Summer of the Monkeys (8 page)

Old Rowdy saved the day for me, or at least I thought so at the time. About fifteen feet from the stump I was sitting on was a big hollow log. Rowdy was over there sniffing around. He never could keep his sniffer out of anything that had a hole in it. He just couldn’t do things like that.

The instant I saw the log a plan jumped right out of the hollow end and bored its way into my monkey-troubled mind. I walked over to the log, got down on my knees, and looked back into the hollow. It was perfect. The hole was large and went back about four feet. I was so pleased I could have kissed Old Rowdy, but he never did like to be kissed.

Patting the log with my hand, I said, “Rowdy, you could have sniffed all over these bottoms and not found anything this good. This is just what I’ve been looking for. I’ll put my apples back in the hollow and set my traps out here in front. Now if that smart monkey wants an apple, he’ll have to wade through all of my traps to get one. If he can do that, and not get caught, then we’re just beat and that’s all there is to it.”

Rowdy seemed to know that I was pleased about something. He reared up on me and tickled my ear with his long pink tongue.

“Come to think of it, Rowdy,” I said, “I’m starving to death for
a drink of water. Let’s go get a drink first and then we’ll really get after these monkeys.”

Not far away, at the upper end of an old slough, the cool, clear water of a spring gushed out from under the roots of a huge gum tree. I always figured that the spring belonged to Rowdy and me. We had discovered it on one of our exploring trips. I had even named it “Jay Berry’s Spring.”

We had a good drink and I washed my hot face in the cool water.

There was never a time that Rowdy and I prowled those Cherokee bottoms that we didn’t run into all kinds of surprises, but when I got back to the bur oak tree, I got the biggest surprise of my life. Everything I owned was gone; my gunny sack, lunch, apples, traps, and all.

“Rowdy,” I said, looking all around, “I know I left that sack right here by this stump. Now it’s gone, and everything we had was in it. I wonder what happened to it.”

Rowdy started sniffing around the stump. Then he trailed over to a big sycamore, reared up on it, looked at me, and whined.

“What are you doing that for, boy?” I asked him. “You know that sack couldn’t climb a tree.”

Regardless of what I said, Rowdy seemed to think the sack had climbed the tree. He started bawling the tree bark. I had never known my old dog to lie, so I looked up into the branches of the big sycamore. What I saw all but caused me to fall over backwards.

Sitting on a limb, with his back against the trunk, was that hundred dollar monkey. He was just sitting there, as big as you please, with a sandwich in one paw, and an apple in the other, eating away and looking straight at me.

He had passed out my apples to some of the little monkeys. They were sitting around on the limbs, chewing away and peering at me with their beady little eyes. I could see my gunny sack with the traps in it draped over a limb.

I felt the anger start way down in my feet. It burned its way through my body and exploded in my head.

“Why, you thieving rascal,” I yelled. “You can’t get away with this. You give that stuff back to me.”

I saw right away that the big monkey had no intention of giving anything back to me. He stood up on the limb and started jumping up and down, and laughing fit to kill. This made me so mad I came close to cussing a little.

While hanging around my grandpa’s store, I had learned a few cuss words from the men, but I never did use them. I was afraid to. Daisy had told me that if any boy who wasn’t twenty-one years old yet cussed, his tongue would rot out of his head. So I just didn’t do any cussing. I didn’t figure that I could get along without my tongue. But I was so mad at that monkey, I had to do something.

I grabbed up a chunk from the ground and threw it at him as hard as I could. I didn’t come close to hitting him, but it made him mad anyway. He let out a squall and threw one of my apples straight at me. I had to jump sideways to keep it from hitting me.

The idea of an old monkey throwing something at me was more than I could stand. I went all to pieces. I had a darn good beanshooter, and was such a good shot I could almost drive nails with it. I jerked it out of my pocket and reached for some ammunition. When I discovered that I didn’t have one little rock in my pocket, that really made me mad. It looked like everything in the world was going against me.

Not far away was a washout and the bottom was covered with gravel. I ran over and jumped down in it. Dropping to my knees, I started filling my pockets with small rocks.

“Rowdy,” I said, “I don’t care what the Old Man of the Mountains, or anyone else, does, I’m not going to let that monkey get away with this. I’ll make it so hot for him he’ll think that the woods are on fire.”

With my pockets bulging with ammunition, I climbed out of
the washout and ran back to the sycamore tree. The big monkey was still standing on the limb, jumping up and down, and laughing his head off.

I loaded my beanshooter and pulled the rubbers back as far as I could. Taking dead aim, I let go. Old William Tell himself couldn’t have shot any straighter than I did. I plunked that monkey a good one about where his belly button should have been. He let out a squall that could have been heard all over the bottoms, and started scratching at the spot where my rock had stung him. I couldn’t have been more pleased.

I reared back and laughed as loud as I could. “How do you like that?” I yelled at him. “It’s not so funny now, is it? Well, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

Chuckling to myself, I loaded up again, took dead aim, and plunked him another good one. I never should have shot that big monkey the second time, because it made him awfully mad. Turning to the little monkeys, he uttered a few of those deep grunts and then every one of them started dropping down from the sycamore tree.

This was the last thing in the world I expected the monkeys to do, and I didn’t like what was happening at all. I started backing up, one step at a time.

“Holy smokes, Rowdy,” I said, “they’re coming after us. I didn’t think they’d do that, did you?”

By the time the big monkey had reached the last limb on the sycamore tree, I had a pretty good head start on him. He stopped there for a second, opened his big mouth, and showed me those long teeth again. I wouldn’t have been more scared if someone had thrown a crosscut saw at me. I dropped my beanshooter and let out a squall that didn’t even sound like me.

“They’re going to eat us up, Rowdy,” I yelled. “Let’s get out of here!”

I
 was so scared I didn’t look for any game trails to follow. I just ran the way I was pointed.

Old Rowdy wasn’t scared. He would have stayed there and fought those monkeys until the moon came up, but he figured that as long as I was leaving, there was no use in hanging around, so he took off with me.

It was tough going through the saw briers and underbrush. My clothes got hung up a few times, but I didn’t stop to untangle them. I just moved on, leaving little pieces of my shirt and overalls hanging on the bushes. I never did look around to see if the monkeys were after me, but I could almost feel the hot breath of that big monkey right on the back of my neck. By the time I had reached the rail fence around our fields, I looked like the scarecrow in Mama’s garden. I flew over the top rail and ran out into our field a little way. I stopped then and looked back for the monkeys. They were nowhere in sight.

“Rowdy,” I said, “I believe those monkeys would eat a fellow up, don’t you?”

From the other end of the field where he was working, Papa saw me when I came flying over the rail fence.

“Jay Berry,” he hallowed, “what’s going on down there? Are you all right?”

“I’m all right, Papa,” I hallowed back. “I’m just having a little monkey trouble, that’s all.”

Papa motioned with his hand for me to come to him. After all the bragging I had done about what a good monkey catcher I was, I hated like the dickens to go and face him, but I couldn’t just run away. He wouldn’t have liked that at all. Feeling terrible, I walked over to him.

As I walked up, Papa frowned and said, “What were you running from, Jay Berry? And look at your clothes. Why, they’re torn all to pieces. What happened anyway?”

I couldn’t even look at Papa.

Poking a finger in one of the holes in my britches, I said, “I was running from those monkeys, Papa. I guess I got hung up in the bushes and tore my clothes a little.”

“Running from the monkeys?” Papa said. “Were they after you?”

“I think they were, Papa,” I said. “I didn’t look back to see if they were chasing me, but I’m pretty sure they were after me all right.”

“Aw,” Papa said, chuckling, “monkeys aren’t dangerous. You probably just thought they were chasing you.”

“I don’t know, Papa,” I said. “I wouldn’t put anything past those monkeys. They’re the smartest things I’ve ever seen. They sure made a fool out of me.”

“Made a fool out of you?” Papa said. “How did they do that?”

“The little devils stole everything I had,” I said, “my traps, my gunny sack, apples, lunch, and all. I guess they’ve even got my beanshooter by now. When I ran off, I dropped it, too.”

“I was afraid something like this was going to happen,” Papa said. “I think I’ve read where monkeys can be pretty smart; especially, if they’ve been trained.”

“It’s not the little monkeys, Papa,” I said. “They don’t seem to have any sense at all. I believe I could catch every one of them. It’s that hundred dollar monkey that I’m having trouble with.”

“I thought all monkeys looked alike,” Papa said. “How can you tell that hundred dollar monkey from the others?”

“Oh, that’s easy, Papa,” I said. “He doesn’t even look like the little monkeys. He’s much bigger, and looks just like a little boy when he’s standing up; and is he ever smart. I don’t believe anyone could catch him in a trap.”

“If he’s that smart,” Papa laughed, “301 why don’t you just forget about catching him, and try to catch the little ones? If you could catch all of them, you’d still have a lot of money.”

“It’s not that simple, Papa,” I said. “That big monkey is the leader of the pack. He tells the little monkeys what to do, and they mind him. He won’t let one of them get close to a trap.”

Papa frowned and looked at me like he couldn’t believe what I had said.

“Are you trying to tell me that those monkeys can talk to each other?” he asked.

“They sure can,” I said. “As sure as I’m standing here, they can talk to each other. Why, that big monkey even laughed at me. He can turn flips and somersaults, and do things that you wouldn’t believe he could do.”

“Aw, Jay Berry,” Papa said, “you’re just imagining things. Monkeys can’t talk to each other. Whatever gave you that idea anyway?”

It was getting harder and harder to explain things to Papa. It seemed that the more I talked, the crazier everything sounded; but I wanted him to believe me, so there wasn’t but one thing I could do. Starting at the very beginning, I told him everything that had happened, from my first go-around with the monkeys until I had sailed over the rail fence.

Papa listened to me, but I could see a lot of doubt in his eyes. He just stood there with a frown on his face, looking at me, and then at Rowdy. Now and then he would turn and stare off toward the bottoms. Finally, as if he had made up his mind about something, he shook his head, pursed his lips, and blew out a lot of air.

Taking the check lines from his shoulders, he wrapped them around the handles of the corn planter and said, “Well, corn or no corn, I’d like to see an animal that’s as smart as all of that. Come on. Let’s go and have a look at this educated monkey.”

If I had found a pony and a .22 lying in the middle of the road, I wouldn’t have been more pleased. As long as my papa was with me, I wouldn’t have been scared of the devil himself if he’d had horns on both ends. Besides, Papa was as stout as a grizzly bear, and I just knew that if he ever got his hands on that big monkey we would sack him up.

Just as we entered the thick timber of the bottoms, Papa reached down and picked up a club. “I don’t think those monkeys will jump on us,” he said, “but just in case they do, I think I’ll be ready for them.”

“That’s a good idea, Papa,” I said. “I think I’ll get one, too.” I walked over to an old high-water drift and picked up a club twice as big as the one Papa had.

Papa laughed and said, “What are you going to do with that? Stick it in the ground and climb it in case that big monkey gets after us?”

“That wouldn’t do any good, Papa,” I said. “It wouldn’t do any good to climb anything. Those monkeys can climb better than squirrels can. You ought to see how fast they can get around in the timber.”

When we reached the sycamore where I had last seen the monkeys, I got another surprise. My gunny sack was gone again. We walked all around the big tree and really looked it over. There wasn’t a monkey or a gunny sack in it.

“Are you sure this is the tree?” Papa asked.

“Oh, I know it’s the tree, Papa,” I said. “See that limb way up there? That’s where my gunny sack and traps were. Now they’re gone. I guess that big monkey took them with him.”

“Oh, I don’t think he could do anything like that,” Papa said,
“but if he did, he couldn’t get very far carrying a sack with steel traps in it. Come on, let’s look around a little.”

Papa didn’t know that hundred dollar monkey like I did, or he wouldn’t have said anything like that. I was pretty well convinced that the big monkey could do anything a human being could do.

We walked all around through the bottoms, looking up into the trees for a monkey. We looked and we looked. Even Old Rowdy looked and sniffed, but we didn’t see hair nor hide of a monkey.

About thirty minutes later, Papa wiped the sweat from his brow and said, “It looks like those monkeys flew the coop, doesn’t it?”

“They’re around here somewhere, Papa,” I said. “I know they are. I’ll bet right now they’re watching every move we make. They’re smart, I tell you. They’re the smartest things you’ve ever seen.”