The Ape Man's Brother Read Online Free PDF Page A

meaning.”
    “Thank you,” I said. I tell you, right then I felt like one sophisticated motherfucker, that motherfucker word being something I learned later.

[9]
     

M e and The Big Guy were all the rage. We were paraded about like circus animals and asked to do all manner of things. Big Guy bent metal bars and broke ropes with his chest and climbed up the sides of buildings like a big bug. I couldn’t bend the bars, but I could break a lot of ropes and climbing was my middle name. It’s actually Uchugucdagarmindoonie, but that’s not important. Besides, looking at it now, spelled out, I have to say that is only a close approximation, so we just won’t worry about it.
    Anyway, we were taken here and there, poked and probed by doctors, and on one occasion a greased finger was jammed up my butt, which resulted in an unexpected thrill. We were needled and measured, asked to run and be timed, asked to climb and be timed. They watched us eat, watched us talk English in our peculiar way. They listened to the old language, the language we knew, and they made notes. They were amazed at how hard the bottoms of our feet were. They were equally amazed at the overall condition of The Big Guy’s muscles and teeth. Mine they were equally impressed with, especially my more pronounced canines.
    Next thing that happened was we had lessons in manners.
    We learned to sit in chairs, sleep in beds, take baths, eat with utensils instead of our fingers, and to take our time about meals. We had to grasp the idea that no one or anything was going to spring on us from under the table or out of a closet and wrestle us all over the room for our food. This was one of the more difficult changes for the two of us, due to us having come from a world where when food was found you wolfed it down to make sure you got to keep it, or to make sure it didn’t bite you back; and you eyed everyone and everything around you suspiciously, lest they be reaching for your chow. They soon learned how engrained this was when one of our table companions reached casually for the salt shaker, only to end up with Big Guy grabbing him by the head and flinging him across the room. He thought the man was going for his baked trout.
    To make sure the man understood The Big Guy’s dominance, The Big Guy not only finished his own trout as quick as a wild pig snuffing up a grub worm, he ate the man’s trout as well, jumped to the middle of the table and started stuffing the dessert (a cake) into his mouth as fast as he could reach with both hands.
    Instinct and experience taking over, me knowing how much that big bastard eat, and having gone to bed hungry because him in the past, I too leaped onto the table and started snatching, which led to a mild grapple between the two of us which resulted in my being bit on the shoulder and having a handful of cake stuffed in my ear and a random carrot shoved in my nose.
    What could you expect? We were savages. But we did learn some civilized activities. We learned to drink, and I learned to smoke (Big Guy never took to it), and I learned to chase women. Big Guy had his woman, and he stuck with her. They had even taken to living in the same hotel room. But me, well, I was a goddamn celebrity, and I had groupies. They all wanted to hump Mr. Hairy. I rush in here to say this was a title given to me by the newspapers for a time (fortunately it didn’t stick) and one I never embraced. But the women embraced me, and I came to find them attractive, not just usable. I began to like to wear suit coats and ties, well-creased pants, and shoes, though I always had to cut them open at the front so my toes had room. In short time I took to wearing open toed house shoes. It became all the rage with the kids. The sale of house shoes went up, and pretty soon I was modeling them in magazine, wearing a tux with those fuzzy shoes on my feet. They pretty much became my trademark. I was loved by the young and the sophisticated, disliked by parents and