Summer of the Monkeys

by Wilson Rawls

  “Oh, no!” Mama exclaimed. “Not again!”

  “I can’t understand that old cow,” Papa said, shaking his head. “Just last week I put an extra rail on the pasture fence. It didn’t do any good though. She sailed over it as if it wasn’t even there.”

  Turning to me, Papa said, “Jay Berry, you’ll have to find her; that’s all there is to it. It’s wild onion time, and if she gets a bellyful of those things, her milk won’t be any good for days. We can’t do without milk and butter.”

  When Papa asked me to do important things like that, it made me feel just about as big as those Ozark Mountains around our log house.

  I puffed out my chest and said, “I’ll find Sally Gooden, Papa. She’s probably down in the river bottoms. That’s where I usually find her.”

  It seemed that Papa and I never could hold a man-to-man conversation without Mama getting all worked up; especially, if we were talking about my going down to the river bottoms.

  Mama frowned and said, “That crazy old cow anyhow. Jay Berry, you be careful. I worry every time you go down in those bottoms.”

  “Worry!” I said, big-eyed. “Why, Mama? What do you have to worry for? I’ve been all over those bottoms. You know that.”

  “I know,” Mama said, “but I worry just the same. It’s no place for a fourteen-year-old boy. Why, it’s a regular jungle down there. You can’t see ten feet in any direction; and there are snakes, wild hogs, and goodness knows what all.”

  “Aw, Mama,” I said, “you make it sound like I was going to the jungles in Africa, or something. I’ve chased Sally Gooden out of those bottoms a thousand times and nothing’s happened yet. Besides, Rowdy’s always with me and he wouldn’t let anything get in a mile of me.”

  I didn’t know it at the time, but about an hour later I wasn’t so sure but that I was in Africa—the deepest part of Africa.

  Sally Gooden was the one thing we had around our farm that I thought was hardly worth putting up with. I always figured that she was a twin sister to the cow that jumped over the moon. She could stand flatfooted and jump out of a well. It seemed as if I spent about half of my time looking for her, and I figured my time was very valuable.

  We kept a bell on the jumping old thing, but that didn’t do any good. Every time she heard me coming, she would get behind a bush and stand as still as a fence post. Sometimes I swore that she held that bell in her mouth just to keep me from hearing it. I don’t think I ever could have found her if it hadn’t been for Rowdy. He could sniff her out every time.

  Right after breakfast I called Rowdy and we lit out for the bottoms to look for the Lee family’s milk supplier. It didn’t take Rowdy long to sniff out Sally Gooden. She was down by an old slough that emptied into the river. It was cool and shady along the banks of the slough and there was plenty of green grass. She was just standing there under a big sycamore, chewing her cud, and looking as innocent as the day she was born. I was just about to warm her up with a switch when an idea popped into my head.

  Looking at Rowdy, I said, “It’s a cinch she’s not going anywhere. Her milk bag is so full now she’ll have to walk spraddle-legged. Let’s leave her alone for a while and do a little looking around.”

  Rowdy’s long skinny tail started fanning the air. He whined and licked my hand. That was his way of saying, “If you want to do a little looking around, pal, it’s all right with me.”

  Now if there ever was a place that needed looking into, it was the Cherokee bottoms. A jillion little game trails twisted their way through jungles of wild cane and matted masses of elder. Like the crawl of a black snake, they wound their way beneath tall white sycamores, black gums, birches, and box elders. Every chance I had, I was down in those bottoms and was doing a pretty good job of leaving my barefoot tracks in the dust of each trail and of carving my initials in the smooth white bark of every sycamore tree.

  In the cool silence of those Cherokee bottoms, I could find all the wonders of a storybook world. Sometimes I was Daniel Boone; then there would be spells of Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, the Last of the Mohicans, and Tarzan of the Apes. My favorite hero was Daniel Boone. With hawk feathers sticking in the top of my old straw hat and with my face painted with pokeberry juice, till I’m sure that it would have scared a hoot owl to death, I laid ten thousand Indians to rest in that sycamore heaven.

  Old Rowdy was always there, and he was always in the lead, ever alert for any danger that might lie in my way. He could scent a diamond-back rattler or a copperhead long before I saw it, and he’d let me know that it was there. If there were any wild hogs around, he could scare the daylights out of them with his deep voice.

  Sometimes Old Rowdy would hop up on a sycamore log, raise his head high in the air, and bawl. I always smiled when he did it because I knew what he was doing. That was his way of telling every living thing in those Cherokee bottoms to look out, for a mighty hunter and a bluetick hound were on the prowl.

  I loved every bone in Old Rowdy’s body, but what I liked about him most of all was the way he could understand me. Sometimes I figured that he could understand me even better than grown folks could. At least, he would never say “No” to anything I suggested.

  We were following a little game trail deep in the heart of the bottoms, when all at once Rowdy stopped and raised his head in the air. Standing as rigid as a black locust stump, and with his long ears fanned open, he started sniffing the air. I could tell by Rowdy’s actions that he had scented something, but was having trouble locating it. Just then a warm summer breeze whispered down from the hills and fanned its way through the tall-timbered bottoms. That was all it took for the sniffing of Old Rowdy to zero in.

  “What is it, boy?” I whispered.

  Rowdy looked at me and whined.

  “Go get it, boy,” I said in a low voice.

  With no more noise than the shadow of a winging hawk, Rowdy turned and padded from sight in the folding green. Standing as still as the sycamores around me, I waited and listened. I didn’t have to wait long. The bell-like tones of my old dog’s voice jarred the silence around me. He was bawling treed, and his deep voice was telling me and the whole wide world that he had something up a tree.

  To let Rowdy know that I was coming, I reared back and whooped as loud as I could, “Who-o-e-e, tell it to him, boy. Sing him a hound-dog song.”

  Ducking my head and running as fast as my legs could carry me, I started boring my way through the underbrush.

  Rowdy had something treed in a huge bur oak that was a solid mass of green. As I walked around the big tree, I peered into the dark foliage.

  I said, “What is it, boy? A squirrel?”

  Not being able to see anything, I backed off to one side, picked up a stick, and threw it up into the branches. From a shadow close to the trunk of the big tree, something moved out on a limb. I couldn’t see what it was until it walked into an opening.

  At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was a monkey—an honest-to-goodness live monkey. I was so surprised I couldn’t move or say a word. All I could do was stand there with my eyes bugged out, and stare at it.

  The monkey was staring at me, too. He just sat there on a limb, boring holes through me with his bright little eyes. Then he opened his mouth like he was going to scream his head off, but he didn’t make a sound. All he did was show me a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. He looked so cute and funny, I couldn’t help laughing out loud.

  Rowdy had seen the monkey, too; and was having a hound dog fit. He was trying his best to run right up the trunk of the bur oak tree; and all the time his deep voice was telling that monkey it was the end of the road.

  I don’t know whether the monkey got mad or scared. Anyhow, he reared up on his hind legs and let out a cry. All around me the bottoms came to life with noises I had never heard before; grunts and squeals, barks and cries, and everything else.

  I didn’t get scared until I remembered that about the only place you could
find wild monkeys was in the jungles somewhere. The very thought of jungles brought up visions of all kinds of man-eating things like lions, tigers, and gorillas. Then I really got scared. My old heart started turning somersaults; and something that felt like a thousand-legged centipede jiggled its way up my spine.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I yelled at Rowdy, and tore out down a game trail like a scalded cat.

  Any second I expected something to jump out of the bushes and eat me up. Old Rowdy could usually outrun me, but it was all he could do to stay up with me.

  I came tearing out of the bottoms into one of our fields. At the far end, I saw Papa hitching one of our mules to the corn planter. I headed for him, kicking up the dust.

  About five feet from Papa, I threw on the brakes and said in a loud voice, “Papa, Rowdy treed a monkey.”

  Papa just stood there for a second looking at me, then he smiled and said, “Jay Berry, when a boy’s growing up, it’s all right for him to see things. I did myself, but you’re getting to be a pretty big boy now and I think it’s time you quit seeing things. Rowdy probably treed a squirrel.”

  “No, he didn’t, Papa,” I almost shouted. “It wasn’t a squirrel. It was a monkey—an honest-to-goodness live monkey. I saw it plain as day.”

  Looking at me kind of hard, Papa said, “Now hold on just a minute. I can’t remember that you’ve ever seen a monkey before.”

  “I haven’t seen a live one, Papa,” I said, “but I have seen pictures of them. You remember that little thing Grandma gave me a long time ago. That little thing that had three monkeys on it who couldn’t see anything, or hear anything, or say anything. Well, that thing that Rowdy treed looked just like they did. I’m sure it was a monkey all right.”

  I guess papas have a way of knowing when boys are telling the truth.

  Papa frowned and looked off toward the bottoms. “Maybe you did see a monkey,” he said, “but it’s sure hard to believe. I’ve never heard of any monkeys being around here.”

  “Well, there’s one here now, Papa,” I said. “He’s right down there in the bottoms, sitting on a bur oak limb, big as you please.”

  Papa didn’t even act as if he heard what I had said. He just stood there with a thoughtful look on his face, staring off toward the bottoms.

  After what seemed like an hour to me, he chuckled and said, “Why, that explains it. Sure, that’s it. It has to be.”

  “What explains what, Papa?” I asked.

  “That monkey,” Papa said, still chuckling. “You know all those rich people that come up here in the summer to fish on the river. Well, the way I see it, one of them had a pet monkey and it got away from him.”

  I was just about to go along with what Papa had said when I remembered all those strange noises I had heard.

  “Papa,” I said, “I believe there was something else down there. I heard a lot of different noises. Do you reckon it could have been more monkeys?”

  “Aw,” Papa said, turning to pour seed corn into the hopper of the planter, “you probably got scared and just thought you heard something. Besides, if there were monkeys all over the country, I couldn’t do anything about it. I have to get this corn planted. We can do without monkeys, but we can’t do without bread corn.”

  I was aching all over to have Papa go with me to look for the monkey, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good to ask him. He thought so much of that little old farm of ours, he wouldn’t have stopped working to watch a herd of elephants march down the road.

  Just as Papa was putting the check lines over his shoulders, he said, “Oh, by the way, did you find Sally Gooden?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “She’s down by that old slough. I guess when I saw the monkey I got so excited I forgot all about her. I’m sorry. I’ll go get her.”

  Papa smiled and said, “No, now that I know where she is, I’ll look after her. Your mother needs some things from the store; and I think she has a little job she wants you to do.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said and started at a trot for the house.

  I didn’t have the least bit of trouble getting Mama to believe in my monkey. She already believed that the bottoms were full of things that could gobble me up.

  “Monkey!” Mama said, looking all worried. “I don’t doubt it. There could be anything down in those bottoms. Monkey! Why, I never heard of anything like it. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  I saw right away that if I didn’t say something to ease Mama’s mind she was liable to start laying down the law about my going to the bottoms.

  “Aw, now, Mama,” I said, “I can’t see why you have to get all worked up like that just because I saw a monkey. Papa said it was probably a pet that belonged to a fisherman, and it got away from him.”

  “Jay Berry,” Mama said, “your father doesn’t know everything, but I hope he’s right. I certainly do. All we need around here now are some lions and tigers, and a few more wild things. We may as well be living in the jungles. I wish more people would move into the country. It’s not safe the way it is. It’s too wild and untamed.”

  To get Mama’s mind off all those wild things, I changed the conversation.

  “Papa said you wanted me to go to the store,” I said.

  “I do,” Mama said, “but I expect I’d better get a piece of paper and write down the things I want. With that monkey running around in your head, you’d probably forget half the things I need.”

  I waited while Mama got pencil and paper and made a list of the things she needed.

  Cramming the list down in one of my overall pockets, she said, “Now you hurry back from the store. I intend to set some hens today and I need you to put fresh straw in the nests.”

  “I will, Mama,” I said and bolted for the door.

  two

  It was about three miles to the store and I nearly ran Rowdy’s legs off getting there. I was pretty sure that when I told my grandpa about the monkey, he’d know what to do about it. My grandpa was one of those old, slow-moving, boy-loving kind of grandpas. We had been pals for as long as I could remember. He’d do anything he could for me, and I’d do anything I could for him.

  If you were looking at the outside of my grandpa, you wouldn’t see very much. He was just about as big around the middle as he was tall. He didn’t have much hair either, just a little around the edges; and it was as grey and stiff as a wild hog’s whiskers. He wore glasses, chewed Star tobacco, and needed a shave about three hundred and sixty days a year. It was the inside of my grandpa that really counted. He had a heart as big as a number four washtub; and inside that wrinkled old hide of his was enough boy-understanding for all the boys in the world.

  On entering the store, I saw Grandpa over behind the counter, setting canned goods on a shelf. He didn’t hear me when I came in. Of course, I was barefooted and didn’t make any more noise than a lizard walking on a rail fence.

  I eased right up behind him and said in a voice much too loud, “Grandpa, Rowdy treed a monkey.”

  I saw my old grandpa flinch—just about like I always did when a wasp dabbed his fiery little dagger in me. He took his time about turning around. Ducking his head, he looked at me over his glasses; then he looked at Rowdy.

  Rowdy was just sitting there on his rear, looking at Grandpa. His long ears were sticking straight up and his tongue was hanging out about a foot.

  Grandpa must have liked what he saw. He grinned a little and said, “Now, let’s do that all over again—only this time don’t talk so loud.”

  “You mean you want me to go back outside, Grandpa, and come in again, just like I did?” I asked.

  “No, no,” Grandpa said, waving his hand. “You don’t have to go back outside. Just say that all over again.”

  “Oh,” I said. I swallowed a couple of times and tried hard to control my voice. “Rowdy treed a monkey.”

  Grandpa nodded his head and said, “Uh-huh, that’s what I thought you said. I wanted to be sure though. Are you sure it was a monkey?”

 
“Sure as I need a haircut, Grandpa,” I said. “It was a monkey all right. It had a skinny tail, four long legs, a baby-looking face, and hair all over it. Papa thinks it was a pet monkey that belonged to a fisherman and it got away from him.”

  Grandpa thought a second, then shaking his head, he said, “No, I don’t think it belonged to a fisherman. Is one monkey all Rowdy treed?”

  “That’s all I saw, Grandpa,” I said, “but I believe there was something else around there. I heard a lot of noises.”

  Grandpa’s bushy eyebrows jumped straight up.

  “Noises?” he asked. “What kind of noises?”

  “I don’t know what kind of noises they were, Grandpa,” I said. “I’ve heard all kinds of noises in the bottoms and I usually know what’s making them, but I’ve never heard anything like that before. It sounded like cries and squeals, barks and grunts, and everything else. It scared me into a running fit.”

  Grandpa got all excited. He took off his glasses and I saw a twinkle in his friendly old eyes.

  Then very seriously he said, “I’m pretty sure those noises you heard were more monkeys. It sure sounds like it. From what I understand, there were probably about thirty of them.”

  My eyes got as big as bur oak acorns.

  “Thirty!” I exclaimed. “Boy, that’s a lot of monkeys, Grandpa. Are you sure?”

  “I can’t be positive,” Grandpa said, “but I’d be willing to bet my last bucket of sorghum molasses on it.”

  “Grandpa, do you know something about those monkeys?” I asked.

  Rearing back and looking as important as Rowdy did when he had treed something, Grandpa said, “Sure I know something about those monkeys. That’s what grandpas are for, isn’t it? To know things for boys.”

  I grinned and said, “Yes, sir. I guess so.”

  It didn’t surprise me too much to find out that my grandpa knew something about the monkeys. I was firmly convinced that he was the smartest man in those Ozark hills anyhow. He knew a little bit about everything. He knew where all the best fishing holes were, and the right kind of bait to use. He knew the best places to hunt, and the right time to go hunting. It did seem though that all the good things my grandpa knew about were things that I liked.