T. Boyle - If the River Was Whiskey

“Eee-eee!” he shouted now, slapping his palms rhythmically on the hardwood floor.

“Awright,” the TV said in its stentorian voice, “take the dirty little stool pigeon out back and extoiminate him.”

It was an unfortunate thing for the TV to say, because it provoked in Konrad a reaction that could only be described as a frenzy. Whereas before he’d been excited, now he was enraged. “Wraaaaa!” he screamed in a pitch no mere human could duplicate, and he charged the screen with a stick of firewood, every hair on his body sprung instantly erect. Good, she thought, stirring her soup as he flailed at the oak-veneer cabinet and choked the voice out of it, good, good, good, as he backed away and bounced round the room like a huge India-rubber ball, the stick slapping behind him, his face contorted in a full open grin of incendiary excitement. Twice over the sofa, once up the banister, and then he charged again, the stick beating jerkily at the floor. The crash of the screen came almost as a relief to her — at least there’d be no more of that. What puzzled her, though, what arrested her hand in mid-stir, was Konrad’s reaction. He stood stock-still a moment, then backed off, pouting and tugging at his lower lip, the screams tapering to a series of squeaks and whimpers of regret.

The moment the noise died, Beatrice became aware of another sound, low-pitched and regular, a signal it took her a moment to identify: someone was knocking at the door. Konrad must have heard it too. He looked up from the shattered cabinet and grunted softly. “ Urk , he said, “ urk, urk, ” and lifted his eyes to Beatrice’s as she backed away from the stove and wiped her hands on her apron.

Who could it be, she wondered, and what must they have thought of all that racket? She hung her apron on a hook, smoothed back her hair, and passed into the living room, neatly sidestepping the wreckage of the TV. Konrad’s eyes followed her as she stepped into the foyer, flicked on the porch light, and swung back the door.

“Hello? Miss Umbo?”

Two figures stood bathed in yellow light before her, hominids certainly, and wrapped in barbaric bundles of down, fur, and machine-stitched nylon. “Yes?”

“I hope you don’t…I mean, you probably don’t remember me,” said the squatter of the two figures, removing his knit cap to reveal the stiff black brush cut beneath, “but we met a couple weeks ago at Waldbaum’s? I’m Howie, Howie Kantner?”

Agassiz, she thought, and she saw his unsteady grin replicated on the face of the figure behind him.

“I hope it isn’t an imposition, but this is my father, Howard,” and the second figure, taller, less bulky in the shoulders, stepped forward with a slouch and an uneasy shift of his eyes that told her he was no longer the dominant male. “Pleased to meet you,” he said in a voice ruined by tobacco.

She was aware of Konrad behind her — he’d pulled himself into the precarious nest he’d made in the coat tree of mattress stuffing and strips of carpeting from the downstairs hallway — and her social graces failed her. She didn’t think to ask them in out of the cold till Howie spoke again. “I–I was wondering,” he stammered, “my father’s a big fan of yours, if you would sign a book for him?”

Smile, she told herself, and the command influenced her facial muscles. Ask them to come in. “Come in,” she said, “please,” and then she made a banal comment about the weather.

In they came, stamping and shaking and picking at their clothing, massive but obsequious, a barrage of apologies—“so late”; “we’re not intruding?”; “did she mind?”—exploding around them. They exchanged a glance and wrinkled up their noses at the potent aroma and high visibility of Konrad. Howard Sr. clutched his book, a dog-eared paper edition of The Wellsprings of Man. From his coat tree, which Beatrice had secured to the high ceilings with a network of nylon tow rope, Konrad grunted softly. “No, not at all,” she heard herself saying, and then she asked them if they’d like a cup of hot chocolate or tea.

Seated in the living room and divested of their impressive coats and ponderous boots, scarves, gloves, and hats, father and son seemed subdued. They tried not to look at the ruined TV or at the coat tree or the ragged section of bare plaster where Konrad had stripped the flowered wallpaper to get at the stale but piquant paste beneath. Howie was having the hot chocolate; Howard Sr., the tea. “So how do you like our little town?” Howard Sr. asked as she settled into the armchair opposite him.

She hadn’t uttered a word to a human being since Konrad’s companion had left, and she was having difficulty with the amenities expected of her. Set her down amidst a convocation of chimps or even a troop of baboons and she’d never commit a faux pas or gaucherie, but here she felt herself on uncertain ground. “Hate it,” she said.

Howard Sr. seemed to mull this over, while unbeknownst to him, Konrad was slipping down from the coat tree and creeping up at his back. “Is it that bad,” he said finally, “or is it the difference between Connecticut and the, the—” He was interrupted by the imposition of a long, sinuous, fur-cloaked arm which snaked under his own to deftly snatch a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. Before he could react, the arm was gone. “Eeeee!” screamed Konrad, “eeee-eeee!” and he retreated to the coat tree with his booty.

Beatrice rose immediately to her feet, ignoring the sharp pain that ground at her kneecaps, and marched across the room. She wouldn’t have it, one of her chimps indulging a filthy human habit. Give it here, she wanted to say, but then she wouldn’t have one of her chimps responding to human language either, as if he were some fawning lapdog or neutered cat. “Woo-oo-oogh,” she coughed at him.

“Wraaaaa!” he screamed back, bouncing down from his perch and careening round the room in a threat display, the cigarettes clutched tightly to his chest. She circled him warily, aware that Howie and his father loomed behind her now, their limbs loose, faces set hard. “Miss Umbo,” Howie’s voice spoke at her back, “do you need any help there?”

It was then that Konrad tore round the room again — up over the couch, the banister, up the ropes and down — and Howard Sr. made a calculated grab for him. “No!” Beatrice cried, but the warning was superfluous: Konrad effortlessly eluded the old man’s clumsy swipe, bounced twice, and was back up in the coat tree before he could blink his eyes.

“Heh, heh,” Howard Sr. laughed from the top of his throat, “frisky little fella, isn’t he?”

Beatrice stood before him, trying to catch her breath. “You don’t,” she began, wondering how to put it, “you don’t want to, uh, obstruct him when he displays.”

Howie, the son, looked bemused.

“You don’t, I think, appreciate the strength of this creature. A chimpanzee — a full-grown male, as Konrad is — is at least three times as strong as his human counterpart. Now certainly, I’m sure he wouldn’t deliberately hurt anyone—”

“Hurt us?” Howie exclaimed, involuntarily flexing his shoulders. “I mean, he barely comes up to my chest.”

A contented grunt escaped Konrad at that moment. He lay sprawled in his nest, the rubbery soles of his prehensile feet blackly dangling. He’d wadded up the entire pack of cigarettes and tucked it beneath his lower lip. Now he extracted the wad of tobacco and paper, sniffed it with an appreciative roll of his eyes, and replaced it between cheek and gum. Beatrice sighed. She looked at Howie, but didn’t have the strength to respond.

Later, while Konrad snored blissfully from his perch and the boy and his father had accepted first one bowl of chicken soup and then another, and the conversation drew away from the prosaic details of Beatrice’s life in Connecticut — and did she know Tiddy Brohmer and Harriet Dillers? — and veered instead toward Makoua and the Umbo Primate Center, Howard Sr. brought up the subject of airplanes. He flew, and so did his son. He’d heard about the bush pilots in Africa and wondered about her experience of them.