Free Monkey Business by John R. Erickson Page B

dangerous microbes are to little children? Very dangerous, and once germs have lit on a two-pound package of hamburger, it’s next to impossible to get rid of ’em.
    About the only precaution you can take is to eat the hamburger right away, and I mean all of it. Otherwise, you’ll have plague and disease and sick kids laying around everywhere.
    Well, you know where I stand on the issues of plague and disease. I’m 100 percent against ’em, and if I had my way, I’d abolish ’em completely. If a dog can’t—this is for the record and you can quote me—if a dog can’t protect the kids on his ranch from plague and disease, by George he ain’t much of a dog.
    So, in a selfless effort to save the ranch from an outbreak of deadly microbosis, I began disposing of the infected meat in large gulps.
    I heard the door slam, then footsteps on the floor. “Hey, Monk, come here, son. I’ve got something . . .”
    Those were pretty heavy footsteps . . . for a monkey . . . I began to get this funny feeling . . . that I was being . . . stared at . . . you know how you get that feeling sometimes?
    Very slowly, I turned my head away from the pool of hamburger blood on the floor and the wreckage of the refrigerator and the busted eggs and the jelly smears, and I’d sure expected her to stay longer at the dentist office.
    That dentist sure hadn’t done much . . . you’d think . . .
    I, uh, whapped my tail on the floor and tried to squeeze up a smile. She was probably about to jump to a hasty conclusion. That was my impression. I could heard the air rushing through her nostrils, and suddenly her eyes . . .
    Where were my friends when I really needed them?
    I’d be the first to admit that Sally May and I had experienced our ups and downs. No relationship is easy. But never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that she would chase me around the house with hands that had become like claws.
    Or drag me out from under her bed, or take a loaded shotgun from the bedroom closet. Or tie a blindfold around my eyes, carry both me and the gun down to the corrals. Or line me up against the fence and take up a position twenty paces away.
    Never in my wildest dreams . . .
    The drums began to roll. “Ready!” I heard the hammers click on the shotgun. “Aim!”
    â€œWait, Sally May, I think I can explain everything. There was this monkey, see, who escaped from the circus and turned into a terrible despotic Pasha . . .”
    â€œLies, lies!”
    â€œNo, it’s true, honest. And he forced strong drink upon me and made me do monkey business and terrible things, and never in my wildest dreams . . .”
    â€œHank? You’d better wake up, I’ve got some bad news.”
    â€œDrover, when she pulls that trigger, all the bad news will be bad, because . . .”
    HUH?
    Drover?
    I pried my eyelids open and stared at the runt. “Why, you traitor! You back-stabbing, two-faced snake in the grass! You left me in the kitchen to face the firing squad alone!”
    â€œFiring squad in the kitchen? What are you talking about?”
    I cut my eyes from side to side. It appeared that I was lying on my gunnysack bed, under the gas tanks. The sun was shining and, best of all, I saw no traces of Sally May or her shotgun.
    With each new piece of evidence, it became clearer and clearer that I had just awakened from an incredible dream.
    I pushed myself up on all-fours and staggered around, waiting for the fog to lift, so to speak, from the area between my eyes and whatever it is that resides behind the eyes.
    Brain. Mind. Data Control Center. Whatever.
    â€œDrover, let me ask you a question. To your knowledge has there ever been a monkey on this ranch?”
    â€œOh, yeah. He was in a box and the box fell off the back of a circus truck.”
    â€œOkay, that checks out. Question Two: Did this alleged monkey ever reach into your mouth and pull out your