This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Chapter 17, This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Chapter Seventeen




Nicole made sure I suffered acutely for betraying her and deep down maybe I was glad. When she found out what I’d told Howser and her mind was no longer confused, she played the part to the hilt, fawning over Howser all that week and making love, brassy and flamboyant as I sat at the table in the company of our blind bird Take One, the van rocking and swaying on its loose shocks as she moaned with fabled delight, causing in me a frenetic rising wave to focus my jealous rage on the thoughts of better days to come. I had a movie to make. Plus, I had my third marriage, the wedding to attend. I had my life to live.
“Well, bird,” I said to Take One as Nicole’s shuddering climax swept over me like a sonic boom. But I couldn’t think of anything to say. I was distracted.
The bird just sat there, looking very dull and dim-witted, its sewed-on wings fluttering in a light breeze. I heard the whirr of the electric wheelchair as Brittany came forward to try on the shorts for the bird that she had made. The crude homemade shorts would not stay on and Brittany moaned loudly and garishly as she’d so often heard from Johnny. She threw the shorts to the ground and shook her fist to the sky like a well-rehearsed pantomime. Then she put her hands to her hips and sneered and started gesturing wildly, trying to convey something to me, her filthy boobs waving unruly signals from her ribcage.
I took a rag from Take One’s nest and from the thermos soaked it with ice water and got up to start washing that grime off, but she groaned and crossed her arms until the check book came out. After signing the check, I washed her and she slipped her shorts off and spread her legs, resting them on the arm rests of the wheelchair. I climbed on, having pushed my pants to my ankles, and purposely knocked the joystick until we’d worked our way across the sandy lot in stages to the van, Brittany shrieking so loudly in my ear that it thoroughly killed my inclination, so that once the wheelchair was knocking into the rear panel of the van, we were both seized in the throes of unmistakable pretense.
I was very upset, jealous, and I started pounding my fist on the van as hard as I could.
From inside, Howser giggled and said, peering through the window, “Dude, you’re going to wake Nicole up. You crazy nut. Where’s Johnny? He’s gonna be pissed if he sees you screwing his squeeze.” He kept looking through the window, half like a homely pervert, watching.
I faked the end, as a way to put some finality into the transaction, then pulled my pants back up as Brittany, mumbling incoherently, drove the wheelchair away in the direction of her discarded shorts.
I was staring down at my feet. I looked up and Howser was still looking at me from the window of the van. He smiled like an innocent child. If anyone deserved our French angel Nicole it was Howser all right. I knew that. In time I was hoping that Nicole would see it, too. Of that I was convinced. It made me feel good about myself. By offering her I sensed that I had reached an unknown level of maturity. I felt stoic and hardboiled, typecast for Big John Wayne to come crawling out of the grave. This is what I was thinking as I decided to go for the second jog of the day down the frontage road all the way to the bridge and back. And for the second time of the day Brittany followed me in the wheelchair--with the checkbook just in case I needed a sudden break. I was experiencing some wild, breakthrough ideas as I ran and I felt disappointed that I couldn’t relay them as one would to a secretary as Brittany cruised alongside me in the wheelchair, not forgetting her passion for bird spotting.
It occurred to me then. I remembered. A couple of months ago when I’d first met Brittany, wasn’t this what I had imagined? A constant (semi-nude) companion to be at my every beck and call? I felt blessed. If anyone could see my good fortune it might be Nicole and I planned on telling her-—when Howser wasn’t looking--after my run. But suddenly I stopped dead in my tracks. It occurred to me. Holy shit.
“Brittany!”
She hesitated, but then remembered that she was supposed to be deaf, and resumed driving.
“Brittany, damnit, I know you can hear me. Is today Sunday?”
She ignored me and kept going, driving away from me, even started to hum to herself.
I jogged up to her and put my hand on her shoulder and she let out a wild frightened shriek, then pretended to be relieved once she saw that it was me, and gave a grunt.
“Brittany, stop this. Is today Sunday? It is, isn’t it?”
She stared at my lips and cocked her head curiously like a chimpanzee.
“Listen, stop it and tell me. It’s Sunday, isn’t it?”
She closed her eyes and reached out with her fingertips to touch my mouth. I took her by the wrist and said, “You don’t answer me, no more money for you.”
Her eyes opened and she said clearly. “Yes, today’s Sunday.”
“Was that so hard?”
I turned around and started running back to the Chicken Coop. I was all in a panic. Today was my wedding day. My future was at stake.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I got to get going.”
“Well, don’t we have time for a quickie?”

Back at the Chicken Coop before leaving I told Howser what scenes to shoot and that Johnny could direct if he wanted to.
“Johnny? No one can understand him. He’s hopeless, dude.”
“Well, it makes him happy.”
“Since when do you care about Johnny?” His face broke into a smile. “Oh, I get it. You feel guilty about screwing his squeeze, don’t you? I get it.”
“Is Nicole still sleeping in the van?” I asked.
“I’ll go wake her.”
“It’s OK. You don’t have to.”
“I thought you were going into town.”
“You don’t have to wake her. She can go with me. Just let her sleep. I need to get going.”
He grimaced slightly and hung his head. “Why are you going into town again?”
“Wallmart.”
“Why don’t you support the local economy and shop in Cucumber?”
“Too expensive, our budget. Don’t worry, I’ll be back later this evening.”
As I started for the van, he went around and opened the back and tried to wake her up. But it was useless. She was dead to the world.
I got in the driver’s side and Howser, looking somewhat agitated, walked up and said, “Let me go with you. There’s some things I need to get, too.”
“No, stay here and do those scenes. It’ll be fun.”
“Well, let me try and wake her again.”
“Howser, she’s fine. Let her sleep. I need to get going.”
He looked at the ground and with pursed lips said, “Yeah, I suppose.”
I heard something like a toenail raking the inside of the van and when I turned around I saw that Moonshine was having one of his nightmares with Nicole’s arm draped around his chest. At first I smiled. Then I thought about it.
I turned and looked at Howser. I said, “Howser, was my dog in here when you were getting busy with Nicole?”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s disgusting. Doing it with the dog right there?”
“He didn’t see anything. He was sleeping. That dog’s always sleeping.”
“God damnit, Howser.”
“It’s just a dog, dude.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Then he studied me and started grinning, like it dawned on him, and he started saying that he knew what it was all about, that I was still in love with Nicole and I was jealous and mad that she chose him to come back to and not me. He was grinning and kind of laughing at me, smirking, and honestly I felt an urge to go out and punch him in the face, to break that smile.
Instead, I started driving away.
As I drove away I forced a laugh, as with wicked delight, thinking how Nicole would wake up and stumble into the backyard, confetti in the air, pelted by rice, just as I was sucking the cake crumbs off my new bride’s mustache. That’s how crazy and confused my mind was becoming.
I looked in the rearview mirror and Howser was standing there, appearing very lonely, like the child I’d been seeing in him all day.
I drove all the way to the bridge before I turned around, plagued with guilt.
Howser was still standing there. He said, “Did she wake up?”
“No, she’s still sleeping.”
I helped him carry her out by the legs to the tent. As we muscled her into the tent and laid her down onto the sleeping bag, with eyes closed she said, “I lof’ you.” Howser and I looked at each other, feeling embarrassed for the other.


Alright, so two hours later I’m in my bedroom at my mom’s all alone in the house and I’m getting into the tux that I was fitted for two weeks previous and the thing hangs on me like a bed sheet draped around a stick. I mean, I look ridiculous. But I figure everyone will be looking at the pretty bride and not at me, so I’m comfortable after about three pills to go ahead with it, or so I thought until I get to the door and realize I have to actually walk out, so I go back inside and put the clothes I’d been wearing that fit me, the slacks and shirt I found a few days before hanging in Old Man Berkwell’s closet. I go to the fridge and have a few beers to get seriously calm. I feel it sweep over me. I’m happy. I feel deeply loved. I drink more beer and I find myself drifting out onto the sidewalk, as if carried, held aloft by this grace and love. I’m walking down the street, smiling, listening to the mourning doves coo in the late summer breeze.
I’m somewhere down the street, a handful of pills later, and I notice a party going on, several cars parked at the curb and in the driveway. I’m lonely, so I go in. I know this house. I’ve been here before. There’s a display of food, tastefully done, lots of it, ham, coleslaw, slices of cheese, platter of veggies, stacks of paper plates, wine, vodka, whiskey. I make myself a drink and look closely at the cake and understand that this must be a wedding party. I drift out towards the commotion in the back yard. It is a wedding. Two people are standing at the altar. Both I know. It’s Dorothy and the guy when he turns his head--it’s hard to place at first (my mind’s a haze)--but I see that it’s my mom’s old boyfriend Roger, the guy whose car I left on the highway a few weeks before. Dorothy is sobbing lightly. She does not look radiant; she looks somehow garish. Still, a girl needs to find happiness and maybe this is one way of securing it--dressing up like a stuffed doll and keeping it ceremonious. But then, you know, like a prick of light in the back of my brain, I sense danger—-people, there’s something wrong here! I can sense it. Come on, man, think! I keep repeating to myself.
It dawns on me and I start screaming, “Nooooo!!! Stop the wedding! Stop the wedding!!!” I can’t move. I want to rush up to the altar, the card table, but I can’t move. I’m paralyzed with fear. This was supposed to be my wedding. This was going to get me a house and a piece of comfort all my own, that eventually I’d share with Nicole and my kids. I thought of all that money in the escrow account. I knew, messed up as I was, that the money would not be there much longer if this wedding were to continue. I was crying out like a bird, like the boy from The Tin Drum. “Someone, please, somebody help me!!”
Then I black out.
When I wake up, I’m looking up into the sky. It looks cloudy and dark, like a storm a-brewing. I hear the crackle of a campfire. I figure I must’ve made my way back to the Chicken Coop and I’m on the ground by the fire pit. I sit up and start choking and coughing. My eyes sting and instinctively I duck back to the floor to get out of the smoke. I see by the legs of the furniture and the stained green carpet that I’m on the living room floor back at my mom’s and there’s a fire raging in the kitchen. Oh, my God…Now what the fuck did I do? It’s the first thing I think.
I crawl around on my hands and knees, instinctively moving in the direction of my mom’s bedroom. The door’s closed. I work the doorknob, but the door won’t open. I’m coughing and trying to keep my eyes shut against the smoke.
Somehow I know she’s in there. I hurl myself against the door and bit by bit it budges open. There’d been towels shoved under the door for some reason.
“Mom! Mom! We need to get out of the house! The house is on fire!”
She’s lying on the floor on her back, surrounded by several empty beer cans, as if placed to outline her body like police tape, and there’s a bottle of brandy there, too. If she’d been religious, there’d have been a bible placed somewhere on her chest, with her hands folded in quiet contemplation.
“Mom, hey, Mom!! Wake up!! Wake up!! The house is on fire! We need to get out of the house!! The house is on fire!!”
She won’t come to; she’s passed out deep under the lapping swells of a quiet summer lake. I’m getting close to panic. I take her by the legs and try to drag her towards the door, but the fire’s really going now, raging, making strange eerie noises. Every time I stand I have to immediately crouch back down because of the smoke that’s now pouring into my mom’s bedroom. I leap to the window and try to open it, but it won’t budge. I see the pink padded two-pound dumbbells, the impulsive purchase from a faded health kick, and they’re lying in the corner and with them I break open the window. The fresh air comes rushing in. I start dragging my mom by the legs to the window. I hear voices. A man’s voice. I understand that it’s the next-door neighbor, Mr. Smith; he’s standing by the window offering to help. “I’m here, I’m right here, bring her to the window and I’ll let her down.” I get her to the window and quickly place the bedspread over the cut glass, so she won’t get cut, and I start heaving her with all my might. I got her under the arms, but man, it’s something else. She’s heavy, which is strange to me now looking back on it, because she’d lost so much weight-—she was thin as a finger—-but it was as if another force was trying to keep her in the room. Mr. Smith sees that I’m having trouble and suddenly he runs into the house and he’s in the room with me helping heave her onto the window frame. He jumps out of the window and I push the rest of her out and he starts dragging her away to safety.
As I’m about to crawl out, I turn and look back into the room and I experience a sudden calm. The smoke is billowing into the room in angry shapes, but the sound of the fire drops out all together, and I cock my head in curiosity. I realize--it floods my whole being--that there is nothing to fear. Dead or alive I sense that I’m more than half way there.