'Like it wanted you to wind it up,' Hal said.
Pete nodded violently. 'It isn't really broken, is it, Dad?'
'Sometimes it is,' Hal said, looking over his son's shoulder at the monkey. 'But sometimes it still works.'
'I kept wanting to go over there and wind it up. It was so quiet, and I thought, I can't, it'll wake up Daddy, but I still wanted to, and I went over and I . . . I touched it and I hate the way it feels . . . but I liked it, too . . . and it was like it was saying, Wind me up, Petey, we'll play, your father isn't going to wake up, he's never going to wake up at all, wind me up, wind me up . . .'
The boy suddenly burst into tears.
'It's bad. I know it is. There's something wrong with it. Can't we throw it out, Daddy? Please?'
The monkey grinned its endless grin at Hal. He could feel Petey's tears between them, Late-morning sun glinted off the monkey's brass cymbals--the light reflected upward and put sun streaks on the motel's plain white stucco ceiling.
'What time did your mother think she and Dennis would be back, Petey?'
'Around one.' He swiped at his red eyes with his shirt sleeve, looking embarrassed at his tears. But he wouldn't look at the monkey. 'I turned on the TV,' he whispered. 'And I turned it up loud.'
'That was all right, Petey.'
How would it have happened? Hal wondered. Heart attack? An embolism, like my mother? What? It doesn't really matter, does it?
And on the heels of that, another, colder thought' Get rid of it, he, says. Throw it out. But can it be gotten rid of? Ever?
The monkey grinned mockingly at him, its cymbals held a foot apart. Did it suddenly come to life on the night Aunt Ida died? he wondered suddenly. Was that the last sound she heard, the muffled jang-jang-jang of the monkey beating its cymbals together up in the black attic while the wind whistled along the drainpipe?
'Maybe not so crazy,' Hal said slowly to his son. 'Go get your flight bag, Petey.'
Petey looked at him uncertainly. 'What are we going to do?'
Maybe it can be got rid of. Maybe permanently, maybe just for a while . . . a long while or a short while Maybe it's just going to come back and come back and that's all this is about . . . but maybe I--we--can say good-bye to it, for a long time. It took twenty years to come back this time. It took twenty y,ears to get out of the well . . .
'We're going to go for a ride,' Hal said. He felt fairly calm, but somehow too heavy inside his skin. Even his eyeballs seemed to have gained weight. 'But first I want you to take your flight bag out there by the edge of the parking lot and find three or four good-sized rocks. Put them inside the bag and bring it back to me. Got it'?'
Understanding flickered in Petey's eyes. 'All right, Daddy.'
