Summer of the Monkeys

by Wilson Rawls

  Mama looked up at the sun. She said, “It’s time I started fixing dinner.”

  “I’ll help you, Mama,” Daisy said. “I can clean my playhouse later today. It’s a little too wet now anyway.”

  We hadn’t taken ten steps down the trail when I noticed that Rowdy wasn’t with us. I turned around to see where he was, and was just in time to see him step very gently over the little toadstools into the fairy ring. He dropped his old nose to the ground and started sniffing around.

  “Rowdy,” I said, in a hard voice, “you get out of there! You’re going to step on those toadstools and mash them in the ground.”

  Rowdy didn’t budge an inch. He sat down on his rear and looked straight at me. He whimpered a few times and his old tail waggled all over the place.

  Daisy giggled. “Leave him alone, Jay Berry,” she said. “Don’t you know what he’s doing?”

  “Sure, I know what he’s doing,” I said. “He’s trying to figure out what we were doing in the fairy ring. He’s just nosy.”

  “No, he’s not nosy,” Daisy said. “He’s making a wish just like we did. That’s what he’s doing.”

  “Aw, Daisy,” I said, “what are you saying? Whoever heard of a dog making a wish? Dogs don’t do things like that.”

  Mama and Papa had turned around and were watching Rowdy. Both of them were smiling.

  “Jay Berry,” Mama said, “maybe Rowdy is making a wish. It sure looks like he is.”

  Papa chuckled. “That old hound is smart,” he said. “I’m not surprised at anything he does. I’ve seen him do things that I couldn’t believe.”

  “He’s smart all right,” I said. “If I’m digging fishing worms, he’ll start digging holes in the ground. He tries to do everything I do.”

  Papa laughed. “Does he ever pick up a worm and put it in the can?” he asked.

  I smiled and said, “No. I’ve tried to get him to do that, but he won’t have anything to do with worms.”

  Just then Rowdy came bounding out of the fairy ring. He came to me, reared up, and put his paws on my shoulders.

  When Rowdy reared up on me like that, he was just about the same height as I was and there was no way I could dodge his lapping tongue. He lapped me on the neck and ears, and all up and down my face. He even pushed my old straw hat off my head and lapped me a few times up there.

  I loved him and squeezed him and scratched behind his ears. He liked that.

  “Rowdy, if you did make a wish,” I said, “I bet I know what you wished for—a big bone or a meat rind.”

  Oh, how I loved that old hound dog of mine.

  Daisy was smiling. “I don’t think Rowdy wished for a bone or a meat rind,” she said. “I bet he wished those monkeys would disappear.”

  Both Papa and Mama were laughing as they started down the trail again, ahead of Daisy and me. Papa was carrying the pitchfork in his left hand and his right arm was around Mama’s waist. We heard him say to Mama, “Did you notice how still it was there at the fairy ring?”

  “Yes, I did,” Mama said, “and I couldn’t understand it. I’ve never seen the hills so quiet. You can always hear something.”

  “Mama,” Daisy said, “I know why it was so still there at the fairy ring.”

  “Oh,” Mama said, glancing back at Daisy, “why?”

  “Because the Old Man of the Mountains was there,” Daisy said. “That’s why.”

  “Aw, Daisy,” I said, “you’re always seeing things. I never saw any old man. Did you see anyone, Mama?”

  “No,” Mama said, “I didn’t see anyone, but I did have a strange feeling. Maybe the silence had something to do with it. I felt that something was watching us. Something I couldn’t see.”

  “I think we all felt something,” Papa said. “I know I did.”

  “Jay Berry,” Daisy said, “just because you didn’t see the Old Man of the Mountains doesn’t mean that he wasn’t there. He was there all right. He’s always there. If you ever believed anything in your life, you can believe that.”

  Just then an old white leghorn hen came sailing out of our henhouse, flapping her wings and cackling her head off. I knew that she had just laid an egg and it had probably tickled her half to death. It always did.

  The cackling hen seemed to awaken the silent hills. Birds started singing, squirrels started churring, and chipmunks started squeaking. In the underbrush close to the trail, I saw a little wren. It was hopping around and chirping. I wondered if it was the same wren I had seen in the red oak tree.

  Papa stopped and started looking around at the hills. With a smile on his face, he said, “Now, this is more like it. This is the way it’s supposed to be. If you take the music out of these hills, they’re not the same.”

  Just as we reached the house, Mama turned to Daisy and said, “Why don’t you go to the garden and pick some fresh tomatoes and cucumbers? We’ll have them for dinner.”

  “Sure, Mama,” Daisy said. “After that rain last night, I bet I can find some dandies.”

  Papa and I went to the blacksmith shop to finish our work.

  While Papa and I were working, I kept thinking about the fairy ring and the wishes we had made. I couldn’t get them out of my mind.

  “Papa,” I said as I stopped turning the handle on the blower, “do you believe that the wishes we made at the fairy ring will come true?”

  Papa didn’t answer me right away. I could see by the expression on his face that he was having trouble finding the right words. Then, looking at me, he said, “Son, that’s a pretty hard question to answer. But I do believe that any wish you make can come true if you help the wish. I don’t think that the Lord meant for our lives to be so simple and easy that every time we wanted something, all we had to do was wish for it and we’d get it. I don’t believe that at all. If that were true, there would be a lot of lazy people in this old world. No one would be working. Everyone would be wishing for what they needed or wanted.”

  “Papa,” I asked, “how can you help a wish?”

  “Oh, there are a lot of ways,” Papa said. “Hard work, faith, patience, and determination. I think that prayer and really believing in your wish can help more than anything else.”

  “I sure hope the wish I made in the fairy ring comes true,” I said. “I’ll do everything I can to help it.”

  After Papa had explained about helping wishes, I still had one more thing I wanted to ask him.

  “Papa, has Daisy said anything to you about the Old Man of the Mountains?” I asked.

  “No, Daisy hasn’t said anything to me about him,” Papa said, “but your mother has.”

  “Do you believe that she really sees that old man?” I asked.

  Papa frowned as if he were in deep thought. Before he answered, he laid his hammer down on the anvil, turned, and started stirring up the fire in the forge.

  “Yes, son,” he said. “I believe that Daisy does see the Old Man of the Mountains. It may be just her imagination, but I believe that she does see something. There is one thing I know. All little children who are crippled can see things and hear things that you and I can never see or hear. I think the Lord has something to do with this. It could be his way of showing them mercy.”

  “That’s what Mama told me,” I said. “She thinks that the Old Man of the Mountains is a spirit. Do you think he’s a spirit?”

  Papa thought a second. “Your mother could be right,” he said. “What Daisy is seeing could be the spirit of Christ. Lots of people have seen his spirit; especially, those who are in pain or deep trouble. It happens every day somewhere in the world.”

  I was so startled by what Papa had said, I couldn’t say a word. I even got scared a little. Right then I decided that never again would I tell my little sister that she wasn’t seeing the Old Man of the Mountains.

  I was thinking about the way Daisy had described the Old Man to me when she poked her head out the back door and yelled, “Come and get it, or we’ll feed it to the chickens.”

  Papa chuckled. �
��It looks like we’d better go in for some dinner or we won’t get any,” he said.

  fifteen

  We were sitting at the table eating, when Papa looked at me and said, “If you find the monkeys, are you going to try to catch them?”

  “No,” I said, “I just want to see if they are all right. Then I’m going to the store and have a talk with Grandpa. I hope he has something figured out.”

  As soon as I had finished eating, I walked out in the yard and called Rowdy. “Come on, boy! Let’s go!” I said.

  The storm had raised Cain in the thick timber of the river bottoms. Trees had been blown down. The game trail we were following was littered with broken limbs and leaves. Puddles of water were still standing in it. Several times Rowdy and I had to work our way around a big tree that had blown down across the trail.

  “Boy, Rowdy,” I said, “I don’t think a ghost could have lived through a storm like that, do you? I bet those monkeys were drowned or got blown away.”

  About every fifty yards I would stop and listen. Then I’d call in a loud voice, “Jimbo! Where are you? Come on, Jimbo!”

  I’d stand still and listen to the echo of my voice die away in the distance. There was no answer from the monkeys—just that cold, damp silence all around us.

  The first two or three times I called and got no answer didn’t leave me too discouraged. Then a numb feeling of doubt started creeping in on me.

  Rowdy didn’t help the situation at all. He was slipping along as if he were walking on porcupines. At every bend in the trail, he would stop and peek around it before going on. His ears were sticking up and he was watching both sides of the trail.

  Every little way, Rowdy would stop and look up into the trees. He just knew that any minute a monkey would come flying out of nowhere, land on his back, and start chewing on him.

  “Aw, Rowdy,” I said, “I wish you’d stop acting that way. You’re making me nervous. I don’t think you have to worry about any monkeys jumping on you. After a storm like that, I doubt if there’s a live one left.”

  All the way through the bottoms to the river bank. I called and listened, called and listened. I didn’t hear a thing—not a sound.

  On reaching the river, Rowdy and I stopped to watch a mother duck, with about a dozen little babies, working around an old drift close to the bank. I could hear her talking to her little ones. She was teaching them how to find food around the drift.

  One little duck decided to do some exploring on his own. He didn’t get ten feet from his mother when she let out a peculiar quack that must have scared the little one half to death. With a baby quack, he scooted back so fast it looked like he was walking on top of the water. On reaching his mother, he shook his little tail as if it was on fire and he was trying to cool it off.

  I watched another little duck climb on his mother’s back. He sat down and started scratching his neck with a tiny foot.

  Across the river on a sand bar, a big blue crane let out a loud squawk. With wings flapping and long legs dragging in the water, he took off down the river.

  Out in the middle of the river, a big old catfish rolled and boiled the water to a white foam. Instantly the mother duck quacked her alarm and herded her babies into the shallows. She knew all too well that a baby duck would make a good meal for a big old catfish.

  Rowdy and I walked up the river bank for about three hundred yards and then cut back through the bottoms. It was the same thing all over again. I called and called, and got no answer. By the time we reached the rail fence around our fields, my doubts were getting stronger and stronger.

  “Rowdy,” I said, “it sure looks like our luck has run out. I don’t think there’s a monkey around here anywhere. I guess something happened to them in that storm.”

  The next thing that Rowdy and I tried wasn’t easy. We followed a game trail until we were about halfway between our fields and the river. Then we left the trail and took off right through the middle of the bottoms.

  It was tough going through the thick underbrush. The ground was wet, muddy, and slick. Once my bare feet flew out from under me and I sat down so hard I grunted. Every now and then the underbrush was so thick I couldn’t make my way through it. I’d get down on my hands and knees and crawl until I could stand up again. Every time I shook a bush, water would shower down.

  All along the way, I called and listened for the monkeys. The only thing I heard was my deep breathing, the thumping of my heart, and the panting of Old Rowdy.

  Several times I tried to get Rowdy to go out on his own and do a little sniffing around, but he wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t get five feet from me. Once I really got tough with him. I scolded him and even picked up a stick and made believe I was going to whip him.

  Rowdy knew I was bluffing. He knew I would never hit him with a stick. He just whined a few times, sat down in the mud, and looked at me.

  In every way he could, Rowdy seemed to be saying, “If you want to go monkey hunting, that’s all right with me. I’ll even go along with you, but I’m not going hunting for those monkeys by myself.”

  We worked our way through the bottoms for a good quarter of a mile. I kept calling and calling, and got no answer. Finally, I gave up. Wet, cold, and very discouraged, I sat down on an old sycamore log and buried my face in my arms.

  Almost in tears, I started talking to myself. “All the monkeys are gone,” I said. “I’ll never see them again. I’ll never have a pony or a gun—not ever.”

  Rowdy could tell that I was unhappy and this made him unhappy, too. He came to me and tried his best to cheer me up. He tried to push his nose up under my arms so he could lick my face. Then he started licking my hands.

  I put my arms around my old hound and said, “It’s not your fault the monkeys are gone. It’s not my fault either. I guess we weren’t supposed to catch them.”

  Feeling lower than I had ever felt, I got to my feet and started for home.

  I hadn’t taken ten steps when I thought I heard something. I stopped and listened. I didn’t hear a thing. I looked at Rowdy.

  Usually, if anything made a racket, Rowdy would hear it and he’d let me know. His ears would stand straight up and he’d point his nose in the direction of the sound.

  In a low voice, I said, “Rowdy, I thought I heard something. Did you hear anything?”

  If Rowdy had heard anything, he sure wasn’t letting me know it. He was just sitting there on the cold ground, looking at me, and wagging his muddy tail.

  With his friendly old eyes, he was trying to tell me, “No, I didn’t hear anything. I wasn’t listening for anything. Let’s get out of these cold, wet bottoms and go home where it’s warm and dry.”

  I decided I had just imagined hearing something, and once again I started for home. I hadn’t taken three steps when I heard the noise again. That time there was no doubt I had heard something. It was a low, whimpering cry and sounded like a small animal suffering.

  Rowdy had heard the noise, too. His ears were sticking straight up and he was looking toward my right. I could see his nose twitching as he sniffed for the scent.

  “What was that, Rowdy?” I whispered. “It sure didn’t sound like a monkey. It sounded more like a little animal that’s been hurt. Let’s see if we can find it, and maybe we can help it.”

  With Rowdy in the lead, we started working our way toward the sound. We had gone about two hundred yards when I stopped again to listen. For several seconds, I didn’t hear a thing. Then I heard the low, pitiful cry.

  “Rowdy,” I said in a whisper, “whatever that is, it must be suffering. I bet that storm blew down a den tree that had some baby coons in it and one of them got hurt.”

  Again Rowdy and I started boring our way through the underbrush in the direction of the cry. We had worked our way to the bank of a deep washout when I stopped and listened.

  I heard the cry again and I could tell that it was coming from down in the washout. Catching hold of a tall cane growing on the bank, I bent it down and used i
t like a rope to let myself down to the bottom.

  I could see a lot farther in the washout. No underbrush or trees grew there—just bunches of grass, cattails, and ferns.

  I stood still for a moment. When I didn’t hear anything, I whooped. I was answered by that low cry. By the sound of it, I could tell that I was close to whatever was making it.

  I walked up the washout about a hundred yards and stopped to listen. When I heard the cry that time, I almost jumped out of my britches. It was coming from right behind me.

  I turned around. At first, I couldn’t see anything. Then I saw a small pocket under the bank. Rushing water had made the hole a long time ago.

  Mumbling to myself, I said, “Whatever it is that’s crying must be under that bank. That’s the only place it could be.”

  I eased over to the side of the washout, dropped to my hands and knees, and looked under the bank into the pocket. I almost screamed. I was looking right in Jimbo’s face. I just knew he would come boiling out from under that bank and jump right in my face—but he didn’t.

  Jimbo didn’t move or make a sound. He just looked at me and batted his eyes as if he were very sleepy. He was sitting there with his back against the wet, cold bank. All the little monkeys were there, too. They were huddled up against his body as close as they could get—trying to keep warm. He had his long arms wrapped around his little friends as if he were protecting them.

  Right away, I saw that the monkeys were in terrible shape. They were sopping wet and their small bodies were quivering from the cold.

  “Holy smokes, Jimbo!” I said. “What are you doing in there? The storm’s over. You’ve got to get out of that cold place and start moving around. If you don’t, you’re not going to make it. Come on, let me help you.”

  Jimbo didn’t move. All he did was open his big mouth and utter that low, pitiful cry.

  I felt sorry for the monkeys and wanted to help them, but I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid they would jump on me.

  One little monkey looked as if he were already on his way to monkey heaven. He was off a little to one side, stretched out on the cold ground. At first, I thought he was dead. Then I saw his tiny mouth open as if he were gasping for breath.