Summer of the Monkeys (19 page)

“Come on, boy,” I coaxed, “I’m going to the store to have another talk with Grandpa about those monkeys, and he might give you a meat rind.” That was all it took to get him to come with me.

On my way to the store, I stopped to watch a sight that all but left me breathless. To my right, from far up on a hillside, there was a loud gobbling and a beating of heavy wings. Then up out of that green blanket and into the sky rose a flock of wild turkeys. I blinked my eyes at the burst of fiery bronze as they winged their way through the bright rays of the morning sun. Rowdy and I watched until they faded from sight in the thick timber of the river bottoms.

“Boy, Rowdy,” I said, “wasn’t that something to see? You just wait until I get that gun. We’ll have an old gobbler on our kitchen table for breakfast, dinner, and supper every day until I’m old and gray-headed.”

A little farther along, just as Rowdy and I rounded a bend in the road, I stopped and stared in wonderment at the sight directly ahead. Here and there on the long sloping hillside, milky white
splotches stood out like spilt buckets of milk in the deep green. The Ozarks’ most beautiful flowers, the dogwoods, were in full bloom. Mixed in with the green and white, the deep glare of redbuds gleamed like railroad flares in the dewy morning.

As I stood there drinking in all of that beauty, I said, “Rowdy, Daisy says that the Old Man of the Mountains is taking care of everything in the hills. If he is, he must have worked a long time painting that picture.”

I had been so busy looking at all of that Ozark beauty I had forgotten about the monkeys. When I did think about them, I said, “Holy smokes, Rowdy, we better stop this gawking around and get on to the store. Grandpa will think that we’re never coming.”

To make up for lost time, I started off in a dog trot.

Grandpa wasn’t in his store when Rowdy and I arrived, but I knew that he was around somewhere because the door was wide open. Then I heard a loud banging coming from the barn. I walked over and found him putting a new spoke in one of his buckboard wheels.

As Rowdy and I walked up, Grandpa smiled and said, “Hi!”

“Hi, Grandpa!” I said.

With a sly look on his friendly old face, Grandpa looked all around, and then, leaning over close to me, he whispered, “I’ve got a jug hid there in the corn crib. Would you care for a little drink?”

I knew that Grandpa was kidding me, so I grinned and said, “Aw, Grandpa, you know I’m not a drinking man.”

Grandpa said, “Well, I didn’t think you were, but your papa told me that you and Rowdy got on a pretty good tooter.”

“I guess we did, Grandpa,” I said, “but it wasn’t our fault. That Jimbo monkey got us drunk. It seems like every time we get close to those monkeys they make fools of us. Why, they even stole my britches this time and I never will live that down.”

Grandpa exploded in laughter. He laughed and he laughed. He
laughed so hard that great big tears boiled out of his eyes and ran all over his face.

I even laughed a little myself, but I wasn’t laughing about losing my britches. I was laughing at Grandpa.

Rowdy thought that because Grandpa and I were laughing we were happy and so he got happy, too. He wiggled and twisted all over the place.

Grandpa finally got over his laughing spell and reached for his old red handkerchief. He took off his glasses, wiped them, and then blew his nose.

“Now that we’ve had a good laugh,” he said, “I think it’s time we started thinking about catching those monkeys. We can’t let them get away with stealing a fellow’s britches.”

“Grandpa,” I said, “I haven’t done anything but think about those monkeys and my thinker is just about wore out. I don’t know what to do now. I’ve tried everything from a to z, and I haven’t caught one yet.”

“Oh, I don’t think we’ve tried everything yet,” Grandpa said. “There’s a lot of space between a and z. Now, here’s what you do. You go on home and be ready about daybreak in the morning. I’ll come by in my buckboard and we’ll make a trip into town.”

I was really surprised to hear that we were going to town because I didn’t get to go to town but about once in ever so long.

“What are we going to town for, Grandpa?” I asked.

“We’re going to find out how to catch those monkeys,” Grandpa said. “That’s what we’re going for.”

“Grandpa,” I asked, all interested, “do you know someone in town that knows how to catch monkeys?”

“No,” Grandpa said, shaking his head, “I don’t believe I know of any monkey catchers in town, but I think there’s a place where we can find out something.”

“What kind of a place is that, Grandpa?” I asked.

“The library!” Grandpa said.

I thought a second and said, “Oh, I know now. That’s the place you were telling me about where they have all of those books; thousands and thousands of books.”

“That’s the place,” Grandpa said. “I don’t care what kind of a problem a man has, he can always find the answer to it in a library. Somewhere, in one of those books, we’ll find the answer to our monkey-catching problem.”

“Boy, Grandpa,” I said, “we should have thought about this library a long time ago. It sure would have saved a lot of wear and tear on Rowdy and me.”

Grandpa looked at me, then he looked at Rowdy. Smiling, he said, “I can’t see any wear and tear anywhere. You both look like you’re in pretty good shape to me.”

Rowdy had seen Grandpa looking at him and he figured that this was as good a time as any to let his wants be known. His old tail started thumping the ground, then he opened his mouth and let out a bawl that scared the chickens out of the barn.

Grandpa said, “What was that all about, boy?”

Rowdy whined, turned, and bounded for the store. On reaching the porch, he stopped, looked back at us, and bawled again.

Frowning and looking surprised, Grandpa said, “What’s gotten into him?”

I couldn’t help chuckling a little, for I knew what Rowdy was trying to tell Grandpa.

“Aw, Grandpa,” I said, “don’t pay any attention to him. He just wants a meat rind.”

Watching Rowdy bouncing up and down on the porch, Grandpa said, “He seems to know where the meat rinds are, all right. Maybe we’d better get him one before he has a nervous breakdown.”

Rowdy wound up with a big fat meat rind and I got my usual sack of candy. I thanked Grandpa and told him that he wouldn’t have to wait for me in the morning, that I would be ready and waiting.

M
y promise to Grandpa about being ready and waiting for our trip to town got sidetracked during the night. I was sound asleep the next morning when Papa opened the door to my room.

“You’d better get up,” Papa said. “Your grandpa is here and he’s waiting for you.”

“Grandpa’s already here?” I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. “What time is it anyway?”

“It’s just breaking daylight,” Papa said. “You’d better hurry now. Your grandpa is raring to go.”

I flew out of bed and jumped into my clothes. As I stepped into the kitchen, I saw to my surprise that everyone in the family was up. Mama was fixing breakfast and Daisy was setting the table. Papa and Grandpa were drinking coffee.

“Boy,” I said, as I poured water into the wash pan, “this early in the morning and everybody stirring around.”

Looking at Grandpa, Mama said, “Papa, this is the silliest thing I ever heard of, an old codger like you, going to town to read monkey books.”

Grandpa snorted and said, “I can’t see anything silly about it. We don’t know anything about catching monkeys. Maybe in the
library, we can learn from a book something about how to catch them. It’s worth a try anyway.”

Daisy said, “Grandpa, have you ever been in a library?”

Grandpa squirmed a little and said, “No, I haven’t, but I understand that anyone can go to a library, and there’s always a first time for everything.”

It was twelve miles from where we lived in the hills to the little town of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and it would take a good part of the day to get there. As soon as breakfast was over, Grandpa looked at me and said, “We’d better be on our way. I have a lot of things to do in town.”

Mama, Papa, and Daisy followed us out to Grandpa’s buckboard. Rowdy was sitting in the spring seat, looking at us, whimpering and whining. His old tail was wagging so fast that I just knew it was going to come unscrewed from his body.

Grandpa chuckled and said, “Would you look at that? He knows that we’re going somewhere and he’s bound and determined to go with us.”

“Rowdy,” I said, in a hard voice, “you get down out of that buckboard. You can’t go to town with us. What’s the matter with you anyway?”

Rowdy dropped his old head and wouldn’t even look at me. His tail was the first part of him to die. Very slowly, it stopped wiggling. To make things worse, he squirmed his rear end around until his tail was hanging over the back of the spring seat. It just hung there all limp and lifeless, and looked like a dead grapevine.

Rowdy’s sympathy-getting act melted Grandpa’s heart. He glanced at Rowdy and then turned to me and said, “I don’t see why Rowdy couldn’t go to town with us. Lots of people take their dogs to town.”

“Oh, Grandpa,” I said, “if we took him to town with us, there’s no telling what might happen.”

Grandpa said, “I don’t see how Rowdy could get into any trouble
in town. We’re going to stay at the wagon yard, and you could tie him under the buckboard. He’d be all right.”

“Grandpa,” I said, “I’d like to take Rowdy to town with us. I don’t like to go anywhere without him, but I’m afraid I might lose him in that big town. If that happened, I’d just die.”

Rowdy knew that we were talking about him. With a low moan, he lay down on the spring seat and closed his eyes. He must have been holding his breath because I couldn’t see one speck of life anywhere in his body. His dying act really stirred everybody up.

“All right,” I said, throwing up my hands. “I give up. He can go with us but I don’t like it—I don’t like it at all. I just hope that everything comes out all right.”

Grandpa climbed into the buckboard, gathered up the check lines, and said, “We’d better be on our way. We have wasted a good hour as it is.”

Mama came over to me and started laying down the ten thousand laws that all mamas have for their going-away boys: things like being a good boy, minding Grandpa, washing my face, combing my hair, and saying my prayers when I went to bed.

I just stood there and waited until Mama ran out of breath, then I said, “Mama, I can’t understand you sometimes. Every time you send me to the store—I don’t care if it’s for two or three little old things—you always write them down on a piece of paper, but if I’m going away for a day or two, you tell me ten thousand things to do and you never write anything down. Why, Mama, I couldn’t remember all of those things if I had ten heads.”

Mama smiled and said, “I don’t expect you to do everything I ask you to do, but if you do just a few of them I’ll be satisfied.”

Daisy giggled and said, “Jay Berry, you sure would look funny running around with ten heads. Boy, wouldn’t you be something to see.”

Everyone, but me, was still laughing at Daisy’s remarks when Grandpa said, “Get up” to the mares.

Just as we were leaving, Daisy yelled, “Jay Berry, you’d better not forget my ribbon. If you do, you’d better not come home.”

I didn’t even look back at her.

The road we followed stayed at the edge of the foot-hills for a short distance, and then it made a right turn and ran down into the river bottoms. We had no more than entered the bottoms when things began to happen. Rabbits, squirrels, ground hogs, and quail began darting across the road. Once, a mama deer with a spotted baby leaped across the road and disappeared in a thick cane brake.

Rowdy was on needles and pins. Every time something would zip across the road, his ears would stand straight up. He would fidget around on the spring seat, whimper, and whine. He wanted to chase something so bad, he could hardly stand it.

I understood Rowdy’s feelings. I loved him up a little, and said, “I know how you feel, boy, but just let on like you don’t see a thing. We don’t have time to stop and let you do any hunting.”

Grandpa laughed. “I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen so much game in the river bottoms,” he said. “After we catch those monkeys, maybe we can take a few days off and really do some hunting.”

“I’d like that, Grandpa,” I said, “and I know Rowdy would.”

About halfway through the bottoms, the road made a sharp left turn. Just as we made the turn, a big old mama coon with three little babies waddled across the road. This was too much for Rowdy. He just simply couldn’t stand it any longer. Letting out a bellow that all but busted my eardrums and came close to scaring the mares out of their harness, he leaped down from the buckboard and took off after the coons.

I stood up in the buckboard and yelled as loud as I could, “Rowdy, you’d better leave those baby coons alone. That old mama coon will skin you alive! You come back here now!”

Mumbling something about a yelling boy and a bawling hound, Grandpa finally got the mares settled down. We sat there waiting
to see what would happen. From far out in the bottoms, we heard a loud commotion. The mama coon was squalling and Rowdy was howling like he was hung up in a barbed-wire fence.

With a worried look on his face, Grandpa said, “Boy, they’re sure going after it, aren’t they? Do you think Rowdy’ll be all right?”

“Oh, don’t worry about Rowdy, Grandpa,” I said, “he’s been through this a hundred times. You would think that by now he would learn to leave coons alone. He never does though. He always goes back for more.”

It wasn’t long until the squalling and howling stopped. About a minute later, Rowdy came tearing out of the brush with a sheepish look on his face and with his tail between his legs. I didn’t have to tell him to get in the buckboard. He made one leap and landed in the spring seat. He had a raw, red scratch on his nose.

“Rowdy,” I said, as I rubbed his nose with my hand, “I don’t believe that you’ll ever learn anything. I really don’t. You know that you can’t whip a coon; especially, a mama coon with babies.”

Chuckling to himself, Grandpa tapped the mares with his buggy whip and said, “Well, there’s one thing you can say for Rowdy, he sure can make things exciting.”