Chapter Five

I listened for monkeys, but heard none, that part of the day when the wise things rest. I’d had my pink slumber, and so I forged ahead, more and more disoriented. Maybe I’d just never been so close to so many goers, their boxes everywhere under the spreading branches now, but also their blackly roasted go-ways, their cropped meadows, one each to go with every box. Boxes inzide boxes, remember, and pink inzide, and very cold. So much noise! And not just the usual male shouts and female wheedles (and all the everything in-between), but slams and screeches, roars and hisses, squeals and rattles, sudden bangs and unexplained splashes, hoots and explosions, the local trees not inured to it but shaking, gripping the ground in terror. I couldn’t begin to fathom the goer vocalizations—which of them were joy? Which fear? You-mens! They marched about alone or in twos and threes. Was there no affinity among cousins here, no troupe to run with?

Go, Beep, go!

Branch to branch, tree to tree, that was the monkey way, sun on my back, sense of the ground climbing, views looking back: there was the ocean, which had never been so far from me. Ahead, plenty of green but also that wall of noise, and below so many boxes, so many meddle rollers. Suddenly I was at an edge sharp as a beach. But there was no beach, no water, just a break, one of the goer go-ways, the biggest and widest I’d ever seen, wide as the crocodile river, no blue pretend vines provided, yet sun at my back. The river-wide trail was right in my path to the smoking mountain and to the sunrise, and to my heritage, that lost troupe.

There was wisdom in the family about crossing goer trails: do not. Unless where branches touched or a vine extended, and not one of the lightning ones! The you-men bluelines were safe and much used. Some of the oldest uncles remembered their advent and considered them proof of the goodness of you-mens.

I ranged that way, ranged this way, but found no blueline, and no trees great enough to reach their branches all the way over—the meddle rollers roaring or sputtering or whistling past, some of them enormous like I’d never seen and smelling like fire had burned them.

My belly rumbled. I could locate none of the leaves we monkeys like. No fruit. The trees in this you-men forest were so much smaller than in the true forest and not so many kinds. Overhead great birds roared—I winced, I ducked, but they only roared and rumbled, glinting meddle roarbirds that left their straight lines of cloud, maybe farther away than I could tell, which would make them too big for the monkey imagination, which is vast, I tell you.

The pineapple called me. The scramch behind the ears. The goer tween, Inga. I slept in the biggest tree I could find, the farthest from any goer boxes. Nothing to eat but ants, and not the good ones.

In the morning, I peed my hands and feet and thanked—as monkeys do daily—thanked the clouds in both sky and in puddles, gave them thanks that I’d lived through the night, then retraced my route, returned to the sweet trees above Inga’s box. I waited above the stone flats where she kept her sitting contraption, watched the side of the biggest box, the mysterious dar that had swung to allow our escape. And after a long time, the dar did open, and with a cry, here she came.

Inga!

“I won’t!” she cried.

“Sweedie, our flight,” the adult female called from inzide the box, almost begging.

“Inga,” I said clearly.

Her ropes of hair flew, she searched the branches for me, found my eye. The adult female, clearly Inga’s momma, was close behind her, bearing the small one. Inga put a finger to her lips. She made happy eyes and showed her teeth, burbled with that you-men laughter that even monkeys like.

“What is so funny,” her mother said.

“There’s a monkey,” Inga said, and pointed her pink finger right at me.

“What on Aarth,” her mother said.

“It is I, Beep!” I said. “Aarth is my cousin, if that’s what you said.”

Even the baby saw me.

“Squirrel monkey,” the mother said warmly. “Ooooh. They aren’t usually solo. Oooh, ooh. Keep your eyes peeled, there will be more.”

Ugh, eyes peeled?

“I’d like some fruit,” I said clearly.

“Oh, how charming,” said the mother. “Hoo-hoo, monkey.” She’d wiped most of yesterday’s blood from her lips, but at the edges of the enormous mouth some remained (probably she’d caught and eaten a bird). Also part of her outer wrappings had come loose and her poor chest looked more distended than ever, wrapped in a bright banner of some kind. Somemonkey once said they look like us, but come on: they do not.

“I call him Mr. Nilsson,” Inga said.

Her mother laughed, very much like the girl’s laugh, bubbles popping in a tumble-brook. “Well, when we’re back in Nyork we’ll have to read Pippi Longstocking again,” she said.

“‘I am the strongest girl in the world,’” Inga said and lifted her arms like a male punk-monkey would do, why?

Because it was true, I supposed—she was the strongest girl in the world. Look how she had carried me in that box full of pretend animals, unimaginably heavy!

“I will attest to your offspring’s strength,” I said. “Also to her courage, which has emboldened me. Still, there is the question of some fruit, if you would oblige me.”

“Oh, ha-ha!” the mother said. “Ooh-ooh-ooh, ahh-ahh-ahh! Well. He seems friendly enough, but please keep him away from Willie.”

“But, Mom.”

“It’s your hour with Willie. I have my thing on Zooom. It’s just till noon. Mommy’s going to get you two a snack, then have a rest. Okay? You watch Willie out here on the paddy-o, I rest.”

“Just as we do it,” I called down.

Inga’s mother ignored my pleasantry, put the baby down on the stones. He wailed. Momma disappeared behind that blue dar, which cracked just enough for her to enter the box dwelling. The baby stopped wailing. He reached from his sitting position, suddenly scooted himself bottom-wise to a pretend meddle goer. He pushed on the center of a circle thereon. It made a comical sound.

“Beep,” the baby said clearly. “Beep.”

“Yes, Beep,” I shouted down. “I am Beep, Monkey.”

“Beep-beep,” the baby said.

“Beep-beep,” the girl said.

The baby pushed the button. I understood the onomatopoetic nature of the boy’s locution, that it was not my name—but.

I made some noise myself. “I am Beep,” I said clearly.

But Inga only laughed.

Could I make the sound they were making? Imitate the toy? Sort of. And patted my chest.

“Beep-beep,” the little boy said.

And I didn’t say Beep, my name, but made the sound the toy made as best I could, patted my chest.

“Beep,” the girl said, looking up at me.

I beeped. I patted my chest. Patience, she was no monkey.

“Beep-beep,” the little one said.

“I am Beep, Monkey,” I said. But that did no good. I made the toy noise, pointed at my chest the way the girl had pointed when she called herself Inga.

“You are Beep,” she said. Joy, it is visible even upon the you-mens.

I gave a congratulatory and self-introductory speech, formal locution, I’m afraid, the level of this social moment eluding me, but Inga laughing all the while, the little boy noticing me, too.

“Beep,” the girl said pointing at me.

I made the noise and pointed at me, too.

“Beep,” the baby said.

Inga pointed at herself. “Inga,” she said.

“Yes, Inga,” I said.

“Ooh-ooh-ooh,” she said, mocking me as her mother had.

“Beep-beep,” the baby said.

“You are Beep,” Inga said.

I was exhausted. I was mocked. But I was understood. I was unpanicked, only cautious. This was the strongest girl in the world and also very bright.

The dumb adult female returned with a pink flat sort of shiny rock, round as the sun and covered with clever foods. She’d forgotten me entirely. “Time for my Zooom,” she said, incomprehensible. “Please feed Willie his snack.” And she hurried back into the boxes that were this troupe’s dwelling.

“Beep-beep,” said the baby. He was only making a sound.

“Beep,” said Inga. She, by contrast, was saying my name: “Beep, Beep, Beep.”

I swung down a little closer. I did not want to be back inzide that dwelling. My freedom had tasted good. But so had the pineapple. On the crystal disk I saw only one familiar food, a redsharp, we called it, often stolen from the growers, this one torn into pieces with the neatest straight lines, how? Otherwise the only things on offer were white squares of spongey matter with purple innards and brown gook leaking out. Also orange sticks that I took to be injured carrots.

“You want samweedge,” the girl said to the baby.

He and I made similar assenting noises.

She laughed at that—that I could imitate the wee-bee—handed him a white square.

And she held a fat piece of the redsharp up to me. “Pebber?” she said. “You like red pebber? These are my fayb-fayborite.”

I was wary and must have looked it—not about Inga, just all the noise, the adult female apparently near, the gruff male unaccounted for, this strange understanding. Inga tossed the redsharp piece, pebber, as she called it, to the stones of the paddy-o. There it glistened, beckoned. Okay, so I bounced down and grabbed the redsharp fragment and brought it back up to my branch, used my two orange hands, now pleasantly pissed upon, to politely feed the morsel into my teeth.

And Inga picked up her own piece. Giggling, she ate it the same way.

Yes, mocked!

So I mocked her, patting at my not-hair the way she patted at her long ropes of hair. And she wasn’t as sensitive to the teasing as the aunts might have been but brought me over a samweedge, she’d called it, the white square oozing its purple blood. I took it straight from her hand—we could both be brave—unexpectedly soft, both hand and so-called samweedge. I sniffed the samweedge, to her apparent delight. I licked the blood—not salt as I’d expected, but sweeter than sweet. The brown ooze was the salty stuff, and I licked that, too, mysterious substance, but deep and delicious. Now the white square, soft, like textured air. She just bit her samweedge, so I bit mine, and the flavors in combination were. They were.

They were afterlife.

The goop got all stuck in my mouth, and the purple blood sticky in my hands—it was honey, purple honey, and tasted like fruit. These goers, maybe smarter than a monkey gave them credit for.

No, they were only fortunate.

Pointing seemed to work. I pointed at the next samweedge. Inga lifted it, handed it to baby, who smeared it mostly on his face. So babies were babies. I pointed at the next samweedge, this you-men plenty. Inga picked it up, folded it in some way, stuffed it all in her mouth, laughing around it. But picked up the next samweedge and held it up to me. I grabbed it summarily and ate it same. And more redsharp—nothing like what I’d ever tasted. And the orange sticks, hard as nuts and crunchy, no name forthcoming. I licked the purple from my hands, ecstatic:

I’d found a friend, one who’d maybe help a monkey cross the goer’s go-way.