The Ape Man's Brother (5 page)

Y
eah, I hadn’t thought of Red in ages, but right then I knew down deep in my bones, it was him, and what hit me the hardest was that there was something for him to find, something he could let The Big Guy see so that it harmed his pride and took away the only reason he had allowed himself to be hoodwinked into coming to this world.

The Big Guy trusted us, especially me. We had been brothers since he was a baby. Right at that moment I felt the way I should have felt all along. Like a traitor.

I smashed the camera on the floor.

But you know what? I still went to bed with The Woman.

The next day that lion bumping film was released and seen in private by a number of newspaper men who reported on it. It wasn’t seemly for it to be shown to the public, and wasn’t, at least at that period in time. But it was written about, and a few stills were published in the rags, and though they weren’t explicit, it was clear what was going on. Shots of the dead lion facing us, its tongue lagging out of its mouth, The Big Guy clutching its tail, lifting it into position for… Well, it was obvious. There had been the rumors before, but now there was the film. I told you how it is with money, how it offered lots of insulation. But The Big Guy took a hit with the public. Not that he cared, but that’s what happened. Our two movies were removed from circulation, and even to this day they are seldom shown, and only on late night television.

But the day it hit I found out about it in the morning paper. I tried to hide it from The Woman, but too late. She saw it. It made our souls and stomachs sink, and you would think we would just lock our hotel room door and hide. Or maybe at least have the guts to somehow talk to The Big Guy, own up to what we had done, and try to commiserate with him over the news, though that part about the lion probably didn’t bother him the way it would others. For him, that was an accepted ritual. And once, it had been for me as well.

As I said, you’d think we’d do that, commiserate with The Big Guy, but we didn’t. We took the cowardly way out and tried to make things better for ourselves. We went out for a drive. It’s not that we weren’t concerned, but we were determined to not let some asshole with a camera ruin our life, and like I said, we were cowards. We drove outside of New York and into the country. There was a nice place there where we could have a picnic. We parked the Packard and rolled our blanket on the ground, set out our picnic basket stuffed with very fine foods, a thermos of good wine, as well as a thermos of Italian coffee. We had paper plates and cups, and we ate and laughed and kissed, trying to make our worries go away, but the truth is they hung over us like a rain cloud even though the sky was clear and beautiful. After awhile we lay back on the blanket, in each other’s arms, digested and looked at the sky. I rose up on one elbow to pry off the thermos lid to the coffee, and that’s when I saw him.

The Big Guy. He was a pretty good distance away, on a hill covered by trees. In the tallest tree, mostly hidden by leaves, he sat in the fork of a limb and watched us.

I knew then that Red had not only had the camera put in my hotel room, but that most likely shots from that camera had been put in an envelope and somehow slipped to The Big Guy, just as we feared.

The Big Guy knew I saw him. He dropped from the tree, light as a bird, disappeared behind the hill. I expected he would come rushing down that hill to destroy us at any moment, and I didn’t intent to put up a fight, not even to protect her.

The Woman had seen him as well. She had tears in her eyes.

We waited.

He didn’t come rushing down after us.

I heard a car start up behind the trees and race away.

I could tell by the sound of the engine that it was his Buick, the one he hardly drove and really shouldn’t drive at all. The Big Guy could do many things, but he never really learned to drive too well. He was always being pulled out of ditches and having to pay other drivers for banging up their cars. But he had been smart enough to ease up behind that hill silently, get out and climb that tree. Now he didn’t care. About anything was my guess.

You want to know what hurt me the most right then? That he didn’t even have the courtesy to kill us.

A
fter that, it was over with me and The Woman.

I decided what I had to do was confront The Big Guy, lay it all out and hope he didn’t yank off my leg and beat me to death with it. I desperately wanted to make amends. But he wasn’t in his room. I couldn’t find him. I walked all over the city, took taxies and trains to his favorite haunts, but nothing. I must have gone through every bar in New York City that next week, but I couldn’t find him. The Woman had gone back to their room to wait for him, to hope for the best. But he hardly ever went there. Up until the other day he didn’t seem too concerned about where she was, or even where he was. But I could imagine him seeing those photos, my hairy ass on top of her, doing the deed. It made me sick to my stomach.

I didn’t really want to see her again, but I went to her and told her that I had searched everywhere, and had pretty much given up.

“Any ideas?” I said.

“The hospitals,” she said.

“Beg pardon?” I said.

“He may have been injured. You know how he drove. He may be in the hospital.”

Well, that got me to a phone right away. I started checking around, and sure enough, we found him. Downtown, right near the hotel, in a hospital room. Two broken legs, a broken arm, smashed ribs, and a concussion. He’d been there all week, under an assumed name. He hadn’t done that, a doctor had, knowing there was so much publicity afoot concerning the film of him and the lion. It was a damn noble thing to do, I thought, though later I found out he sold his story to one of the cheap-ass rags, and for not that much money, I might add.

When I finally saw the police report a couple days later, it was revealed that he had driven down a hill on his way back into the city at top speed. A motorist behind him said, “He just yanked the wheel to the left, off the curve, and over the side of the big hill. The car flew like a plane. Was in the air all the way down until it hit a brick fence around a sheep farm. Tore that fence down, and one of the sheep died of a heart attack. It didn’t do the car any good either.”

The Good Samaritan drove to a nearby farmhouse, called the law and an ambulance. That’s how The Big Guy ended up in the hospital, wrapped up like a mummy, his legs lifted in traction. The nurse told us that three days later he came around, but they couldn’t get him to eat or drink. He seemed to want to die. They finally used heavy drugs to put him completely out, help him deal with the pain. I thought, yeah, the pain. The only thing he was pained about was seeing me and The Woman together like that. Broken bones were nothing to him.

After he was knocked out, they kept him that way, ended up hooking him to a feeder tube and an IV. We went and sat by his bed, and when they tried to make us leave because visiting hours were over, we wouldn’t. They finally gave up and let us stay. The Woman held the hand of the arm that wasn’t broken, and I just sat in my chair with tears in my eyes and looked at him.

The Good Life had ruined all three of us.

…

One morning, The Big Guy still on the mend, The Woman at the hospital with him, I went to see Dr. Rice, and laid out my plan. I said, “Doctor, The Big Guy, he’s not doing so well. Civilization hasn’t taken with him like it has with me. He needs to go back.”

The old man nodded. He said, “And back he shall go.”

Remember, the location of our home on the world in the mist had been kept secret by Dr. Rice, and a couple of other individuals, including the navigator, one Bowen Tyler. Red and a few others had been on that trek, but they were all trusted individuals, except for Red, who had been there due to the fact he was then The Woman’s boyfriend, and a known hunter and tracker. He could find his way through the jungle, but no one thought he knew the path to our world across that vast ocean, so any knowledge he had wasn’t a great concern. And at that moment, no one knew where he was. Nothing had actually been proven to suggest he had been the one behind the lion-fucking leak, or for that matter, the camera in our room, so there was nothing to do legally, though it was in the back of my mind to give him a visit if I got the chance so that what was inside of him could be found painting the walls of his abode, wherever that was.

Remember too, for the most part we were considered the perpetrators of a hoax to sell tickets in Hollywood, so that gave us a bit of insulation, and was part of the reason crew members had been silent in regards to discussing where we had come from. To talk about us in a positive way was the same as telling their neighbors they had seen the Abominable Snowman in their backyard having a cookout on their barbecue grill with a nude female leprechaun.

We made plans. The Big Guy was going back, and I had a pretty good idea that The Woman was going back with him. While The Big Guy was on the mend, it was pretty obvious that he and The Woman had found their connection again. It was also clear, though I had betrayed my friend, he had forgiven me. He said so. I suppose that he actually had always known. The photographs that he found in his hotel room were just the icing on the cake. In fact, it was a rare thing for him to go back to that room, but he had, and they had been waiting. Yeah, the photos were the icing, but he had known about the cake for a long time, or certainly suspected it was baking in the oven. I think he forgave me because he understood. The Woman was a force unto herself, and he felt he had been as responsible for our situation as much as we had. I didn’t agree. Friendship should have stood steadfast, woman or no woman. But, then we come back to that part about it being her, and if you’ve ever seen her, you would understand. I don’t mean photos of her. Oh, she looks fine, no doubt. But if you had actually ever SEEN her in person, you would know. No other woman could hold your fancy after that. She was a goddamn goddess.

In our old world The Big Guy would be away from alcohol and things he didn’t truly understand. He would be with The Woman. He could speak the old language and live the old ways. And me, I could come back to New York City where I truly belonged, among the civilized. I didn’t find that savage life all that appealing anymore. It was different when it was all that I knew, but I liked my winter heat and summer air-conditioning and no flying beast and saber-toothed cats. I liked what my money from the movie royalties could buy. It was my intent when I came back to get a college degree. I thought I might teach anthropology. Lots of college girls around, nice cushy job, retirement, and all that shit. It beat working, which with the money I had coming in from the films I wouldn’t have to do for a long time to come; but truth be told, it wouldn’t last forever. Already the checks were slightly smaller. It was a matter of time, and I had to plan for the future, and I didn’t have any plans where I would be out in the jungle with my ass hanging out in the wind, glancing over my shoulder for predators.

It took about two more months for them to get the zeppelin refurbished and for Dr. Rice to get the old navigator on the task. Turned out Bowen Tyler had retired from navigating air flights and was living in Greenwich in England (the half that belonged to Germany; he was there on a visa), and he was teaching at a small college in the area. He really didn’t want to go back into the air, but, as he was one of the few who knew how to get to our little lost world, we told him it was necessary, and he kindly agreed. We also knew we could trust Tyler, as he had refused to give the location of our world these last few years, though he was constantly asked. He had written about it, but never in any detail. His work was a fictional account, and I will be quick to add it is very fictional and has little to do with the truth. He got the part right about how savage the place was, about the creatures that lived there, but the rest of it, about evolutionary pools and submarines, and so on, that was just pulp magazine junk. Another reason we have been marked down to nothing more than a hoax. But hell, that’s all right with me.

Bottom line is it all got planned. The Big Guy healed up good as new. That’s how he was. He could mend quickly, and considering how many injuries he had from that car crash, it was amazing. The doctors who worked on him were astonished. One of them, a nice man named Dr. Cupp, told me that there was something different about The Big Guy’s insides, that it appeared as if everything was unique about his body. That would have been the injection he received from his parents, but I didn’t say that, though I had done a bit of research on the matter, and figured that the drug he had been given not only gave him long life, but made him capable of healing rapidly and perfectly. He could be hurt, and he could die, but because of that drug, he had advantages over you and me.

Now, if you are paying attention, I bet you are thinking about now what I was thinking about then, and it was simply that The Woman didn’t have that serum in her blood. What happened when she aged, and he did not? It was an ugly thing to think about. I decided for the time being to be silent.

O
n an early morning with the copper sun edging into the city, we launched off from atop the Empire State Building and into the rising light. No cars and no people visible; the city had not truly awakened yet. It was so quiet up there you could have heard a gnat fart. As we rose, a flock of white birds flew before us, and I took that as a good omen.

Let me tell you what I know now.

Omens are for shit.

…

The zeppelin had been worked on and retooled. It was larger, but swifter. It had less of a crew than when we first rode in it, and it was, according to Dr. Rice, a trustworthy crew. The zeppelin was stuffed with food and water and even a few barrels of beer and a stocked wine closet. There were two biplanes as well, one on either side of the wheelhouse. They were held by clamps that could be worked from the open cockpit of the planes to release them. There were a number of guns on board. There were some trade goods. The Big Guy had tried to discourage this aspect, trading with the natives, as he had seen what civilization could do to us (I, as I said, liked it. He didn’t), but Dr. Rice was determined that if he was going to lose The Big Guy and his daughter as well—for he knew the score and wanted her to be happy—he demanded an opportunity to work among my people, explore the island, bring back native items, write about his experiences, but not give away its location.

By the time we were four days out I couldn’t shake a feeling of doom. Perhaps it was because I knew I was not staying with The Big Guy, and The Woman was going with him, and I was going back to civilization. Fact was, I had already started to crave it, yet, still I hated to leave them. I loved them both.

On the fifth morning the sky darkened. It began to rain and the zeppelin began to jump. I was airsick until late afternoon when the darkness split and the sunlight sliced in and the rain died out. I went to the huge storage room for some bicarbonate of soda to settle my stomach, and while there I saw that some of the food goods had been broken into. A lid on a crate near the back had been lifted and replaced awkwardly, and a wax paper container of crackers was missing from the box. I also noticed that the tins of sardines had been disturbed, many of them strewn about on the floor. I didn’t think much of this at the time, as it seemed to me that it was likely one of the crew members that had broken into the goods; far as I was concerned they were welcome to it. I found the bicarbonate of soda, and on my way out I sniffed the air, recognized human urine. Some years back I would have thought nothing of someone pissing wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted, but now this bothered me. Had it only been a bit of the food, I could have stood that, but pissing on the floor? I had become too sophisticated for that.

Angrily, I straightened the askew wine rack on my way out by pushing it with my shoulder, not giving much thought to it being out of place, and determined I would bring these doings to the attention of Dr. Rice. By the time I left the storage room and went to my cabin to put the bicarbonate of soda in a water glass, my anger had subsided. I even considered that The Big Guy might have done it. Gone down there and to get some food and mark his spot. He was still a savage. Years back, I could have sniffed that urine and known who it belonged to, but now my nose was cultured, and all I knew was someone had taken a leak in the storage room. I decided to forget it. I was beginning to be as fussy as an old lady, and I was a little ashamed of myself.

For the next few days the weather was fair. We came to a place in the ocean where a huge mist hung in the air like a veil. A bit of excitement stirred within me then, for this was the world from which I had come, a huge island, or continent—I actually have no idea how large our world really is—clothed in fog produced by the volcanic humidity that warmed our lost world. And even though I liked New York City, I did suffer more than a bit of nostalgia at that moment.

The zeppelin dipped into the mist; everything was a white cloud. Then the zeppelin dropped down even more and the mist thinned. Below there were high, slick, flat gray walls of rock that rose up to incredible heights. As we slipped over the top of that wall there were more clouds. We descended into them slowly. They broke, and what we saw then was mine and The Big Guy’s fine green world. Windows were opened on the sides of the wheelhouse, allowing the warmer outside air to stir about. Great leathery lizards flew about, and for a moment there was some consternation that one of them might attack our ship, but we glided down, easy, unmolested. There was a gap in the forest, a savanna, and we coasted toward it. As we did, we saw a herd of large, feathered lizards running on their hind legs, their heads leaning forward as if to show the way. We slowed to observe them continue their path until they were out of sight, then we stopped hovering and headed in for a landing.

Instantly, things went wrong.

…

I have thought about this a lot, and I don’t know that I have an exact answer, but I have a strong speculation. At first I thought it was just because he had hidden so long, waited so long, was so goddamn angry, he couldn’t wait anymore. Instead of waiting until we landed, he came out of hiding and rampaged into the wheelhouse where everyone on board had gathered. He was carrying a revolver. He looked crazy. His red hair was standing up on his head like a blaze of fire. His face was near red as his hair. His eyes were wide and there was saliva drooling from the corners of his mouth. He looked like a man about to blow a major hose, and in that moment I knew his hatred of The Big Guy had driven him somewhat mad.

You have probably guessed by now that Red had stowed on board, and that he had been the one who had been at the crackers and sardines, pissed all over he place, and when I pushed that wine rack back in place, all I did was help conceal him better, hiding back there behind it, probably on some makeshift bed. I curse myself for not being observant enough to have noticed.

Red came storming into the wheelhouse carrying a revolver, calling The Big Guy a goddamn whoremonger, and calling The Woman a whore and a shit poke, and to top it off, he called me a fucking, chattering monkey. I will admit that I am sensitive to the comparison. The ape comparison is bothersome, but a monkey is a much more annoying association, perhaps because I do chatter a bit. I was a talker in my own language, but the English language opened up all manner of possibilities, and I have most likely taken advantage of all of them multiple times.

That said, even I should know it’s bad storytelling to stop a story in the midst of momentum when someone enters into the wheelhouse with a gun, and especially since I’m trying to describe true events and let you know how things went. But there’s that chattering problem I just told you about. I may go off on a tangent at any moment; I think all the coffee I drink adds to it.

I would like to say there was a big heroic moment that occurred, an immediate battle for the gun, but to be honest, we were all as stunned as if we had awakened to see the sunrise was blue. Red pointed the gun and fired. The shot hit The Big Guy in the stomach. The Big Guy dropped like a pig in the slaughterhouse. Red fired again, at me, but I was moving and the shot tore through the windshield. The Woman dropped to her knee, grabbed The Big Guy’s head, lifted it up. Everyone else hit the floor. It sounded like a wash woman had dropped wet laundry in there.

As I said, I was moving. I went crazy. In that moment everything about me that was civilized went out that hole in the windshield, same as the bullet that blew it open. I sprang forward and grabbed Red as he fired. I felt a pain like a hot iron against my side, and then I had Red by the head with both hands, lifting him off his feet. I threw him toward the side windows, one of those that wasn’t open. He hit with such force the glass shattered into thousands of sun-winked stars; he went right through the opening his body made, out into the wind, the revolver flying from his hand as if it had gone to roost.

I jumped to the window, looked down.

He had fallen onto the top wing of one of the biplanes below, and was swinging himself to the lower wing on the port side of the craft. I suspected he was planning to open the cockpit, release the clamp with the wrench that was inside for just such a purpose, and try and fly away. I doubted he had any real flight knowledge, but we were still high enough over the lost world he might well have glided to the ground, and to safety. He might even try to fly the plane into the zeppelin if he had any understanding of how the craft worked. I couldn’t take any chances.

…

I went through that gap in the broken window and clung to one of the metal windshield struts. There was a coiled rope ladder to the right of me where there was a door that led out to it and the plane below. I could have climbed back inside and gone out the door and used the ladder, but I hadn’t become that civilized. I kicked off my toeless house shoes, stretched my leg way out and kicked the ladder loose. It tumbled down until it was even with the bottom wing of the biplane. By this time Red had managed to reach the cockpit, had lifted it up, and was climbing into the plane.

I leaped and grabbed the ladder, was down it and onto the bottom wing of that plane faster than someone on the ground could have looked up and seen me and said, “Is that a monkey or a man in a wool jacket up there?”

What I didn’t expect was for him not to be in the cockpit. He had opened it and taken out the wrench, and was standing on the bottom wing, clinging with one hand to a wing strut, and in the other he had that wrench. He hit me with it. It was a glancing blow, but it knocked me off the wing. I was able to twist my body and catch the edge of the wing. He scooted forward and stomped one of my hands, hard. I swung out, grabbed the plane’s propeller, which of course was stationary, scrambled along it, up over the nose of the plane, and back onto the bottom wing. He was gone. The ladder was visible and it was vibrating. He was going back up.

I don’t know if he was truly bug-shit crazy, or just afraid he hadn’t finished the job on The Big Guy. Or maybe he wanted to do The Woman harm. Maybe he wasn’t thinking at all, just working off instinct. I scrambled up after him.

Feeling the pull of my weight below, he pivoted and saw me. He had stuck the wrench in his back pocket, and now, hanging on with one hand, he grabbed hold of it with his free hand. As I came close enough to grab his ankle, he leaned down and tried to hit me with the wrench. I dodged, grabbed at the weapon and ripped it from his hand. It was such a violent motion I lost my grip on the ladder. I spun out and landed on the top wing of the biplane with enough force to knock the breath out of me.

I got my air quickly, hustled to my feet, glanced down and saw the earth was coming up fast. In all of the confusion, something had gone wrong up in the wheelhouse. I leaped off the wing and snatched at the ladder, climbed up to the broken window glass just in time to see that the bullet that had grazed me had caught Dr. Rice. I hadn’t noticed this before I went out the window. Dr. Rice was down, not moving. Bowen Tyler was struggling at the wheel, which looked bent. Keep in mind that while it takes me time to describe all this, it all occurred rather quickly. I assumed Dr. Rice, after being shot, had fallen into the wheel with such force that his weight had done something to it. Maybe the bullet that had grazed me and killed him had gone through him and done damage to the control panel. I can’t honestly say, but the craft was flying erratically. I could hear the rear propellers cutting out. The great gas bag was starting to dip its nose. The Big Guy was on his feet. He had ripped off his shirt, and his stomach was covered in blood. He was a little wobbly. The Woman clutched his huge arm, as if to help. The Big Guy pulled free of her just as I was trying to climb through the window after Red.

Red went at The Big Guy. He swung the wrench. The Big Guy, wounded as he was, dodged it and grabbed Red’s arm. There was a cracking sound, like the weight of heavy ice breaking a rotten limb, then there was a savage yell from The Big Guy; the sort of war cry that would have made that actor who played him in the movies crap himself.

And then I, one foot hanging through the broken window, was splattered in blood, and so was everyone else. It was like a geyser full of red plum juice had erupted. The reason for this wasn’t only that The Big Guy had twisted Red’s arm off at the elbow and it was spurting, but as they went down together in a tangle of limbs and blood, The Big Guy bit out Red’s throat with a wild gnash of his teeth. You could hear flesh ripping like someone tearing old bed sheets. The Big Guy sprang to his feet, leaped up and down on Red a few times, put a foot on Red’s destroyed and bloody throat, bent down and grabbed that flame-head, and yanked that sucker off as easy as jerking a cork out of a bottle with a wine screw.

This would have held our attention longer had not Bowen said, “I can’t lift it.”

He was talking about the zeppelin. It was dropping fast. I had just managed to climb completely through the gap in the window (which should give you some idea how fast The Big Guy took care of Red) when it listed to starboard, then turned completely over. I hit the roof of the wheelhouse, which had become my floor, glimpsed through the windshield at a huge, leathery, flying beast grabbing at the zeppelin with its claws, screeching loudly. I thought, perfect. If it wasn’t for bad luck we’d have no luck at all.

I don’t remember much after that.