The Monkey

     'I told him to get the dope out of the house, too.'

     'You did'?' Now she sounded apprehensive. 'How did he take it? What did he say?'

     'Come on, Terry! What could he say? You're fired?'

     'Hal, what's the matter with you'? You're not like this--what s wrong?

     'Nothing,' he said. thinking of the monkey locked away in his Samsonite. Would he hear it if it began to clap its cymbals'? Yes, he surely would. Muffled, but audible. Clapping doom for someone, as it had for Beulah, Johnny McCabe, Uncle Will's dog Daisy. Jang-jang-jang, is it you, Hal? 'I've just been under a strain.'

     'l hope that's all it is. Because I don't like you this way.'

     'No'?' And the words escaped before he could stop them: he didn't even want to stop them. 'So pop a Valium and everything will look okay again.'

     He heard her draw breath in and let it out shakily. She began to cry then. He could have comforted her (maybe), but there seemed to be no comfort in him. There was too much terror. It would be better when the monkey was gone again, gone for good. Please God, gone for good.

     He lay wakeful until very late, until morning began to gray the air outside. But he thought he knew what to do.

     Bill had found the monkey the second time.

     That was about a year and a half after Beulah McCaffery had been pronounced Dead at the Scene. It was summer. Hal had just finished kindergarten.

     He came in from playing and his mother called, 'Wash your hands, Senior, you are feelthy like a peeg.' She was on the porch, drinking an iced tea and reading a book. It was her vacation; she had two weeks.

     Hal gave his hands a token pass under cold water and printed dirt on the hand towel. 'Where's Bill?'

     'Upstairs. You tell him to clean his side of the room. It's a mess.

     Hal, who enjoyed being the messenger of unpleasant news in such matters, rushed up. Bill was sitting on the floor. The small down-the-rabbit-hole door leading to the back closet was ajar. He had the monkey in his hands.

     'That's busted,' Hal said immediately.

     He was apprehensive, although he barely remembered coming back from the bathroom that night and the monkey suddenly beginning to clap its cymbals. A week or so after that, he had had a bad dream about the monkey and Beulah he couldn't remember exactly what and had awakened screaming, thinking for a moment that the soft weight on his chest was the monkey, that he would open his eyes and see it grinning down at him. But of course the soft weight had only been his pillow, clutched with panicky tightness. His mother came in to soothe him with a drink of water and two chalky-orange baby aspirin, those Valium of childhood's troubled times. She thought it was the fact of Beulah's death that had caused the nightmare. So it was, but not in the way she thought.

     He barely remembered any of this now, but the monkey still scared him, particularly its cymbals. And its teeth.

     'I know that,' Bill said, and tossed the monkey aside. 'It's stupid.' It landed on Bill's bed, staring up at the ceiling, cymbals poised. Hal did not like to see it there. 'You want to go down to Teddy's and get Popsicles?'

     'I spent my allowance already,' Hal said. 'Besides, Mom says you got to clean up your side of the room.'

     'I can do that later.' Bill said. 'And I'll loan you a nickel, if you want.' Bill was not above giving Hal an Indian rope burn sometimes, and would occasionally trip him up or punch him for no particular reason, but mostly he was okay.

     'Sure,' Hal said gratefully. 'I'll just put the busted monkey back in the closet first, okay?'

     'Nah,' Bill said, getting up. 'Let's go-go-go.'

     Hal went. Bill's moods were changeable, and if he paused to put the monkey away, he might lose his Popsicle. They went down to Teddy's and got them, and not just any Popsicles, either, but the rare blueberry ones.