A Short History of a Small Place (16 page)

She wanted a couple of sport coats and a few pairs of trousers, and as it turned out the monkey was fairly human in the shoulders so could wear a blazer pretty handsomely, but once that clerk had measured Junious at the waist and inseam he told Miss Pettigrew he could not do much for her monkey in the way of trousers. Daddy said he told her people just weren’t made like that and pants weren’t either. So Miss Pettigrew said she’d settle for some shirts and maybe a sweater or two and a necktie, but the assistant manager did not especially want to show her shirts and sweaters and neckties, did not especially want to wait on a monkey any longer, and Daddy said he stopped off at a bin full of porkpie hats, pulled one out and handed it to Miss Pettigrew and said, “Ma’m, you can take this on home with our compliments if you’ll just take it on home now.” Daddy said Miss Pettigrew had most likely not even been considering a hat but, being fairly sharp and polite on top of it, she saw that she could have both it and the salesman’s good will all at once and for nothing, so she took the hat and took her monkey and took her monkey’s new plaid sportcoat and went home.

Mattie Gunn’s sister, Miss Martha Gunn, ended up making the trousers for Miss Pettigrew. Miss Martha had a pretty sizeable place down by the ice house and she sewed and took in boarders to earn her way in the world. As best as Daddy could recall it, Miss Martha usually kept her upstairs full of school teachers and would not ever allow alcohol or Republicans across her threshold, but Daddy imagined Miss Martha had not been able to discover anything particularly distasteful in making trousers for a monkey so had made two pair which were not even full trousers anyway but only duck pants, white ones and blue ones, and as a favor to Miss Pettigrew, Miss Martha had sewn an elastic chin strap onto the porkpie hat for the price of materials only.

As Daddy recalled it, Junious had his coming out of a midmorning on a Saturday. The mayor brought him onto the porch, hooked him into his tether, and then turned him out into the yard alone, and Daddy said that monkey went down the front steps and along the sidewalk on his knuckles before he veered off into the grass and made a complete tour of the front lawn that ended up at the base of the flagpole. He did not go up it right away but held on at the bottom and shook himself against it which allowed time for most everybody with business along the Boulevard and in Municipal Square to gather in front of the mayor’s house and congregate against the fence. Daddy said when that monkey had collected a considerable audience he shot straight up to the top of the pole and stood there with one foot on the knob and the other gripping onto the shaft itself, and then he struck a noble pose, Daddy said, which brought admiring responses from the audience, and Daddy himself admitted it was quite a display, a mixture of balance and bad taste, but then most people had never had the opportunity to see a monkey up close before, especially a sportcoated duckpantsed, porkpiehatted monkey, so Daddy said it was understandable that folks would be taken with the sight of Junious in such a prominent place and in such a state of monkey-hood, Daddy called it.

According to Daddy the mayor was still too new at politicking to know exactly what to do with an audience so he merely gawked and chit-chatted by turns along with everybody else, and Daddy said that monkey scooted up and down the flagpole and around the yard and into the mayor’s arms and out again and generally kept the morning rolling along fairly well until he had the accident which Daddy said was not accident at all but certainly intentional on the monkey’s part but which everybody called the accident out of politeness and sheer embarrassment. Daddy said the monkey had been skimming across the lawn on his knuckles when he got to the flagpole and climbed on up to the top of it where he stood again with one foot on the knob and the other latched onto the shaft itself, but Daddy said the monkey did not look the same as before because of the expression on his face which had become very serious and thoughtful, Daddy said, like maybe he was reading a menu without really knowing what he wanted to eat. Then the monkey lifted his head a little and Daddy said he looked off beyond the crowd and the treetops and municipal square and on into the distance until it seemed he wasn’t looking at anything anymore but just standing there atop his flagpole all lofty and wise and caught up in pondering the general predicament of the world as he knew it. Daddy said it was a most impressive expression to see on the face of a monkey and consequently he did not witness the accident himself since he wasn’t looking at that part of monkey where the accident was occurring, and Daddy said only Mr. Satterwhite down at the end of the fence saw it, or was willing to open his mouth about it anyway, and he didn’t even come straight out with it but pointed up at the monkey and said, “Mayor, MAYor,” which turned Wallace Amory around who Daddy said studied Junious for a good half minute before his eyebrows stood up and he shouted off towards the house, “Sister, Sister!” which brought Miss Myra Angelique on out into the yard.

Daddy said the mayor flushed some and then declared into the open air and to no one in particular, “I just don’t understand this; he was trained on a toilet you know,” and he grabbed onto two prongs of the fence, flushed some more, and smiled a little, but Daddy said nobody was paying much attention to the mayor since most everybody was caught up in speculation as to how Miss Myra Angelique was going to fetch that monkey down off the flagpole, her being so proper and naturally dainty and pitched against a creature who had already wet himself and who looked a little more fiery-eyed, Daddy said, every time she yanked on the tether. And according to Daddy, Miss Pettigrew never did coax him down exactly but eventually gave the tether over to the mayor who pretty much reeled that monkey in against all of the screeching and scrapping and clawing and flat out holding on that he could manage. Daddy said Miss Myra Angelique gave that monkey a smart load of scolding as soon as he touched the ground, which more or less deflated him on the spot so that he became tame all over again and stood by while she examined his trousers which had gone to almost pure navy in the front while the back was still a shade of royal blue. And Daddy said Miss Pettigrew scooped up Junious in her arms, accident and all, and set out towards the house, and he said the mayor, who still had hold of the tether, which was still attached to the monkey’s neck, watched several loops of it play out of his hands before he looked up briefly at the crowd of people against the fence, muttered, “ ’scuse us,” and went off after his sister.

Daddy said Junious Pettigrew’s accident atop the Pettigrew flagpole on the Pettigrew front lawn inspired considerable discussion and argument among the citizens of Neely. He said even folks who had not been there themselves and who had yet to get the story straight had a thing or two to say about the monkey and the monkey’s affliction, and according to Daddy it wasn’t until three or four days after the event that the general buzz and huzzah died down and opinion began to solidify into several distinct philosophical camps, what Daddy called the various streams of thought on the urinary problem. He said far and away the majority of Neelyites started out as Isolationists, which Daddy defined as those people who thought the monkey would not wet himself again, who thought that perhaps the fit of the trousers had provoked him to the first time and, now that he was somewhat accustomed to pants, would not provoke him to again. But the monkey himself dealt a severe blow to the Isolationist cause when he did to his white duck pants the following Saturday what he’d done to his blue duck pants the previous one, and Daddy said the Isolationists disbanded immediately, modified their views in one direction or another, and allowed themselves to be asorbed into one of the remaining streams.

Daddy said the fallout after the second poletop accident left the Hard Liners in the majority since a sizeable number of former Isolationists had decided to take their humiliation out on the monkey and so joined up with a compatible group who had said all along that any creature who wet himself should have his nose rubbed in his business and then be whipped. And Daddy supposed the Hard Liners remained in the ascendancy for about a week before sentiments began to shift somewhat and the Protectionists commenced to assert themselves and win favor with their more sympathetic notion that a diaper underneath the duck pants would be a suitable and acceptable remedy to the whole nasty predicament. But Daddy said the Protectionists could never quite manage a firm hold over public opinion and were ever having to fend off threats and advances by any number of sects and splinter groups including the followers of Mr. Emmet Moss, amateur astrologer and feed merchant, who were in general agreement that the magnetism of the stars could draw the fluids from any monkey on any flagpole, and the entire congregation of the Pentecostal Holiness Church on Zinnia Drive who Daddy said unanimously apostled themselves to Mrs. Alice Butler of the Oregon Hill Butlers who stood up in church of a Sunday and told the congregation it had come to her in a vision that the monkey was the anti-Christ and should be immolated, Daddy called it, which kicked up the immediate and unquestioning support of the faithful who Daddy said had held Miss Butler in especially high esteem ever since she accurately predicted the eruption of a water main in the winter of 1938. And Daddy said it was while the Protectionists were busy holding off the Mossians and the Butlerites that a relatively small band of liberal-minded citizens saw an opening in the fray and jumped in, and Daddy said for a week and a half, maybe even two weeks, the whole situation was confused and unsettled with everybody claiming to have won and nobody winning and the monkey still making water all over himself until finally all the fuss and furor began to die away and when the dust cleared it was the Free Thinkers who’d landed on their feet, hale and unified, Daddy said, and proclaiming to the world that if a monkey wants to do his business from atop a flagpole then, by God, we should take his trousers off and let him.

Of course Miss Pettigrew had charge of the monkey, and Daddy said in all of Neely only Miss Pettigrew lived far enough out from under public opinion to ignore it altogether. Daddy supposed the mayor might have tracked in a suggestion or two from off the street, but he said there was no call whatsoever for Miss Pettigrew to pay the least mind to any of the mayor’s proposals since as far as Daddy could tell the only thing the mayor knew about a monkey was where to get one. So Miss Pettigrew did what she pleased with her chimpanzee and her chimpanzee’s affliction, and Daddy said right off she did nothing at all but went on the assumption that the monkey had become a little nervous and excited, what with the crowd and the new clothes, and consequently had done something to himself that he would probably not do again. But when she turned him out the following weekend and the monkey once again did what he had done, Miss Pettigrew was persuaded to change her mind.

Daddy said now Miss Pettigrew figured the second accident, and maybe the first one too, was a sign of rebellion on the monkey’s part so she took immediate measures to make life difficult for Junious until he reformed, beginning with the very moment he set his little hairy foot down off the flagpole the second time when Miss Pettigrew was there to tell him what she would and would not stand for before she let him have it in the backside with a rolled up newspaper, And Daddy said the monkey screeched and howled and tried to fight off Miss Pettigrew but was unable to and eventually got himself separated from his duck pants long enough for them to travel from his bottomside to his topside, where Miss Pettigrew draped them around his head and held them there until she thought he’d had enough. And Daddy said the next day when the Pettigrew door opened up around midmorning it was a new monkey that came out onto the porch and went down the steps and along the sidewalk on his knuckles. He was back in the blue pants, Daddy said, but did not at all appear to be the same creature who had relieved himself into them previously. He was a haunted chimpanzee, according to Daddy, and went everywhere looking backwards so as to keep out of the way of the Neely
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if one happened to come at him. Daddy said he did not go up the flagpole right away but stood cowering at the base of it all drawn up on himself and skitterish until Miss Pettigrew showed up on the lip of the porch and said, “Go on,” which was not quite enough to send him scooting up the pole like before but did start him to creeping towards the top, still looking behind himself and still seeming altogether half the size he’d been the day before. But Daddy said something magical happened to that chimpanzee when he finally made it to the knob and stood up on it; he said Junious sort of blossomed like a flower, gradually opened up and swelled to his full size. And Daddy said he looked back at Miss Pettigrew one last time before he turned his attention to the horizon which he considered with a very grave and sobering expression as he soaked himself again.

Miss Pettigrew had Miss Martha Gunn make him some underwear out of a green bathtowel and she tried them under the duck pants, but Daddy said Junious put out such a penetrating product that the underwear could not effectively prevent the spot from spreading onto the trousers but could only slow down its arrival somewhat, so Miss Pettigrew and Miss Martha Gunn got together again and Miss Gunn made another pair of underwear out of a white bathtowel this time and she tripled up on the material and tripled up on the seams so that Daddy said you’d have been hard pressed to fire a bullet through any part of them. Miss Pettigrew dispensed with the duck pants, since the underwear would not fit beneath them anyway, and turned Junious out into the yard in just his hat and sport coat and new white terrycloth briefs, which Daddy said was still fairly exceptional attire for a chimpanzee. And Daddy said the monkey went directly to the flagpole and scooted up to the top of it where he struck his pose and looked off beyond the treetops and on out of town, and Daddy said while the monkey pondered the horizon Miss Pettigrew and the mayor and all the folks along the fence pondered the monkey’s midsection in anticipation of some activity there, but he said the spot never came and the monkey shot back down the flagpole and squatted on the lawn where he picked at himself before running off into the bushes and back out again and around the yard entirely and then up to the top of the pole once more. And Daddy said he stood with one foot on the knob and the other half around the shaft itself and looked off beyond the courthouse and into the reaches of the county while Miss Pettigrew and the mayor and the crowd of concerned citizens along the fence studied the frontside of his triple-ply bathtowel underwear and waited for the spot to come, but still it didn’t, Daddy said, and the monkey climbed down off the flagpole and toured the lawn twice before vanishing momentarily into the shrubbery and then reappearing at the mayor’s feet and leaping directly up into his arms. Daddy said the mayor grinned for about two seconds and then let loose of that monkey like he was a firecoal, and he said the monkey tried to jump back up into the mayor’s arms but the mayor wouldn’t let him so he tried to jump up into Miss Myra Angelique’s arms but she wouldn’t let him either so he took off down the sidewalk on his knuckles and cut across the lawn and Daddy said first the monkey zipped by the fence and the crowd of people gathered at it and then the aroma came along behind him. Daddy said it was enough to bring tears to your eyes. He said that monkey had become little more than an ammonia pocket with legs.