Summer of the Monkeys

by Wilson Rawls

  The strain was almost more than I could stand. My insides got all knotted up and I felt like I was going to bust wide open. If the monkey hadn’t done something about then, I think I would have. Instead of stepping in my trap, he just reached out with one of those long arms, took hold of the apple, and pulled on it until the nail came out.

  Holding the apple in his paw about like I would if I were eating one, he opened his huge mouth, took one bite, and tossed what was left to the little monkeys.

  This caused a loud commotion. The little monkeys started fighting over the apple. I never heard so much squealing and chattering. In no time there wasn’t as much as a seed left.

  I sat there as if I were frozen to the ground and watched that big monkey walk all around the bur oak, taking the apples and never stepping in a trap. One bite from each apple seemed to be all he wanted. What was left was tossed to the little monkeys.

  When the last apple had disappeared, the big monkey did something that made me wonder if I wasn’t seeing things. He started turning somersaults and rolling around on the ground. At the same time, he was making the bottoms ring with a peculiar noise that he hadn’t made before.

  Now I had never heard a monkey laugh and didn’t even know they could; but as I sat there watching the capers of that big monkey, it didn’t take me long to figure out what he was doing. He was laughing at me. I was sure of it. I even remembered the dream I had had about the hundred dollar monkey—how every time he came leaping by, he would stop and laugh at me.

  The little monkeys seemed to know that something funny was going on. They started screeching and chattering like a bunch of squirrels in a hickory nut tree.

  My neck and face got all hot. I knew I was blushing, but I couldn’t help it. That was the first time I had ever had a monkey laugh at me. I looked at Old Rowdy. The way I was feeling, if he had been laughing, I would have taken a stick to him. But Rowdy wasn’t laughing. He was just as serious about catching those monkeys as I was.

  All at once the big monkey stopped making a fool out of himself and turned to the little monkeys. Uttering a couple of those deep grunts, he just seemed to rise up in the air like fog off the river and disappeared in the branches of the bur oak tree. The little monkeys followed him—zip, zip, zip—one behind the other.

  After the monkeys had all disappeared, it got so still around there you could have heard a grasshopper walking. I looked at Rowdy, and Rowdy looked at me.

  “Did you ever see anything like that, Rowdy?” I said. “Grandpa was right when he said that monkey was smart, but I didn’t think he was that smart. Why, he knew all the time that we were here. And he sat right up there on that sycamore limb and watched me set my traps. Then he stole all of my apples and laughed at me. Now, how do you like that!”

  My first go-around with the monkeys left me a little discouraged—but not too much. After all, my grandpa had taught me practically all there was to know about the trapping business. I figured it was just a matter of time until I’d have them all in the sack.

  Trying to act like nothing had happened, I said, “Rowdy, that monkey may not know it, but he’s messing around with one of the best trappers in these Cherokee hills. If he comes back one more time, we’ll see who does the laughing. Let’s try the old mouse-catching trick on him. I think that will stop this laughing business.”

  Rowdy whined and licked my hand. That gave me a lot of confidence and I felt much better.

  Taking three more of my apples, I set them up on a log. Then taking my pocketknife, I cut them in half. Walking over to where my traps were, I lifted them from their hiding places and tripped the triggers with a stick. Untying the strings from the nails and bushes, I used the short pieces to tie half of an apple to the trigger of each trap.

  I wrapped those pieces of apple to the top of the triggers as tightly as I could, and tied the ends of the strings in hard knots. Then I reset the traps and placed them back in the holes. Very carefully, I covered each trap with leaves but left the apples in plain sight.

  Backing off to one side, I took another good look at my trap setting. Every time I had set a trap I had been proud of the way I had done it, but on that day I was especially proud. You could see the pieces of apple all right, but you sure couldn’t tell there were any traps there. Not one shiny piece of metal could be seen.

  “Rowdy,” I said, “I don’t care how smart that monkey is, if he gets one of those apples, he’s going to wind up with a trap on his foot, and that’s all there is to it.”

  All of the time I was resetting my traps I kept looking around in the trees for a monkey. I didn’t see one, but I had a feeling that there were ten thousand monkey eyeballs looking right at me.

  Feeling about as smart as Old Trapper Dan himself, I said, “Come on, Rowdy, I think the money will start rolling in now.”

  I didn’t go straight back to my hiding place. Instead, I took off in another direction, circled around, and came back to it. I thought that I was being smart doing this, but I felt silly, too; because if that big monkey was sitting somewhere in the top of a sycamore tree, he was probably watching every move I made.

  I was so sure that I would catch a monkey this time, I didn’t sit down on my gunny sack. I held it in my hand so that I would be ready to sack him up the instant I heard the snap of a trap.

  It seemed that Rowdy and I had hardly gotten seated when here came the monkeys: leaping, squealing, and chattering.

  “Boy, Rowdy,” I whispered, “that sure was fast, wasn’t it. They must have been waiting for us. Why, the way they’re acting, they must think we’re playing some kind of game. They won’t think it’s a game when I get a few of them in the sack.”

  It was a little different this time than it was before. The big monkey was the first one to touch the ground, and he was standing very close to one of my traps. The little monkeys were milling around everywhere. They didn’t seem to know what was going on, but every time one got close to a trap, that big monkey would fly out of gear like a mama jaybird when I wanted to take a look at her babies.

  He would scream like someone had slapped a branding iron on him, and start jumping up and down, and making those deep grunting noises. He would run at the little monkeys and scare the daylights out of them. Finally he succeeded in herding them all to one side where they bunched up and stayed.

  If I had known then what that big monkey was going to do next, I wouldn’t have stayed there and watched it.

  Again he walked over close to one of my traps and stopped. I knew that I was watching a monkey, but he still looked like a small boy, standing there, trying to figure something out. Once he even bent over so that he could get a better look at things. Then he reached up with one of his long arms and scratched his head. When I saw him do that I thought of my grandpa. He was always scratching his head when he had something heavy on his mind.

  “Rowdy,” I whispered, “I believe that monkey knows the trap is there and he’s trying to figure out how he can get the apple and not get caught. I don’t think he can do it. I don’t care how smart he is, he’s not that smart.” How wrong I was.

  As if he had solved the problem, and was tickled to death about it, the big monkey turned a few somersaults. He stopped and stared straight at my hiding place. Then he let out another one of those squalls before he reached down and picked up a long stick from the ground. Holding the stick out in front of him, still uttering those deep grunts, he started beating at the apple as if he was killing a snake.

  I almost jumped out of my britches when I heard the trap snap. I sat in a trance and watched that hundred dollar monkey spring every one of my traps the same way. Every time a trap snapped, he would look straight at my hiding place and squall.

  He didn’t use his teeth to tear the apples from the triggers. He simply used his fingers and untied the knots in the strings.

  There was one thing I could say for that monkey. He wasn’t only smart, he was very polite, too. He saw to it that the little monkeys got their share of each
apple.

  After it was all over and the monkeys had again disappeared in the treetops, I looked to Rowdy for some kind of understanding. I didn’t get any help from him. He was just lying there with his long ears sticking straight up, looking at me as if he were the most surprised hound dog in the world.

  I was so dumbfounded I couldn’t even think straight, much less say anything. For several seconds I sat there staring at the ground and trying to remember everything that had happened. The more I thought about how that big monkey had outsmarted me, the madder I got.

  “Rowdy,” I said, “I wish I had brought Papa’s old shotgun along. I’d sure warm that monkey’s hide with some bird shot. It’s bad enough that he made a fool out of me, but he didn’t have to laugh like that.”

  I put my lunch and apples back in the gunny sack, and walked over to where my traps were. Mashing the springs down with my foot, I released the sticks from the jaws. I put the traps back in my sack. Then I sat down on a stump to do a little thinking. I could remember every trick my grandpa had taught me about trapping, but I couldn’t think of a thing that would catch a monkey. The more I thought about everything, the more disgusted I got.

  Talking to myself, I said, “There’s only one thing I can do. I’ll have to get rid of that smart-aleck monkey. If I can get rid of him, I believe I can catch the little ones. They don’t seem to have any sense at all. I’ll just go to the house, get Papa’s gun, and do away with that monkey once and for all.”

  Then I thought, “What in the world am I thinking of. I can’t do that. Why, it would be like hanging a hundred dollar bill in a tree and shooting it all to pieces. And, there was the Old Man of the Mountains. If I shot one of those silly monkeys, there was no telling what he’d do.”

  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!”

  five

  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.