"The Unfurry animal called Homo Sapien isn't exactly attractive," I was thinking, looking at the others outside. It didn't surprise me classics were about the ugly Hunchback of Notre Dame slaving to a tyrant relative, or an orphan in violent slums. The story that came to me didn't paint a pretty picture of man either--but would you read it--please? The turtles of the park up in Iwatsuki listened to all my stories! Really!
“When you see furry little baby chimpanzees, don’t you want to just pick them up and cuddle them?” His father, the pet shop owner, was showing him a few before they went out in the store. Joey could see their round little fuzz-ball-like forms all around the playpen, curiously eyeing everything as they scampered from corner to cor…but there, huddled in one corner, hiding next to the feeding cup, was a hairless chimp, a ball of flesh that looked like it had been a mistake. A flat face set with beady eyes widened with visible fright whenever anything neared it.
“He feels sorry
for that baby monkey, doesn’t he?”
“No son;” he answered; “that’s not why he’s
crying.” The information that followed was horrific. But the man felt Joey was
old enough, and he needed to know these things if he was to grow up to be a
responsible store owner one day.
“The reason he feels sad is because…the
parents of that baby chimp—apes named Adam and Eve—killed that man’s son last
year, Joey. He’s thinking about his own boy.”
“What?” Joey was shocked. The man looked so
kind. “They killed his son? How? Why?”
“He’s some kind of animal trainer, and the
man’s son, Chris, was teaching the baby chimp some tricks, when some of the
big adult apes got out of their cages and turned on him. They thought he hurt
their chimp, went wild, pinned him on the rocks and clubbed him to death. By
the time staff rushed in and got him to the hospital, it was too late.” Father
and son were looking down at the floor, both feeling too sorry to notice the
man had quietly approached them, until he cleared his throat.
“Um, before you pick the chimps to put into
your shop cages for sale today, I was wondering something. Can I have the
little one in the corner? How much would you ask for it? I can pay you right
now.” The man was already opening his bulging wallet.
“Manny, the b-baby Naked Chimpanzee? Oh Sir,
you don’t want to buy him!” The sight of Manny would only bring him heartache
and nightmares, he thought.
“But he was my last link to my son…” the man
replied, but when he saw the shopkeeper shaking his head, he turned, shoulders
drooping, to go home.
“Wait!” the storekeeper shouted. He ran to
the pen, scooped up the surprised chimp, and carefully handed him to the man.
“You know I cannot accept one cent from you. But no one deserves to have him
more than you, Sir.”
A warm glow came across the man’s face as he
left the pet store cradling the lump with widened eyes.
But the pet store owner’s son said to himself:
the ape’s parents killed his son? He’s going to kill that chimp!
(Joey had no way of knowing what happened to
those apes. After the ambulance had taken Chris’ mangled body to the hospital,
and after all the people were gone, it seems some of the larger slabs of stone
on the cliff, due to their wild rampage, had loosened and come crashing down on
them, pinning them to the ground. When Mr. Salvado came in the morning to
return Manny to his parents, their lifeless forms were found crushed under
rocks stained with Chris’ blood. Manny had been sent to the pet shop completely
alone.)
* * * * * *
Years later, the store owner’s son had become an adult and taken over the pet shop himself. His father, Joseph Wells Sr., usually sat nearby to offer advice. Today however, he was at the hardware store to pick up parts for broken cage locks, so his son Joe was running the store himself.
The bell tinkled. A customer had just entered
the front door. Oh, the same silent foreigner who came several days ago, hands
in his pockets, looking at all the pets in the bottom row few people wanted. It
seemed his eyes smiled, but his complete face couldn’t be seen because of a
mask worn for health reasons, covering the nose and mouth.
This customer
was short, stocky, wore a stylish Fedora on his head and Ascot at the neck. Joe
tried not to stare rudely, but he seemed to walk on artificial stumps leading
to suede shoes; those legs were much too short compared to the rest of his
body. But the other day, when he left the shop, he had turned around, lifted a
gloved hand out of his pocket, and tipped his hat.
So the pleasant
gentleman was back again. Joe felt something familiar about the broad face he
could not put his finger on. Where had he met him before?
The customer
was motioning for him to come. So he hurried to his side. “Yes. Can I help
you?”
The man stood
looking quietly, saying nothing, then seeming to come to himself, he whipped
out a pre-written note from his back pocket. It read:
“I’ve just had
a series of operations during which breathing tubes were stuck down my
windpipe, so I can’t talk. Please excuse written messages for a while.”
“Oh, of
course!” the shopkeeper replied. He liked him even more.
The customer
handed him a second note. It read:
“I am looking
for Joey, I believe the son of the store’s previous owner, Joseph Wells.”
“’Joey’? That’s
me! But nobody’s called me that for years! It’s been either ‘Mr. Wells’ or
‘Joe’. Only those who knew me as a little boy would call me ‘Joey’!”
He lowered the
note and was about to say, “Who are you anyway?” but as soon as Joe revealed
who he was, the customer began hurriedly looking through his sheaf of papers
for his next question, and when he found the note, he shoved it out at him.
“If you are
Joey: 1. Do you still keep a playpen in the back room for final decisions of
pets you want to keep to sell and those you do not want anymore? 2. If you do,
can you take me there? I may want to buy one of them.”
“I wish Dad
were here,” Joe thought; “he’d know what to do. Do I let this man in the back? Well,
if he knows us well enough to know my childhood name, he can’t be all bad.”
Thus reasoning,
he motioned for the customer to follow him.
Behind the
counter and behind a curtain was a room, and in it an enclosure—the “playpen”
mentioned in the note. There were many furry, tongue-wagging puppies jumping
around in it, all eager to be picked up, petted, taken out to the pet shop…all
except a few curled up in the corners. You could barely see the one on the
bottom, actually. He was a colorless, hairless one with a bit of fuzz on top of
its head and an excuse of a tail on its rump.
When the
customer indicated, with a gloved finger, that
puppy, Joe told him he’d been displayed for sale in the shop for a while, but
nobody had wanted it, so it would be taken to the pound, probably put down. Joe
couldn’t believe the quickness with which the customer snatched the puppy
away—the ugly thing—and cradled it defensively, handing him a note and showing
him a thick wallet.
Joe was
flabbergasted. What would his Dad do? Immediately he saw a figure in his mind’s
eye of utility bills that would be due in a few days and quoted that amount.
Actually, it had nothing to do with the worth of the puppy. He hadn’t been expecting
to sell it. But he had to say something.
If the man
didn’t buy it, it would be no loss. But the customer paid the full amount
without the least hesitation, and he left the store, eyes smiling down at the
lump of flesh fanning its excuse of a tail.
With the same
ringing of the bell on the door, Mr. Wells Sr. returned from the hardware
store. As he brushed past the customer leaving the shop with his new pet, he
asked his son, “Who was that?”
“Strangest but
one of the finest customers I’ve ever waited on;” Joe replied. “You know the
hairless Retriever puppy nobody wanted and we were going to have put down? He
bought him today! He would’ve paid in cash if it were a smaller amount, but he
wrote out a check for it instead. See?”
He handed the
check to his father, who seemed to lose all the strength in his legs and had to
sit down on one of the stools at the counter when he saw the name on the note.
“What, he
didn’t! Couldn’t! He was here? And he bought the pup?!”
“Dad? What’s
wrong?” Joe asked. “Is it a bad check?”
“No…no.” the
senior pet shop owner began smiling wearily, explaining:
“Mr. Salvado,
an animal trainer, had a son Chris killed by naked chimpanzees Adam and Eve.
But when they died, he adopted their offspring Manny as his own son, giving him
the best clothing, education, dignity possible.” He paused, raised his
eyebrows, then tapped on the check as he slowly concluded, “It seems that chimp
has come back to the store to buy, from my son, life for another hopeless lump
of flesh.”
The check was
signed simply, ‘Manny’.”
