Where Did You Get That Monkey Bite?

Where did you get that monkey bite?" Meemaw asked, setting down her glass of sweet tea so hard the ice jumped.

I pulled my sleeve down quick, but it was too late. The marks were already turning purple-green, like muscadines left too long on the vine.

"Ain't no monkey," I mumbled, which was true enough. Mr. Thibodaux's organ grinder monkey had been dead since last Tuesday, buried out back of the Piggly Wiggly in a Folgers can.

But something was still turning that crank handle every night around three a.m., playing that same tinny waltz that made the dogs howl and the baptists check their locks.

Meemaw squinted at me through her cigarette smoke. "Boy, I've dressed everything from gator bites to knife fights, and that there's a monkey bite sure as I'm sitting here. Got the thumb mark and everything." She leaned in closer, smelling like Virginia Slims and White Shoulders perfume. "Question is, which monkey? 'Cause the only one in Thibodaux Parish is supposed to be six feet under."

I could've told her about the little paw that reached through my window screen last night, still wearing its tiny velvet vest. Could've mentioned how its eyes caught the moonlight like dimes at the bottom of a wishing well. Could've explained how it whispered my name in Mr. Thibodaux's voice before it sank its teeth into my wrist.

Instead, I just shrugged. "Must've been a dream."

Meemaw snorted. "Dream monkeys don't leave real teeth marks, sugar. And they sure as hell don't track cemetery dirt across your windowsill."

Meemaw reached under the kitchen table and pulled out her doctoring bag. A carpet bag older than sin, held together with duct tape and what she claimed was genuine gator hide. The smell hit me before she even opened it: camphor, whiskey and something sharp that made my eyes water.

"Hold still," she said, fishing around inside. Past the mason jars full of murky liquid, past the bundle of chicken bones tied with red thread, until she found what she was looking for. A syringe big enough to vaccinate a horse.

"Now Meemaw—"

"Hush." She held my wrist up to the light, studying those purple-green marks like they were tea leaves. "You know what Mr. Thibodaux died of?"

"Heart attack," I said, though everybody knew that was just what Doc Bergeron put on the certificate. Hard to write 'scared to death by his own reflection' on official paperwork.

"Heart stopped, sure enough." Meemaw drew something thick and yellow into the syringe. "But not before he went telling everybody who'd listen that his monkey knew things. Secret things. Said it would whisper them while they performed." She tapped the needle, and a drop of liquid hissed when it hit the linoleum. "Course, nobody believed him. Not until the fires started."

The bite marks on my wrist began to throb in time with my heartbeat. Outside, I could hear it. That tinny waltz carrying on the humid air, getting closer. The dogs had gone quiet.

"What kind of secrets?" I asked, though I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

Meemaw smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "The kind that come climbing through windows at night, looking for new tongues to tell them with."

✦

That's where the story stops, and where it's been stopping for a while now. Some weeks I think I'll find the next part. Some weeks I think I'm not supposed to.

If you've got an ending for it, write back. Maybe Issue 2 is your endings.

That's all I've got tonight. The fire's still warm. So am I.

Still tending it,

Geno