Of Monkeys And Men

Trouble Lord, trouble, trouble is all I see
Trouble, I said, "Trouble, trouble is all I see"
Yes, you know, I ain't got nobody there work and care for me

--“Bad Luck And Trouble,” Lightnin’ Hopkins (1959)

“How do you feel about a little overtime this weekend?”

The question caught me by surprise, and I guess I must have sounded pretty retarded with my response.

“Huh?”

“Overtime. This Saturday. Joe’s out of town for the day,” explained Ken, “and we need somebody to cover for him.”

That’s when it began to dawn on me that I was finally coming of age—I was a real man. The boss needed somebody to do something extra, and he had thought of me. “So what do you think?”

“Sure, no problem,” I said, affecting my most manly recline in the chair in Ken’s office. His office was really just an extra room attached to the break room. It had a map of Gainesville on the wall, and a couple of file cabinets to go with the second-hand desk and two chairs.

Ken wasn’t an office kind of guy, anyway. His reddish-blond hair was thick but close-cropped, and his full beard was an exact outline of his tall, rectangular face. His perpetually stern expression made him seem somehow more solemn and older than his actual age, which was around the mid-thirties at that time. He had a sort of constant nervousness about him, personality-wise, as if he were still a bit shocked that someone had made him the boss—and he was worried he might screw it up. I don’t remember ever laughing at a joke with him, now that I think about it. And he was dead-serious about work, for sure.

Ken was easily the most serious guy I knew. He was serious about the Parks Department of the City of Gainesville. He was serious about making me stop goofing off and cutting up during morning meetings. He was serious about making sure I drove five miles per hour through the park when I was in a City truck. He was serious about those animals in the zoo. He was serious about not having a repeat, on his own watch, of that other incident—that Dump Truck Thing in the cemetery from a few years before. He was serious about life, serious about work, serious about his beard—just seriously serious, man. I couldn’t hardly handle it.

“Well, I’ll send you with Joe tomorrow and he’ll train you. And you’ll get time and a half for Saturday.”

“Time and a half. Great.”

And that’s how The Great Monkey Incident of 1989 got started.....with the promise of time and a half from a really serious guy.

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I guess I only got the job in the first place because good old Papa had talked his friend Orville down at City Hall into giving me another chance to work for the city. I had slunk home in disgrace from Waxahachie—exiled for my sin, forever in humiliation—and needed a job to pay for my apartment. Even the apartment had come with some serious help from Papa—he had talked to a guy he knew, who agreed to give me a chance to be responsible, and all that hoo-haw—and it was a little one-bedroom duplex over on “the wrong side of the tracks,” as everybody in Gainesville called it. I was the only white guy within seven blocks, and definitely had the trashiest apartment on Commerce Street. I barely earned enough working for the City of Gainesville Parks Department to keep the lights on. I had no television, but did have a loud stereo. I owned maybe three or four dishes, and couldn’t cook to save my life. My most important possession was an old typewriter that Papa had given me.

Papa had always liked my writing. He always wanted to read whatever it was I was working on, and always made a point of telling me how I might be a famous writer someday. Looking back, with all I know about Papa now, I suppose the fantasy  of having an important writer grandson would have been kind of a big deal to him. He had dropped out of school in the ninth grade and joined the Navy, and never had a formal education beyond that—but was a voracious reader with a sizable intellect. When he gave me that typewriter, the importance of that gesture was not lost on me. I wanted what he wanted—for me to be Somebody. And we both understood that writing might be the ticket to me being Somebody.

And so I had set up the typewriter in my living room, where everybody could see it and understand that I was a Writer. If I was a little weird or goofy or drunk or lacked etiquette, it was because I was working on something Important. I don’t think I actually did any real writing, beyond a couple of long-forgotten short stories. But it was the way I impressed the girls. I could invite them over, and they would ask about my typewriter and I could tell them that I was a Writer, and was working on something Important, and would probably be published within the year and would have to move to New York City because my agent needs me to be close by. Believe it or not, it actually worked a few times. Somewhere out there are two or three grown women lecturing their daughters or granddaughters about men who make up laughable crap about themselves in order to impress girls—and wherever they are, there is certain to be two or three daughters or granddaughters who are rolling their own eyes and ignoring the old crones—and the Cycle of Idiots continues on, unabated.

But it was a bona fide miracle that Papa had talked old Orville into giving me another shot at working for the City—the most coveted of all unskilled positions in Gainesville, Texas. There wasn’t a chance in hell that Orville had forgotten about You Know What at the cemetery—but he must have been real good friends with Papa because he pulled some strings and got me that job. And so I put all my mowing and weedeating skills to work again for the bustling metropolis of Gainesville, and found myself once again growing into a trusted employee. This job was a little different; I did travel to the three parks in Gainesville and keep the grounds trimmed and clean, but I was headquartered in the Frank Buck Zoo, where I helped to keep the cages hosed down and clean. You know all about the Frank Buck Zoo.

The Frank Buck Zoo had been founded by Frank Buck, some Indiana Jones-type guy who brought back exotic animals to be used in traveling circuses and zoos. His motto, memorialized for all time in a big important-looking plaque in front of the zoo bearing his name in Gainesville, was “Bring ‘Em Back Alive!” Guess there was no chance HE was going to be a writer.

But the zoo got famous back in 1981, when the big flood hit Gainesville. I was in sixth grade when it happened, and I only remember it because my friend’s dad got killed riding in the front of a backhoe while trying to help clear the streets for the good citizens of Gainesville. That was a terrible moment for him, and my heart still hurts for him to this day. But of course everybody else remembers the Great Flood of 1981 because of Gerry.

Gerry the Elephant was just a stupid elephant, until that flood. But after that, she was a Cooke County treasure. It turns out that some idiot built the zoo right on the banks of Elm Creek, and after it had rained for a solid twelve days in 1981, the creek flooded and threatened old Frank Buck’s hallowed motto. Many animals lost their lives in that flood, but one plucky female elephant got washed into a big tree, and kept her trunk above the water to stay alive until the flood abated. Gerry became a front-page story, and a miniature cottage industry. People began making t-shirts that had pictures of Gerry on the front, trunk held aloft in a tree, with the saying “Gerry and I survived the flood of 1981.” I doubt very much if my friend’s family owned any of those. I wouldn’t own one to this day, out of respect for him.

But I got to see Gerry the Overrated Elephant every day of my life during my second stint as employee of the City of Gainesville. When I wasn’t weedeating and mowing, I made rounds with a giant water hose to all of the cages in the Frank Buck Zoo. I stood outside the cages, on the sidewalk with the regular people, and sprayed water up into the cages to wash the animal feces down into the gutters. Gerry’s product, of course, wasn’t as easily disposed of. I had to actually enter her cage with a giant snow shovel and a wheelbarrow and remove great mountains of elephant dung twice a week. Believe me when I tell you that I wasn’t all that impressed with Gerry’s survival of the Great Flood of 1981 at that point in my life. In fact, not entirely without coincidence, it was during the execution of these duties that I actually decided that it would be advisable for me to return to college forthwith.

No, my job description in the Parks Department was not going to inspire much in the way of inter-departmental political maneuvering so someone else could snag my job. I was pretty safe in my position—as long as I could keep from screwing it up, a possibility for which Ken gave about even odds.  And despite Ken’s rather obvious distaste for my constant joking around, it looked like I might even be earning my way up the professional ladder. Joe the Zookeeper existed on an entirely different strata than I; he was skilled labor, and had actually trained to do his job. He made very good money, and worked a lot less than the rest of us. On this particular Saturday, he had something he had to attend out of town, and I had been the employee Ken trusted to do Joe’s job in his stead.

I was feeling pretty grown up as I made Joe’s rounds with him. Joe treated me pretty well, too—he took me to each cage, showed me how to get in, how to feed the animals, and how to lock up. He showed me the giraffes, the monkeys, the two lions, the mountain goats, the hyenas—I was in the cage right up close to every one of them. We went into the forbidden zones, the places where the regular people would watch enviously from the safety of the outer sidewalk. We went right into the cages and mingled with the animals. The kids who came to the zoo were eating their hearts out with envy, watching the zookeeper and his helper. My day of training was the apex of my time in the City’s employ, and I could feel my stock rising as an important member of the team. Before we left for the day, Joe handed the keys to the zoo over to me.

“Zoo opens at nine, but you can open the gates at 8:30 if you want,” he explained. “Folks don’t usually start coming in till later anyhow, and there’s no point in doubling back toward the gate once you’ve passed it.”

The keys. I had the keys to the zoo.

“Make sure you close and latch the gates behind you when you go in.” Joe was giving me last minute reminders as he climbed into his truck. He didn’t ask me testing questions, or look at me concernedly, or anything else like that. He gave me important professional instructions, man-to-man, and then was done with it. He assumed I understood, because I was a full-grown City employee, not a perpetual screw-up prankster.

“No problem. Will do.” I was earnest and capable, and could tell that Joe had faith in me. “I’ll handle it for you.”

“Have a good weekend. See you Monday.” He closed his door, started his truck, and drove out of my life forever.

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Saturday started off unlike any Saturday before it—I was in charge. I had the keys and I was in charge. I woke up early, got dressed, put those keys in my pocket and drove to work. I was a half-hour early. That’s what men do sometimes.

I opened the break room and made myself some coffee. I drank a cup and decided to get to work. Making my way to the zookeeper’s barn, I looked over at Frank Buck’s plaque, his heroic bust gazing at some far-off exotic creature to be captured, a safari hat on his head. I’ll keep ‘em all alive for ya, Frank, I thought to myself. I could feel his nod of approval. I started on the west side of the zoo, and carefully made my way through all of the animals leading back east toward the front gate. When I reached the gate, I unlocked it. There were no people yet, but when they arrived they would see the motivated young zookeeper hard at work, all by himself with his animals. I made my way to the hyena cage. The hyenas were clearly the ugliest animals I had ever laid eyes on, other than That One Girl in 10^th grade, but they deserved my professional treatment. I fed them, watered their cages, and spoke authoritatively to them. I moved on to the monkeys.

I carefully opened the gate in the back of the patas monkey cage. Hooking the open padlock on the fence adjacent to the gate, I closed the gate and latched it shut. Picking up the coiled hose in the top of the cages, I turned on the water and began to hose down the concrete roaming area. People were beginning to enter the zoo now, and some of them had stopped in front of the patas monkey cage. I pretended as if I didn’t notice them, manfully going about my business being the zookeeper for the day. I hosed down the cage on the right side, then I moved professionally over the left side and repeated this action. As I finished up the left side of the cage, I ventured a glance at the curious onlookers, and noticed that quite a crowd had gathered. They were pointing and looking up at me, and I realized that they were actually looking behind me. I looked backward to where they were pointing, and saw the monkeys.

Outside the cage.

The gate had been unlatched and opened, and the monkeys had escaped from their cage. They clambered over the fence and up into the nearby trees. I immediately dropped the hose and ran after them, trying hard not to look like I was panicking. I bolted out of the cage and turned toward the nearest two monkeys, who were sitting on the ground directly behind the cage. They turned and darted to a nearby elm tree, and I gave full pursuit.

Did you know that a patas monkey can run at speeds up to thirty-five miles per hour? Yeah, me neither, at that time. I do now, though.

I never so much as laid a finger on the monkeys. They ran up that tree and—I swear it—looked down and laughed at me. I saw a flurry of activity to my left, and noticed three more running toward I-35, which runs adjacent to the zoo. I must have looked quite hilarious to the people, flailing about and trying to capture these super-fast animals. I could hear the folks laughing. They were having quite a Saturday entertainment, alright. I gathered up what was left of my tattered pride and made my way back to the office. Picking up the phone, I dialed Ken’s emergency number. I don’t remember the particulars of the conversation; I just know that the man was dumbfounded, and in a serious way. I could hear it over the phone. By the time he got there, somebody had called the police and the fire department, and I guess he had already mobilized some other employees to come out and help round up the monkeys. Everybody was there except Joe, who I was sure would just shake his head sadly at my incompetence when he returned from his one day off.

It took us all morning long to get them all back, and it was quite an adventure. We had to lure them down from trees, away from the lion pens, out of the bird cages, and away from the highway. Two of the monkeys didn’t make it back; they had been struck and killed by cars while trying to cross I-35. I remember looking down at their bodies in the back of the city truck after they had been retrieved, and quietly gloating to myself. Their mangled corpses were the most glorious sight I could imagine at that moment. The monkeys had declared war on me, and I had lost. But at least there were two casualties on their side. In that moment, I hated them with what must have been something akin to how American soldiers felt toward the Japanese.

Still do.

One lucky patas monkey made his way across the highway and over to the McDonald’s where the dumbstruck customers called the police and the Gainesville Daily Register. A newspaper reporter came out and took a picture of the little monkey, trapped up in a tree at McDonald’s. I’m sure you can still see this Peabody-worthy photograph in the Daily Register archives, if you ask them. It made front page, above the fold, the next day.

That wasn’t all that happened the next day. I gingerly made my way to work the next morning, and tiptoed into Ken’s office sheepishly. I assumed I was in trouble, and wondered whether or not I’d be fired for what had to be considered an honest mistake. Who knew that would happen? I latched the gate. I didn’t lock it but I latched it. Who knew that patas monkeys would know the difference? Chalk it up to more information that I learned about the patas monkey later. They’re fairly smart.

As I turned the corner in the break room and walked into Ken’s office, I could see him sitting behind his desk. The air was heavy with seriousness, even more than normal. He looked up and saw me, and he was already shaking his head. There were no words spoken; I fully understood the communication. He stopped and stared at me, and pointed out the door. He resumed shaking his head as he looked back down at his work on the desk. I knew better than to still be standing there when he looked up again. That’s my last picture of him—shaking his head, refusing to even look at me.

I guess that was the first moment in which I came to grips with two unavoidable truths about my existence: first, it was starting to look like I would need to get used to living my life in more or less constant shame. It was just destined to be the narrative arc of my life, and I was now aware of it. No matter what goal I undertook, or what noble cause I stood up to be counted for, or what destiny I reached for—there would always be some sort of humiliating embarrassment that would mark my presence in it. I was a walking Three Stooges episode.

 Second, I would have to become a real working man without a City of Gainesville pension to shoot for. I’m not sure how Papa and Orville got along after that, but somewhere in the bowels of City Hall is a Human Resources folder on employees. And despite the blacklisting laws on the books in the state of Texas, it is quite certain that there is one employee who folder has been red-tagged against future hiring in any department for the City of Gainesville. Those monkeys’ tenure may have outlasted mine in the Frank Buck Zoo, but the really good news is that the patas monkey only lives 25 years in captivity.

We’re just about coming up on that figure now.