Brother Otis and His Imaginary Pistol

I've been worrying about Brother Otis Rose. His father died a few months ago, and shortly after, Otis bought himself a Nazi officer's uniform, trimmed his mustache into a "Hitler" and walked the twenty three miles to Nacogdoches. He wanted me to photograph him, but I wasn't there. He called and yelled at me for taking the day off. I haven't heard from him since. I imagined that he stopped taking his meds and spent all his money on pot, or even worse, started smoking with the crackheads that give him rides sometimes. I finally decided that if I didn't say something, Otis would have an episode and end up in another showdown with the police.

Aunt Cheryl called his case worker and left a message. She told him that we hadn't seen him in awhile, and she wanted to make sure he wasn't missing his appointments.

"They can't tell us anything, but if he's missed appointments, they'll send someone to the house to check on him."

When we never heard back from the case worker, Aunt Cheryl decided we needed to try something else.

"Reb, do you want to call him? Wait, that's not a good idea, he's in love with you. I'll call him. He hates me." She picked up the phone. "Otis, this is Cheryl. How are you? We've been worried about you because we haven't seen you."

"Hi Miss Cheryl! I'm just fine! How are you?"

"I'm just fine, Otis."

"Miss Cheryl, you still got that P-08 pistol up there?"

"No Otis, we don't have one of those."

"Did you sell that pistol?"

"Yeah, we sold it." (We haven't had a P-08 in over five years.)

"You sold MY gawddamn pis-TOL?"

"Otis, that wasn't your pistol, hun. That belonged to someone else."

"You don't tell me NOTHIN'! I'm the MOTHERFUCKIN' Nazi that used to own that MOTHERFUCKIN' pistol. You ain't nothin' but a GAWDDAMNED LIAR!"

Cheryl handed me the phone. "He's lost it. He's off his meds. Listen."

By the time I got the phone, it was only dead air.

He's probably goose-stepping around the house right now, pretending to be Rommel, the Desert Fox.