Bad Monkey

Yancy ordered one more Barbancourt with his meal. He dealt with the conch salad painstakingly; each incoming bite was picked apart by fork and then scrutinized for insect pieces. The locals who were witnessing this dour procedure snickered among themselves, but Yancy carried on. It seemed unlikely that Rocky Town was large enough to have a full-time health inspector, if such a job even existed on Andros. The conch shack was just that, an open-air bar next to a hill of gutted mollusk shells. No government health certificate was posted on the plywood menu board, only the boozy jottings of sailboaters and tourists.

Still, the food was excellent. After he finished eating, Yancy climbed on the clattering bike and set off in the starless night for the motel. At the bottom of a hill his front tire caught a pothole and he spilled sideways, landing on his back. He was sitting on the broken pavement and swearing aloud when he heard a motor.

From the crest of the roadway a single white light descended slowly. It was too small to be the headlamp of a motorcycle. Yancy leaned his bike against a utility pole. The white light weaved on its approach, the hum of the squat vehicle growing louder. Yancy still wasn’t sure what he was looking at, though now he could hear a smoky voice, singing and laughing.

It was a woman piloting some sort of souped-up wheelchair, which she braked to a halt when its narrow beam fell upon Yancy. She was dressed flamboyantly and followed by heavy-lidded matrons who clapped softly and rolled their heads. On the steering bar of the motorized scooter perched a monkey wearing a doll’s plastic tiara and an ill-fitted disposable diaper.

“You hoyt, suh?” the throned woman asked Yancy.

“I’m good. Took a tumble off the bike is all.”

“You a white fella? Don’t lie. Where you from?”

She looked bony and harmless, yet Yancy experienced a spidery chill. The woman wore a wrap of pink batik on her head and swigged from a tall glass that barely fit in the cup holder. Although it was too dark on the road for Yancy to see her features, the gleam of a gapped smile was unmistakable. Something about her pet monkey didn’t seem right.

She said, “Dot’s Prince Driggs. He’s a movie star! You two handsome boys shake honds.”

“No, that’s okay.”

The monkey growled and thrust out a brown paw.

“Better do it,” the woman warned Yancy, “or he fuck you up bod.”

Yancy shook the moist little fist and said, “Well, I’d better be going.”

“Take a ride wit me, suh. I’ll sit on dot strong monnish lap a yours.”

“Thanks, anyway. That’s a spiffy wheelchair, though.”

“Ain’t no fuckin’ wheelchair! You tink I’m a cripple?” To display her agility she hopped up, causing her attendants to flutter and fuss.

Indignantly the woman said to Yancy, “Wot dis ting is, boy, is lux’ry transport. Even got a iPod dock!”

“Sweet.” He leaned closer to read the label on the mobile chair. It was a Super Rollie, the same brand that Nick Stripling’s company had billed to Medicare in imaginary numbers.

“Can I ask where you got this?”

“From a friend. Woman like me has plenny friends.” She resettled herself in the contoured seat and smoothed the folds of her colorful skirt.

Yancy said, “I’d really like to have a scooter like this.”

“Maybe you lucky. Let’s talk sum bidness.”

The woman seized the fly of Yancy’s pants and tugged him halfway on top of her. Zestfully she began to grope, her husky grunts reeking of rum and stale cigars. Yancy was shocked to feel the wiry old drunk fishing for his balls. He fought to get free but the monkey hooked three sinewy fingers through one of his belt loops. Only when Yancy pinched the hairless web of its armpit did the beast let go, screeching.

“No, no, don’t hoyt my prince!” the woman cried. “Bey, I gon pudda black coyse on your soul! Black as det!”

Yancy pulled out of her grasp and jumped back from the scooter chair. The riled monkey hurled first his tiara and then the diaper, which landed in a sodden lump at Yancy’s feet. As the matrons rumbled toward him, he kicked off his flip-flops and ran.

The last leg of the crossing got rough, and a few passengers began to throw up. Neville watched tall clouds building in the east as the breeze strengthened. The captain of the mail boat said a tropical storm was heading up from Hispaniola, which wasn’t uncommon that time of year. He said the storm was called Françoise, which meant nobody would take it seriously. He said the hurricane forecasters in Miami should give scarier names to the storms—like Brutus or Thor—if they wanted people to pay proper attention.

Neville didn’t own a television so his weather news came from the waterfront. Usually it was reliable. Some of the guides and fishermen had programmed their cellular phones to receive NOAA bulletins and radar loops; whenever they started moving their boats into the mangroves, Neville knew something big was coming. His own boat ran skinny, and he could take it up almost any creek on a low tide and tie off to the trees.