Hal moved toward it, meaning to stop it somehow, perhaps put his hand between its cymbals until it ran down, and then it stopped on its own. The cymbals came together one last time --jang!--and then spread slowly apart to their original position. The brass glimmered in the shadows. The monkey's dirty yellowish teeth grinned.
The house was silent again. His mother turned over in her bed and echoed Bill's single snore. Hal got back into his own bed and pulled the covers up, his heart beating fast. and he thought: l'll put it back in the closet again tomorrow. I don't want it.
But the next morning he forgot all about putting the monkey back because his mother didn't go to work. Beulah was dead. Their mother wouldn't tell them exactly what happened. "It was an accident, just a terrible accident," was all she would say. But that atternoon Bill bought a newspaper on his way home from school and smuggled page four up to their room under his shin. Bill read the article haltingly to Hal while their mother cooked supper in the kitchen, but Hal could read the headline for himself--TWO KILLED IN APARTMENT SHOOT-OUT. Beulah McCafiery, 19, and Sally Tremont, 20, had been shot by Miss McCaffery's boyfriend, Leonard White, 25, following an argument over who was to go out and pick up an order of Chinese food. Miss Tremont had expired at Hartford Receiving. Beulah McCaffery had been pronounced dead at the scene.
It was like Beulah just disappeared into one of her own detective magazines. Hal Shelburn thought, and felt a cold chill race up his spine and then circle his heart. And then he realized the shootings had occurred about the same time the monkey--
"Hal'?" It was Terry's voice, sleepy. "Coming to bed?"
He spat toothpaste into the sink and rinsed his mouth. "Yes," he said.
He had put the monkey in his suitcase earlier, and locked it up. They, were flying back to Texas in two or three days. But before they went, he would get rid of the damned thing for good.
Somehow.
"You were pretty rough on Dennis this afternoon," Terry said in the dark.
"Dennis has needed somebody to start being rough on him for quite a while now, I think. He's been drifting. I just don't want him to start falling."
"Psychologically, beating the boy isn't a very productive "
"I didn't beat him, Terry for Christ's sake!"
"--way to assert parental authority "
"Oh, don't give me any of that encounter-group shit," Hal said angrily.
"l can see you don't want to discuss this." Her voice was cold.
"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. Then they went down to the Rec where some kids were getting up a baseball game. Hal was too small to play, but he sat far out in foul territory, sucking his blueberry Popsicle and chasing what the big kids called "Chinese home runs." They didn't get home until almost dark, and their mother whacked Hal for getting the hand towel dirty and whacked Bill for not cleaning up his side of the room, and after supper there was TV, and by the time all of that happened, Hal had forgotten all about the monkey. It somehow found its way up onto Bill's shelf, where it stood right next to Bill's autographed picture of Bill Boyd. And there it stayed for nearly two years.