Summer of the Monkeys

by Wilson Rawls

  “Come on, boy,” I said. “You may as well get used to this hole because we might be sitting in it for a long time.”

  During the past few days, I had asked Rowdy to do so many things he had never done before that he didn’t know straight up from straight down. Standing on the rim of the hole and peering down at me, he started whining and whimpering and fidgeting around. Then he just hauled off and jumped clean over the hole and looked at me from another angle. I could hear Papa chuckling in the darkness.

  “Aw, Rowdy,” I said, “what’s the matter with you. Surely you’re not scared of this little old hole. Why, you’ve had your nose in every hole in these bottoms. Come on now.”

  Whimpering like he was getting ready to swim the ice-cold waters of the river, Rowdy got down on his belly, slid off into the hole, and sat down by my side.

  “I’m sorry, boy,” I said, patting his head. “I know I’ve got you all mixed up but in the morning I think you’ll understand what this is all about.”

  “Well, what do you think?” Papa asked.

  “It’s just right, Papa,” I said, “but there’s one more thing we have to do.”

  “What’s that?” Papa asked.

  Climbing out of the hole, I said, “Grandpa thinks it would be a good idea to cover the top of the hole with brush so those monkeys can’t see me from the treetops.”

  “That won’t be hard to do,” Papa said, reaching for his pocketknife.

  Papa started cutting brush while I carried it over and arranged it over the top of the hole. Knowing how smart that hundred dollar monkey was, I took the shovel and scattered the fresh dirt that had come from the hole. After everything had been taken care of, Papa held the lantern up so we could get a better look at our work.

  “I don’t care how smart those monkeys are,” Papa said, “they’ll never spot that hole. Why, if I didn’t know it was there, I’d probably fall in it myself.”

  At that moment, no big-game hunter in Africa could have felt more sure of himself than I did.

  “Papa,” I said, “I really believe I’ll catch some of those monkeys this time. I really do.”

  “I do, too,” Papa said. “What time do you intend to be here in the morning?”

  “I’d like to be here before sunup, Papa,” I said.

  “In that case,” Papa said, “we’d better be getting home so you can get some sleep.”

  seven

  By this time, I had the monkey-catching fever so bad, I didn’t think I’d get any sleep at all that night. In fact, I couldn’t see much use in even going to bed. But I must have been more tired than I thought I was. I fell asleep and didn’t even dream about monkeys.

  It seemed like I had barely closed my eyes when I was awakened by Papa shaking me.

  “You’d better get up,” Papa said. “It’s almost daylight and those monkeys will be waking up.”

  While I was putting on my clothes, I heard the rattling of pots and pans. I thought it was Papa messing around in the kitchen until I walked in and saw that it was Mama fixing breakfast.

  “Aw, Mama,” I said, as I poured water into the wash pan, “you didn’t have to get up this early. Why didn’t you stay in bed and get your rest? I could have done without anything to eat till noon.”

  “You can’t hunt monkeys on an empty stomach,” Mama said. “Besides, it doesn’t look like I’ll get any work out of you until you get over this monkey business.”

  I finished eating breakfast long before Mama and Papa did, and I started getting my monkey-catching gear together. I hurried to the cellar and got some more apples. Then I rushed to the barn for another gunny sack. Calling to Rowdy, I picked up my net and headed for the bottoms as fast as I could trot.

  I was about halfway through our fields when I met Old Gandy waddling home. If he wasn’t a mess. His feathers were all ruffled and he was smeared with mud from his head to his tail. He seemed to be dog-tired and wasn’t moving any faster than a terrapin could walk.

  “Br-r-rother, Gandy,” I said, looking him over, “you must have had a terrible night. It looks like those wild geese down on the river really worked you over.”

  Keeping his eye on the net, Gandy honked his disgust and waddled over to one side as if he didn’t care to have a thing to do with me.

  Rowdy could see that Gandy was just about all in and he figured it was a good time to aggravate him a little. He bounded over and started barking at him, and for the very first time, Gandy refused to fight back. Honking and flapping his wings, he lit out for home. Rowdy was right after him, nipping at his tail feathers and having the time of his life.

  “Aw, come on, Rowdy,” I said, “leave the old fool alone. We’ve got more important things to do than to mess with an old goose.”

  It was almost sunup when I arrived at the hole Papa and I had dug. I opened my net and very carefully placed it on the ground with about a foot of the handle and the celluloid rings sticking over the rim of the hole. Then I started covering the handle, loop, and netting with dead leaves and grass.

  After everything had been completely covered, I placed three big apples in the center of the hidden loop and then backed off to one side to see what kind of a job I had done.

  I was very pleased with my net-hiding skill. “Rowdy,” I said, “I don’t know much about trapping this way, but you’ll have to admit one thing, that net is sure hidden.”

  Even if Old Rowdy couldn’t understand some of the things I did, he always acted like he did anyway. He wagged his tail and seemed to be pleased with everything.

  Picking up my sack, I said, “Come on, boy, let’s get in the hole and wait for those monkeys.”

  With Rowdy behind me, we got down on our stomachs, squirmed back under the brush, and dropped down in the hole.

  Rowdy and I hadn’t been in the hole ten minutes when from somewhere in the bottoms an old woodpecker started banging away on a dead snag. This seemed to wake up everything in the bottoms. Birds started chirping and squirrels began chattering. From across the river, a big old bullfrog started drumming away—brro-o-m, brro-o-m.

  “Rowdy,” I whispered, “if those monkeys are around, I don’t think it’ll be long now. Nothing could sleep with all that racket going on. I hope they’re hungry and would like to have a few apples for breakfast.”

  When I first heard the noise, I couldn’t make out what it was—although I knew that I had heard it before. It was a slow, scratchy, leaf-rattling noise. Then I noticed that the brush over the top of the hole started shaking.

  “Rowdy,” I whispered, “something is messing around with the brush up there. You don’t suppose it could be that smart monkey?”

  Then I saw what it was. It was a big, old, black snake as big around as my arm. There was no doubt but what he had just shed his skin because he was as black and shiny as a new stove pipe. On he came, sticking out his tongue and twisting his way through the brush. When he was directly over the top of the hole, he stopped and peered down at Rowdy and me.

  I thought, “Now wouldn’t it be something if that snake decided to come down in this hole?”

  Things began happening to me. I got as cold all over as I did the time some mean boys threw me in a spring. My skin started crawling around on me. I stopped breathing and my old heart went absolutely crazy.

  “Rowdy,” I said, in a low voice, “I know that old black snake isn’t poison, but he’s still a snake. If he takes a notion to come down in this hole, everything in the bottoms will know that we’re down here because I’ll probably make a lot of racket.”

  I wanted to run but I couldn’t. The only way out of that hole was right over the snake and I never did like to run over snakes.

  Ordinarily Rowdy wasn’t scared of snakes; that is, if he was out where he could maneuver around a little. But he didn’t seem to like the idea of sharing that hole with the snake any more than I did. He was whimpering and trying his best to crawl under me.

  In desperation, I picked up a handful of dirt and threw it in the snake’s f
ace. This scared him. He reared his head back, stuck his tongue out at me about a thousand times, then slithered on through the brush and disappeared.

  Letting out a lot of air that had long since grown stale, I breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Rowdy, that was close, wasn’t it? For a second there, I sure thought we’d have to let that snake have this hole.”

  The next visitor we had came awfully close to messing up everything. It was a big old hornet. He came buzzing around in the brush and then dropped down in the hole. Gritting my teeth, I closed my eyes, held my breath, and tried to sit as still as a knot on a bur oak tree.

  I didn’t know why I was holding my breath because I knew that the old saying of how you could hold your breath and nothing would sting you was pure hogwash. I had tried that before and it hadn’t worked at all.

  Rowdy would have absolutely nothing to do with anything that had wings and stingers. I had taken him on several wasp-fighting expeditions and the little red warriors had really worked him over. He knew all too well that you couldn’t hide from them and it was impossible to outrun them. I had to hold onto his collar and squeeze him up tight to keep him from having a runaway.

  The hornet buzzed all around us. I just knew that he was looking me over for a good soft spot to jab his stinger in. Finally, after what seemed like hours, he must have decided that there wasn’t anything in the hole worth stinging and buzzed on his way.

  Wiping the sweat from my brow, I said, “Rowdy, I’ve sure learned one thing today. If you want to get everything in these bottoms interested, just dig a hole. That’s all you have to do. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if a skeleton didn’t come jiggling around next.”

  Everything went all right for the next thirty minutes, and then I began to have those old doubts again. Maybe Papa was right. Maybe those monkeys had left the country. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that my monkey-catching days had come to an end.

  I had just about decided to give up and go home when all at once I heard that hundred dollar monkey squall. I perked up like our old hens did when a chicken hawk came flying around.

  “Did you hear that, Rowdy?” I whispered. “It was that hundred dollar monkey. We’re still in business.”

  I raised up to where I could peek through the brush and started looking for monkeys. At first I couldn’t see a thing. Then I saw one. He was a little brown monkey and was sitting on a stump about thirty feet away.

  I was keeping my eyes on him when that big monkey let out another squall. From down in the hole, I couldn’t tell where he was, but I knew that he was close by. Peering up through the brush, I saw him. He was sitting on a low limb of the bur oak tree, directly above my net, looking down at the apples.

  I could tell by the big monkey’s actions that apples were just what he wanted for breakfast, but he couldn’t seem to convince himself that everything was all right.

  He stood up on his short legs and started looking things over. Once he looked straight at my hiding place, and I all but crawled down in my skin.

  “Rowdy,” I whispered, “he’s looking for us but I think we’ve got him fooled this time.”

  As if he had finally made up his mind, the big monkey squalled again and started moving backward and forward on the limb—all the time uttering those deep grunts.

  “Rowdy,” I whispered, “he’s talking to those little monkeys. I know he is because he did the same thing before. I wonder what he’s saying to them this time.”

  The big monkey must have been telling the little monkeys that everything looked all right to him because here they came. A whole passel of them dropped down from the branches and started grabbing apples.

  I couldn’t see my net for monkeys. They were standing all over it. Very gently, I took hold of the handle with my left hand and caught hold of the blue ring with my right hand. Using the rim of the hole for leverage, I jerked down on the handle and yanked the blue ring.

  Just as I pulled the ring, I heard the big monkey let out a warning cry, but it was too late. The net had already closed.

  I couldn’t see too well through the brush but I could tell that I had caught something, for the handle of the net was jerking in my hand more than it did when I had Old Gandy wound up in it.

  When the net flipped up out of the leaves and grass, it scared the monkeys half to death. Screeching and chattering, they scattered in all directions and disappeared in the timber.

  Rowdy and I threw brush all over the bottoms when we came boiling up out of the hole. My eyes all but popped out of my head when I saw that I had caught two little monkeys in my net. I was so pleased I whooped like a possum hunter whooping to his dog.

  “I’ve got them, Rowdy,” I shouted. “I got two of them. Look at ’em.”

  Rowdy was just as pleased as I was. Wagging his long tail, he ran over and started barking and growling at the flouncing monkeys.

  The monkeys were so cute and I was so happy that I had finally caught one, I couldn’t keep my hands off of them. I wanted to touch one. Working the handle back through my hands until the net was close to me, I poked a finger through the mesh and tickled one in the ribs.

  I wouldn’t have been more surprised if I had stuck my finger in the firebox of Mama’s cook stove. The monkey squeaked and sank his teeth in my finger. I dropped the net and did a little squalling myself.

  Slinging my hand and doing a jig-jig dance, I shouted, “You bit me. What did you do that for? I wasn’t going to hurt you.”

  Rowdy had seen the monkey bite me and he really got mad. He darted in, grabbed one of the monkeys—net and all—in his mouth and started shaking it.

  “No, Rowdy, no!” I yelled. “Don’t you hurt that monkey.”

  I yelled too late. It seemed the monkey just turned over in his skin and sank his needle-sharp teeth right in the end of Rowdy’s nose.

  Rowdy wouldn’t have turned loose of a bumblebee any faster than he did that monkey. He bawled and jumped back so fast he almost fell over backwards. Sitting down on his rear, he looked at me and started whimpering.

  “Well, don’t look at me,” I said, “I can’t help you. I got bit, too.”

  It was then that I realized I really had a problem. How was I going to get those monkeys out of the net and into my gunny sack.

  “Rowdy,” I said, “for all the good this sack is doing us, we may as well have left it at home. I can’t get my hands close to those monkeys. They would eat me up.”

  I decided that I’d just take monkeys, net, and all to the house and maybe Mama and Daisy could help me figure out something.

  Holding the net out in front of me as if I were carrying a couple of poison snakes, I started for home. I hadn’t gone a hundred yards when the unexpected happened. That hundred dollar monkey dropped down from a sycamore tree and landed smack in the center of the game trail I was walking on. Rowdy and I wouldn’t have stopped more suddenly if we had run face on into a white oak tree.

  Standing on his short stubby legs and waving his long arms in the air, the big monkey started squalling. He lay down on the ground and rolled over and over. Every little while he would jump up and rush straight at me, showing his teeth, and uttering those deep grunts. He squalled and he screamed. Then he began picking up sticks and chunks and throwing them at me.

  Usually when I got scared I could almost outrun my shadow, but I was beyond being scared, I was paralyzed. All I could do was stand there like I was in a trance, hold onto my net, and stare at that big monkey.

  Rowdy was between the monkey and me. Every hair on his back was standing straight up. He was growling way down deep and showing his teeth to that squalling monkey.

  A full minute went by before it dawned on me that I was still in one piece. When I realized this, I began noticing things. Every time the big monkey ran at me he only came a little way, then he would turn and shuffle back. He was bluffing. I was so sure of it that I got a little of my courage back, but not very much.

  “Rowdy,” I said, in a croaking voice, �
��don’t jump on that monkey. I don’t think he means to harm us. I think he’s bluffing, or at least I hope he is.”

  On hearing my voice, the big monkey went all to pieces. He squalled and here he came shuffling along the ground with his big mouth open and grunting. He came close enough this time to grab the metal loop of my net and start jerking on it.

  Every time the big monkey jerked the net his way, I would jerk it back my way. We played tug of war for a few seconds, then he turned his end loose and ran back down the trail a little ways. He lay down in the dirt and started squalling and screaming and cutting all kinds of capers. I thought he was having a fit.

  All the time this was going on, I had the feeling that the big monkey was trying to tell me something. I tried hard to figure out what it was but I was so scared I couldn’t. Just then here he came again, scooting along on the game trail, screaming and making enough racket to scare a goblin to death. He grabbed my net and started jerking on it again.

  It was the same thing all over. We had another jerking session. Again the big monkey turned his end of the net loose, ran back down the trail, lay down, and had another rolling, squalling fit. As I stood there holding onto my net and watching that monkey throw a tantrum, I figured out what it was that he was trying to tell me. He was telling me to turn the little monkeys loose.

  “Rowdy,” I said, “I believe that silly monkey wants me to turn these little ones loose. But he can just keep on wanting. After all I’ve gone through to catch them, there’ll be whiskers on the moon before I let them go. Why, I’ll fight him all over these bottoms.”

  All at once the big monkey stopped squalling and the bottoms got as still as a graveyard. In the silence, an uneasy feeling came over me. Great big drops of sweat popped out on me. I could almost taste the tension.

  Never taking my eyes from that big monkey, I said in a low voice, “Rowdy, I don’t like this a bit. I have a feeling that something is going to happen.”

  I had no more than gotten the words out of my mouth when something did happen. Another monkey dropped down out of nowhere and lit on the ground not over ten feet from me. Not making a sound, it just stood there staring at me.