fox

"I can talk to, ya know?" she growled, leaning forward.

"You remind me of your grandmother, my mom," Sumner smiled.

"Oh, is she..."

"No, I'm sorry, but she passed a couple of years ago, but you would've like her."

"That's just so unfair," she said, settling back in her chair. "So many..."

"Yes, but we can't live back there, can we?" Sumner said. "All we can do is face tomorrow head on, and let's live it like we mean it."

"Okay," she said, "you're right."

"So, vet school?"

"I've been working as a vet tech after school, Saturdays and summers..."

"Have a dog yet?"

"We did, when we were little, but not the past couple of years. Besides, I want a horse, no, really, I want a bunch of horses..."

"Interesting. I've got about eleven acres out at my place. No barn, but those aren't hard to do."

"You mean it, really?"

"Why not? As long as I don't have to take care of them..."

She almost flew into his arms then, and when she whispered "Oh, Daddy," into his neck a couple of time he felt his world spinning round and round. About the time they were finishing up their desserts the hostess brought him a note and he nodded. "Well, okay Forbes, we just have a few papers to sign at the office then you can head back to your house."

"What did you do?" Tracy's brother asked.

"You're caught up now Forbes, through the end of the year, anyway. Charles, the choice is yours, but this is pretty good Bread Pudding, and I'm not leavin' 'til I finish!"

+++++

Elizabeth moved in with him a few weeks later. He designed a barn and fenced in some pasture and bought her a mare, and while all this was going on he returned to the island to survey the damage to the original house. The concrete foundation had been damaged and neglected since fire crews left the scene, and Mrs. Clarendon moved to an assisted living facility, so she'd never move back to the island. The decision was made to clear out the remnants of the old house and sell the island, and Sumner was sorry to see the house end up like it had.

He made one last trip to the island after the remaining demolition was complete, and he took Elizabeth with him -- if only to listen to her memories about growing up on the island, with Tracy. He realized he'd made a tremendous mistake by not committing to Tracy, and the sense of loss had, at times, begun to feel a little like a personal calamity. Elizabeth came to him kind of like a little miracle, yet he couldn't help but think of her as a kind of consolation prize. He'd missed out on the Grand Prize when he'd shuffled away from marriage and commitment and all that, but Elizabeth was his daughter. He moved quickly from the realm of obligatory feelings to knowing real love when he saw her, and he hoped in time she would feel that way too.

When football season rolled around he made it a point to go to all of his son's games and yes, he was talented. Maybe something would become of it, but love came harder between the two of them. His son approached warily, not quite sure who his father was. Charles decided later that year he wanted to go to Michigan State and when he was awarded a football scholarship their that all but cemented their future relationship. Distance would take care of that.

Elizabeth went to the University of California at Davis, and just like that, after a whirlwind year of indecipherable emotions and roller coaster turmoils, they were gone. And so as quickly as they came to him they disappeared. Now, however, he had a horse to deal with.

And one afternoon he rode the horse down to the shore, more just to watch the water than anything else, and to wonder about the nature of such things. Husbands and wives, sons and daughters, all the predictably unpredictable things that went along with those four words. How almost all of them had escaped him, how close he came to never knowing what that life was all about.

He heard a commotion down on the rocky beach and he tied off the horse then picked his way down through the brushy scree to the water's edge and he saw an otter and a fox locked in mortal combat, their bodies intertwined in a whirling dance of death, and he watched them, fascinated. Why? Why do this? Why fight like this, knowing it might only lead to your own demise?

And he watched in awe of whatever had compelled this struggle.

And soon it was over. The otter emerged victorious -- yet as it pulled itself away from the dead fox Sumner could see that its wounds were severe, indeed, the otter had been mortally wounded. She limped off a few feet and then fell over into nothingness, and he walked down to their bodies if for no other reason than to bury them. When that was done he heard a gentle mewing and went to investigate, and he found what he assumed was the dead fox's pup curled up amongst the rocks. He stood tall and looked around, hoping to find signs of the other parent...

And then he heard distant cries up the beach and went to investigate, and he found that the otter had left a pup behind.

So...they had fought to protect their young, and they had...had what? How senseless, he thought, was this outcome? Yet...how inevitable.

C. Llewelyn Sumner didn't really know what else to do, so he gathered some grass and lay the pups side by side on this little makeshift bed and he clambered up through the scree to Elizabeth's horse and he carried them back to his house. He made sure they were warm and he heated some milk in a saucepan and he helped them along by dipping the tip of his little finger into the milk and letting them lick away, and it worked.

"Now what do I do?"

And she came to him then, as she did from time to time. Tracy came and they spoke for a while. About what he must do now to make things right with their world, because everything was now right there before his eyes, everything he needed to know and life and death -- and love. Later that evening he rubbed the little pups when they cried and he finally felt something like peace in his heart. "It's alright," he told them, "I'm here now. Everything will be fine so just go to sleep. I'll be here when you wake up."

Admirers of his work still came calling, and even long after his practice closed people still came to see the old architect in his home between the forest and the sea, down there on the edge of forever. He had always worked to bring the outside inside, so these visitors weren't exactly surprised when they found C. Llewelyn Sumner sitting in the sun on the deck in front of his house -- or that quite often they found him sitting there with a fox curled up on his lap and an otter sleeping on his shoulder. People often found him asleep under the sun with a curious smile on his face, and perhaps these people thought that such a quiet smile rather suited the lonely old man.

This work © 2022 adrian leverkühn | abw | all rights reserved, and as usual this was a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's (twisted) imagination or coincidentally referenced entities are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. In other words and as is always the case, this was just a little bit of storytelling, pure and simple.