Do You Know the Monkey Man?

by Dori Hillestad Butler

  “Sam? Sam? Are you okay?” someone asked. I could feel the ground tremble as everyone stampeded toward me.

  I closed my eyes and let my head rest on the ground. My whole head was ringing and it hurt. A lot.

  “Sam?” Coach Frye patted my cheek. “Can you hear me, Sam?”

  My eyelids fluttered open and I peered into a sea of concerned faces.

  “She’s not unconscious,” Ashley noted.

  “No, but she’s going to have quite a goose egg in the middle of her forehead,” Coach Frye said.

  I’m not sure if I groaned out of pain or self pity. Just what I needed. A goose egg in the middle of my forehead.

  “Are you okay, Sam?” Coach Frye asked.

  “I think so,” I said, trying to sit up. I blinked a few times.

  “Are you dizzy?” Coach Frye asked.

  “I—I don’t know.” Ow! It felt like someone had closed a waffle iron around my head. I felt for the bump on my forehead. It was already about the size of an egg.

  Coach Frye helped me to the bench. Angela brought me an ice pack and Coral Wilson offered me two Tylenol. The girls from the Central City team all stood around like they were bored.

  Coach Frye grabbed a cell phone out of his gym bag. “I think we’d better call your mom.”

  “Okay. Wait…what time is it?” I tried not to moan.

  He checked his watch. “About five thirty.”

  “I…I don’t think you’ll be able to reach her.” I touched my head gently. “She should…be on her way home from work, and she never answers her cell phone when she’s driving.”

  “Is there somebody else I could call? A friend or relative? I think somebody needs to know that you’ve been injured. Who’s your emergency contact?” He reached for the clipboard with all our emergency sheets.

  I had a feeling Bob was my emergency contact. And I sure didn’t want Coach Frye to call him.

  “You don’t have to call anyone,” I said quickly. “It really doesn’t hurt very much. And the game’s almost over. I can just sit here and rest until Angela’s mom picks us up.”

  Coach Frye checked my forehead again and frowned. “Well, just take it easy, okay? I don’t like to mess around with head injuries.”

  I spent the rest of the time sitting on the bench with an ice pack pressed against my forehead. Which, aside from the pain, wasn’t a bad way to spend a softball game.

  “What happened to you?” Mom asked the second I walked into the kitchen. She was rinsing grapes in the sink.

  “It’s that obvious?” I said. Angela and Coral had helped me arrange my bangs after practice. Coral said the bump wasn’t really that noticeable. I should’ve known she was just being nice.

  Mom turned off the water and came over to get a better look at me.

  “Ow!” I cried when she moved my bangs.

  “Did you get hit by a ball?”

  “Yes.” I eased myself into a chair. “But it’s not a big deal.” And I didn’t want to talk about it. “Mom, there’s something else we need talk about. Something important.”

  “Mmm?” Mom poked at the area around my bump.

  I pushed her hand away. “I was going through some boxes in the basement earlier today. And I found one that had a bunch of stuff about Sarah in it. Old photos and newspaper articles and stuff.”

  Mom froze. She literally froze in place. But then she said, “We should probably get some ice on that bump,” and strode across the kitchen as though I hadn’t said a word.

  “Did you hear what I said?” I asked.

  Mom pulled a dish towel out of the drawer, then grabbed a handful of ice cubes from the freezer. “Yes.” She wadded the towel around the ice. “I just think we should take care of that bump on your head now.”

  “I had ice on it for twenty minutes.”

  “Good.” Mom set the towel of ice down in front of me. “Now you can sit for another twenty minutes. You’ll thank me for this tomorrow when the swelling’s gone down.”

  I sighed and put the towel to my bump. “There was a lot of stuff in those articles downstairs about how everybody was searching for Sarah,” I tried again. “But there wasn’t anything in there about her body being found.”

  “Please, Sam,” Mom said, turning her back to me. “It’s been a long day. I really don’t want to talk about this now.” She went back to rinsing the grapes. The rate she was going, these were going to be the cleanest grapes in town.

  “But you’ll never want to talk about it,” I said. “We never talk about Sarah.”

  Mom turned off the water again. Was her hand actually shaking?

  She leaned against the sink to steady herself for a few seconds, then she slowly turned to look at me. “No, I guess we don’t,” she said finally. “It’s been ten years, but it’s still hard for me to talk about her.”

  I lowered my eyes. “I—I just want to know about those articles in the newspaper,” I said. I didn’t want to get into a huge thing with Mom. But I had to know. “Why wasn’t there one that said her body was found?”

  Mom pressed her lips together, then blinked up at the ceiling a few times. A couple of seconds later, she came over and sank down into the chair beside me. “Because Sarah wasn’t ever found,” she said quietly.

  “She wasn’t?” I knew it!

  “No.”

  “How come you never told me?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t important—”

  “Wasn’t important?” I cried. It was the difference between life and death. If Sarah’s body was never found, she could still be alive.

  Mom slumped back in her chair and rubbed the back of her neck. “It was all so long ago. And you were awfully young.”

  “I was three. That’s old enough to remember some stuff.”

  Mom raised an eyebrow. “You remember Sarah?”

  “Of course,” I answered immediately. Then I said, “Well, sort of.” I wished I remembered more.

  I reached over and grabbed a banana from the middle of the table. I wasn’t really hungry, but peeling it gave me something to do with my hands. “Do you ever think she might still be alive?” I asked.

  “No,” Mom said firmly.

  “Why not?” I set the banana down again. “If Sarah’s body was never found, isn’t there at least a chance she’s alive? Maybe she swam to shore and someone found her and took her? Maybe they just raised her as their own child? Or maybe she ended up at the police station and the police thought she was someone else, so they gave her to the wrong people?”

  It was possible, wasn’t it?

  Mom sighed. “I won’t lie to you, Sam. I used to hope she was still alive. I even wondered if your father”—she said the word like it was a swear word—“had somehow fabricated the whole thing and hidden her away somewhere.”

  “What?” I cried. “That’s terrible!”

  “But I know he didn’t—”

  “How do you know?” I asked. “Maybe Sarah is alive and well and living with him somewhere right now.”

  Mom shook her head. “That’s not possible,” she said. “For one thing, your father and I didn’t separate right away after Sarah died, so where would she have been all that time?”

  “With friends?” I suggested.

  “No.” Mom reached for my hand and squeezed. “Listen to me, Sam. Your father was like a big kid. I think that was what I liked about him—at first.” For just a second, there was a brief glimmer of a smile in her eyes. But not on her lips. And the look disappeared almost as suddenly as it had appeared. “But he was also irresponsible and sometimes he acted like he didn’t have a brain in his head. He didn’t know how to take care of a child. That was why Sarah fell in the quarry in the first place. He couldn’t take care of a child for five minutes, so how would he manage for ten years?”

  My mom was getting all worked up now just thinking about my dad. I could see it in her narrow, angry eyes and her firm jaw. She blamed him for what happened to Sarah. She probably always would. No wonder t
hey got divorced.

  “I had a hard time accepting the fact that Sarah was gone myself,” Mom went on. “Believe me, I came up with all the scenarios you’ve just described and more. But Sarah is gone, Sam. She drowned. She’s…dead.”

  Mom let go of my hand and I pulled it away. “How can you be so sure?” I asked.

  She just looked at me as though I should know the answer to that question.

  “Because it happened at the quarry?” I guessed.

  Mom nodded. “That quarry is two miles long. It’s hundreds of feet deep in some places. There’s heavy construction equipment and who knows what else at the bottom—”

  “You mean under the water?” I asked in disbelief.

  Mom nodded again.

  “How could they do that? How could they just drop tons of stuff into the water?”

  “I think it was left there from when they stopped mining the quarry. They filled it with water back in the fifties and that was that.”

  I played with the fringe on the tablecloth while I thought about the things Mom had just told me. I didn’t know what to think.

  “Still,” I said softly, refusing to give up. “Without a body, isn’t it possible Sarah survived?”

  Mom shook her head sadly. “No, Sam.”

  My chest tightened. The thought of someone, anyone, drowning in three hundred feet of murky water—her body drifting down, down, down to a graveyard of abandoned construction equipment—made me feel like I was drowning, too.

  “It’s hard…without a body,” Mom said. “That’s why we held a funeral and I bought a memorial marker. I needed closure.”

  Closure? It sounded to me as though Mom just gave up. She decided Sarah was dead and that was it.

  “I’m sorry you had to come across all those articles, honey,” Mom said. “By yourself. I didn’t even realize they were in those boxes down there. But maybe it’s good that the subject did come up. You and I are closing the door on this chapter of our lives. Bob and I will be married soon and we’ll all be living in a whole new house. It’s time to look forward and put the past behind us.”

  Easy for Mom to say. I had feeling it was a lot easier to put an ex-husband behind you than a father and a sister.

  Chapter Six

  I had absolutely no motivation for doing anything that night. I didn’t even feel like reading. All I did was stare out my bedroom window. I noticed Mrs. Sandvick’s two grandsons were out splashing in the little kiddie pool on the patio next door. Their names were Ryan and Josh. Ryan was four, Josh was five. They lived in California and had two turtles and a lizard, and they were here for the whole summer because their parents were backpacking in Europe. I learned all that and more one day when Mrs. Sandvick asked me to baby-sit for them.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the photo of Sarah and me that I’d found in the basement. I stared at it and thought about how much Sarah and I had missed not growing up together.

  As twins, we would’ve been best friends, I was sure of it. We would’ve shared a bedroom and stayed up half the night whispering secrets to one another. When we were younger, we probably would’ve dressed alike, but we would’ve given that up when we started middle school. We definitely would have had the same taste in clothes, though, so we could’ve traded clothes once we stopped dressing alike. We probably would have had a lot of the same tastes. But not in boys. We never would’ve competed for the same boys.

  Thinking about Sarah so much was making me depressed. I’ve always known I had a sister who died, but I never really thought much about it before. Not like this. But ever since I found those articles it seemed like I couldn’t stop thinking about Sarah and how things could have been.

  I needed to get my mind on something else. I slipped the photo in a book and slid it under my bed. Then I wandered down the hall to see what my mom was doing. From the kitchen window I spotted Bob’s silver Saturn parked in our driveway. He came over almost every night now, but he and my mom never really did much. They watched TV or played board games or worked on this 3-D puzzle of Camelot, which was what they were doing now.

  Bob’s really into 3-D puzzles. He says they relax him. They prove there is order in the universe. You just look at the pieces and match up the pictures. And when you’re done you end up with this perfect little miniature of some famous building.

  I thought that was a really bizarre way of looking at puzzles, but my mom totally bought it. I bet it was the order-in-the-universe thing that made her fall in love with him. She’s into order. So a couple weeks ago Bob brought over the Camelot puzzle and my mom set up a card table in the corner of our living room and they’ve been building the thing off and on ever since.

  I don’t think they saw me standing there in the doorway. Every time one of them put two pieces together they’d lean toward each other and kiss.

  “These two don’t go together,” Bob said, pulling two pieces apart.

  Mom shrugged. “Do you want your kiss back?”

  “I think so.” Bob guided my mom out of her chair and into his lap and they started going at it like a couple of high school kids. I could hardly believe it. Who knows what might have happened if I hadn’t cleared my throat right then.

  They both jumped.

  “Sam!” Bob said, all embarrassed.

  My mom wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and they pulled away from each other real quick. Like, oh no, we weren’t kissing.

  “Should I go someplace else?” I asked. Was this what it was going to be like when they were married?

  “No!” Mom said sharply.

  “Absolutely not,” Bob said. He leaped up and pulled out a chair for me. “In fact, why don’t you join us?”

  Join them? He had to be kidding.

  “Yes, you like puzzles, Sam,” Mom said, fluffing her hair. “Sit down.”

  I stared at my mother. I like puzzles? When was the last time she saw me put a puzzle together? In fact, when had she ever seen me put a puzzle together?

  They both shoved piles of puzzle pieces toward me. Bob peered closer at me. “What’s that on your forehead?”

  I touched my fingers to that bump on my forehead. “Nothing,” I said, flipping my bangs over it. “I got hit by a ball at softball practice, that’s all.”

  “You’re supposed to catch with your mitt, not your forehead,” Bob said, smiling.

  Ha ha. What a funny guy my mom was marrying.

  “Hey.” Bob elbowed me in the ribs. “That was what my dad said to me when I got hit in the head with a baseball. I didn’t find it very amusing, either.” Then he told us all about how it was the last game of the season and he was standing in the outfield waiting for the batter to hit one when this beautiful red-tailed hawk sailed by overhead. While Bob was watching the hawk, this kid who’d never gotten a hit all season whacked the ball out to left field, where it promptly hit Bob in the head.

  My mom smiled at Bob and patted his arm. I could tell she was enjoying this little family moment. She probably hoped Bob and I would bond over our shared ball injuries. But his story didn’t change anything between us. He was still the same old Bob. I was still the same old Sam. And the only thing we had in common was my mom.

  The phone rang and I picked up the cordless next to my mom. “Hello?”

  “Sam?” It was Angela. She sounded upset. “Can you talk?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, relieved to get away from the happy couple. I took the phone down to my room. “What’s wrong?” I kicked the door closed, then flopped on my bed next to Sherlock. He didn’t look at all happy about being disturbed.

  “I talked to my father this afternoon,” Angela said as I reached over to scratch Sherlock under his chin. “Andrew and I are supposed to go visit him next week.”

  I stopped scratching. A hollow spot opened up in my chest. “Wow, that’s great,” I said, trying to sound happy for her.

  But she didn’t sound very happy herself. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve
seen my father, Sam?”

  I thought back. She didn’t see him last summer. And I didn’t think she saw him the summer before that, either.

  “Three years, Sam. Three years! What kind of father doesn’t see his kids for three years?”

  I couldn’t answer that. It had been a lot longer than that since I’d seen my dad.

  Sherlock butted his head up against my hand, so I started scratching again.

  “And it’s not like Hill Valley is even that far away,” Angela went on.

  All I knew about Hill Valley was it was in Minnesota and it was where Angela used to live before her parents got divorced and she moved here in second grade.

  “Well, at least you get to see him now,” I said. She was so lucky.

  “I don’t know. What’s the point? It’s not like he actually wants us to come.”

  I couldn’t understand why she had to be so negative all the time. “He wouldn’t have invited you if he didn’t want you to come,” I pointed out.

  “He didn’t invite us. My mom called him up and told him he had to see us this summer. She was in her room, but I heard her. She said he had to let us come sometime before the summer was over or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is he’s supposed to have us a week at Christmas and two weeks during the summer. But for the last three years he’s always had some excuse. First he and what’s-her-face eloped, then they had some trip, then she got pregnant, then the baby was born, and he’s always going to some medical convention or another. But he’s used up all his excuses. My mom said pick a week, and he picked next week. Never mind that I have two softball games and Andrew’s supposed to work. He picked next week, so we have to go. Whether we want to or not.”

  It wasn’t fair. Angela didn’t want to see her dad, but she had to go anyway. I wanted to see my dad more than anything, and I probably never would. I was so jealous I could hardly see straight.

  “It won’t be as terrible as you think, Angela,” I said. “You’ll see. You’ll get to know each other again. You’ll probably have a great time.”

  “I’ll have a miserable time,” Angela argued. “But so will our father and what’s-her-name, his new wife. We’ll all get to be miserable together. Let’s talk about something else. How’s your forehead? Does it hurt a lot?”