Ted may have been bad with money, disorganized and spendthrift beyond belief, but he had always had sufficient sense to protect his interest in the house, and to that happy orphan scruple Stevie probably owed her otherwise foolhardy attempt to support herself and the kids through free-lancing. If she had had monthly house payments to meet, or even rent for some cheapjack Barclay apartment, she would have been obliged to take another salaried job, resuming her teaching post at the middle school in Wickrath or perhaps applying for a teller’s position at the Farmers and Merchants Bank here in Barclay. Sometimes, in fact, these alternatives seemed more attractive than her labors at the typewriter, a career of such unremitting uncertainty that she wondered both at her arrogance in sticking to it this long and at her luck in simply being able to. Today was a highlight of sorts: she had just made a significant step toward becoming an author of books. If the Briar Patch Press accepted her proposal, the mists of uncertainty would begin to evaporate and she would perhaps never have to worry about her choice of careers again.
Pulling into the Crye house’s gravelly drive, Stevie even had the fleeting idea that she might be able to replace her Exceleriter with either a word processor or a better typewriter. She was through with PDE, though; they were opportunistic bloodsuckers.
But where were the kids? Twenty, twenty-five minutes ago they had been playing with Cyrano (if you could call that animal’s unavailing thrusts at Teddy’s leg a form of play), but now their side yard near the garage was deserted, empty but for Marella’s bicycle and a pair of weathered sawhorses.
Well, maybe Teddy and Marella had gone inside to fix lunch. Hot dogs they were good at, and she had given them such a lecture about being helpful and pulling their weight that maybe they were trying hard to recapture her goodwill. These attacks of practical conscientiousness seldom lasted more than a day or two, but Stevie was grateful for them, and she got out of the microbus feeling tender toward her children, magnanimous and cheerful. The entire brisk, sunny afternoon lay ahead. After lunch they could take a drive through the Roosevelt State Park to Warm Springs to visit the federal fish hatchery there. Teddy and Marella both liked to do that.
Then Stevie heard her daughter’s uneasy laughter, a giggle that suggested doubt as well as amusement—not from inside the kitchen, but instead from near the swing set, around the corner of the garage. Had Teddy been unable to shoo Cyrano home? Was Marella giggling because Teddy had explained the meaning of the basset’s infatuation with his kneecap? Stevie’s cheerful mood turned sour. Marella was only eight. She would kill the boy.
Stevie stalked to the corner of the garage. Peering into the backyard at the dilapidated swing set under the big pecan tree, she suddenly went cold. A strange man had driven a motorcycle all the way into the yard and parked it beside the swing set’s squeaky glider.
Meanwhile, a small manlike creature in a red-and-white football jersey scampered back and forth along the crossbar from which the glider and the swings depended. The children were watching this creature as if bewitched by it, Marella hanging on to her brother for protection.
Stevie tried to take in the whole scene, but her eyes kept going back to the thing on the crossbar, a ghoulish little figure with a white face, deep-set beady eyes, and nostrils like those you would expect to see on a death’s-head. The animal also had a tail, but Stevie’s dawning realization that it was some kind of monkey did not excuse its trespass or diminish her angry dread of either it or the stranger who had apparently brought it.
“What do you want?” Stevie shouted. “What are you doing here?” She was trembling. Maybe it would have been wiser to call Barclay’s police than to issue this direct challenge. Too late. Besides, her children’s safety was at hazard, and she could not leave them even to make a phone call.
Teddy, Marella, the monkey, and the mysterious intruder all turned toward Stevie, their faces as blank as unstamped coins. For an instant the three human beings looked as ghoulish as the white-faced acrobat on the crossbar.
“Hi, Mom!” Teddy called, breaking into a grin. “Look, it’s the man who fixed your typewriter! And he’s brought his pet monkey!”
Who else? thought Stevie, disconsolate and anxious, convinced that she was being persecuted. Who else?
As for Seaton Benecke, dressed today in combat boots and fatigues, he gave her a shy, imperceptible nod and looked right past her with eyes as distantly pretty as the February sky.
XVIII
“Seaton,” Stevie said, recovering a little, “most visitors park in our driveway, not the backyard.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the motorcycle, a shiny black monster with enormous handlebars and a pair of built-in carryalls behind the long padded seat. “I’ll move it.” He grabbed the machine by its horns and walked it past Stevie toward the drive.
“Get out from under the swing set,” Stevie whispered to Teddy and Marella, motioning with her hand. “No telling what kind of manners that monkey’s got.”
The creature cocked its skull-like head and stared at her. She had never seen a living entity whose lineaments so clearly prophesied its inevitable end (save only aged or sick people passively awaiting death, like Ted in his final two months), and she dropped her gaze before the monkey did. Ordinarily, she knew, animals surrendered to human beings in staring contests. Not this time, though. The monkey had a demon on its side.
“How long has he been here?” Stevie asked Teddy, nodding at Benecke. “What does he want?”
“To see you,” Teddy said, still grinning. “A gentleman caller.”
Marella refrained from adding an editorial “Yuck!” Seaton had won the children over by arriving on a sleek chrome-filigreed motorcycle and bringing along his hideous pet monkey. How could a parent compete with such miraculous inducements?
“How long?” Stevie insisted. She was afraid he had shown up right after her departure for the post office. The thought that he had been “entertaining” her kids for the past half hour made her shudder. Benecke looked like a baby-faced assassin and his monkey like a miniature Nosferatu with fur. The ridiculous little football jersey in no wise diminished the animal’s sinisterness.
“Three or four minutes ago, Mom. That’s all.”
“The monkey was holding on to his back,” Marella added. “It was wearing a crash helmet. It jumped onto the swings as soon as he took its helmet off. And it climbed up there.” Unnecessarily, she pointed.
“An Atlanta Falcons helmet, Mom. See his shirt? He’s wearing Steve Bartkowski’s number. He’s a quarterback.”
“Well, I wish he were all the way back. All the way back where he belongs, wherever that is.”
“Costa Rica,” Seaton Benecke said, coming up behind her without his motorcycle. “That’s where his ancestors come from, but I don’t think he’s ever been there. I bought him in a pet store in Atlanta.” Hands pocketed, Seaton regarded his monkey as if reevaluating his purchase of it. “The people there may have got him through some other people at the Yerkes Primate Center. I’m not sure. Anyway, he’s an old monkey. I’ve had him five or six years.”
“Seaton, what’re you doing here?”
The intruder hesitated, scuffling his foot on the carpet of dead grass. “It’s my day off. Saturday, you know. Sorry I wheeled my bike over your lawn. It’s just I saw the kids back here —” He fell silent.
“But what’re you doing in Barclay, Seaton? You don’t usually spend your day off roaming rural Georgia, do you?”
His hand came out of his right pocket clutching a crumpled green bill. “That tip you gave me, Mrs. Crye.” He pushed the bill toward her. “I decided it wasn’t right to keep it. Dad pays everyone a salary. Nobody else gets tips, so I shouldn’t either.”
Is this young man for real? Stevie asked herself. Or are you being manipulated? If so, for what reason? Whatever the case, the bill between his fingers was the very one Stevie had given the cashier at Benecke & Sons to hand over to Seaton. She recognized the squiggle of red ink next to the engraving of
Lincoln. For two days he had held that bill without breaking it. Not bad for a young bachelor with ash-blond hair, pudgy good looks, and a monster motorcycle. Didn’t he have buddies, a girl friend, expensive after-hours hobbies? True, he was a little weird (as the monkey testified), but no weirder than many contemporary young people who had not yet found themselves.
“Seaton, I gave you that money because you deserved it. You saved me eight or nine times that amount.”
“I came up here to give it back.”
“I’m not going to take it, Seaton.”
“I’ll stand here all night,” he replied, gazing at the money instead of her face. “I won’t leave until you take it.”
You mean it too, don’t you? thought Stevie. You’re just like Vincent van Gogh holding his palm over a candle flame to convince some little French gal of his undying love. If I don’t take the bill back, you’ll remain in my yard as a permanent fixture, like a clothesline pole or a birdbath. If I should convince you to leave with the money, you’ll just mail it back to me in a box—along with a gift certificate for typing paper and one of your own severed ears. Or maybe one of the monkey’s. At the moment this is a Mexican standoff, but I’m going to be the first to blink. I know it.
“Listen,” Teddy piped up, “if he doesn’t want that five dollars, I’ll be glad to look after it for him.” A monkey, a motorcycle, a gentleman caller, a dispute over money—why, this was a regular amusement-park tour for the boy. Six Flags Over Georgia in his own backyard. His grin was more wondering than avaricious.
Seaton turned toward Teddy.
“He gets an allowance,” Stevie said. “Don’t you dare give that to him.” She stepped forward and relieved their visitor of the bill. “You’re being foolish, Seaton. This was really yours.”
He seemed gratified to have won the contest. He plunged his hands back into his fatigue pockets and rocked on his heels. “That’s not the only reason I came, though.”
“It’s not?”
“No, Mrs. Crye. If you’d like me to check your typewriter, this could be a service call. Is it working okay?”
“Why shouldn’t it be?” The hostility in her voice surprised even Stevie. “You fixed it, didn’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then there’s no reason to look at it again, is there?”
“Not if you don’t want me to, Mrs. Crye. I just thought—”
“What?”
“I brought my tools. The timing might’ve slipped a little. I wouldn’t mind just giving it a look. For free, I mean. I’m not giving back that five dollars just to charge you more for something else. I don’t do that. I’m just—”
“—being neighborly.”
Seaton Benecke scuffed the soles of his combat boots on the twiggy grass and looked at the ground. “I read your article on the Ladysmith cancer clinic in yesterday evening’s Ledger. It was really good. You really got deep into that stuff—thermograms, nuclear medicine, and all. Really good. I always try to read what you do.” He looked up without engaging Stevie’s eyes. “I guess I just sort of wanted to see what your writing place looked like. I’ve never seen a writer’s place before, how you’ve got your typewriter and all set up. But I would’ve worked on it even if you wanted to bring it out of your office to the kitchen or something—if it needed it, I mean. I would’ve checked it out for you. Sometimes you can catch some things before they go wacky or really break.”
Teddy said, “He can stay for lunch, can’t he?”
Oh, Lord, not that trick again. Stevie glowered at the boy. How many times had she told him not to invite a friend to the house without first consulting with her in private? She could only appear ungracious if she refused such a request within hearing of the disinvited party. Teddy never learned. He issued invitations the way some people threw confetti.
“He’s come forty miles,” the boy pointed out. “It wouldn’t hurt for him to just check your typewriter.”
“I know how far he’s come. I’ve made that trip a few times.” Was Teddy being obtuse on purpose?
“That’s okay,” Seaton Benecke said. “I was going to eat when I got home. It’s hard to stop anywhere when you’re traveling with a monkey.”
“You’re welcome to stay,” Stevie said tightly, still trying to communicate her ire to her son. “If you don’t mind hot dogs or fried-egg sandwiches. That’s about all we’ve got.”
“We love fried-egg sandwiches,” Seaton Benecke declared flatly. “At home, Mrs. Crye, I fix them all the time.”
“Did you say ‘we,’ Seaton?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Look now, please don’t think me rude, but although I’m prepared to have you for a guest, I don’t think I’m ready for your monkey.” Just like I’m not ready for a train carrying toxic waste to derail in downtown Barclay. Just like I’m not ready for a reprise of Ted’s last two months on earth.
“He’s housebroken, Mrs. Crye. He’s neater than some people.”
The gall of some people, thought Stevie, was a poison they sprinkled about like baptismal water.
“Hello there,” Marella was saying. “Hello there, monkey. Grab this stick. Jump down here.”
The girl had extended a broken pecan limb toward the crossbar on which the white-faced, white-bearded monkey was sidling back and forth in its football jersey. The monkey ignored the stick, which was not quite long enough to reach the bar, but he opened his mouth and favored Marella with a hissing death’s-head grin. The monkey gripped the crossbar with his tail, as well as with his feet and hands, edging first this way and then that, a living windup toy.
“Please don’t poke at him,” Seaton said to Marella. “He’s really little, and he thinks you’re trying to hurt him.”
“I’m just playing with him. I want him to come down for lunch.”
Oh, me too, thought Stevie. That’s exactly what I want. Aloud she said, “Marella, put down that stick.”
Marella obeyed, whereupon the acrobat on the swing set startled Stevie by running along the crossbar and leaping over the girl’s head into the fork of the pecan tree. Briefly, terribly briefly, she had feared that the monkey was attacking her daughter, but he had merely been scrambling to a loftier haven.
Hands still in his pockets, Seaton ambled over to the tree and encouraged the tiny beast to come down.
“What’s his name?” Teddy asked him.
“’Crets,” Seaton replied abstractedly.
“Come on down, ’Crets,” Marella began baby-talking. “Come on down, little ’Cretsie.”
“Why do you call him that?” Teddy asked.
“It’s sort of a joke, I guess. I’ll show you how I get him down.” From the same fatigue pocket from which he had taken the five-dollar bill, Seaton removed a small metal tin of throat lozenges. Then he unwrapped one of the foil-covered drops and held it up to the monkey. “He’s always loved Sucrets. You can get him to do just about anything for a Sucret.”
’Crets demonstrated the truth of this assertion by leaping from the pecan tree to Seaton’s shoulder, taking the lozenge into his mouth, and cracking it with his teeth.
“He doesn’t suck them, though. He eats them. I suppose he probably is a little hungry. He only had some banana for breakfast this morning. That was about five hours ago.’’
“Poor dear,” Stevie said.
Marella circled behind Seaton, reached up, and thoughtfully stroked the monkey’s sinuous tail, which was dark brown rather than white and an inch or two longer than the animal itself. ’Crets did not seem to mind. He continued cracking his sore-throat medicine, and when he had finished, he begged for another. Seaton refused him.
“You’ll spoil your lunch,” he said.
XIX
The day had gone scratchy and sour. Not even a gross of Sucrets would take away the sourness and sweeten what remained. An hour ago she had almost managed to forget her typewriter woes and her worries about Marella. The afterglow of mailing off her book proposal had still enveloped h
er.
Now, however, Seaton Benecke had invaded her kitchen, bringing with him—of all impossible things!—a furry little ghoul dressed in football-jersey drag. And she was cooking—cooking, for God’s sake!—for these freeloaders. She had caved in to Seaton’s easy assumption that he was welcome and to her kids’ infatuation with ’Crets. What a travesty of hospitality was her real mood, though, and how bitterly she resented this intrusion.
At the round oaken table in the dining area sat Teddy, Marella, and Seaton, the latter with ’Crets in his lap. From the stove Stevie could glance to her right down the length of her breakfast-bar island into the faces of her visitors, Seaton’s face a mask of pale piety, the monkey’s an uncanny blur as, like a spectator at a tennis match, the creature glanced back and forth between Teddy and Marella. His tiny head—you could probably crush it with a large pair of pliers—was all that was visible of the monkey above the table edge. In fact, Seaton resembled a piece of placid Buddhist statuary with an animate clockwork skull set into its paunch. Stevie hated having the animal in the dining area, but she was grateful that Seaton had not put ’Crets down and given him the run of the kitchen. There was a highchair in the attic, but to get it out for no longer than she intended her visitors to be on the premises would have required a much better hostess than she.
“He doesn’t like cold weather,” Seaton was telling the kids. “That’s why I’ve got him in this outfit. My mother made it for him—before she got sick a while back.” Seaton paused, as if considering the relevance of this last bit of exposition. Then he said, “He watches football on TV, and he can throw a plastic football—one of the little toy ones—just like Bartkowski . . . sort of. Sometimes his throws end up behind him.”
The kids laughed.
Stevie flipped the eggs in her skillet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that ’Crets had stopped playing tennis-match spectator. The animal was staring at her, its black-ringed eye sockets like little portholes into nothingness.
“What kind of monkey is it?” she asked defensively. “He, I mean.”
Who Made Stevie Crye? Page 8