Summer of the Monkeys (22 page)

“I don’t think we’ll have any trouble catching them this time,” Grandpa said. “All we need is those coconuts, a roll of chicken wire, a snap latch, and a ball of binder twine. Now that we have the coconuts, I have everything else we need in my store.”

“What are we going to do with all that stuff, Grandpa?” I asked.

“We’re going to build a big pen out of that chicken wire,” he said. “It’ll have a top on it and a door with a snap latch. We’ll put those coconuts right in the center of the pen and leave the door open. Then we’ll tie the binder twine to the door and run it back through the pen and out into the brush a little way. When those monkeys go into the pen after those coconuts, we’ll pull the binder twine and latch the door. What do you think of that idea?”

Before I answered Grandpa, I closed my eyes and drew a picture of the pen in my mind. I could feel the excitement as it burned its
way through me. “Boy, Grandpa,” I said, “that sure sounds good to me. Is that what you read in the book?”

“It sure was,” Grandpa said. “The story was about a man and woman who lived in the Borneo jungles. All they did was trap monkeys. They sold them to zoos all over the world. They caught thousands and thousands of monkeys—all kinds of monkeys. They always used a pen—just like the one I was telling you about—to catch them; and they used coconuts for bait. It’ll work, I tell you. We’ll get them this time for sure.”

“Grandpa,” I asked, “are you going to help me build that pen?”

“I sure am,” Grandpa said. “We’ll get your dad to help, too. I’m going to lock up my store and do nothing but help trap those monkeys. This monkey business has got to come to an end. It’s beginning to bother me a little. I can’t remember the last time I had a good night’s sleep.”

Grandpa had me so excited I almost swallowed my jawbreaker. With both Grandpa and Papa helping me catch the monkeys, I couldn’t see any way I could lose. Once again, I could almost see myself riding my pony and shooting my .22. Twisting around on the seat, I reached into the basket and lifted out one of the coconuts. As I held it in my hands, I said, “Grandpa, I wonder why monkeys like coconuts so much.”

“I don’t know,” Grandpa said, “but it said in that book there are two things that monkeys won’t ever pass up—coconuts and bananas.”

I started turning the coconut over and over in my hands. Just then I saw something that I could hardly believe. In the pointed end of it, underneath the brown hairy-looking fiber, I saw what looked like two small black eyes and a tiny mouth. They made it look exactly like the face of a small monkey. I started laughing. Great big tears started streaming down my face.

Grandpa said, “What’s so funny?”

Holding the coconut up for him to see, I cried, “Look, Grandpa. These coconuts even look like a monkey’s head.”

Grandpa leaned over and peered at the coconut for a second. Then he grinned and said, “Well, I’ll be darned! They do have a monkey face, don’t they? I never noticed that before.”

“They should have called these things monkeynuts, instead of coconuts,” I said.

Grandpa threw his head back and roared with laughter. He laughed so loud it scared the mares. They started zigzagging all over the road. Grandpa started sawing on the check lines and hollering, “Whoa-whoa-whoa.” He finally got the mares quieted down.

Still laughing and wiping tears from his eyes, he said, “Those monkeys may not know it, but they have a big surprise waiting for them.”

“They sure have, Grandpa,” I said. “I can hardly wait till we start building that pen.”

On reaching the river, Grandpa stopped the team and offered the reins to me. “Would you like to drive across the river again?” he asked.

This time I didn’t hold back. I took the reins in my hands.

Grandpa chuckled and said, “You’d better call Rowdy, or he’ll have to swim the river.”

“Come on, Rowdy!” I yelled. “You’d better get in this buckboard, or you’re going to get wet.”

Rowdy came tearing out of the underbrush and jumped into the buckboard.

That crossing was easy. The water didn’t seem to be half as deep as it was the day before. I didn’t get the least bit scared.

We were in the bottoms about a hundred yards from the river, when I realized I was thirsty. “I’m thirsty, Grandpa,” I said. “Would you like to have a good cold drink of water?”

“I sure would,” Grandpa said. “I’ve been thirsty ever since we left town, but where are we going to get a cold drink?”

“I know where a spring is,” I said. “The water is as cold as ice.”

“Where is this spring?” Grandpa asked.

“It’s just a little way down in the bottoms,” I said.

Grandpa drove the team off to one side of the road and stopped them under a big sweet gum tree. As we tied the halter ropes of the mares to the gum tree, Grandpa said, “As thirsty as I am, I think I’d walk a mile for a cool drink.”

“Oh, it’s not that far, Grandpa,” I said, as I took off on a game trail. “It’s just a little way.”

As we walked along the trail, I noticed that Rowdy kept looking up into the trees. I grinned and said, “Look, Grandpa, Rowdy’s looking for those monkeys.”

“I am, too,” Grandpa said. “I’d sure like to see that hundred dollar monkey. Do you think he could be around here somewhere?”

“If he’s around here, Grandpa,” I said, “we won’t see him unless he wants us to. He could be sitting in the top of a big sycamore right now, watching every move we make. He’s smart, I tell you.”

“I don’t care how smart he is,” Grandpa said, looking up into the trees, “if we ever get him in that pen, and I can get a rope on him, his smart days will be over.”

Grandpa was so serious I couldn’t help laughing at him. When we arrived at the spring, Grandpa and I got down on our bellies and had a good drink. Grandpa had a terrible time getting down. He wheezed and he groaned and he grunted, but he finally made it.

As Grandpa got back to his knees, he took his handkerchief and wiped the water from his chin. “Boy,” he said, “that sure is good water. How did you ever find this spring?”

As I lay back in the cool green grass, I said, “Oh, Rowdy and I found it. There are springs all through these bottoms, but this has always been my most favorite. I named it ‘Jay Berry’s Spring.’ ”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Grandpa said. “Who knows, maybe a hundred years from now, another old man and a boy will stop here
and have a good cool drink from Jay Berry’s Spring. You can’t ever tell; might even be a highway come by here.”

“Aw, Grandpa,” I said, “nothing like that will ever happen to me. I’d be lucky if I had a grasshopper named after me.”

Grandpa chuckled and said, “That’s not a bad idea either. If you could find a purple grasshopper and hang a name on it—like ‘Jay Berry’s Hopper’—it might stick. You can’t ever tell.”

I laughed and said, “Grandpa, we sure have a lot of fun together, don’t we?”

Grandpa smiled and said, “We surely do. You know, an old man like me can teach a young boy like you all the good things in life. But it takes a young boy like you to teach an old man like me to appreciate all the good things in life. I guess that’s what life’s all about.”

I didn’t quite understand what Grandpa was talking about, but it sounded pretty good to me anyway. Just then Grandpa’s mares started snorting and stomping their hoofs. We could hear their trace chains jingling.

Grandpa cocked his ear and said, “It sounds like something has scared my mares.”

“It’s probably an old hog or a deer,” I said. “The bottoms are full of them. We could have spooked one up when we came to the spring; and it ran by the team and scared them.”

The mares quieted down.

As Grandpa got to his feet, he said, “I guess that’s what it was. It sounds like everything is all right now, though. Let’s have one more drink of this spring water, and then we’d better be going. It’s getting along in the day.”

When Grandpa and I got back to the buckboard, I said, “Grandpa, look at Rowdy. Something’s been prowling around here.”

Rowdy was sniffing around the buckboard. He was walking stiff-legged, and every hair on his back was standing straight up.

Watching Rowdy, Grandpa said, “It sure looks that way. I wonder what it was.”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but whatever it was, Rowdy doesn’t like the smell of it at all.”

Grandpa stepped over to the buckboard and looked in it. In a loud voice, he said, “Hey, our coconuts are gone! The basket is empty!”

“Gone!” I said, as I hurried over and looked into the basket. “By golly, they are gone! But there’s something else in the basket.”

Grandpa grunted as he reached down into the basket. He lifted out the dirtiest, most ragged pair of britches I had ever seen in my life. Holding them up in front of him, Grandpa said, “I could be wrong, but it looks like a pair of britches to me.”

I would never have recognized the britches if I hadn’t seen the patch on the seat of the pants. “Sufferin’ bullfrogs, Grandpa,” I said, “those are my britches. They’re the ones I lost the day those monkeys got me drunk. I recognize that patch on them. Mama sewed it on.”

Grandpa tossed the britches into the underbrush. “Phew!” he said, wrinkling his nose. “By the way they smell, those monkeys must have been taking turnabout wearing them.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it, Grandpa,” I said. “Those monkeys are liable to do anything.”

Looking into the basket, Grandpa said, “It looks like we have something else here.” He reached in and lifted out a wet, soggy, nasty-looking gunny sack. I could hear the jingling of metal when he picked it up.

Wide-eyed, I said, “Holy smokes, Grandpa, that’s my gunny sack and traps. I didn’t think I’d ever see them again.”

Dropping the gunny sack in the buckboard, Grandpa reached in the basket again and said, “Well, what do you know!” He lifted out my beanshooter.

“That’s my beanshooter, Grandpa,” I said, all excited. “I lost it the day I shot that hundred dollar monkey in the belly.”

Grandpa started looking in the underbrush. He said, “Something’s going on. I think someone is playing a trick on us. I bet it’s your dad.”

“I don’t think it’s Papa, Grandpa,” I said, as I looked up into the trees. “I think I know who did this. It’s those monkeys—that’s who did it.”

“Naw,” Grandpa said. “Monkeys couldn’t do anything like that. I still think it’s your dad playing a trick on us.”

Just then I saw a sight that took me several seconds to figure out what I was seeing. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even swallow. I couldn’t do anything but stand there with my mouth open and stare. I had seen a lot of sycamore trees in my life, but I had never seen one as beautiful as the one I was looking at. Strung from limb to limb, all through the top of the tree, were the pink and blue ribbons I had gotten for Daisy.

Sitting on limbs, here and there, were the monkeys. Each one of them that I could see was holding a coconut in his paws. They were just sitting there looking at Grandpa and me, with no expression at all on their cute little faces. A gentle breeze was stirring the top of the big sycamore. The ribbons were waving and fluttering. Brilliant flashes of pink and blue gleamed and shimmered in the sun’s bright rays. It was an unbelievably beautiful sight.

As if from far away, I heard Grandpa say, “What’s the matter? Do you see something?”

“Look, Grandpa!” I cried, pointing at the sycamore. “Look at that! I bet you’ve never seen anything that pretty.”

Grandpa looked where I was pointing. I saw him reach and take hold of the buckboard with one hand as if he were steadying himself. He looked down at the ground, shook his head, and looked again at the sycamore. He took off his hat and scratched the top of his bald head. He cleared his throat and said, “What in the name of heaven is that?”

“It’s those monkeys, Grandpa,” I said. “They didn’t only steal
our coconuts, they stole Daisy’s ribbons, too. They decorated that sycamore tree with them. Isn’t it pretty?”

Grandpa never said a word. He just grunted and kept staring at that beautiful sycamore tree. Just then Jimbo walked out onto a big limb. He was carrying a coconut in one of his paws.

Grandpa threw his head back and said, “What in the world is that thing?”

Grandpa,” I said, “you’ve been wanting to see that hundred dollar monkey. Well, you’re looking at him. That’s Jimbo.”

Grandpa said, “Why, that’s no monkey. It’s too big to be a monkey. It looks more like an ape to me.”

“I don’t care what he looks like, Grandpa,” I said, “that’s Jimbo; and he’s the smartest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.”

Jimbo must have realized that we were talking about him, and he decided to show off a little. Waving the coconut in the air, he started hopping up and down on the limb and uttering those deep grunts.

In a surprised voice, Grandpa, said, “What’s that monkey doing now?”

“He’s talking to you, Grandpa,” I said. “That’s monkey talk.”

I saw when Rowdy took off down the road with his tail between his legs. “Rowdy!” I yelled. “You come back here!” Rowdy acted like he hadn’t even heard me. He just put on a little more speed and disappeared around a bend in the road.

“Where’s that hound going?” Grandpa asked.

“He’s going home, Grandpa,” I said. “He’s afraid those monkeys might get ahold of him.”

Jimbo had seen Rowdy take off for home, and it pleased him. He opened his big mouth and made the bottoms ring with his shrill cries.

Watching Jimbo, Grandpa said, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that monkey was laughing at us.”

“He is laughing at us, Grandpa,” I said. “He gets a big kick out
of anything like this. If he were down on the ground, he’d turn a few somersaults for us.”

Mumbling something that I couldn’t understand, Grandpa reached down and picked up a good-size stick.

“What are you going to do with that stick, Grandpa?” I asked.

“I’m going to see if I can’t wrap it around that monkey’s neck,” Grandpa said. “I don’t like to have people laugh at me—much less a silly monkey.”

“Oh, Grandpa,” I said, “don’t do that. Don’t ever throw anything at those monkeys. They’ll come down from the tree and jump on us, and eat us up.”

“Aw,” Grandpa said, looking at me. “They wouldn’t do anything like that, would they?”