Running With Monkeys: Hell on Wheels

by Diane Munier

  There was some money, war bonds. In a box at the bank. She gave him a key.

  They’d be open in the morning. She was going to send them, but he hadn’t written.

  He took the key and thanked her. He bore her no ill will. Was this forgiveness? Maybe so. She wasn’t withholding. It was just never there—what he’d needed years ago and didn’t need now.

  So he got back in the car. Isbe waved to the aunt as they drove away. “Jules…she seems nice. Should we go back?”

  “No,” he said. “The old man is gone.”

  “You were going to send me to stay with her, and now you don’t want me to meet her?”

  “Now you don’t have to,” he said.

  The next day, they went to the cemetery, looked up his mother’s grave. They walked for a couple of hours trying to find it. There had never been a stone, but the plots were marked. Well, they finally made the attendant come with them, and they realized her plot wasn’t marked. Jules bought a stone, made sure her name was spelled right. “She was my mother,” he said, and afterward, they stood there, and it hit him hard.

  “She’s not here anyway, Jules,” Isbe whispered, squeezing his hand.

  “You don’t think so?” he said.

  “No. She couldn’t birth someone like you and not be in heaven.”

  He laughed some, but there were tears too. Isbe looked at him with such sincerity.

  “She don’t have to be in heaven, long as she’s not suffering. But if it’s there like they say…”

  “She’s there, Jules. I know she is.”

  “If she’s got to go on my record, it won’t get her any points.”

  “Jules…trust me on this. Having you was the best thing she did in her life.”

  “Oh crap,” he said, looking up at the sky. She knew how to get to him. He had her pulled so close into his side he knew he was holding her too tight, but she didn’t scold him; she held him hard as she could.

  They walked around a little, looked at the mom-and-pop shops, always the places that caught his interest. St. Louis had felt dead after the war. That’s what took him back to Chicago. Now that was the best thing he ever did.

  He knew he wouldn’t stay at Ill Bell. Not for long. He had it in him to try something. He had an idea, and it had to do with sheet metal and rolling it and shaping it. He could see himself doing this; that’s all he knew.

  Whatever it was, he’d figure it out. His father had invested in the war. His aunt wanted him to believe it had something to do with Jules, but he didn’t need that fairy tale; he no longer cared. It wasn’t much money in terms of a man’s whole life, but it was a small fortune considering the old man had never made any money to speak of. Five grand. He’d see.

  He’d see.

  Chapter 52

  Damn Baboon celebrating his wedding reception at Shiney’s. Jules wore his suit—well, the tie was long-gone, and the jacket, the shirt pulled open at the neck, and Isbe had licked him there, licked his sweat and called him “hero,” and he was laughing and getting so damn ready to go out back and take her on that table. That’s if it was still there.

  He had his arms around his inebriated wife, and they were dancing the night away. She felt like sin and salvation against him and under his roaming hands. “You’re so beautiful, baby,” he said, her in this dress, blue like the one they got married in, two pieces to it: a top and a straight skirt that matched, and what a figure on this dame of his. He told her she was gorgeous every day cause it was so true—Isbe Blaise was sex and lust and trust and love, and she made him crazy and pissed him off and snapped him out of it, blew his world to smithereens; she was his whole life.

  She thought he was lying since she had the baby, about her being beautiful, and all he heard was about these ten extra pounds, and all he could see was more—this voluptuous body, her skin, her hair, the way she filled out a sweater, a pair of jeans—this skirt. Quit complaining and be grateful, he told her, throwing it back because she said that to him all the time. And he’d say, I’m grateful, so damn grateful, and come here, let me show you.

  And the way she looked at him, the way she stayed with him, the worst of him, the best of him, the miserable cold-hearted monkey he could be, the preoccupied workaholic, the crabby bastard, the guy who couldn’t hold his liquor because he was too tired or used up again, the guy who handed her his ashes most nights and somehow, that bedroom door got closed, and he was twenty-four again, twenty-four forever.

  But their baby boy Timmy, oh now, come on. Looked just like him; everyone said so, and they were right. He was tow-headed, but Jules had been tow-headed too until the red moved in, then the brown. Everything else…well, Isbe said any woman on earth could have had that child, and it wouldn’t have made a difference; he so bore his father’s image.

  Now that shut him up. Bore his image? Someone would have said that about him and his father, he’d have jumped in the river long ago. But when she said it, he laughed a little—he was proud. That was his boy!

  Isbe was helping him figure it out, just like she’d promised. See, there was no other woman on this earth just for him. There was no other woman.

  He was kissing her ear, and she was laughing. They hadn’t done this, got drunk together…well, they’d been model citizens for so long now, but tonight they had some babysitting, so yee-haw.

  All the while they’d been building a life and a family, they’d been watching Bobby get smarter, graduating top of his class. He was finally making an honest woman out of Dorie, and she’d waited patiently while Bobby got “done in the academic oven,” as she put it.

  Audie and Francis danced a few feet away, or tried to, with Francis expecting their second, and man, she was big. Their first, Leeann, was a nice fat girl who looked just like Audie, her daddy the copper. Audie was thrilled to have a girl; wanted all girls, as he was terrified of raising himself. It never seemed to occur to Gorilla that he could already have a girl that was just like him, and the truth was, Leeann did have a larger-than-life way in any room her tiny self entered. But Audie had that kind of blind parental love Jules had sworn he’d never have himself. But his boy Tim was like his mother—perfect, sweet and steady. So he’d lucked out hugely. Isbe Blaise had only brought him luck.

  But back to Gorilla. Cadet Arthur Finn had recently graduated to patrol officer. His ambition was to make detective by the ripe age of thirty. Jules swore Audie’s internal organs were green under that uniform, he was such a copper cliché. He loved that damn gorilla.

  They still lived in Isbe’s house, but it wasn’t a duplex anymore. It had been remodeled into one big house. It was nearly unrecognizable. Isbe was good at it—decorating—and Dorie was a maniac for it, and those two had taken to making drapes for people, and of course the remodel had made a perfect class project for Bobby to redesign the guts out of the place.

  The deed to the house had come to Jules and Isbe via Audie. As Cabhan was childless, Audie had inherited his property. And that included Isbe’s house. Gorilla called it a late wedding present.

  Money had been tight sometimes with Jules’s struggling business, but this year had been better and the future was rosy for the business of fabricating steel; the sky was the limit. He had six employees already. And when the Italians showed wanting him to pay protection, he’d sent them packing with a pipe in his hand. One call to Audie and they hadn’t come back.

  He spun his wife a little, and she tripped some, and it looked pretty pathetic to everyone but themselves probably. When he had her back in his arms, he told her that if she felt queasy, to be sure and let him know so he could get them outside in time. And she’d laughed and laid her head right over his heart.

  They owned this city. The monkeys. They’d done all right here in the land of the free. Jules wondered for the millionth time what would have happened if they hadn’t gone to that exact movie that exact night and time. Picking up those three broads was the best thing that had ever happened to them.

  And he crooned in her ear to t
he music, and she laughed, and he kissed her, right there…right then. His girl.

  Present day:

  Jules is the last survivor of this crowd. Dorie succumbed to pneumonia in 2012. He is in his nineties, lucid, frail after a tough year in the hospital, but he’s come through.

  He had sixty-five years with Isbe, and four children—Tim and three daughters—nine grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, one great-great.

  Still in the old house, remodeled twice over the years, most recently by Tim and his wife Gloria, Jules has a bedroom, a living room where he watches his heavy old twenty-four inch cause he hates television except for football, the news of course, and maybe a few of those damn shows that are a total waste of time.

  Tim takes him to the cemetery once a month in good weather, which in Chicago means four times a year. Tim gets the folding chair out of the trunk while Jules makes his way over the spongy ground trying not to lose his cane while it sinks through the earth and nearly ends up in China.

  He picks over Isbe’s grave, but Tim is the one to take off the old, dead flowers and put on the fresh ones Jules buys while Tim walks beside him patiently because it takes forever to make the right choice.

  The last time, though, Jules was sitting there, staring at her name etched in that stone, then his own beside it, wondering how the time went so quickly and he got here, alone at her grave, still bewildered sometimes…bewildered she was gone and he was still breathing.

  But something on the ground caught his eye. “Tim, is that there a four-leaf clover? Right there.” And he pointed with his cane toward the ground about dead-center on the headstone that caught a spot of the morning’s sun.

  Tim looked, and sure enough, right there on Isbe’s grave, there was a four-leaf clover. Tim picked it carefully, and Jules concentrated so his hands wouldn’t tremble and his fingers would be dexterous enough not to shred it.

  “Well fuck a duck,” he said, because it was useless to pretend he wasn’t a foul-mouthed chimpanzee in front of his son. The girls he had fooled; at least, he hoped he had, but Tim had grown up in the business working under Jules until he took over when Jules was eighty, and he knew the deal, that his father’s words were effing colorful.

  But that clover, Jules knew she gave it to him, telling him to be patient, that she was there, in heaven with his mother, and though he’d learned long ago no one got there on their own merit, and thank God for that, it was hard to wait to be with her, to wake up in the morning and be patient through one more day.

  His grandson, another Jules—only this one insisted on being called Julius—put the clover in the plastic from a holy card Jules had carried in his wallet from Isbe’s funeral. Everything in his wallet had expired pretty much, but a man carried his billfold, so he had the card with the clover there inside, and most days he had it in his hand at some point, when he watched the news and fussed at the television and the way the world was going to hell, but mostly when he fell asleep in his lift chair and dreamed about Shiney’s, and that band and a crazy, beautiful girl who told him she would do it with him but she’d promised Francis, and boy, did they make good on that deal. Boy, did they.

  And some days, he was just there, in that Buick, the six of them, Isbe crowding close, him looking at that beauty, trying to believe she was his, wind in their hair, and all the time in the world.

  And anytime his eyes slid closed, she was right there with him. In his dreams, he thought, but one day last week, she kissed his cheek. He didn’t tell the family cause her and him always kept their affections to themselves. But oneness like they knew, it didn’t end because someone’s body gave out. Everything inside, everything they were, not only their history but their selves…had joined.

  He’d surrendered to her. Never stopped doing that. And she held back nothing…for him. All those years, thinking of the other, it made a difference then; it made a difference now. They were taking a trip together; that’s all, and she’d gone on ahead, to get things ready, and soon enough he’d follow. Soon enough. It was just a short hop, and he’d be with her forever—his girl, his dear, sweet girl, Isbe. He’d held her in his arms when she left this earth…and soon, she’d be holding him in hers. Until then…until then…

  End.

  Other Works by Diane Munier:

  http://www.amazon.com/Diane-Munier/e/B00U538DJM

  LOOK HOW YOU TURNED OUT: I’ve known Marcus since around junior high when he moved to town and got a job at the station where Artie is chief of police. Marcus was this young married guy with a baby on the way, and I was just starting to feel tingly about males. Well, he was right on time, the gas in the tank of my fantasies. What motivation! If I had a nickel for every time I imagined Marcus telling me to do bad things and professing undying love for me while I did them, I could lay those nickels end to end all the way to the moon…three times.

  I was in my first year of college when I heard he was going through a divorce. He had a little boy, five at the time. I tried to express my sincerest sympathy to him one night in our kitchen during my father’s annual “have the guys and their wives over” Christmas party. But Marcus had custody of his son, and at Dad’s insistence, brought him along. I don’t even think Marcus had a beer, and as I remember, he patted my head instead of…anything else, and thanked me for my kind words like I was Laura Ingalls and he was Mr. Edwards. I was thinking more along the lines of a less-disgusting Lolita and HH.

  MY WOUNDED SOLDIER, BOOK ONE, FIGHT FOR GLORY: Prequel to My Wounded Soldier, Book Two, Fight for Love: The year is 1866. All across the country, men are drifting home from the war. But when Tom Tanner musters out, he doesn’t plan to go home. He’s been working in the brickyard in Springfield trying to save enough money to buy a rig and head west. He’s not expecting his father to show up and plead with him to return to the farm. After the horrible loss of his older brother, Tom doesn’t feel worthy of the family’s company. But his guilt won’t allow him to cause them more pain, and so he goes home for one last visit. It’s hard to find “normal” around the folks. The work of harvest provides the perfect distraction. Once the crops are in, he’ll go so far away, they’ll never have to look at him again. But his plans are challenged one day. Tom is working in the field when the neighbor boy, Johnny, comes running for help. What Tom finds at the neighbor’s home is a scene right out of the war. But it’s not just about killing. The Missus Addie Varn is ready to birth. Tom wants to run, and he will, come fall, but now he must roll up his sleeves and play midwife.

  MY WOUNDED SOLDIER, BOOK TWO, FIGHT FOR LOVE: Sequel to My Wounded Soldier, Book One, Fight for Glory: Tom Tanner has taken on a family. He lived through the war, but becoming a lover and pa to two small children may be the role that breaks him. This is the story of a man’s slow rise from black sheep to patriarch. 1866 is a time of learning to carry on in the aftermath of civil war. Tom is ready to heal, ready to take over Addie’s farm and make it a grand place. He has money from reupping in the war and reward money for bringing a few notorious outlaws. Can Addie’s love help him settle and become an outstanding man like his pa? It’s the only fight worth making—a fight for love.

  LEAPING: Two lonely souls on the beach. A chance meeting or orchestrated? She invites him to leap to the end of what could be a great time. She has a cabin for three weeks. He has his grandfather’s Victorian house. He doesn’t take chances, as a rule, but he’s been drifting for a long time. Does he have the guts to take her up on the offer? It’s reckless. But his moral compass got reset after the incident. So maybe he’ll leap and see where he lands.

  FINDING MY THUNDER: The story takes place in the late sixties. Hilly Grunier has been in love with Danny Boyd since she was a kid telling scary stories on summer nights at the fire hydrant while Danny pulled close on his bike. But when Danny is thirteen, their friendship ends when he and his brother Sukey have a vicious fight over Hilly. Years pass and Hilly carries a secret and growing love as she watches Danny rise athletically to the top of their school’s food chain. He
even dates the prom queen, and rumor says they’re engaged. Now Danny has graduated and shows up in her dad’s shop looking for some temporary employment until the army picks him off for Vietnam. He’s thrown aside his college scholarship and the golden girl. He seems to be searching for something new before he leaves town. He seems to be searching for her. Hilly can’t let him go overseas without showing him how she feels. But once he’s gone, her own battle intensifies. It’s a long road to finding her thunder.

  ME AND MOM FALL FOR SPENCER: The house next door to Sarah and her mother Marie has been vacant since the murder that happened there when Sarah was ten. Their neighbor, Frieda, was like a second mother to Sarah, and she died brutally, and that event sent a paralysis over this sleepy neighborhood that hasn’t lifted for seventeen years. Imagine Sarah’s surprise when the old place finally sells to an online buyer. She looks through the thick growth separating her house from the other, and a wild man looks back. He’s thirty-seven-year-old Spencer Gundry. Once he shaves the beard and gets a haircut, he’s not hard to look at. Well, Sarah’s mom thinks so. And maybe she does too. The problem is, Sarah has evolved into the neighborhood watchdog, and she knows this tumbleweed Gundry has as many secrets as the house he owns.

  DARNAY ROAD: In the summer of 1963, sweet little ten-year-old Catholic schoolgirl Georgia Christine meets eleven-year-old smoker with armpit hair who really does live on the wrong side of the tracks, Easy. She and Abigail May are mystery solvers, the Darnay Spies, in their spare time, and Easy Caghan (E.C.) and his brother Cap will keep these two little ladies on their sleuthing toes. Darnay Road leads them into a future where their childish friendship blooms into love. Will the Vietnam War be the one challenge they can’t overcome?

  DEEP IN THE HEART OF ME: In 1934, Tonio, the oldest of nine, is a farm boy. Sobe is the new lawman’s daughter. She shows up at Tonio’s school. What seems inevitable quickly becomes impossible. Did I say impossible? That remains to be seen.