Cheero the Hero

7:TAKIS

Monday March 20th 1995 – 5.27 p.m

It was warm when Takis arrived. I was sat on the porch suffering my first ever evening of a morning after. Having been sick for the fifth time and having nothing left to puke, I watched a hundred or so gulls, that for no obvious reason, were circling lazily over head. I was glad of the free, most importantly silent entertainment, when suddenly the two lads who were watching the birds with me both chose an ear and shouted 'Giant!' into it.
It was clear to me that he was a giant as he trudged down from the tree line and across the creek. Dust he kicked up glowing a fire orange in the evening sun.  I had just turned fifteen and in my memory this evening, my gut headache and his arrival at the house marks the end of my childhood.
The boards of the porch, which must have been at least two inches thick, bent under his weight as he stepped onto them. In his boots Takis was a shade under seven feet high. He wore a strange pale, tuft of hair in the centre of his head, the rest being shaved. His face carried an unfamiliar range of battle tattoos. He wore a heavy brown leather smock, so heavy that later I found I could hardly lift it let alone wear it, and carried his belongings in a small brown battered leather suitcase.
His boots though, defined him. Huge cast iron clogs that no other person in the house could lift or even move. His boots symbolised his membership of a very special troop indeed, the Irontoes.
“Here, Kaiser, Here” He asked in a surprisingly soft voice affected with an accent unknown to me. I replied yes and half heartedly made a move to get up to give a call. Takis held up a palm of his hand, saying “Sit Cheero” and walked in and on up the hall, shouting “Kaiser!, Kaiser!, Kaiser!” as he went. I remember everyone began shouting, repeating. Jam describes it better than me I think so I'll give you a bit of her book here.
Extract from Chapter Four of

Admiral ‘Jam’ Kivik's 'An Adventurous Autobiography'

I’ve heard it described as a crush, but it wasn’t it was admiration. The acceptance of someone first as an equal then as mentor then as inspiration and all this happened to me in less than a day.
I don’t remember the cause but there had been chaos in the house for a while when it became apparent to me that something was going on in the front hall. Probably hot, sweaty and blowing hard from fighting and laughing I came to stand at the back of the other kids and  saw the giant. At over two and a half metres tall Takis Kolios was a huge man, the largest un-engineered man I have ever seen.
I didn’t know it at the time but he had also been raised at the house, an orphan like me. Born on the Greek island of Skopelos at a place called Panoramas sometime in the 1930’s. I never knew how he travelled the thousand or more miles to the house. I never found out what happened to his parents or family. The only real fact about his early years was that, like Cheero he was un-chipped and like Cheero had been given Wendy’s  berserker recipe at fifteen.
At the time the Irontoes had a misunderstood existence, to most people they were the inspiration for Morris dancers. But an Irontoe was fabled to be able to smite any man or building with his huge cast iron boots.
Two other young occupants of the house Bodie and Ross always dyed their hair, dyed it in the brightest colours possible and always at opposite ends of the spectrum, as if they were twin’s that needed telling apart. If they told a joke they would say the punch line in unison, with perfect timing, it was brilliant. They made the house fun for me. A delicate little double act. They had Takis in their room for the night, in the top bunk. A giant who weighed at least three hundred kilos slept in the top bunk. When he walked the floorboards cried.
The next morning when Takis fell out of bed it woke the whole house. Bodie and Ross said they caused it by shining a torch in his eyes. Revenge for all the farting and snoring he had been doing during the night.
Strange thinking about it now how much happened in those few days, how my lifeline was kinked by a mere forty odd hours worth of events. Takis and Ginn turning up, The Wayne making contact (although I didn’t know about that until later).
My favourite memory of Takis has to be his stories, his bad stories. Takis told me the tale of the diamond garden.  He said he was working in his garden it was dusty hot, ‘everything thumb deep in dirt and dust’. Takis panted like a hot dog and wiped his brow of imaginary sweat to emphasise the heat for me. I was getting interested but I didn’t want to show it. So he went on to tell me he split a water pipe with his hammer and water sprayed everywhere ‘the first the garden had seen in maybe, oh, a hundred years’, He said the water washed away hundred year old dirt to reveal…’ Then for his big finish he says, “Shiny stones.” I remember thinking he must mean diamonds, remembering the name of the garden being the diamond garden, but no. Stones. Ordinary stones. Wet for a while then they dried off, they were pretty, when they were wet, like on the seashore.
Stories aside, it was his hands that broke my heart. When I saw them and held them  I was instantly informed of a thousand collisions, crushes and cuts. Years on the fields of war, even with carrying this pain, his suffering hadn’t diminished his humour.

Kaiser and Wendy both came to see the cause of the noise, hugged the big man showing genuine emotion. I watched from the front door as the rest of the occupants of the house moved to the kitchen laughing. Later consuming sweet preserves, bread and cheese. Passing the evening telling tales of Takis, Wendy and Kaiser's past.
I ambled back outside wondering how he knew my name.