King and Mrs. Kong Read online

  “Let me guess,” I said to her. “It’s Mister Kong, and he’s the jealous type, right?”

  She stared at me, and I could see she was wondering if she could stuff me in her mouth and swallow me before her husband arrived, and I thunk she was just about to try it when he broke cover and stared at her with bloodshot little eyes. Well, little given the size of his head; actually they were about the size and weight of a pair of bowling balls.

  He pointed at me and growled something, and she shook her head and kind of whined and whimpered, and it looked for all the world like she was telling him that I had partooken of a little carnal knowledge against her will. He looked at me, and came as close to laughing as I ever seen a gorilla come, and then he pulled up a tree by its roots and kind of shook it threateningly, and suddenly that did it, and in about a quarter of a second she stopped being wronged and innocent and she launched herself at him and gave him the thrashing of his life, and finally he took off up the mountain like a bat out of hell, yelping and yowling every step of the way.

  I just knew what was going to come next, and I had no intention of spending the night with a thirty-ton lady gorilla. I climbed down off the tree and hid in the bushes, and decided that she’d figger I was making my way back to the village or maybe Clyde’s camp, while the one place she’d never think of looking for me was up the mountain with her husband, so that’s the direction I headed.

  I caught up with him just after sunrise, and truth to tell he wasn’t a bad guy once you got past the fact that he wasn’t much smarter than a sea slug and hygiene wasn’t real high on his list of priorities. He guv me to understand that whatever happened wasn’t my fault, that he’d known Mrs. Kong was the flighty sort when he’d married her, but since she was the only giant female gorilla on the island he’d learned to put up with her little peccadilloes. Truth to tell, I was glad Rosepetal had high-tailed it back to camp, because if he’d seen her with me, I’m sure he’d have offered to trade Mrs. Kong for her, even-up.

  We spent a few days together, both of us afraid to come back down the mountain and run into Mrs. Kong. Then one morning I saw Clyde trudging up the mountain and approaching us, accompanied by Rosepetal, who was wearing an oversized pair of khaki shorts and a blouse that could have held two of her.

  “Good morning, Lucifer,” he said. “You seem to have made a friend.”

  “He’s really pretty nice,” I replied. “He’s just getting over a bad marriage.”

  “That wife of his done took an instant dislike to me,” said Clyde. “I’ve had to flee for my life a couple of times already. Truth to tell, I don’t think I’m ever gonna get her off this island.” He stared at my companion. “Whereas this fellow, he’s the king of all he surveys. A much more impressive attraction. Maybe I’ll take him back instead. Even his name sounds like show biz: King Kong.”

  “She’s Kong, not him,” I said.

  “A minor detail,” said Clyde.

  “Kong ain’t his name,” I persisted.

  “A feature attraction named King Adelbert couldn’t draw flies at a watermelon party,” said Clyde. “From this day forward he’s King Kong.”

  Which is how he got his name.

  “So how do you think you’re going to get him down the mountain?” I asked.

  “That’s what I brung Rosepetal for,” answered Clyde. “Rosie honey, if Lucifer and I hum ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ do you think you could do a kootch dance to it?”

  “Absolutely not!” she said.

  “How about ‘Nearer My God to Thee’?” he asked.

  “No!”

  “Well damn it, them’s the only two songs I know,” said Clyde. “How about you, Lucifer?”

  “Hell, I know lots of songs,” I said.

  “Well, hum one with a beat so’s she can shimmy to it.”

  Which is how I came to be humming “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano” while Rosepetal Schultz shook and shimmied for a forty-ton ape atop a mountain on a fog-covered island in the middle of the Pacific. Just in case anyone was wondering.

  Problem was, it didn’t do no good. King Kong watched attentively for maybe a minute, and then went back to gorging himself on bananas.

  “That’s that,” said Clyde unhappily. “He must have left his libido in his other pants. Let’s go back to camp and see if we can’t come up with some other plan to entice him down off this here mountain.”

  So the three of us began walking, and damned if King Kong didn’t fall into step behind us.

  “I guess it gets lonely up here,” remarked Rosepetal.

  “Actually, there ain’t nothing wrong with a little loneliness when the alternative is keeping house with Mrs. Kong,” said Clyde.

  He was still following us half an hour later, and Clyde announced that we weren’t heading to his camp after all, but were going straight to the ship he’d parked just beyond the coral reef as long as King Kong was in a traveling mood.

  “Just where is this here ship bound for?” I asked.

  “New York City!” enthused Clyde. “This is gonna be Madison Square Garden’s greatest display ever.” He paused, and then said, “Well, except for the rasslin’ match between the Butcher of Belgrade and Victor the Vampire.”

  “I’ll walk down to the shore with you, but I ain’t getting in that boat,” I said.

  “You sure?” replied Clyde. “You’ll get three squares a day, and a free trip to the land of your birth.”

  “There’s a reason why I ain’t in the land of my birth right now,” I said.

  “I forgot,” said Clyde. “You can’t go back to North America, can you?”

  “How about South America?” asked Rosepetal.

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Or Europe or Asia or Africa?” she said.

  “Afraid not,” I said. “And you can add Easter Island and Hawaii to the list.”

  “Well, on the plus side,” said Clyde, “you sure have seen a lot of the world.”

  “What’s left?” asked Rosepetal.

  “I’m making my way to Australia,” I answered. “Due to a series of misunderstandings, it’s the only major land mass I ain’t been asked to leave and never come back.”

  “Really?” she said. “The only one?”

  “Bringing the Word of the Lord to the godless heathen of the world is a rough and tumble sport,” I said. “It ain’t for sissies.”

  “There’s always Antarctica,” said Clyde.

  “It’s my considered opinion that mighty few seals and polar bears are in serious need of salvation,” I said.

  We made it to the bottom of the mountain, made a wide circle around Mrs. Kong’s living room, and soon we were at the seashore, where a beat-up cargo ship was parked about a quarter mile out to sea.

  “Does he swim?” asked Clyde.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Do forty-ton monkeys swim?”

  “Well, he’d better,” said Clyde. “The boat can’t get no closer without running onto the reef. Now, we already proved we can’t lure him anywhere with Rosepetal, which shows his brain ain’t no bigger than a normal monkey’s, and I sure as hell can’t carry enough bananas to make it all the way out to the boat before he eats ‘em all.” He paused thoughtfully for a moment. “I don’t suppose you’d like to get Mrs. Kong and bring her down to the shore here? There ain’t no doubt in my mind that one look at her and he’ll outswim Johnny Weismuller and Buster Crabbe.”

  I looked at the boat, and then the water, and then King Kong, and then the boat again, and finally I said, “You’re looking at this all wrong, Clyde. Why can’t the boat get any closer?”

  “It’ll shred its bottom on the coral reef,” he said. “I already told you that, Lucifer.”

  “How deep is the water before you get to the end of the reef?”

  “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “Fifteen feet, maybe twenty,”

  “And how tall is King Kong?”

  “Son of a bitch!” exclaimed Clyde. “He don’t have to
swim. He can just walk to the boat!”

  Which is just what he did. The last I saw of Clyde and Rosepetal, they were on the ship, throwing bunches of bananas into the space they’d cleared out in the cargo hold for King Kong and then stepping aside as he dove in after them.

  As for me, I wandered back to the village, offered to absolve Mpuji of any mortal sins he’d committed in the past month in exchange for any meal what didn’t have no fruit in it. I sought out the young lady who’d been trussed up and offered to give her a blessing, but she figured since Mrs. Kong had turned her down she was already blessed.

  I hung around for another week, and then decided it was time to continue making my way to Australia. I absolved Mpuji of a few more sins in exchange for a month’s supply of food for my canoe, and headed due west. After I’d busted through the fog and paddled a few miles I was joined by my old friend Basil, who’d lost his door somewhere along the way and was back to swimming again. He paced the canoe for a couple of days while I pulled out my well-worn copy of the Good Book, skipped the part about Jonah so as not to give him any ideas above his station, and read some of the racier psalms at him.

  So I was on my way to Australia and its picturesque Outfront, and things couldn’t have been pleasanter—but as you’ll see, it just goes to show what an ironic sense of humor the Good Lord can display when the mood takes Him.