The Life or Death of Otto Krause

By DUANE KLAUS

Otto Krause, the exemplary mailman, has never accepted the mysterious disappearance of his four-year-old daughter, Mary. Decades now passed, Otto, eighty-seven and demented, faces a rather unorthodox dilemma. He no longer knows if he is alive or dead. Sensing that if he waits much longer he might never know the truth, Otto launches a dramatic escape from the nursing home where he lives to return to his old postal route, now a down-at-the-heels Houston neighborhood.

There Otto meets Ayana, a young Black girl on the run, her heart hardened by abuse. Despite Otto's unstable mind and nuclear grumpiness, a tender, immutable bond forms between them. While hiding out in a cold storage room, the two misfits decide to join forces. The next day they embark upon a remarkable odyssey. Ayana will help Otto find Mary and the old man will seek to do the impossible. Lead a broken, young girl to a life worth living. A life filled with safety, kindness, and love. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: DUANE KLAUS
• Release date: Mar 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393152354

DUANE KLAUS

Duane Klaus has been writing for over thirty years. The Life Or Death of Otto Krause is also available for digital download.  

Book preview

Prologue

Sunnyside, Texas 1962

When a child goes missing , a star goes dark, leaving a vacant spot in an eternally imperfect sky.

Time has passed. That Otto knows. But unbeknownst to him, it’s been over an hour since he stepped from his mail truck, leaving his daughter, Mary, alone. He knows only one word to describe Mary. Perfect. A perfect five-year-old girl with sunshine hair and enchanting dimples who knows nothing of the evil ways of men, only laughter, bedtime stories, and playing baby dolls with her twin sister, Lisa. She is oblivious to a perverse world ready to feast on perfect little girls on perfect sunny days. Why do such dreadful things happen? No one knows for certain. Especially not a man like Otto.

Otto, a veteran of World War II, suffers from shell shock. With increasing frequency, terrifying flashbacks trigger mind-numbing amnesia, stealing him away from the here and now. Until today, this devil, born of war, tormented only him. But that all changed the minute Mary unknowingly stepped out of his truck.

As the fog of war dissipates, Otto returns to the present to find himself standing next to his red-and-blue mail truck, his callused hands firmly rubbing his temples just below the rim of his blue postman’s hat. His postal route encompasses all of Sunnyside, Texas, the oldest and most dangerous of Houston’s inner-city wards. He knows these streets well and recognizes what they hide. Sunnyside is no playground, no place for a young girl to wander off aimlessly. Otto, well aware of the extreme danger his daughter has fallen into, recognizes that he must find her before she slips through the cracks of this urban jungle. Before she disappears forever.  

Thick humidity inflames the already hot air, causing sweat to collect across his brow as he paces frantically on the broken sidewalk in front of the post office. His eyes scan the shadows falling from bushy shrubs and knotted trees, each one concealing its own vile secret as to the fate of his daughter.

Mary? Mary, where are you? he yells, his mind crippled with raging anxiety. Mary! Come to Daddy. But she’s nowhere to be found. She’s somehow vanished, her intoxicating laugh still playing feverishly in his troubled mind.

With the burden of a thousand souls picking at his skin, Otto falls to his knees, his body dropping onto the ailing sidewalk, grass-filled cracks crisscrossing their way across the eroded cement. Using his hands as a vise, he squeezes the sides of his head tightly, hoping to shake loose the lingering fog seeking to obscure his thoughts.

Where did she go? He recalls stopping in front of the post office and exiting his truck, only to be confronted by an abhorrent man dressed in tattered clothes reeking of garbage.

Oh my God! Did he take her? Does that despicable creature have my Mary? Panic sweeps through his chest before resting in his stomach as a tight knot. Across the street, a small group gathers to watch the show. They stand and stare, each one mumbling to another something inordinately petty. No one offers him help or a kind word. Don’t they see the panic in his face or the sheer horror in his voice when he calls her name? Otto climbs off his knees, walks a few yards down the busy street, and plops down on a rusted metal bench, red-and-purple graffiti covering every surface paint will stick to.

A few minutes later an African American woman, clothed in a modest dress the color of honey, sits down on the opposite end of the bench. For a long time they sit side by side, neither breaking the grave silence that seeks to devour them. Her sad, dark eyes find a place somewhere across the road and fixate on it.

As if on cue, she speaks, her melancholic voice resonating like a stagnant river, the water still and lifeless. My boy was killed not far from here. Two blocks over, on Elm Street. He was just six years old. Someone shot him in the back like a stray dog; shot him for no reason—no reason at all. A long, fathomless sigh escapes her. The woman has a distinct hardness to her. A hardness only an unbearable life can bring. This damned place eats its young. She never looks at Otto, and although her body takes up space on the bench, what once made up her soul left long ago.

Otto doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing at all. An occasional car rushes by, but none stop. Birds fly overhead, but none land.

Then, as if having fallen from the sky, a young African American girl appears before them. The girl has a disquieted countenance, a sheepish façade evident in her every motion and word. Without a sound, she brings her hand forward, presenting Otto with something she has concealed behind her back. He stares at the object, trying to make sense of it. It’s Mary’s doll, Dolly. The blond-haired toy is encased in thick mud, her tiny pink dress ripped to shreds, her face shattered into an unnatural plastic mélange. Before a thousand questions can fall from his tongue, the shy girl turns and runs, the intense sadness shrouding the bench repelling her like an opposing magnet.

Wait. Where did you find this? he yells. But the girl has gone, disappearing behind a row of buildings, never to be seen again. A few minutes later, a policeman in a dark uniform appears and kindly escorts Otto to a waiting black-and-white police cruiser.

I’m sorry, the officer keeps repeating, his voice sounding like a worn record stuck in an unfathomable groove. I’m here to help you. Help you find your daughter. Otto turns back to the park bench only to find the woman draped in honey has vanished, like some misplaced angel sent to comfort him—an impossible task even for a heavenly spirit sent by God. The policeman deposits Otto in the back seat, and as the cruiser pulls away, Otto watches the street, the people, the post office transform into a blur of sullied chaos.

As trees and houses spin past him, Otto allows his mind to drift to a place where he knows he can breathe, a place where peace resides: the dusty attic above their home on Cherry Street. Over the course of many years, Otto has become a master craftsman. A sculptor of wood. Under the rafters of their home, he built a magical make-believe world that includes a bustling town, a towering forest, an emerald-blue river, and an entire population of figurines that live safely beneath the shingled roof. Otto knows firsthand how hateful the world can be. Cruelty of this magnitude directed at a young child has the power to clip wings, to kill dreams—to thwart a seedling before it ever leaves the earth.

The attic has become an oasis for Otto. For hours he sits alongside his twin daughters on the plywood floor, telling stories and playing make-believe with them in their magical world. Twinkling lights strung from the soaring rafters create a starry sky, and a forever-full moon hanging from the highest beam diligently casts its warm glow upon all of Everyland.

The policeman, a willowy man with flaxen hair, stops the car in front of the police station and escorts Otto into the building. The station is comprised of a somber collection of four gray walls with only one row of windows trusted to light the dreary room. Long fluorescent tubes, several of them flickering hysterically, light the remainder of the space filled with nameless desks and faceless people. Across the way, he sees his wife, Rose, resting uneasily on a metal chair. In front of her sits a cluttered desk occupied by a pudgy man wearing a faded brown jacket that in a tragic way complements his inscrutable countenance. Hurriedly, Otto navigates the endless maze of desks, people, and chairs. Once beside her, he puts his hand on Rose’s shoulder, the woman recoiling as if someone has touched her with a hot iron.

Don’t touch me, she yells. She has already cried a river of tears that have turned her eyes red and swollen. Where have you been, Otto? It’s been hours, Rose asks, her voice hoarse and shaken.

"I’ve been looking for Mary. I know what you’re thinking. That you shouldn’t have trusted me with her. But I will find our daughter. Don’t you worry." His voice sounds weak and pathetic, nothing like the confident man he wanted to portray.

Rose’s once-golden hair has begun to gray prematurely, and she is much thinner than she ever planned on being. She’s a tall woman, but today her shoulders slump forward under the sheer weight of the burden forced upon her at the young age of thirty-five. Exhaling deeply, she looks away, fixing her eyes, the color of Dorothy’s emerald slippers, on a round clock hanging lazily on one of the cinderblock walls. She needs a miracle. Out of desperation, she does something she hasn’t done in quite some time. She prays.

Oh, Otto. I need a man now. Not another child. What happened to you? Where is the man I married?

Otto pulls one of the cold chairs next to her and sits down. Staring into her, he says, I’m right here. And I promise I’ll fix this. That’s one thing I know how to do. I know how to fix things.

Once again, Rose begins to cry, her tears relentlessly tearing at Otto’s heart. This isn’t a leaky roof or a broken porch swing. This is our daughter’s life you’ve lost. Go away, Otto. I can’t look at you. Just go away.

Rose. Please. But her mind has already dismissed him.

He pulls himself up, walks to the other side of building, and stares out a window to an empty parking lot, a lone tree breaking through a floor of gray cement like the beanstalk in a fairytale Otto once knew by heart.

For years to come, on his mail route and for countless hours after, he will diligently wander the streets of Sunnyside, looking, searching, all while holding his breath in anticipation of cradling his little girl, touching her cheek, hearing her enchanting laugh once again. After he finds her, they will return home, climb the twenty-two steps to the attic, and return to Everyland. Once there, she will be safe from the senseless violence this world worships.

The undaunted postman will never give up hope—no matter how long it takes. But how long will it take? And at what cost to his family, his health, his sanity? Only God knows the answers to such unbearable questions. But there lies the problem. For as years fall into decades and hope inevitably begins to fade, Otto, once a great lover of God and humanity, begins to lose faith in people, God, and, most tragically, himself.

What lies on the opposing side of love’s golden coin? Not more love. No, not love. Hate lies there. Deep-seated hatred, powerful enough to turn a once-good man, a once-kind man, a once-loving man, into something altogether unrecognizable. Even to himself. Otto will toss that golden coin many times in his life; where it ultimately lands will determine not only the fate of his life but the fate of many others as well.  

Forty-six years later

Chapter 1

Houston, Texas

2006

Dead or alive. For Otto Krause it’s not a directive on how to bring in a felon but a question that eats at him every time the brass clock on the cafeteria wall ticks languidly forward. Until recently, he assumed when he came to the end of his life there would be a clear distinction between living and dying, breathing and not breathing, thinking and not thinking, farting and not farting. Surely, he will know when he’s dead? But Otto’s not sure of anything anymore. Eighty-eight years of sand flowing through an hourglass proves to be a hell of a lot of sand. Old, grumpy, confused, and possibly dead are not endearing attributes for any one person to possess. To top it off, in this peculiar space between life and death, Otto sees and talks to dead people, just like that kid in the 90s movie The Sixth Sense .

He doesn’t like it one bit. It’s all so damn confusing. One minute he is focusing all his concentration on scooping the final remnants of chocolate pudding from one of those tiny cups, the next his dead master sergeant is standing above him, screaming profanities with a stern look on his face.

Otto currently resides in a stinky dump where everyone around him has one foot in the grave and the other, well, the other damned close to the hole. Four Seasons Manor. The shithouse of nursing homes.

On this typical morning, Otto shuffles across the dirt-laden halls of the home with an exaggerated sense of purpose. Broken streams of muted light filter through the grubby windows that line the hallway to his right. His Four Seasons–issued brown slippers make an unnerving swish-swish sound on the tile floor as his feet slide back and forth, never leaving the ground, as if connected to some hidden rail system. The sound irritates him, but then again most things irritate him these days. At this stage of the game, he has bigger fish to fry than squeaky shoes. Inopportune sounds regularly emanate from his decaying body. It’s not easy being an octogenarian. Everything hurts, and forget trying to get anywhere fast; it’s just not going to happen. Although he’s a resident like any other at Four Seasons Manor, he dresses entirely differently from the other zombies wandering the halls in their oversize pajamas, Sansabelt trousers, and baggy sweatshirts. Every morning, Monday through Friday, Otto proudly slips on the first postal uniform ever issued him. On that special day in 1949 the uniform became his to keep. Despite its age, the uniform is in surprisingly good repair, evidence of the utmost respect he holds for the most honorable of professions. Otto does not throw things away just because they’re old. Born into a family, a generation, of scarcity, he can’t understand this new disposable society.

Get rid of it. Why are you saving that old thing? He can’t count how many times he has heard that from some pimple-faced joker of a millennial younger than the pair of boxers currently securing the family jewels. Unfortunately, his daughter, Lisa, has things in common with these idiots. Fortunately, Otto interceded before she executed a heinous crime of biblical proportions. Two months ago, he discovered Lisa was about to donate his postal uniform to the Salvation Army. Can you believe that? Thank God Otto intervened. Otherwise, some deadbeat drunk sitting in a dark alley would be wearing his pride and joy while downing a pint of Jack Daniels. By locking him away in this dump, Lisa officially declared herself to be a true-blue, grade-A disposer. With his productive years past, and his head missing a few marbles, Otto became a bother—just another thing to throw atop the growing pile of superfluous rubbish. That’s why he’s here, doing time in this prison of a home. What really sucks is that it’s the last bit of time left on his clock, if his clock is still ticking at all.

Otto comes from 100 percent, grade-A German stock. Despite the cruelty of years that have wreaked havoc on his body, his blue-green eyes, the color of a calm ocean, remain gentle. His head looks like someone molded skin and bone into a large square block and positioned that block on top of another bigger, squarer block. Sprigs of gray hair stick out of his head like seedlings of some peculiar plant trying to take root in a bleak landscape of spots, bumps, and bony ridges.

A cheerful smile once followed alongside him, but like the Loch Ness monster, it disappeared years ago, never to be seen again. He dons a thick, gray imperial moustache that curls up on each end, like a flower reaching for the sun. The imperial gives a man a particular distinguished look, or so he thinks.

People often ask, Where are you from? What’s the accent?

Annoyed with their blatant ignorance, he barks, "From America. Born here, lived here, will die here. Where do you think I’m from? Dummkopf!" Otto calls most people dummkopf, these days. It means stupid in German. It’s a chore for Otto to live in a world filled with so many stupid people. At this stage in his life, all he wants is to be left alone. You see, Otto dislikes people. He hasn’t always disliked them. In fact there was a time when he would have, on many occasions, been referred to as a people person. It’s just been since . . . Well, that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Suffice it to say, at this time, on a planet filled with billions of people, he only likes, only trusts, one other human—his wife. His Rose.

Like most of his body, Otto’s vision is in rapid decline. To see anything, he must wear the most repulsive pair of black plastic square glasses ever assembled. They don’t seem to bother him. In fact, he likes the weight and thickness of his forlorn spectacles. They provide another layer of reassuring protection between him and a bleak world he has grown to despise. The obscene weight of the eyewear forces him to continually push them up with his middle finger, making it look like he’s perpetually shooting the nasty sign at anyone who passes. This brings on a constant barrage of Oh my, or, did you just shoot the finger at me? He ignores them, the fatuous people, choosing to press on, pushing up his glasses, finger extended for the next raging idiot in his path.

Polished silver buttons, like tiny tin soldiers, march up the blue Eisenhower jacket of his uniform. The coat hangs languidly on his bony frame, making him look more like a child playing dress-up in his father’s work clothes than the postman he once was. He used to stand close to six feet tall, but as his aging spine collapses and curves, his height diminishes with it. His pleated pants are also blue, and a thin maroon tie hangs from his neck as if it were an afterthought.

Otto Krause has long since retired as a postman, but he doesn’t know that. He can’t remember retiring, can’t recall the obligatory send-off they gave him, or many other things that once made up the fabric of his past. His brain now functions like a television set on its last leg—static and noise obscuring the once-clear picture. More and more people around him make excuses for his failing faculties, helping him fill in the lapses of memory that keep growing like weeds in a forgotten garden.

Along with advancing dementia, Otto has Parkinson’s disease—two nightmare diseases for the price of one! Great! Parkinson’s has turned his gait into something resembling a controlled slide, his slippers pushing dirt and debris along with them like a bulldozer clearing a construction site, while his wrinkled hands unremittingly shake as if plugged into an electrical outlet.

Otto delivers all of the important mail at Four Seasons Manor. It’s a job he’s given himself. The staff at Four Seasons Manor allow Otto to deliver all of the fliers to the residents—fliers informing them about pivotal events such as bingo games, shuffleboard tournaments, or taco night. The staff thought by giving Otto this useless job he might become less ornery, less bothersome. They were wrong.

At the end of the dark-green tile hallway, bright sunlight shines through a single window, making it look like the tunnel into the afterlife. Is this the end? Am I really dead? he thinks. Shuffling toward the bright light, he expects to find God, Jesus, or maybe Elvis. Instead he finds Jake, one of the male nurses, walking toward him with a long clipboard resting in his hand. Jake is gay. Otto doesn’t care that Jake is gay; it just bothers him that the male nurse wears a female nurse’s uniform: a bright-white scrub dress and sneakers. The intrepid postman has always been a stickler for uniforms, taking them very seriously and thinking everyone else on the planet should as well. A man wearing a woman’s uniform isn’t right; it’s not natural. It doesn’t follow the rules of society. A society, he believes, even at a nursing home, needs rules. Rules that people rigorously obey. Without them, the citizens, or the residents as it might be, are all just a bunch of stupid apes, running around playing shuffleboard, watching Wheel of Fortune, and begging for enemas.

Jake almost looks like a woman with his shaved legs, stuffed bra, and flowing mane of cocoa hair that is sexier than most of the real women at Four Seasons Manor. What gives Jake away is his five o-clock shadow that never waits till five o’clock to show up.

Hello, Otto. Nice day, isn’t it? he says, his voice light and cheery. Girly, Otto thinks.

What’s nice about it? Otto mumbles, shuffling forward, trying to keep his eyes off the shadow, afraid he might say something he’ll later regret.

With a voice as dazzling as unicorns and pink bubble gum, Jake exclaims, Everything is amazing. It’s just good to be alive—to breathe, to feel the air against my skin, and to be in love. Twirling around, his arms reach for the ceiling as if he were a ballerina.

Otto stops, lifts his leg slightly, releases a loud, stinky fart, and winks at Jake. The nurse stares at the old man waiting for an Excuse me or something else a normal, civilized person might say to apologize for such vulgar behavior.

Otto glares at him before blurting out, You need a shave, Jake. And quit wearing a woman’s uniform. It’s confusing to the residents.

Bowled over by the remark, Jake sweeps his hair back with the stroke of a hand. I don’t know what you mean. What are you saying, Mr. Krause?

I’m saying if you’re going to act like a woman, you need to nix the beard, Jake.

"Why I am a woman, Mr. Krause. And I don’t have a beard."

Otto shakes his head. You’re not a woman, Jake. Look in the mirror.

Mr. Krause, you can say whatever you want, but I know what I am. I’m a woman. I have the right to claim my own gender identity. It’s in the constitution, you know, Jake says adamantly, thrusting his fake breasts forward.

Otto shuffles over, stops directly in front of Jake, and in one quick move, so quick it even surprises Otto, reaches out, grabs Jake’s balls, and squeezes. The nurse lets out a scream that would make any woman proud, the sound reverberating up and down the hall like a siren.

"You aren’t a woman, Jake. Women don’t have balls. And you’re wrong. It’s not in the constitution, dummkopf." Otto lets go and quickly scoots away, leaving Jake on the floor holding his crotch, his pride gone, his balls bruised.

You assaulted me, Jake yells. You’re dangerous, Otto Krause.

Yeah, and you’re a fake. Buy a razor, and while you’re at it, buy some pants, too, dummkopf!

Four Seasons Manor consists of a central nursing station that looks out over a common area where a wide-screen television blares a continuous stream of The Golden Girls reruns. The residents set the volume level to accommodate the person with the worst hearing in the room. That translates to the God-awful machine blaring at full volume all hours of the day, the noise leaving Otto in a perpetual state of nuclear grumpiness.

Brainless retards! he says as he slides by the TV room, wishing he had a set of earplugs or a gun. From the common area, two wings of patients’ rooms stretch out in opposite directions like spokes on a wheel. The dining hall concludes the end of the East Wing. It’s a cavernous room that perpetually smells of burnt toast and an infinite array of flowery perfumes.

The patient corridors are painted a puke green, with not one picture to break the monotony of the boring interior. Ray and Bill occupy room 101, the room closest to the nursing station. With all his weight, Otto pushes open the door to their room and creeps in. Ray, bald and skinny, lies in bed with a patched quilt pulled snugly to his neck. On the other side of the room, Bill is strapped into one of those rotating beds designed to keep pressure ulcers from invading his motionless skin. Otto thinks Bill looks like a piece of beef on a barbecue skewer and often says so. Round and round he goes. Where he stops nobody knows. With all that spinning, Otto thinks Bill should be done by now and ready to move on to the big barbecue in the sky.

Otto shuffles up to Ray’s bed and stops. Here’s your mail, Ray, Otto says, dropping a yellow flier on the bedside table. Ray stares up at him with tired yellow eyes. The man suffers from extreme paranoia, perpetually looking as if someone might shoot him, stab him, or poison his lousy food. When he speaks, Ray’s petrified words jump from his mouth, thick saliva spraying the room in all directions.

Why are you wearing that stupid uniform, Krause? You ain’t no postman. Not anymore. As if his blanket has caught fire, Ray quickly throws it off him, revealing an emaciated chest, ribs pressing forward, covered in skin littered with age spots.

Otto shields his eyes with one of the fliers. Put some clothes on, Ray. Nobody wants to see that ugly corpse of yours. Anyway, you’re wrong. Once a postman, always a postman. I deliver the mail around here. It’s my job. If you don’t want your mail, well, then fill out a do-not-deliver form and submit it to the office.

Ray waves him off. "You stupid Kraut! This is a