The Monkey

When Hal Shelburn saw it, when his son Dennis pulled it out of a moulderlng Ralston-Purina carton that had been pushed far back under one attic eave, such a feeling of horror and dismay rose in him that for one moment he thought he would scream. He put one fist to his mouth, as if to cram it back ... and then merely coughed into his fist. Neither Terry nor Dennis noticed, but Petey looked around, momentarily curious. "Hey, neat," Dennis said respectfully. It was a tone Hal rarely got from the boy anymore himself. Dennis was twelve. "What is it'?" Peter asked. He glanced at his father again before his eyes were dragged back to the thing his big brother had found. "What is it, Daddy?" "It's a monkey, fartbrains," Dennis said. "Haven't you ever seen a monkey before'?" "Don't call your brother fartbrains," Terry said automatically, and began to examine a box of curtains. The curtains were slimy with mildew and she dropped them quickly. "Uck." "Can I have it, Daddy'?" Petey asked. He was nine. "What do you mean?" Dennis cried. "I found it!" "Boys, please," Terry said. "I'm getting a headache." Hal barely heard them. The monkey glimmered up at him from his older son's hands, gnnning its old familiar grin. The same grin that had haunted his nightmares as a kid, haunted them until he had-- Outside a cold gust of wind rose, and for a moment lips with no flesh blew a long note through the old. rusty gutter outside. Petey stepped closer to his father, eyes moving uneasily to the rough attic roof through which nailheads poked. "What was that, Daddy'?" he asked as the whistle died to a guttural buzz. "Just the wind," Hal said, still looking at the monkey. Its cymbals, crescents of brass rather than full.The Monkey circles in the weak light of the one naked bulb, were moveless, perhaps a foot apart, and he added automatically, "Wind can whistle, but it can't carry a tune." Then he realized that was a saying of Uncle Will's, and a goose ran over his grave. The note came again, the wind coming off Crystal Lake in a long, droning swoop and then wavering in the gutter. Half a dozen small drafts puffed cold October air into Hal's face--God. this place was so much tike the back closet of the house in Hartford that they might all have been transported thirty years back in time. I won't think about that. But now of course it was all he could think about. In the back closet where I found that goddammed monkey in that same box. Terry. had moved away to examine a wooden crate filled with knickknacks, duck-walking because the pitch of the eaves was so sharp. "I don't like it," Petey said, and felt for Hal's hand. "Dennis can have it if he wants. Can we go, Daddy?" "Worried about ghosts, chickenguts'?" Dennis inquired. "Dennis, you stop it," Terry said absently. She picked up a waferthin cup with a Chinese pattern. "This is nice. This--" Hal saw that Dennis had found the wind-up key in the monkey's back. Terror flew through him on dark wings. "Don't do that!" It came out more sharply than he had intended, and he had snatched the monkey out of Dennis's hands before he was really aware he had done it. Dennis looked around at him, startled. Terry had also glanced back over her shoulder, and Petey looked up. For a moment they were all silent, and the wind whistled again, very low this time, like an unpleasant invitation. "I mean, it's probably broken," Hal said. It used to be broken . . . except when it wanted not to be. "Well, you didn't have to grab," Dennis said.The Monkey "Dennis, shut up" Dennis blinked and for a moment looked almost uneasy. Hal hadn't spoken to him so sharply in a tong time. Not since he had lost his job with National Aerodyne in California two years before and they had moved to Texas. Dennis decided not to push it ... for now. He turned back to the Ralston-Purina canon and began to root through it again, but the other stuff was nothing but junk. Broken toys bleeding springs and stuffings. The wind was louder now, hooting instead of whistling. The attic began to creak softly, making a noise like footsteps. "Please· Daddy'?" Petey asked, only loud enough for his father to hear. "Yeah," he said. "Terry, let's go." "I'm not through with this " "I said let's go." It was her turn to look startled. They had taken two adjoining rooms in a motel. By ten that night the boys were asleep in their room and Terry was asleep in the adults' room. She had taken two Valiums on the ride back from the home place in Casco. To keep her nerves from giving her a migraine. Just lately she took a lot of Valium. It had started around the time National Aerodyne had laid Hal off. For the last two years he had been working for Texas Instruments it was $4,000 less a year, but it was work. He told Terry they were lucky. She agreed. There were plenty of software architects drawing unemployment, he said. She agreed. The company housing in Arnette was every bit as good as the place in Fresno, he said. She agreed, but he thought her agreement to all of it was a lie. And he was losing Dennis. He could feel the kid going, achieving a premature escape velocity, so long, Dennis, bye-bye stranger, it was nice sharing this train with you. Terry said she thought the boy was smoking reefer. She smelled it sometimes. You have to talk to him, Hal. And he agreed, but so far he had not. The boys were asleep. Terry was asleep. Hal went into the bathroom and locked the door and sat down on the closed lid of the john and looked at the monkey. He hated the way it felt, that soft brown nappy fur, worn bald in spots. He hated its grin. that monkey grins just like a nigger, Uncle Will had said once, but it didn't grin like a nigger or like anything human. Its grin was all teeth, and if you wound up the key. the lips would move. the teeth would seem to get bigger, to become vampire teeth, the lips would writhe and the cymbals would bang, stupid monkey,The Monkey stupid clockwork monkey, stupid, stupid He dropped it. His hands were shaking and he dropped it. The key clicked on the bathroom tile as it struck the floor. The sound seemed very loud in the stillness. It grinned at him with its murky amber eyes, doll's eyes, filled with idiot glee, its brass cymbals poised as if to strike up a march for some band from hell. On the bottom the words MADE IN HONG KONG were stamped. "You can't be here," he whispered. "I threw you down the well when I was nine." The monkey grinned up at him. Outside in the night, a black capful of wind shook the motel. Hal's brother Bill and Bill's wife Collette met them at Uncle Will's and Aunt Ida's the next day. "Did it ever cross your mind that a death in the family is a really lousy way to renew the family connection'?" Bill asked him with a bit of a grin. He had been named for Uncle Will. Will and Bill, champions of the rodayo, Uncle Will used to say, and ruffle Bill's hair. It was one of his sayings ... like the wind can whistle but it can't carry a tune. Uncle Will had died six years before, and Aunt Ida had lived on here alone, until a stroke had taken her just the previous week. Very sudden, Bill had said when he called long distance to give Hal the news. As if he could know; as if anyone could know. She had died alone. "Yeah," Hal said. "The thought crossed my mind." They looked at the place together, the home place where they had finished growing up. Their father, a merchant mariner, had simply disappeared as if from the very, face of the earth when they were young; Bill claimed to remember him vaguely, but Hal had no memories of him at all. Their mother had died when Bill was ten and Hal eight. Aunt Ida had brought them here on a Greyhound bus which left from Hartford, and they had been raised here, and gone to college from here. This had been the place they were homesick for. Bill had stayed in Maine and now had a healthy law practice in Portland. Hal saw that Petey had wandered off toward the blackberry tangles that lay on the eastern side of the house in a mad jumble. "Stay away from there, Petey," he called. Petey looked back, questioning. Hal felt simple love for the boy rush him ... and he suddenly thought of the monkey again. "Why, Dad?" "The old well's back there someplace," Bill said. "But I'll be damned if I remember just where. Your dad's right, Petey --it's a good place to stay away from. Thorns'll do a job on you. Right, Hal?" "Right," Hat said automatically. Petey moved away, not look