A Short History of a Small Place

by T. R. Pearson

  Then it hit, hit right dead on a bare spot and I said to myself, that surely doesn’t sound like a monkey, though I’d never bounced a monkey off a bare spot before to see what it sounded like. And then Daddy raised himself up a little and said to Mr. Newberry, “That was no monkey,” and Mr. Newberry said, “No, I don’t believe it was,” and we got up off the ground along with everybody else and the whole bunch of us sort of closed in and crept up on what Daddy called the impact area. The firemen and Mr. Pipkin slipped out from under the truck and back up onto the running board while the sheriff climbed down out of the cab and ordered his deputies on into the crowd. They came off the road and washed around Mr. Small like water before wading on in to where we had pretty much encircled whatever it was that had sailed off the top of the tower, which the people in front were stooped over and could see fairly well and which the people behind them could probably catch a glimpse of but which me and Daddy and Mr. Newberry could not see at all from where we were until one of the deputies finally broke through to the center where he passed about a half minute looking directly at the ground and about another half minute eyeing the people all around him and then he said, “Shit,” bent over at the waist, and came up holding a black sneaker by the laces.

  Mr. Small still had gone nowhere and had hardly moved at all except at the chin, which continued to sink away from the rest of his face. Mr. Pipkin went back to sit where he had sat, the sheriff moved in to stand where he had stood, and Mr. Small just stayed where he was, which again put him abreast of the sheriff and facing up to Mr. Pipkin. Once the deputies had cleared the crowd, the one with the sneaker came up alongside Sheriff Burton and held it out for him and the sheriff grabbed at that sneaker like it was the treasure of the pharaohs and the finest thing he’d ever had the honor of taking hold of. Then he grinned and looked straight at Mr. Pipkin who did not look straight back at the sheriff but more towards Mr. Small who himself was staring full at the sheriff, or anyway at the side of the sheriff’s head, and Sheriff Burton bent the sneaker double between his hands, then shook the toe of it at Mr. Pipkin and said, “Well?”

  Mr. Pipkin brought the calf of one leg up onto the knee of the other and stuck his finger down inside his shoe so as to scratch the underpart of his foot. The fireman closest to him on his right side leaned over to say a few words and Mr. Pipkin met him with his ear, which was all aflame with color by now, and heard the man out before drawing himself upright again. Whatever was said did not seem to register on Mr. Pipkin at all because he continued to poke at the sole of his foot just as he had previously before pulling his finger out of his shoe and rubbing his nose with it. Then he looked full at Mr. Small on his way to reconsidering the crowd of us behind him which had undergone a general overhaul during the uproar and so was worth some new attention, and at last he made his way to the sheriff himself, starting with the rubber toe of the sneaker, which Sheriff Burton was still pointing at him, and eventually working his way up to the sheriff’s face so that the two of them might glare at each other for the better part of a minute before Mr. Pipkin finally opened his mouth and said, “Well what?”

  iii

  It wasn’t the condition of the ladder any of them objected to, not the firemen or the deputies or the firechief, Mr. Pipkin, or even Sheriff Burton himself, and it wasn’t the height of the climb either. It was the monkey, not simply because it was a monkey but because it was that monkey, which was far and away the most peculiar creature any of us had ever come across. Daddy said when Wallace Amory jr. bought it and carried it home to Miss Myra Angelique it did not seem all that exceptional as monkeys go but just scooted up and down the flagpole and ran around the yard smirking and grinding its teeth at everybody, which Daddy said is all anybody could ask of a monkey. Then Mayor Pettigrew and Sister named it and put a suit of clothes on it, and Daddy said that’s where the trouble started. According to him, that monkey was not nearly as willing to be civilized as they were to civilize it.

  Of course they called it Junious at first after their second cousin on their mother’s side. As Mayor Pettigrew gave it to Daddy, his second cousin’s mother had possessed all the venom it took to name her son Clyde Junious Bennet for no detectable member of the family in any branch at any time, and the mayor suspected that was just the sort of name his cousin could never quite overcome because he never did quite overcome it as far as the mayor could tell. Daddy said Junious Bennet was already a middle-aged man when Wallace Amory jr. was just a little boy, and Daddy said he lived three quarters of the year in Front Royal, Virginia, where he worked for a lawyer as a legal assistant, what Daddy called a secretary with pants, and then in the summertime him and the lawyer would travel down and set up office at the lawyer’s house in Salvo, which I’ve never been to myself but which Daddy tells me is a godless little sandpit and green-headed fly sanctuary just this side of Cape Hatteras which I’ve never been to either but which Daddy tells me is a bigger, more notorious sandpit with a grander, more monstrous variety of fly.

  The mayor said his momma and daddy would take him and Miss Myra Angelique on vacation once a summer and they would spend three or four days at the lawyer’s house in Salvo to visit with cousin Junious. According to the mayor, Junious did not much care for the seashore or the weather there and would only go outdoors on cloudy days and even then wouldn’t let himself anywhere near the ocean as the mayor recollected it. He would walk the beach just where the dunes gave way to level sand wearing what the mayor remembered to be crepe-soled shoes and duck pants with a braided rope for a belt. And the mayor said sometimes him and Junious and Miss Myra Angelique would sit down between the dunes among clumps of sea oats, and if Junious found the weather to his liking, which the mayor said meant a sunless sky and a sea breeze that was not particularly salty or fly-infested, he would take his shirt off and stretch out on his frontside, which left his backside partway uncovered to reveal between cousin Junious’ shoulders and his waist the bushiest, coarsest, most unbelievably successful crop of hair the mayor could ever recall seeing in his lifetime. And the mayor told Daddy how him and Miss Myra Angelique would take turns touching it with the tips of their fingers because it was the sort of thing you couldn’t help but touch. Junious never seemed to mind, the mayor said, not there stretched out in the sand among the sea oats and not in the house after supper when Mrs. Wallace Amory sr. and the lawyer would play Scrabble at the dinner table and Mr. Wallace Amory sr. would sleep sitting up in the lawyer’s chair with a newspaper over his face and the mayor and cousin Junious and Miss Myra Angelique would sit all three of them together on the floor and talk and laugh while Miss Pettigrew and Wallace Amory jr. took turns combing cousin Junious’s back. And the mayor said when Miss Myra Angelique picked up that monkey for the first time and turned it over, the two of them looked at each other and said more or less simultaneously, “Junious,” which the mayor told Daddy they intended as a memorial and tribute to their cousin, who had since died somehow though the mayor did not know just how and hadn’t found out about any of it until after Junious was already in the ground.

  So Junious was what they called it, and Daddy said Miss Myra Angelique decided right off that she would not have a monkey if he weren’t decent and maybe just the least bit fashion-conscious, so she rushed him on downtown to Hoopers where Miss Pettigrew figured she could outfit her monkey well enough in the boy’s department. But it first the manager wouldn’t let her and Junious in the store, not because he absolutely objected to monkeys on the premises but because he had never had a monkey on the premises before and objected to it now out of natural reflex and instinct. He got over it, however, and apologized to Miss Pettigrew who was after all a Pettigrew of the Pettigrew money. According to Daddy, he said he had not been expecting a monkey and had needed several minutes to get used to the arrival of one. But the assistant manager, who headed up the boys’ department, did not soften up and give way so readily. He was willing enough to allow the monkey into the store but couldn’t see clear to let the creature try o
n or even touch anything that Miss Pettigrew had not already bought and paid for. Daddy said the assistant manager did not much think his customers would put out good money for clothes a monkey had handled or worn even if only for a few seconds, which Miss Pettigrew said she herself would not be all that eager to do and so agreed to have the assistant manager measure the monkey as best he could and then point her to whatever Junious could most probably wear.

  She wanted a couple of sport coats and a few pairs of trousers, and as it turned out the monkey was fairly human in the shoulders so could wear a blazer pretty handsomely, but once that clerk had measured Junious at the waist and inseam he told Miss Pettigrew he could not do much for her monkey in the way of trousers. Daddy said he told her people just weren’t made like that and pants weren’t either. So Miss Pettigrew said she’d settle for some shirts and maybe a sweater or two and a necktie, but the assistant manager did not especially want to show her shirts and sweaters and neckties, did not especially want to wait on a monkey any longer, and Daddy said he stopped off at a bin full of porkpie hats, pulled one out and handed it to Miss Pettigrew and said, “Ma’m, you can take this on home with our compliments if you’ll just take it on home now.” Daddy said Miss Pettigrew had most likely not even been considering a hat but, being fairly sharp and polite on top of it, she saw that she could have both it and the salesman’s good will all at once and for nothing, so she took the hat and took her monkey and took her monkey’s new plaid sportcoat and went home.

  Mattie Gunn’s sister, Miss Martha Gunn, ended up making the trousers for Miss Pettigrew. Miss Martha had a pretty sizeable place down by the ice house and she sewed and took in boarders to earn her way in the world. As best as Daddy could recall it, Miss Martha usually kept her upstairs full of school teachers and would not ever allow alcohol or Republicans across her threshold, but Daddy imagined Miss Martha had not been able to discover anything particularly distasteful in making trousers for a monkey so had made two pair which were not even full trousers anyway but only duck pants, white ones and blue ones, and as a favor to Miss Pettigrew, Miss Martha had sewn an elastic chin strap onto the porkpie hat for the price of materials only.

  As Daddy recalled it, Junious had his coming out of a midmorning on a Saturday. The mayor brought him onto the porch, hooked him into his tether, and then turned him out into the yard alone, and Daddy said that monkey went down the front steps and along the sidewalk on his knuckles before he veered off into the grass and made a complete tour of the front lawn that ended up at the base of the flagpole. He did not go up it right away but held on at the bottom and shook himself against it which allowed time for most everybody with business along the Boulevard and in Municipal Square to gather in front of the mayor’s house and congregate against the fence. Daddy said when that monkey had collected a considerable audience he shot straight up to the top of the pole and stood there with one foot on the knob and the other gripping onto the shaft itself, and then he struck a noble pose, Daddy said, which brought admiring responses from the audience, and Daddy himself admitted it was quite a display, a mixture of balance and bad taste, but then most people had never had the opportunity to see a monkey up close before, especially a sportcoated duckpantsed, porkpiehatted monkey, so Daddy said it was understandable that folks would be taken with the sight of Junious in such a prominent place and in such a state of monkey-hood, Daddy called it.

  According to Daddy the mayor was still too new at politicking to know exactly what to do with an audience so he merely gawked and chit-chatted by turns along with everybody else, and Daddy said that monkey scooted up and down the flagpole and around the yard and into the mayor’s arms and out again and generally kept the morning rolling along fairly well until he had the accident which Daddy said was not accident at all but certainly intentional on the monkey’s part but which everybody called the accident out of politeness and sheer embarrassment. Daddy said the monkey had been skimming across the lawn on his knuckles when he got to the flagpole and climbed on up to the top of it where he stood again with one foot on the knob and the other latched onto the shaft itself, but Daddy said the monkey did not look the same as before because of the expression on his face which had become very serious and thoughtful, Daddy said, like maybe he was reading a menu without really knowing what he wanted to eat. Then the monkey lifted his head a little and Daddy said he looked off beyond the crowd and the treetops and municipal square and on into the distance until it seemed he wasn’t looking at anything anymore but just standing there atop his flagpole all lofty and wise and caught up in pondering the general predicament of the world as he knew it. Daddy said it was a most impressive expression to see on the face of a monkey and consequently he did not witness the accident himself since he wasn’t looking at that part of monkey where the accident was occurring, and Daddy said only Mr. Satterwhite down at the end of the fence saw it, or was willing to open his mouth about it anyway, and he didn’t even come straight out with it but pointed up at the monkey and said, “Mayor, MAYor,” which turned Wallace Amory around who Daddy said studied Junious for a good half minute before his eyebrows stood up and he shouted off towards the house, “Sister, Sister!” which brought Miss Myra Angelique on out into the yard.

  Daddy said the mayor flushed some and then declared into the open air and to no one in particular, “I just don’t understand this; he was trained on a toilet you know,” and he grabbed onto two prongs of the fence, flushed some more, and smiled a little, but Daddy said nobody was paying much attention to the mayor since most everybody was caught up in speculation as to how Miss Myra Angelique was going to fetch that monkey down off the flagpole, her being so proper and naturally dainty and pitched against a creature who had already wet himself and who looked a little more fiery-eyed, Daddy said, every time she yanked on the tether. And according to Daddy, Miss Pettigrew never did coax him down exactly but eventually gave the tether over to the mayor who pretty much reeled that monkey in against all of the screeching and scrapping and clawing and flat out holding on that he could manage. Daddy said Miss Myra Angelique gave that monkey a smart load of scolding as soon as he touched the ground, which more or less deflated him on the spot so that he became tame all over again and stood by while she examined his trousers which had gone to almost pure navy in the front while the back was still a shade of royal blue. And Daddy said Miss Pettigrew scooped up Junious in her arms, accident and all, and set out towards the house, and he said the mayor, who still had hold of the tether, which was still attached to the monkey’s neck, watched several loops of it play out of his hands before he looked up briefly at the crowd of people against the fence, muttered, “ ’scuse us,” and went off after his sister.

  Daddy said Junious Pettigrew’s accident atop the Pettigrew flagpole on the Pettigrew front lawn inspired considerable discussion and argument among the citizens of Neely. He said even folks who had not been there themselves and who had yet to get the story straight had a thing or two to say about the monkey and the monkey’s affliction, and according to Daddy it wasn’t until three or four days after the event that the general buzz and huzzah died down and opinion began to solidify into several distinct philosophical camps, what Daddy called the various streams of thought on the urinary problem. He said far and away the majority of Neelyites started out as Isolationists, which Daddy defined as those people who thought the monkey would not wet himself again, who thought that perhaps the fit of the trousers had provoked him to the first time and, now that he was somewhat accustomed to pants, would not provoke him to again. But the monkey himself dealt a severe blow to the Isolationist cause when he did to his white duck pants the following Saturday what he’d done to his blue duck pants the previous one, and Daddy said the Isolationists disbanded immediately, modified their views in one direction or another, and allowed themselves to be asorbed into one of the remaining streams.

  Daddy said the fallout after the second poletop accident left the Hard Liners in the majority since a sizeable number of former I
solationists had decided to take their humiliation out on the monkey and so joined up with a compatible group who had said all along that any creature who wet himself should have his nose rubbed in his business and then be whipped. And Daddy supposed the Hard Liners remained in the ascendancy for about a week before sentiments began to shift somewhat and the Protectionists commenced to assert themselves and win favor with their more sympathetic notion that a diaper underneath the duck pants would be a suitable and acceptable remedy to the whole nasty predicament. But Daddy said the Protectionists could never quite manage a firm hold over public opinion and were ever having to fend off threats and advances by any number of sects and splinter groups including the followers of Mr. Emmet Moss, amateur astrologer and feed merchant, who were in general agreement that the magnetism of the stars could draw the fluids from any monkey on any flagpole, and the entire congregation of the Pentecostal Holiness Church on Zinnia Drive who Daddy said unanimously apostled themselves to Mrs. Alice Butler of the Oregon Hill Butlers who stood up in church of a Sunday and told the congregation it had come to her in a vision that the monkey was the anti-Christ and should be immolated, Daddy called it, which kicked up the immediate and unquestioning support of the faithful who Daddy said had held Miss Butler in especially high esteem ever since she accurately predicted the eruption of a water main in the winter of 1938. And Daddy said it was while the Protectionists were busy holding off the Mossians and the Butlerites that a relatively small band of liberal-minded citizens saw an opening in the fray and jumped in, and Daddy said for a week and a half, maybe even two weeks, the whole situation was confused and unsettled with everybody claiming to have won and nobody winning and the monkey still making water all over himself until finally all the fuss and furor began to die away and when the dust cleared it was the Free Thinkers who’d landed on their feet, hale and unified, Daddy said, and proclaiming to the world that if a monkey wants to do his business from atop a flagpole then, by God, we should take his trousers off and let him.