Chapter Six

Much activity in Inga’s howzz, as she called it, a difficult concept, but more than a cave dwelling, for objects were stored there. I could suss every sound her sadly small troupe made, lazed on my branch, awaited my moment. At one point the blue wall split open (dar, dar) and Inga leapt out into the sun, sat in her contraption, arms folded hard across her chest, lips pushed out big (sign of unhappiness universal), then flowed water from her eyes, wailed. Curious. After a long interval her mother came out, patted her comfortingly—and I remembered: when there’s a new one, the first child must go. Inga was being pushed out of the troupe! But no, after a while the gruff male appeared, not so gruff now, also patted her back.

“All goothings come to an end,” he said.

Ha-ha, hopeless you-men. The trees did not come to an end. The ocean did not come to an end. Monkeys did not come to an end.

But surprise, Inga liked this big male and let him lift her up in his (proportionately very short) arms like a tiny one and rock her. He made his wind-voice so sweet and said some long thing to her, high voice, higher, low voice, lower, all smooth as water pouring, and gentle. And she stopped her wailing and snuggled to him and he said something more, that wind voice of theirs.

“Promeez?” she said.

“Yes, we come back for E-stir. We wub it here. Pura Vida.”

“Pura vida,” Inga repeated soulfully.

And he left her, the blue wall closing behind him.

“Inga,” I hissed from my branch.

Nothing.

“Inga, Inga, Inga, Inga, Inga,” I said.

Still nothing.

I crept down my branch, shook it.

Inga startled, looked up, found me there. “Oh, monkey!” she said. Then, gratifyingly, “Beeeeeep!”

But just then the adult male popped out. His name, apparently, was Dabby. He had a blue-crystal disc for her, covered with more foods, more samweedges, small squares. Not many uncles will share. Maybe affection, or then again maybe competition with the adult female. I began to feel some respect for him. He put the foods on the tree piece in front of Inga. She made her lip big again. Perhaps she’d had enough food.

Not I.

“Sweedie,” said Dabby. “Sweedie please.”

“I’m not going,” she said.

But Dabby just grunted and clucked, some kind of private knowing. And heaved himself back into their dwelling through the dar, which seemed to open magically at his touch, a turning of his thick wrist.

“Food,” I said from on high.

Inga understood! She held up a curious item, long and white, perhaps a mushrooom stem, but drooping. “Cheeeestick?” she said, offering it.

Ugh. I said, “Is there pineapple? I think I’d prefer that. I was most pleased by the pineapple. And you’ve taught me to look beneath the exterior of that estimable fruit next time they are happened upon by troupe or just I, Beep, and not count on the whitefurfaces to supply it. Sweet, delicious, toothsome.”

“Hoo hoo hoo,” she said, like a tinybaby learning monkey. “Ah, ah, ah, ahhhh!”

I took the cheeeestick, texture like a slug but no life in it. I expected it to pop open the way a lizard does when bitten, yum, but it only severed and a dense piece sat upon my tongue, clammy. Well, when on adventure, be adventurous. I bit into the thick excrescence, chewed, swallowed. Sweet, very salty, mostly salt, unctuous. That last comes from animals, usually, but this was no animal and never had been. Mystery upon mystery! To please her, I finished it. It sat hard in my stomach.

The girl forgot me, made that big lip again, wailed, shoved the disc of foods away from her onto the stones of the paddy-o. It was pineapple in those magical cubes! Offered thus! I dropped from my perch, retrieved a chunk, stuck it in my monkey mouth, then quickly retrieved as many more as I could, couldn’t leap carrying them so stuffed my maw till my cheeks bulged, lunged for my branch. But I needn’t have mistrusted Inga. She was delighted once again. In fact, she leapt up off her contraption and fell comically to all fours—no tail! Or was it hidden in her wrappings? And on all fours like a you-know-what (a monkey!), she picked up pineapple chunks and stuffed her mouth.

Capable of learning.

And she laughed and I laughed and she tossed me up a round fruit I didn’t recognize, sharp taste, hot as a rock in sun.

“You don’t like rabbish?”

I, Beep, did not like rabbish, spat it out dramatically.

Inga burbled with you-men mirth, tossed up the last chunk of pineapple. I gobbled that. Then she threw another cheeeestick. I tossed it back, hard, beaned her. Good companion, she shrieked with delight, shied the next rabbish at me, hard red little thing. I caught it easily—my game, after all, just substitute pooop—waited for her to pick up the next one and while she was bent, beaned her.

She rubbed her head, then laughed like a javelina, ee-see-ee-see! And a compliment, monkey style: “Good one!”

I jumped down, grabbed part of the white cake the samweedge was made in, glob of purple, but just as I got it in my mouth the blue wall cracked and the wall of the howzz swung open, dar. I leapt sideways and climbed a meddle tube to the hot top of the straight lines they lived among, and from there into my tree. Because through the door came the abandoning you-men mother, baby on her hip.

“What on Aarth!” she said. “Inga, what on Aarth! You’ll clean this ubb. You’ll clean this ubb immediately!”

“It’s that monkey!” Inga said. And pointed right at me.

“Yes, it was I,” I said. “I, Beep. I take full responsibility, and can explain. I leapt down in search of pineapple and ubbset that precarious disc of foods so that it fell to the stones there, the paddy-o, if I might.” Monkey mendacity would have been hopeless: my hands were dripping purple, crumbs of the white cake still decorated my chest.

“Awww, monkey. So cute!” the mother said. “But such a mess. Hoo-hoo-hoo!”

“Beeeeep,” said the baby. “Beep-beep!”

“Inga, take the baby,” Momma said, suddenly remembering him, as suddenly forgetting me.

And just like that, Inga took the baby, bounced him, and he was all happy again.

Meanwhile Momma disappeared through the dar, which was a crack in the wall one took advantage of at will, it seemed, that quick and twisty hand gesture.

Inga scanned the canopy, found me on my branch, and stuck her long tongue out at me. “Eee-eee-eee,” she said.

Her monkeytalk was poor.

“Let’s try that again,” I said. “If you’re making fun, you say, Monkey is a slug. Try that. Monkey is a slug.”

“Hoo-hoo, hee-hee, ahh-ahh!” Inga said. That tongue again. Well, she could say slug, at least.

The mother popped back out with a bright blue piece of beach refuse, perfect rectangle, used it to wipe up the purple honey, placed rabbishes back on the disc, stray pieces of pineapple, several cheeeesticks.

“Now sweedie,” she said. “Don’t feed the monkey. And come inzide if he’s a bother. They’re cute but they are wild animals and unbredictable. Still, the baby will like to watch him. Just careful. I am inzide packing. We’re almost done. Your father is on his work Zooom now. We’ll be on our way in two hours.”

And with that, she disappeared through the blue wall once again, Dabby’s food in hand, confiscated, yes: clearly an intratroupe competition.

Inga was leaving! I had to communicate. I called her name, impossible to vocalize, but I tried: “Eeee-ah.”

“Beeee-eeep.”

Formal mode: “Eeee-ah, dear female, I journeyed many a day and many a night from here in the direction of sunrise unfailing, but came to the blighted path your meddle rollers trample so constantly, six deep, such roaring. I need your help in effecting a crossing. Is there a way for a monkey to effect a crossing? That is my question.”

“Hoo-hoo-hoo, slug-slug,” she said. And indicated I should come down and join her.

Cautiously, aware of the grown humans behind the blue wall and the suddenness of the dar, I approached.

“Beep-beep,” the baby said, smug little thing, waving his hands wildly.

“You’ll be abandoned, too, one day,” I told him.

Under another of the sitting contraptions I spotted a forgotten piece of pineapple, leapt and feinted, scurried crabwise, got it, couldn’t stop myself, plunked it in my mouth, leapt to the stiff-legged slab of wood directly in front of baby and girl.

“Good monkey!” she said.

“Yes, I try,” I said, could not have said it more clearly. “But Eeee-ah, I need your help. I need your help to cross the goer go-trail.”

“Cutest monkey,” Inga said. I let her scramch my ear. The baby held out its little swollen hand. I had meant to let him scramch my ear, instead endured a mild pummeling, then a tugging of fur.

But I, Beep, could endure anything if it would help me communicate.

I pondered. I inspected. The baby—he had his toy vehicle in hand and then mouth.

“Trugg,” his sister said fondly.

Several more truggs lay tossed on the ground by the meddle fire receptacle (these horrors of you-men ingenuity always smell of incinerated animals—and in that moment, perfect clarity, I recalled one of the old uncles saying the you-mens raised enormous animals, gave these animals to their gods in fire, incomprehensible). I picked up the toy rollers, brought them to the slab in front of girl and baby.

“Trugg,” she said to me, also fond.

I rolled the little trugg, rolled the little other.

“Carr,” she said.

I made trugg and carr pass each other. I did it again and again. I pointed to myself. I pointed to the vehicles, to the go-way I’d implied.

Inga took sudden interest—I was no baby. “Monkey, what are you saying?”

“I need help crossing the big trail, could I say it any plainer?”

Blank you-men look. I pointed to myself. I pointed to the toy rollers. I rolled them this way and that. I repeated my phrase: “I need help to cross the big trail. Do you know the big trail? It stands between me and my quest.” Pointing, rolling, implying the go-way with eyes back and forth, narrating need.

“You want to come with us?” Inga said. “Oooh! You want to come with?”

I showed so much happiness at that that even Inga understood: “You do want to come with!” she cried.

“Yes, with you through the forest a ways, not far, and then with your help over the furious black trail, where once having crossed I can push on toward the sunrise, resume my quest.”

“Okay,” she said, finger to her lips. “I’ll get my stuffee carrier.”

That cage I’d been in. She hefted the baby onto her hip, went inzide the you-men living box through the blue wall. I raced back to my branch, peed till there wasn’t another drop, just casting it to the breeze. I didn’t pee my hands and feet because I’d be in her territory, and a monkey has manners. I shat, just whatever would come out. A monkey prepares.

Shortly she was back with the carrier, as she’d called it.

She put it on the wood plane, tavle, it was called. Inzide the carrier were several pretend animals. I climbed in with them. Inga arranged them around me, a warm, agreeable bunch, all those pretend eyes seeming to see, all those pretend hands so useless. But who was I to judge? I’d played with a stick as a child, even given it a name: Stickens.

“Just be very quiet,” she said. Finger to her lips.

I put my own finger to my own lips.

I was pleased I’d cheered her up.

Not long and every bite of her snack shared, the baby sleeping, I among my pretend brethren nearly so, Dabby appeared. “All loaded,” he said so loudly, yet somehow gently. And then, “Oh, jeez your stuffees, sweedie.”

“They go on my lap,” Inga said.

“On your lap it is,” said Dabby, who, I saw, was still of vital age. He scooped up the baby careless of its waking, but it did not wake, just grabbed a fistful of the gruff male’s wrapping like anymonkey might. I felt a queer wave of affinity, all of us with our fists in one another’s fur.

Inga, strongest girl in the world, picked up the stuffee carrier and she and I were a we, sense of sympathetic communication flowing between us silent. She swung me and my fake compatriots off the tavle and (wonderful swooping sensation!) swung us into their dwelling, through its now lifeless rectilinear spaces, finally down a long interior trail and through a tall dar and back outzide, where a rolling machine—a grown-up carr—stood up high, a certain shine and animation. The baby was now shrieking, having been pressed through an opening behind one of the vehicle’s squeaking wings (four, like a dragonfly), and tied brutally into a sitting contraption mounted inzide. The baby stopped his caterwauling when Inga got into the machine beside him, total change of weather, the powerful Inga effect, kindest girl in the world, swinging me and the other stuffees onto her lap, strabbing us to her in some way, then clamping down her arms protectively.

Soon the adults were onboard, and soon there was a roar and strange howling, then movement, a lurching and swinging, all of us being freighted along, Dabby somehow in charge.

“Turn off the mewzzik,” Momma said.

And Dabby made a fast gesture, snapped the strange howling silent, and we were rolling.

I, Beep, was a goer!

Through the maybe mica underwings of the carr I could see the blessed tops of trees moving by, then whizzing by, then nothing but a blur of green. My stomach rolled this way, rolled that. I concentrated on Inga’s face. Poor thing, all pink-skinned and covered in spots and not a hair except over her eyes and on her head. Her wrapping was also covered in spots, bigger ones green and blue and orange and red. She hadn’t forgotten me but stuck a you-men finger through a slot in my convenient prizzon. I held that finger, suddenly exhausted. She, too, I saw. Anyway, like the baby she slept, then I.