Summer of the Monkeys (17 page)

Not to be left out of any of the merrymaking, the monkeys gathered around us, screeching and chattering. Jimbo danced all over the place, clapping his paws, squalling, grunting, and turning somersaults.

The first thing I knew, monkeys were climbing all over me. They poked around in my ears with tickly little fingers, explored my eyes, nose, and mouth. I had a giggling fit when they ran their arms down the back of my shirt.

Rowdy was going through the same thing I was. Monkeys were all around him, looking through the hair on his body as if they were searching for fleas. They lifted up his long floppy ears and peered down in them. They played with his tail, crawled upon his back, lifted up his lips, and inspected his teeth.

Rowdy was really enjoying his new-found friends. With friendly whimpers, he was lapping every monkey he could reach with his long pink tongue.

I never knew when I went to sleep, but I sure knew when I woke up. It was late in the evening and I was as cold as a bullfrog. My stomach felt as if I had swallowed a handful of cockleburs and I was sicker than I had ever been in my life. My head felt as big as a wagon wheel. It was pounding and throbbing, and felt like it was going to split wide open any second.

I couldn’t see very well and what I could see seemed to be all out of focus. There must have been a hundred different trees in the bottoms but they all looked alike to me. Every one of them was leaning way over—sideways.

I thought that if I could close my eyes and give my head a good shake it might straighten things out a little. I tried it and squalled
like a stepped-on cat with the pain. My head felt as if it had exploded, and I was sure that my eyeballs had popped right out onto the ground.

I couldn’t understand why I was so cold. My teeth were chattering and I had goose bumps all over me. When I finally did discover why I was so cold, I jumped straight up and hollered in a loud voice, “Hey, my britches are gone!”

I still had my shirt and shorts but that didn’t cover up very much of me because Mama never did make my shirts long enough. I looked all around for my britches, but they were nowhere to be seen.

Rowdy was lying on the ground about five feet away, sound asleep.

“Rowdy!” I said in a loud voice. “Wake up! You’re a heck of a watchdog. You laid there sound asleep, and let someone steal my britches. Wake up now, and help me find them before someone sees me like this.”

Rowdy got to his feet, but then he just groaned and lay down again. He didn’t seem to care if I found my britches or not.

“I know you’re sick, Rowdy,” I said, “but you’re not any sicker than I am. Now you get up from there, and help me find my britches. It’ll soon be dark and I can’t be running around in these bottoms half naked like this.”

Rowdy got to his feet again but made no effort to walk. He just stood there, stiff as a board, with his head down, and his legs spraddled out.

I started over to see if I could help him, but something went wrong. I couldn’t seem to walk straight, and kept angling off to one side. I missed Rowdy by a good five feet, and had to grab hold of a sapling to keep from falling down. I was drunk and that’s all there was to it.

After a lot of grunting and whimpering, Rowdy got his feet to working and started over to see if he could help me a little. But he
seemed to be in about the same shape I was in. He wobbled all over the place and his rear end kept trying to get ahead of his front end.

“Boy, Rowdy,” I said, holding my throbbing head in my hands, “I didn’t know that sour mash would make a fellow like this. I thought it had to be made into whiskey first before it could make you drunk.”

I had forgotten all about the monkeys, and when they did cross my mind, I started looking for them. I looked all around the whiskey still and up in the trees but there wasn’t a monkey around. It was so still in the bottoms that all I could hear was the gurgling of sour mash fermenting in the barrels. The very sound of that stuff gurgling made me sicker than ever.

“Rowdy,” I said, “I can’t understand where my britches went. I don’t think anyone would want them because they were patched all over. I wonder if that Jimbo monkey took them off me and ran away with them. I’ll bet anything, that’s what happened. Now I know why he kept pouring that sour mash down us. He wanted to get us drunk so he could take my britches.”

Up until that time I hadn’t given much thought about how I was going to explain to Mama about losing my britches. When I did think about it, I got really shook up. There just wasn’t any way that I could explain anything like that to Mama.

As far back as I could remember, Rowdy and I had run along those game trails like two wild deer. But on that day, the trail didn’t seem to be any bigger than a twine string. The only way I could stay on it was by holding to the bushes on each side.

Rowdy was behind me and was having all kinds of trouble. He just couldn’t seem to keep himself pointed in the right direction.

We finally made it to the rail fence around our field and there we ran into another problem. Rowdy and I had jumped that old rail fence a thousand times, but that day the fence looked like it was twenty feet high.

Rowdy didn’t even try to jump the fence. He found a wide place between two rails, low to the ground, and wiggled his way through.

I made it to the top of the fence in pretty good shape, then something went wrong. I got dizzy and fell off. For a few seconds, I thought sure that I had broken my neck.

When I finally reached the gate going into our yard, I thought I had it made, but just as I opened the gate, all my luck ran off and left me. Daisy came around the corner of the house on her crutch; humming a silly little tune. She took one look at me standing there half naked, and by the expression on her face, you would have thought that she had stepped on a snake. Her mouth flew open and she gasped like she had swallowed a butterfly.

“Jay Berry,” she said, in a loud voice, “where on earth are your britches? It’s not very nice to run around half naked like that. What’s the matter with you anyway?”

I didn’t say a word. There wasn’t anything I could say. I just groaned way down deep, wrapped both arms around the gate post, and held on.

Daisy came over, peered at me, and said, “Jay Berry, you’re as white as an egg. Are you sick?”

“Sick?” I said. “Daisy, I’m sicker than I’ve ever been in my life. I think I’m dying.”

When I told Daisy that I thought I was dying, it scared her. She caught hold of my arm and said, “Here, let me help you into the house.”

Before I could unwind myself from the gate post, Daisy turned loose of my arm, stepped back, and said, “Phew! What’s that I smell?”

I didn’t say anything and wouldn’t even look at her.

Daisy stuck her nose up close to me and started sniffing. With a frown on her face, she stepped back, and said in a disgusted voice, “Jay Berry, you’re not sick. You’re drunk. You smell just like an old whiskey bottle.”

“I can’t help it if I am drunk,” I said. “I’m sick just the same.”

Looking toward the house, Daisy yelled in a voice louder than I had ever heard her yell, “Mama, Mama, come and look at Jay Berry! He’s as drunk as a boiled owl and naked as a jaybird.”

Mama must have had a pot in her hands when she heard Daisy yell, because I heard something hit the floor with a loud bang and clatter its way across the floor.

I wanted to run but knew if I ever turned loose of the fence post, I would probably fall flat on my face.

Mama came sailing out of the house, looking more surprised than she did the time she found the young hoot owl I had put under an old sitting hen that had just hatched a bunch of chicks.

In the late evening shadows and with me being hugged up so close to the fence post, Mama didn’t see me right away. She looked at Daisy and said, “Daisy, what did you say?”

“Look at him, Mama,” Daisy said, pointing her finger at me. “He’s so drunk, he’s cross-eyed, and he’s lost his britches. Can you imagine anything like that?”

“No,” Mama said in a slow, cold voice, “I can’t imagine anything like that.”

“Go smell him, Mama,” Daisy said. “He smells just like an old whiskey bottle, and you can see for yourself that he’s lost his britches.”

With a deep frown on her face and an uncertain look in her eyes, Mama came and looked me over from my head to my feet. Then she grabbed me by the arm, shook me a little, and said in a very hard voice, “Jay Berry, are you drunk?”

“I guess I am, Mama,” I said, “but I didn’t mean to.”

“Didn’t mean to!” Mama shouted. “What kind of an excuse is that? Who gave you that whiskey anyway? You tell me now! Somebody is going to get into trouble over this. Did those Gravely boys get you drunk?”

“I haven’t seen the Gravely boys, Mama,” I said. “That Jimbo monkey got me drunk.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jay Berry,” Mama said, “you don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”

“It’s the truth, Mama,” I said. “There’s a whiskey still down in the bottoms. That’s where I found the monkeys. They were drinking sour mash and I guess I had a few drinks with them. I didn’t know that stuff would make you drunk.”

“What happened to your britches?” Mama asked.

“I don’t know, Mama,” I said. “I went to sleep and when I woke up they were gone. I think that Jimbo monkey got away with them.”

Just then Daisy let out a squeal and said, “Look, Mama! Rowdy’s drunk, too!”

Poor old Rowdy. He could tell by the tone of Mama’s voice that the fat was in the fire, and he was trying very hard to disappear altogether. He was trying his best to get under the porch.

Mama looked at Rowdy, and then, looking up the heavens, she closed her eyes and said, “Dear Lord, what have I done to deserve this?”

Grabbing me by my left ear, Mama said, “Come on, young man, you’re going to bed. Your monkey-hunting days are over. I’ve had all I can take.”

Mama wasn’t any too gentle about putting me to bed. She just kind of wadded me up and crammed me down under the covers. I fell asleep immediately.

I woke up sometime during the night and heard Mama talking to Papa and she sounded as if she was real upset. I heard her say, “As far as I know, he’s never lied to me, but I just can’t believe that a bunch of monkeys could get a boy drunk. I still think that someone got him drunk.”

Papa laughed and said, “No, I don’t think so. I know there’s a still down in the bottoms because while I’m working the fields and if the wind is right, I can smell the sour mash.”

Mama said, “I don’t care if there are a hundred stills down
there. Whoever heard of a bunch of monkeys getting a boy drunk?”

“It probably happened just like he said it did,” Papa said. “Those monkeys found that still and you know as well as I do that most animals love sour mash. It’s made of everything that animals like—sugar, corn, malt, and yeast. There’s probably more to this than we know. I’ll have a talk with him in the morning and find out all about it.”

“You had better talk to him,” Mama said. “I don’t think I can take any more of this monkey business. Why, if that monkey is as smart as everyone seems to think he is, he might catch Jay Berry down on the river and drown him.”

Papa laughed and said, “Aw, I don’t think anything like that’s going to happen.”

Mama never should have said anything about Jimbo drowning me because after I went back to sleep, I had a horrible dream. I dreamed that the monkeys caught Rowdy and me down in the bottoms. Then they threw us down a deep well that was about half full of ice-cold water. Rowdy and I were swimming for our lives. I could see all the monkeys looking down at us and laughing. I woke up swimming all over the bed.

I 
woke up the next morning with a pounding headache and twice as sick as I had been the day before. My whole body screamed for water and my throat was so dry I had to jiggle my Adam’s apple three or four times before I could swallow. I had such a nasty taste in my mouth it reminded me of the time I had eaten some green persimmons.

When I first opened my eyes I couldn’t remember a thing. For a few seconds, I didn’t even know where I was. Everything I looked at was going round and round and round. Then, little by little, the spinning stopped and things started coming back to me—the monkeys, the whiskey still, drinking the sour mash, and the loss of my britches. The more I thought about everything that had happened to me, the more ashamed I became. I tried covering my face with a pillow but that didn’t blot out a thing.

I was lying there, feeling sorry for myself, and wondering how Rowdy was making out, when Papa and Daisy came into my room.

Papa smiled and said, “How do you feel?”

“I’m sick, Papa,” I said. “I’m sick enough to die.”

Papa laughed and said, “Oh, I don’t think you’ll die. You may think you will, but you won’t. In a day or two, you’ll be as good as new.”

“Papa,” I said, “I didn’t know that sour mash would make you drunk. I thought that it had to be made into whiskey first.”

Shaking his head, Papa said, “Oh, no! Sour mash will make you just as drunk as whiskey does and twice as sick. Once that stuff gets down in your stomach, it just keeps on fermenting and you’ll be sick.”

Up until then Daisy hadn’t opened her mouth. She just stood there looking disgusted, and listening to Papa. Turning to leave the room, she said, “Well, I guess I’d better get busy because it looks like I have my work cut out for me.”

I was so sick that I didn’t pay much attention to what Daisy had said; but I should have known that I was in for another one of her Red Cross go-arounds, and that’s all there was to it.

I didn’t have to worry about Mama paying me a visit because she was really put out with me. This didn’t bother me too much because Mama’s mad spells never did last very long. My mama was just about like any other boy’s mama. She would stay mad at me for a little while and then she’d start feeling sorry for me and everything would be all right.

Papa said, “I can’t understand why you drank that sour mash. I know that you found stills before and I’m pretty sure you didn’t drink any of the mash.”

“I didn’t, Papa,” I said. “That was the first time I ever drank anything like that. Everything happened so fast. The first thing I knew Rowdy and I were both drinking it like water.”