The Ape Man's Brother (3 page)

I
caught up with The Big Guy and The Woman about nightfall. The Woman had removed her coverings; she was as naked as The Big Guy. There were streaks of blood where the great winged beast had grabbed her, and that attack would leave a scar on her shoulder, three slash marks. The two of them were in the cup of a big limb that had been struck by lightning and hollowed out by it. There were soft leaves laid out in the cup, and they were resting on top of them. What they were doing wouldn’t pass for anything other than what it was; I’ll use a more common English phrase. They were fucking like there was no tomorrow.

They were so at it I didn’t even announce that I had shown up, though The Big Guy could smell me. As he did his business, her screaming and him grunting, he waved a hand at me that let me know to keep my distance. I did. But I watched. Carefully. I had never seen such goings on. Usually, in the jungle, we jump it and do it and get on with looking for something to eat.

This was different. He moved her in different positions, and she let him, and it was well midday when they quit cooing and fell asleep in the cup of the limb. I sat around for awhile, then went out and found some fruit to eat. I brought some of it back with me.

They ate the fruit I brought, and then they went back at it. I think somewhere in all this The Woman realized from the way The Big Guy and myself interacted, that I wasn’t a pet. I didn’t know that’s what she was thinking at the time, but I can look back on events now with acquired knowledge. I think it’s a little different knowing the family dog is watching you go at it, but once you realize that what you thought was a pet is a best friend having secondary thrills, that changes thing.

When that realization settled down on her, she got downright prudish. I was surprised The Big Guy didn’t just make her do what he wanted, because as I said, we were primitive, but he didn’t. He seemed hurt by her reaction. He pouted. He made hooting noises, clicking noises, and screaming noises for complaint. For her complaint, she slapped him so hard it knocked him off the limb.

He grabbed another. Climbed rapidly back up. His face had a red mark in the shape of her fingers on it. I thought this was it. Now we were going to kill her and eat her. But no, that didn’t happen.

When he was back up there with her, he hung his head and whimpered. She looked at him for a long moment, her face softened, and she took him into her arms and held him, looking at me over his shoulder with a glare that was nearly strong enough to kill the fleas in my fur.

Me, I went hunting.

N
ow, I could go into a blow by blow recreation of what happened next, but frankly, that part is not all that interesting. Simply put, The Woman, having covered herself in her coverings again, took the The Big Guy back to the camp with her, or to be more precise, nearby, and I went along with them. She had somehow developed a way of making the The Big Guy understand what she wanted, mostly with hand motions, and I believe this was possible because they were so naturally attracted to one another.

Anyway, she went into camp and did some talking while we watched from hiding, tucked back in the bush. There was some yelling from the flame-headed man, who had tried to shoot The Big Guy, and there was a lot of conversation from the others, but finally she came to collect us and led us into camp. The Big Guy went without hesitation, being so caught up in The Woman’s spell. I on the other hand was nervous. The flamed-headed man, Red, who had tried to shoot The Big Guy, was eyeing us and then looking toward his rifle which was stacked against a tree nearby. He wanted that thing as bad as a worm wants a corpse.

We walked for a ways with them for no other reason than we were invited and wanted to, and in time, just before the sun melted down into the jungle and the ground, we came to a long, dark thing that looked like some kind of giant vegetable. It bobbed in the air on ropes. It was not high off the ground, and underneath it was a kind of box-shape with what to me then looked like eyes that went all the way around, but were in fact glass housed in the frames of a cabin. I know now that it was a zeppelin. There was wooden ramp that led up from the ground to the opening of the cabin. We were easily convinced to go up that ramp and inside, and then the ramp came up and became our door, and we were closed in.

There wasn’t any panic. We had not been forced, and in fact, it was something we wanted to do. For uncivilized wild men, we proved to be putty in the hands of the woman. A smile and a laugh and everyone was inside and the ropes that were looped through metal pegs on the ground, were let loose with a crank and a groan of machinery. The ropes threaded through the pegs and the pegs were left, and we were aloft. We rose quickly and smoothly, into the mist that covered our world, and then we lifted up through that roof of mist into clearer air. Up there I saw a great winged lizard flying. I never knew they came this high, because I never knew how high was high. It flapped its wings and the crew of the zeppelin oohed and ahhed, and on we went, high and then wide, over the tops of the slick walls that contained our world. We stood by the glass and watched as that world moved away from us and the world below turned blue. It was water, but we had never seen so much water. It went on forever, and we sailed across it, rising higher and higher, moving quickly away from our home.

We were in a way captured specimens, but we didn’t know it. The old bearded man was ecstatic. I don’t know what he truly thought about his daughter’s escapades with The Big Guy, not what he was thinking down inside of him, but he seemed fine with it. I didn’t think about that then, of course, because as I said, our ideas about what is proper and improper varied considerably from those of the civilized, of which I am now one, but later I would think on it and decide either the old man was very progressive about such matters, or the idea that his daughter had lured in such unique specimens as The Big Guy and myself surpassed any sort of fatherly propriety he may have possessed. At this late date, and it’s still only a guess, I am going with the former view instead of the latter.

So there we were, as stunned as if we had been run over by a water buffalo, looking out the window glass of the cabin as the zeppelin rose up and our world became a dark line in the distance capped with fog, resting there in the great blue water in such a way it seemed the sky had been turned upside down and the dark line of our home was a wound in the fallen sky, blanketed by a cloud.

Inside the cabin there was plenty of space. There was a man in a funny hat standing at the wheel beside the captain, a position I learned of later. The captain’s name was Zeppner and he worked for Dr. Rice. There were many other crew members, and there were a number of jobs they did. During the time we were aloft, and that was a goodly time, we would find out that the cabin branched out through a door and there was a place where the cook prepared meals and there was a mess, and there were rooms off of it. One of these rooms we shared with The Woman’s father, so perhaps his propriety was wider and deeper than I would think, but it may have been merely a polite custom to separate a man without clothes from his daughter, as well as myself. I think it took a few days for them to decide if I was man or animal. I think the final decision was somewhere in-between.

Dr. Rice was not only our roommate, but a man who began teaching us his language and certain customs long before we reached the shores of Japanese-America, and later European-America. We also made friends with the navigator, Bowen Tyler, of which adventure books have also been written, most of them exaggerated lies, and by the same liar who told the stories about The Big Guy and me, though I will admit he got a few things right, if only perhaps by accident.

Anyway, we were given pants, and I took to mine right away, but had to learn about unfastening them and pulling them down when the urge to let loose with inner workings arrived on the wings of nature. I ruined several pairs of pants before I got that right. The Big Guy wore the pants all right, but he didn’t like shirts at all and wouldn’t wear them for the longest time, and he never did really take to shoes. I liked them, but there were none in the zeppelin that would fit me.

The days passed. On we went. Over mountains and jungles and more water and land dotted in the water, and finally back to more water again; a blueness that appeared to stretch out until it linked up with the sky.

…

As I was saying, during the trip I began to learn words of English, which was the main language spoken by Americans, even the Japanese side. I learned that at one time there had been a war, and one side of this huge country we were going to had been taken over by the Japanese, but in time they united. Still, the West Coast was called Japanese-America, the East, European-America. On the zeppelin there were also a few Japanese. During the trip I began to see the differences in them and the others. Before, when I had seen them as a group, except for the hair on the faces of some, I hadn’t realized they were different; to me they were all the same, people like The Big Guy, but smaller. I learned to say “please” and “thank you” and “pass the peas,” and for a long time I thought all food was called peas. I also learned words like “fuck” and “shit,” “damn, hell, goddamn” and the like, but it took me some time to learn how to use them in properly in polite conversation.

So we flew and we flew and The Big Guy and The Woman were often together, much to the disappointment of flame-head, or Red as he was known. You could see the anger coming out of him. He looked easily as savage as the wildest things me and The Big Guy had ever encountered. But from previous experience, Red knew going up against The Big Guy would lead to him losing a few parts, so with steam almost blowing out of his ears, he held his temper and watched them stand beside each other, look at each other and smile and say nothing, and sometimes they held hands, and I am sure there were times in secret places that they did more than that.

When we were near our destination, New York, they gave me and Big Guy some fresh pants and shirts, but neither of us wore shoes, The Big Guy because he wouldn’t, and me because as I said, none fit. We didn’t really need them. The bottoms of our feet were hard as wood and we could step on thorns and glass and not have them penetrate. They also gave The Big Guy a tie for some reason, and he used it to bind back his long hair, which The Woman had trimmed considerably, after combing out burrs and thorns and minor wildlife. She even gave me a good brushing, and I liked it so much, that I did it myself several times a day. I liked the way it made my hair shine.

We had never seen buildings before, and in the wheelhouse, looking out of the glass, those buildings looked like odd mountains at first. When the craft docked at what they called the Empire State building, I was almost beside myself. So was The Big Guy.

“Son-of-a-bitch,” I said.

“Very good,” said Dr. Rice. “That is a proper usage of the word, if not the literal meaning.”

“Thank you,” I said. I tell you, right then I felt like one sophisticated motherfucker, that motherfucker word being something I learned later.

M
e and The Big Guy were all the rage. We were paraded about like circus animals and asked to do all manner of things. Big Guy bent metal bars and broke ropes with his chest and climbed up the sides of buildings like a big bug. I couldn’t bend the bars, but I could break a lot of ropes and climbing was my middle name. It’s actually Uchugucdagarmindoonie, but that’s not important. Besides, looking at it now, spelled out, I have to say that is only a close approximation, so we just won’t worry about it.

Anyway, we were taken here and there, poked and probed by doctors, and on one occasion a greased finger was jammed up my butt, which resulted in an unexpected thrill. We were needled and measured, asked to run and be timed, asked to climb and be timed. They watched us eat, watched us talk English in our peculiar way. They listened to the old language, the language we knew, and they made notes. They were amazed at how hard the bottoms of our feet were. They were equally amazed at the overall condition of The Big Guy’s muscles and teeth. Mine they were equally impressed with, especially my more pronounced canines.

Next thing that happened was we had lessons in manners.

We learned to sit in chairs, sleep in beds, take baths, eat with utensils instead of our fingers, and to take our time about meals. We had to grasp the idea that no one or anything was going to spring on us from under the table or out of a closet and wrestle us all over the room for our food. This was one of the more difficult changes for the two of us, due to us having come from a world where when food was found you wolfed it down to make sure you got to keep it, or to make sure it didn’t bite you back; and you eyed everyone and everything around you suspiciously, lest they be reaching for your chow. They soon learned how engrained this was when one of our table companions reached casually for the salt shaker, only to end up with Big Guy grabbing him by the head and flinging him across the room. He thought the man was going for his baked trout.

To make sure the man understood The Big Guy’s dominance, The Big Guy not only finished his own trout as quick as a wild pig snuffing up a grub worm, he ate the man’s trout as well, jumped to the middle of the table and started stuffing the dessert (a cake) into his mouth as fast as he could reach with both hands.

Instinct and experience taking over, me knowing how much that big bastard eat, and having gone to bed hungry because him in the past, I too leaped onto the table and started snatching, which led to a mild grapple between the two of us which resulted in my being bit on the shoulder and having a handful of cake stuffed in my ear and a random carrot shoved in my nose.

What could you expect? We were savages. But we did learn some civilized activities. We learned to drink, and I learned to smoke (Big Guy never took to it), and I learned to chase women. Big Guy had his woman, and he stuck with her. They had even taken to living in the same hotel room. But me, well, I was a goddamn celebrity, and I had groupies. They all wanted to hump Mr. Hairy. I rush in here to say this was a title given to me by the newspapers for a time (fortunately it didn’t stick) and one I never embraced. But the women embraced me, and I came to find them attractive, not just usable. I began to like to wear suit coats and ties, well-creased pants, and shoes, though I always had to cut them open at the front so my toes had room. In short time I took to wearing open toed house shoes. It became all the rage with the kids. The sale of house shoes went up, and pretty soon I was modeling them in magazine, wearing a tux with those fuzzy shoes on my feet. They pretty much became my trademark. I was loved by the young and the sophisticated, disliked by parents and the clergy.

I went to fine restaurants and learned to order wine. I will tell you truthfully, I took to the life. It beat climbing trees to flee wild animals. It beat looking for fruit and eating bugs and worms, or chasing down some swift animal with a stick or a rock. I liked the nice rooms in the great hotel where we were kept. I liked the bed with its clean, cool sheets better than I liked a leafy nest on the ground or the crook of a tree. I liked room service. I liked the women who slept with me; or rather I liked what we did. No particular woman ever stayed with me more than a day and a night. I wouldn’t let them, even though there were many who wanted to. There were just too many opportunities, too many offers, and I took advantage of it.

I was drinking until late, smoking cigars and sometimes a pipe. I was learning to tell jokes and talk in a sophisticated manner. I knew how to get my arm around women’s shoulders without being awkward, and I had gained quite a reputation in the tabloids as a ladies’ man.

And I was becoming famous and admired. Maybe not as much as The Big Guy, but it was a new experience for me. Back home I was, to sum it up in crass and modern terms, just another monkey, because even though he was different from the rest of us—perhaps because he was—he was always held in higher esteem than me. At home, I was just like everyone else there, but in New York, I was special.

In time this fame led to The Big Guy and myself becoming movie stars.

At least for awhile.