Giant Metal Monkey

 

I thought I knew what I wanted from Uncle Elliot.

There weren’t many people who could afford a backyard the size of a football field. The color was probably the most impressive part of his property. Green. Bright green. Northeastern greenery in a Nevada desert. The joke in our small town was that the more grass and trees a neighborhood had, the better off the people were because our chunk of nature didn’t have much water. It had to be funneled in. I grew up with front lawns of rocks and dirt. If you fell, it hurt and you learned. That’s how my parents and Uncle Elliot grew up too.

This year, he blessed the town with dozens of roller coasters and carnival games, all kept in his backyard. In the leftover space between the rides, thousands of people waited in lines. All the other kids seemed rowdier than usual, fueled by the funnel cakes and corndogs. They ran faster, fell harder, and laughed louder because, for one day a year, Uncle Elliot let everyone into his property that overruled nature. All of the town seemed to know him. The patriarch of the wealthy Kidd family. The extravagant Kidd family. The good Kidd family.

          I was not from that side of the family, but just walking beside Uncle Elliot made me feel like I could be. When some people saw his tall, wiry frame, they waved to us and tried to talk to him, but Uncle Elliot had one goal in mind: beating me at the basketball booth. I had been practicing for weeks by watching YouTube tutorials and stretching my wrist to flick the ball just right. Playing anything with my uncle was dangerous — you never knew what you might lose. If he won, he got anything of yours and if you won, you got anything of his. Uncle Elliot once took my favorite toy as a kid, only for me to start bawling. He reluctantly gave it back. Right then, though, thirteen-year-old me was willing to lose anything.

          The basketball booth, with its big, digital timer and walls lined with stuffed animals, was right next to his favorite piece of property: the two-story-tall metal monkey statue. It was of an orangutan scratching its back, with many beams jutting out from the bottom. Everything but its face was abstract. If you squinted you could see the wrinkles on its face, almost the individual hairs, and then all that detail morphs into coils forming the rough shape of a torso and what looked like a car bumper in one leg. The steel hairs of the other leg were inches away from the back of the basketball booth.

          For every person that tried to talk to my uncle, two slunk back, trying to be invisible. This was especially noticeable in the line we cut, many of the parents staring at us as unforgiving as the sun, while a few kids beamed.

          “My turn,” he said to the booth person, who stopped the people playing and threw one of the bigger prizes at them. I didn’t care if it was through fear or love — that was the kind of power I wanted, to be given everything just by being me. “Let’s see who's better: a fat kid or an old man.”

The attendant laughed a bit too loudly. He must’ve known that Elliot Kidd’s first taste of fame came from being a high school star, then a college basketball prospect, and almost making it into the NBA. I looked more like a ball than an athlete.

          The timer started. We had two minutes to score as many of the little basketballs as possible. Uncle Elliot swished his first two.

          “Who’s your favorite NBA player?” I asked. I already knew the answer, but I wanted him talking.

“Kevin Garnett,” he said, missing his first basket. “He spent a decade losing on the Timberwolves. The second he goes to Boston, boom, he’s a champion.” It was one of the stories he told at every basketball game. “Chances make men, Wheeler. Not hard work.”

“No one wants to work nowadays.” A lot of the adults around me had been saying that.

          “No one ever wanted to work. They did it because they had to. You ever taken a shit, Wheeler?”

          “I would never.” I was leading 17 to 16 now.

          “Bullshit. Do you like using the bathroom?”

          “No, not really.”

          “But you still do. Why?”

          “I have to.”

          “Exactly,” he said. His fingers were jittery, swishing one out of every five. “Life is built around not shitting our pants.”

The more he talked, the more focused I got. His voice wasn’t soothing like a lullaby or empowering like a pep talk. It was more like being entranced by a Rube Golberg machine, dominos hitting dominos until they knock into a marble that, somehow, turns on a light — all perfectly lined up but you’re not sure how.

          He ranted about how his staff quit and then their replacements and their replacement’s replacement, how everything was costing more, even paper, “fucking paper,” so he could barely blame people for quitting, for taking care of themselves.

          “Do what’s best for yourself, Wheeler, and maybe your family while you're at it.”

          “Times up!” the attendant yelled.

          Uncle Elliot looked at the score and finally seemed to register that he lost.

          “Give me that monkey,” I said. I had loved it ever since I was a kid and I wanted to put it in front of my home and charge people a dollar to take a photo with it. I could never understand why my uncle commissioned such an amazing thing, only to show it to the world one day a year.

          He scowled really hard, the angles of his face making him look like a crow. “You’re not getting that. Besides, I would’ve won if I wasn’t out of practice.”

          “But Uncle Elliot…”

          “Tell me how. How are you going to get that out of here? Huh? You’re 13 and your mom drives a Subaru. Pick something else, you dumb kid.”

I hadn’t planned that far ahead. My mom, his sister, could barely get her car to work each morning. I thought for a moment. What was the best thing I could do for myself? I looked around at all the rides, the people whipping around in the air. I also saw how miserable everyone looked in those long, still lines that wrapped around the yard. How could I skip those like Elliot Kidd?

“Okay,” I said. We shook hands.

          He smiled. “Never take the first offer, kid. Could've asked for two or three things. Too late now though. What do you want?”

          “Do you have an old driver’s license or something on you?” I asked.

          “You’re a weird kid, you know that, Wheeler?” Regardless, he pulled out his wallet, a ridiculously big thing, and fished through the card slots. He handed me his old college ID. “I’m already sick of this whole carnival. Next year has to be better, but me and you will have a rematch before then.”

Nothing could derail Uncle Elliot on a creative bender, not even his own plans. Just like that, he was gone, his long strides making him vanish into the rides and lines. He was rarely seen at his own events. I always figured his disappearances were from him talking to some sect of the town. Fame, even if it is just small-town fame, means more people want your time. I’d be lucky to talk to Elliot Kidd again this month, let alone today.

 I had gotten what I wanted, but I was still disappointed. I looked around and noticed I was still blocking the line for the booth.

          “Sorry,” I said. I moved to the side.

          “Congrats on graduating, Jaden,” the attendant said.

          “I’m not his son. I’m Wheeler,” I said.

His face immediately dropped. “Oh, well, tell your Mom thanks for giving me that discount the other day.”

It would’ve been one thing if Elliot Kidd eclipsed my side of the family. I probably would’ve liked that: anonymity most days and a spotlight for vacations. But if Elliot Kidd was the face of our small Nevada town, then my parents were the backbone. If you bought groceries here in the past 25 years, you probably talked to my mother, and she remembers everyone. My father had been laid off a year before from his trucking job and now was doing Uber, often driving around his former classmates.

In school, my friends talked about them. “Your Dad drove me and my Dad to Las Vegas the other week,” a girl had told me. She had not said it in a mean way, just making conversation, but the kids in my private school had started gossiping. They were the sons and daughters of lawyers, doctors, and entrepreneurs who chose to live here for less taxes, less traffic, and less stress. They thought that people like me, the child of a cashier and an Uber driver who both had to work extra just to send me to a good private school, were odd.

But, now, I had something none of them had. I weaved through the crowds. Each year, my uncle’s events got bigger and stranger. He said he started these to celebrate his hometown, but I feel like it was really to show people his extravagance. The first one was a little Burning Man with giant structures towering over everyone, which is where he got the idea for the metal monkey statue. Another was a huge medium gathering. He paid them all to give half-off readings all day and even built an amphitheater, though my mother had talked to the sound people for the event. Hidden mics were planted throughout the entrances and seats. If a family talked about how their grandfather died while they waited, the sound people would hear and tell the “mediums,” who would pretend to hear the voice of their dead loved one.

This year, I think because of Jaden’s graduation, he aimed it more at teens and children. There wasn’t any hint of a plan, with barely a trashcan in sight and electrical wires everywhere. The rides and booths weren’t even in rows, so there was no way to know where you were other than landmarks in this mad city.

          I looked for a smallish line to test out my plan. I hated lines because I waited in so many. My mom would take me shopping with her everywhere, often to random stores she got coupons for. It was a game to her, enjoyable, and she and her coworkers talked about sales the same way my dad and his friends talked about fantasy football. Every year, I watched her buy my Christmas gifts, which I didn’t know was weird until Jaden made fun of me for it.

As I got farther from the center and the monkey, the rides and crowds thinned, until I found a big slide at the upper left of the festival by the trees outlining the property. Maybe a dozen young kids and their parents stood in line and I felt bad for walking past them.

The attendant was around five years older than me, sweating and obviously sick of working.

          “Elliot Kidd said I could skip the lines,” I said.

The attendant blinked a lot.

          “He gave me this.” I pulled up his old college ID. I only half expected this to work. Elliot Kidd’s name could get me anywhere, but I doubted that I could pull the lie off.

He nodded. I lost count of how many times I went down the slides, the rollercoasters, and the teacups. At first, I ran to each one, expecting there to be a time limit to my luck, but no attendant batted an eye after my first time on their ride. My screams filled the carnival for at least an hour.

The little roller coaster would loop and turn within itself, barely room for the metal and tracks to breathe, so, for one section, we all screeched, expecting our heads to be lopped off. For once I was glad I wasn’t Uncle Elliot — that ride was the one place all six-foot-seven of him would be a curse. Most rides had that jaggedness. Some by design, the Zipper tilting to make stomachs swirl. This made the Ferris wheel just behind the mansion a beacon for older people like my parents. They told me later that they rode it five times, soaking in the view of the town, mountains, and desert.

          I went on the swinging ships three times in a row before it felt like my body was going to slip off the earth.

          “Jon!”

          I stopped and almost fell over. I turned and saw my cousin Jaden striding over with a friend. I'm okay with teachers or strangers using that name, people who don’t know me, but Jaden has always said it with a bite.

          I smiled. Even if he was a bit of a jerk, I wanted Elliot Kidd’s son to like me.

          “Why are they letting you cut the lines?” he asked.

          I pulled out the college ID. “Your dad said I could.”

          There’s a bit of hurt on his face that I didn't know he was capable of. He grinned to cover it up. “I’ll give you twenty bucks to use it.”

The thought of making money hadn't occurred to me. Don’t take the first offer. “Twenty-one bucks.”

He and his friend paid and then more people came up. One person would go on a ride, come back, and the next person would go. Jaden eventually took command, even of the adults.

Do what’s best for yourself and your family. I slipped a twenty-dollar bill into his pocket and he nodded at me. I was way too giddy then. I liked how naturally we had worked together like maybe we were meant to be brothers instead of first cousins.

 I was thinking about what trees and giant metal statues I would buy for my own mansion when I felt a poke at my shoulder.

“Wheeler,” my little cousin Allison said. I say little but she was always bigger than me, the tall, basketball-playing genes of the Kidd family fully displayed on her. “Can I try too?”

“It’s twenty-five bucks, now,” I said.

She looked down. “I already spent my allowance.”

My uncle was the exception of the Kidd family. We had no pioneering ancestors that gave some branches of the family tree a boon of wealth. We were miners and farmers at best. Allison, though we only shared a great-grandparent or something, grew up the same way I did: with food and clothes all bought in the clearance aisle.

Do what’s best for yourself and your family. “Don’t worry about it. Pay me when you’re older.” That was one of my proudest moments as a teenager, but what I said next was one of the dumbest. “Ride as many rides as you want.”

          Her face beamed and I felt my mistake, learning in real time how literal kids were because when the next person came back, Allison snatched the license from their hand and ran straight to the big, metal slide by the trees. She bounded up the stairs, and rocketed down the slide, then again and again, so many times that my new clients were asking when it was their turn.

          “Go get her, dude!” Jaden said.

          Unfortunately, I was the dude in question and all my clientele’s eyes were on me. “You go get her,” I said. “You’re a closer relative than I am.”

          “No! I am not!” Jaden yelled. His friend laughed at him. I am sure we made a comedic sight — an athletic, soon-to-be college student arguing with a pudgy, soon-to-be eighth grader. “Whatever. Just do something, Jon.”

I stared at him.

          “Please, Wheeler.”

          I still didn’t want to, but Uncle Elliot would’ve used the opportunity to show his whole company why he was in charge. Chances make men.

I walked to the bottom of the slide. Allison was at the top, red-faced, but she barely looked worn out. I held up a finger. “One more,” I mouthed.

No one likes a broken promise. I don’t think that changes as we get older. Allison’s face scrunched. Then she had a “You can’t tell me what to do” smirk. She burst out the gates, jumping like Mario, coming down hard on her feet and somehow staying upright for a step or two. I thought she might make it down in one piece, but I don’t even think Uncle Elliot ever had the athleticism to keep his balance running down a thirty-foot slide. Allison leaned to the right, over to the other lanes of the slide, then overcorrected and fell right off. Her legs scrambled in the air on instinct and she stuck her left arm down to brace herself. Even my uncle’s grass wasn’t enough to cushion her fall. This is my fault, I thought, because I taught her how to skip lines, but didn’t teach her how to fall. Her screams sounded like everyone else’s at the carnival, only the other screams went up and down, matching the rhythm of the rides. Allison’s cries had no end, her left forearm breaking so badly that it looked like she had two elbows.

The attendant didn’t know how to work his walkie-talkie, so someone sprinted to another ride, and two people argued about whether to hold her down as the rest of us did our best deer impressions, but at least there was one mom who kept the kids back, all the while Allison kept howling, her lanky body twisting on the ground and her left arm flopping around. Two people with walkie-talkies ran over, saying that the girl was by the slide, “by the fucking slide,” but the person on the other end didn’t seem to know where to go.

“There are three slides here,” I told them. I knew because I had been on each one many times. “We are at the back-left corner.”

Eventually, the EMTs arrived and somehow got the stretcher through the crowd. They got Allison to stop moving, but couldn’t quiet her, and plopped her onto the stretcher. As her screams faded, I could hear the insects in the trees behind us. Everyone just stood, still deer.

          Some people started to walk away, a few rushing to some of the newly open lines, others headed for the mansion. A little part of me wanted to go inside, bowl at the mini alley, or watch whatever was playing in the theater. The biggest part of me wanted to find my parents, tell them to take me away, away from the too-green grass and back to our rocks.

Jaden grabbed my shoulders from behind and walked me toward the center of the carnival. He had a confidence in his steps like he knew the exact patch of lawn we were on. Which made sense to me, because we were in his backyard. A lot of people were looking at us and smiling now, but not slinking back like they were with his father. I guess no one feared Jaden yet.

          Eventually, we were underneath the monkey. It was nice and shady under there, with a bench and metal beams everywhere. A few kids were playing tag, using the beams to dodge each other. There was a long, wide rectangular pillar in the center, which I guessed supported most of the monkey’s weight. It stood out from the rest, a good 10 feet by feet, with squares all over it.

          “You alright, stupid?” he asked.

          I nodded even though I wasn’t alright or stupid.

          “You’re not gonna tell my parents that I was a part of this, right?”

          Again, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. A punishment felt right to me. If Allison broke a bone, it was only fair I got what was coming to me. “I wasn’t planning to,” I said.

          “Good.” He looked at his friend, who pointed upwards. Jaden nodded. “Alright, sweet. Now, go on some rides or something. And don’t run down any slides.”

          They both looked at me, these young adults who obviously didn’t want to babysit a middle schooler. I understood that, but I had a weird feeling about how they were acting, so I walked away and hid behind the first group I saw.

          After about five minutes of them talking, they huddled around the big, rectangular pillar. Jaden squatted down and did something, then part of the metal wall swiveled open like a door. He disappeared into the pillar, his friend following, and the door closed.

I sprinted after them. It was the most Elliot Kidd thing I had ever heard: a secret passage inside the monkey.

          I felt around the area Jaden had been touching. I noticed the outline of a door, one you would never notice if you weren’t looking for it. I pressed on all of the squares until I felt one go in like a button. The door flipped open, revealing a room the size of a small closet with a ladder. I closed the door behind me and immediately regretted it because it became very dark, with only a few small holes in the walls letting in light. I felt around the hot, metal walls until my hand found a rung of the ladder. I was already sweating, so I could only imagine how bad it got at the peak of the summer.

          Their voices echoed above me.

"Where was your dad this whole time?" his friend asked.

"I never know,” Jaden said.

“Sorry I asked.”

“How am I supposed to know? The second he gets an idea, he always leaves. Always.” Then he laughed. “Look at that person screaming.”

I only dared to go up a rung when they got loud.

          “Guess who I am, guess who I am,” Jaden said. There was a pause and I stopped. My heart was beating faster than it was on the rides. Then there was a bang and a roar of laughter. I got to the top and felt a latch. I could feel their footsteps above me. The space above couldn’t have had that much space, since they were in the head of the monkey, but they seemed like they were having a great time.

“That whole family is so fat, even the baby. Like, how much do you think they all eat?” his friend said.

“Probably like two sticks of butter a day,” Jaden said. “It looks like their clothes are from the cheapest part of Goodwill, too.”

“They’re like your little cousin. You two look so alike!”

“Shut it!”

Jaden must’ve pushed his friend, hard, because I heard a thud and the whole thing shook, almost making me lose my grip. I really wanted to pop up and join them. Getting closer to Jaden meant getting closer to my uncle, closer to the near royalty people expected when they heard my last name, and further from the disappointment in their eyes when they realized I wasn't a “good” Kidd.

          “Well,” his friend said. “At least you’re smarter than your other cousin.”

          “Damn right I am,” Jaden said.

          “That isn’t hard to do. You’re a little bit quieter too.”

          “I couldn’t yell as loud as the dumb bitch if I tried.”

I understood that they made fun of me. There was a lot to joke about. I was a good 30 pounds overweight at that time and I did not wear it well, but it wasn’t fair to Allison. I was the one who told her to go on as many rides as possible. It wasn’t her fault that she listened to me. They had seen Allison fall and heard her screams as well as I had. I still wonder how long it took them to find it funny. Was it when they got up there? I feel like Jaden stifled his laughs as Allison was still rolling on his grass.    

I went back down, unable to care if they heard me. I kicked the door open and I think I left it open behind me. I didn’t know where exactly I was going. The maze of the carnival unfolded before me and I found my legs taking me past the basketball booth and the Ferris wheel. My parents were probably at the top of that, timed their day to the minute so they could have a full view of our town’s desert mountain sunset, a beauty so natural that it looked fake. Then my legs took me through the entrance, to the end of the mansion with its needlessly large windows, and towards their front yard. Tons of cars were parked in the front yard in equal disarray as the carnival and I pitied the landscaper who had to fix all the tire tracks.

           And, on the front steps, there was Uncle Elliot, doodling something in a notebook. Of course, he was already onto his next project. He seemed like a kid more interested in his imagination than anything reality could give him.

“Uncle Elliot.”

My voice startled him. “Wheeler! Come see this Siren I’m gonna commission.” It was mainly dashes, everything in pen, but I could see the outline of a young girl, wailing.

“It looks cool,” I said. “When will it be finished?”

“You can’t show off your wealth every day. People get annoyed. So I’ll wait a bit. Maybe I can do a waterpark next year, for this unveiling. At least I got some inspiration out of this day.”

           I doubted any of the workers or people standing in the static lines would say this day went well, though none of them would say that to Elliot Kidd. “A waterpark with more safety stuff.”

          “Why’s that?”

          “Because, you know… Allison.”

Scorn filled his voice. “Obviously I know Allison. The tourists in Las Vegas could hear her. Who do you think the Siren is gonna be modeled after?” I looked closer at the Siren he was drawing. It was crying, obviously in pain, with the long limbs of the Kidd family. “You can’t stop a child from hurting themselves. Especially a dumb one.”

          I didn’t like this version of him, his chaotic speeches veering into insults. Basketball was a safer topic and he definitely wanted to talk about his new statue but I needed to know about Allison.

          “Are you gonna make sure Allison’s okay?” I asked. I didn’t know how much the medical bills would be, but they were probably cheaper than the statue he was drawing. In the notebook, it looked taller than his rough sketch of the mansion, with many sections marked with secret rooms. It was money my parents or Allison’s couldn’t spare, at least not on a whim like Uncle Kidd. Do what’s best for yourself and your family.

          “I’ll give you a little lesson so you aren’t a cashier when you’re 40 like your mother,” he said. “Don’t try to fix other people’s messes. Allison’s parents shouldn't have raised an idiot.”

          I felt like slapping the book out of his hands but I guess I was too tired to argue. Instead, I watched the pinks and oranges of the sky until something more clever came to my head.

          “Do you want to have our rematch?” I asked. “You can have two things of mine.”

          Elliot Kidd smiled and I could see the possibilities racing behind his eyes. He might make me walk lopsided for the day by taking a shoe and a sock, or he might demand two of my wisdom teeth when they get taken out. He could have it all. He could have my last name, my bones, everything. But not before I took as much away from him as I could.

---

Nick Danlag is a short story writer from Mount Laurel, New Jersey. He currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada and graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida.
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