Summer of the Monkeys (7 page)

I forgot about being scared and got kind of mad.

“Rowdy,” I whispered, “I don’t know if that’s a boy or not, but
if it is, he’s sure messing things up for us. If he keeps on screaming like that, and scares the monkeys away, I’m going to wear him out.”

Just then the thing moved out on the limb into some sunlight and I got a better look at it. I could see then that it wasn’t a boy but was some kind of black, hairy animal. It had short stubby legs, and long arms that hung down almost to the limb it was standing on. When I discovered that it didn’t have a tail, I didn’t know what to think. I had never seen an animal that didn’t have a tail of some kind.

It was too far away to tell what color its eyes were, but I could have sworn that they were as red as our old red rooster. Anything that had red eyes always did scare me. Goose pimples jumped out all over me. My old heart started running around inside me like a scared lizard.

“Rowdy,” I whispered, in a shaky voice, “that’s an animal all right, but I’ve never laid eyes on anything that looked like that before, and I don’t like the looks of it.”

I had just about decided that my monkey-catching days were over, and was getting ready to get away from there, when I remembered what my grandpa had told me about that hundred dollar monkey. He had said that it was different than the other monkeys, and that thing I was looking at sure didn’t look like those other monkeys.

Just then the big monkey let out another cry, and running to the end of the limb, he leaped high in the air. I was so startled by this I stood up. I thought sure that he had sprouted wings and was flying away. Instead, he lit in the branches of the bur oak tree; and using those long arms, he started dropping down from limb to limb and landed on the ground between the little monkeys and my traps.

This all happened so fast it left me a little bit breathless. I thought squirrels could move around in the timber, but they couldn’t do anything that monkey couldn’t do. Every move he
made was as sure as Daniel Boone’s musket, and as smooth as the dasher in Mama’s old churn.

All the time this had been going on, the little monkeys hadn’t made a sound. They just stood there in a bunch, watching every move the big monkey made.

About that time one of them decided that as long as there were some apples around, he may as well have one. He left the bunch and with his skinny tail sticking straight in the air, he started toward my traps.

The big monkey saw this and went all to pieces. He started jumping up and down, and making deep grunting noises as if he were talking to the little monkey. The little monkey seemed to understand what the big monkey was saying. He squealed like someone had stepped on his tail and scurried back to the others.

It was hard for me to believe what I had seen. Yet it was as plain as the stripes in a rainbow. That big monkey had known that the little monkey was in danger, and in his monkey talk, he had simply told him so.

“Rowdy,” I whispered, “did you see what the monkey was doing? He was talking to that little monkey, that’s what he was doing. Grandpa didn’t tell me that they could talk to each other.”

As if he were proud of the fact that he had knocked me out of a two dollar reward, the big monkey then did something that all but caused me to swallow my Adam’s apple. Looking straight at my hiding place, he peeled his lips back, opened his mouth, and let out another one of those squalls. When he did, I got a good look at his fighting tools.

I had thought that our old mules had big mouths and teeth, but they were nothing compared to what that monkey had. To me, it looked as if you could have thrown a pumpkin straight down his throat and never scratched the peeling on one of his long teeth.

“Holy smokes, Rowdy,” I whispered, “did you see those teeth? You’d better think twice before you jump on him. He could eat you up—collar and all.”

Old Rowdy didn’t seem to be the least bit scared. If I had said “Sick ’em!” he would have torn out of those elders like a cyclone. He may have taken a whipping, but there would have been a lot of monkey hair flying around while it was going on.

I didn’t have to worry about the big monkey jumping on us. Instead, he turned, and still making those deep grunting noises, he walked up within two feet of a trap and stopped. For several seconds, he just stood there, looking at the apple and all around at the ground. He kept making funny little noises, as if he were talking to himself.

The strain was almost more than I could stand. My insides got all knotted up and I felt like I was going to bust wide open. If the monkey hadn’t done something about then, I think I would have. Instead of stepping in my trap, he just reached out with one of those long arms, took hold of the apple, and pulled on it until the nail came out.

Holding the apple in his paw about like I would if I were eating one, he opened his huge mouth, took one bite, and tossed what was left to the little monkeys.

This caused a loud commotion. The little monkeys started fighting over the apple. I never heard so much squealing and chattering. In no time there wasn’t as much as a seed left.

I sat there as if I were frozen to the ground and watched that big monkey walk all around the bur oak, taking the apples and never stepping in a trap. One bite from each apple seemed to be all he wanted. What was left was tossed to the little monkeys.

When the last apple had disappeared, the big monkey did something that made me wonder if I wasn’t seeing things. He started turning somersaults and rolling around on the ground. At the same time, he was making the bottoms ring with a peculiar noise that he hadn’t made before.

Now I had never heard a monkey laugh and didn’t even know they could; but as I sat there watching the capers of that big monkey, it didn’t take me long to figure out what he was doing.
He was laughing at me. I was sure of it. I even remembered the dream I had had about the hundred dollar monkey—how every time he came leaping by, he would stop and laugh at me.

The little monkeys seemed to know that something funny was going on. They started screeching and chattering like a bunch of squirrels in a hickory nut tree.

My neck and face got all hot. I knew I was blushing, but I couldn’t help it. That was the first time I had ever had a monkey laugh at me. I looked at Old Rowdy. The way I was feeling, if he had been laughing, I would have taken a stick to him. But Rowdy wasn’t laughing. He was just as serious about catching those monkeys as I was.

All at once the big monkey stopped making a fool out of himself and turned to the little monkeys. Uttering a couple of those deep grunts, he just seemed to rise up in the air like fog off the river and disappeared in the branches of the bur oak tree. The little monkeys followed him—zip, zip, zip—one behind the other.

After the monkeys had all disappeared, it got so still around there you could have heard a grasshopper walking. I looked at Rowdy, and Rowdy looked at me.

“Did you ever see anything like that, Rowdy?” I said. “Grandpa was right when he said that monkey was smart, but I didn’t think he was that smart. Why, he knew all the time that we were here. And he sat right up there on that sycamore limb and watched me set my traps. Then he stole all of my apples and laughed at me. Now, how do you like that!”

My first go-around with the monkeys left me a little discouraged—but not too much. After all, my grandpa had taught me practically all there was to know about the trapping business. I figured it was just a matter of time until I’d have them all in the sack.

Trying to act like nothing had happened, I said, “Rowdy, that monkey may not know it, but he’s messing around with one of the best trappers in these Cherokee hills. If he comes back one more
time, we’ll see who does the laughing. Let’s try the old mouse-catching trick on him. I think that will stop this laughing business.”

Rowdy whined and licked my hand. That gave me a lot of confidence and I felt much better.

Taking three more of my apples, I set them up on a log. Then taking my pocketknife, I cut them in half. Walking over to where my traps were, I lifted them from their hiding places and tripped the triggers with a stick. Untying the strings from the nails and bushes, I used the short pieces to tie half of an apple to the trigger of each trap.

I wrapped those pieces of apple to the top of the triggers as tightly as I could, and tied the ends of the strings in hard knots. Then I reset the traps and placed them back in the holes. Very carefully, I covered each trap with leaves but left the apples in plain sight.

Backing off to one side, I took another good look at my trap setting. Every time I had set a trap I had been proud of the way I had done it, but on that day I was especially proud. You could see the pieces of apple all right, but you sure couldn’t tell there were any traps there. Not one shiny piece of metal could be seen.

“Rowdy,” I said, “I don’t care how smart that monkey is, if he gets one of those apples, he’s going to wind up with a trap on his foot, and that’s all there is to it.”

All of the time I was resetting my traps I kept looking around in the trees for a monkey. I didn’t see one, but I had a feeling that there were ten thousand monkey eyeballs looking right at me.

Feeling about as smart as Old Trapper Dan himself, I said, “Come on, Rowdy, I think the money will start rolling in now.”

I didn’t go straight back to my hiding place. Instead, I took off in another direction, circled around, and came back to it. I thought that I was being smart doing this, but I felt silly, too; because if that big monkey was sitting somewhere in the top of a sycamore tree, he was probably watching every move I made.

I was so sure that I would catch a monkey this time, I didn’t sit down on my gunny sack. I held it in my hand so that I would be ready to sack him up the instant I heard the snap of a trap.

It seemed that Rowdy and I had hardly gotten seated when here came the monkeys: leaping, squealing, and chattering.

“Boy, Rowdy,” I whispered, “that sure was fast, wasn’t it. They must have been waiting for us. Why, the way they’re acting, they must think we’re playing some kind of game. They won’t think it’s a game when I get a few of them in the sack.”

It was a little different this time than it was before. The big monkey was the first one to touch the ground, and he was standing very close to one of my traps. The little monkeys were milling around everywhere. They didn’t seem to know what was going on, but every time one got close to a trap, that big monkey would fly out of gear like a mama jaybird when I wanted to take a look at her babies.

He would scream like someone had slapped a branding iron on him, and start jumping up and down, and making those deep grunting noises. He would run at the little monkeys and scare the daylights out of them. Finally he succeeded in herding them all to one side where they bunched up and stayed.

If I had known then what that big monkey was going to do next, I wouldn’t have stayed there and watched it.

Again he walked over close to one of my traps and stopped. I knew that I was watching a monkey, but he still looked like a small boy, standing there, trying to figure something out. Once he even bent over so that he could get a better look at things. Then he reached up with one of his long arms and scratched his head. When I saw him do that I thought of my grandpa. He was always scratching his head when he had something heavy on his mind.

“Rowdy,” I whispered, “I believe that monkey knows the trap is there and he’s trying to figure out how he can get the apple and not get caught. I don’t think he can do it. I don’t care how smart he is, he’s not that smart.” How wrong I was.

As if he had solved the problem, and was tickled to death about it, the big monkey turned a few somersaults. He stopped and stared straight at my hiding place. Then he let out another one of those squalls before he reached down and picked up a long stick from the ground. Holding the stick out in front of him, still uttering those deep grunts, he started beating at the apple as if he was killing a snake.

I almost jumped out of my britches when I heard the trap snap. I sat in a trance and watched that hundred dollar monkey spring every one of my traps the same way. Every time a trap snapped, he would look straight at my hiding place and squall.

He didn’t use his teeth to tear the apples from the triggers. He simply used his fingers and untied the knots in the strings.

There was one thing I could say for that monkey. He wasn’t only smart, he was very polite, too. He saw to it that the little monkeys got their share of each apple.

After it was all over and the monkeys had again disappeared in the treetops, I looked to Rowdy for some kind of understanding. I didn’t get any help from him. He was just lying there with his long ears sticking straight up, looking at me as if he were the most surprised hound dog in the world.

I was so dumbfounded I couldn’t even think straight, much less say anything. For several seconds I sat there staring at the ground and trying to remember everything that had happened. The more I thought about how that big monkey had outsmarted me, the madder I got.

“Rowdy,” I said, “I wish I had brought Papa’s old shotgun along. I’d sure warm that monkey’s hide with some bird shot. It’s bad enough that he made a fool out of me, but he didn’t have to laugh like that.”

I put my lunch and apples back in the gunny sack, and walked over to where my traps were. Mashing the springs down with my foot, I released the sticks from the jaws. I put the traps back in my sack. Then I sat down on a stump to do a little thinking. I could
remember every trick my grandpa had taught me about trapping, but I couldn’t think of a thing that would catch a monkey. The more I thought about everything, the more disgusted I got.

Talking to myself, I said, “There’s only one thing I can do. I’ll have to get rid of that smart-aleck monkey. If I can get rid of him, I believe I can catch the little ones. They don’t seem to have any sense at all. I’ll just go to the house, get Papa’s gun, and do away with that monkey once and for all.”

Then I thought, “What in the world am I thinking of. I can’t do that. Why, it would be like hanging a hundred dollar bill in a tree and shooting it all to pieces. And, there was the Old Man of the Mountains. If I shot one of those silly monkeys, there was no telling what he’d do.”