Inheritance

The Inheritance

Tom goes through a three weeks’ backlog of mail. “Bill, bill, eviction notice … coupon for 15% off a three-credit online course in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy,” Tom flips the advertisement, “addressed to Sambhunath Samantray or Current Resident.” Tom tosses the advertisement in the discard pile, and continues browsing the mail.

“A letter from Mississippi,” Tom narrates.

“Addressed to Sambhunath?” inquires Tim.

“Addressed to me,” wonders Tom. “Oh, it’s dear old Great Aunt Lucy,” he realizes. “I haven’t seen her, or talked to her, since I was like 6 years old. I kinda forgot she existed.”

Tom opens the letter, “Yadda yadda yadda, on my deathbed, yadda yadda, ah.”He assumes an old southern lady voice: “Ahem: ‘I know how much you love animals, Thomas –“

“You love animals?” Tim asks.

“They’re delicious,” replies Tom. “But to your point, I don’t know – I was 6 the first and last time I met her.”

Tom proceeds in his old southern lady voice: “Expect a letter from my executor regarding a special inheritance for you.’” 

Tom inflates with excitement. “An inheritance! Maybe my financial troubles are over!”

“Yes, our financial troubles! Look for the letter from her executor,” Tim commands with matching excitement.

There are three more letters from Mississippi in the stack. Tom tosses the rest of the mail. The first two letters are notices from the county that Tom has one month, and then one week, to respond, upon the pain of his monkeys being impounded and euthanized. The third letter is from Great Aunt Lucy’s executor, informing Tom that, of sound mind, Lucy Elizabeth had bequeathed her exotic lizard collection, as well as her late husband’s monkey collection, to him.

“It appears that Great Uncle Caleb kept a collection of colobus monkeys.  Colobi.Colobuses,” Tom decides. “They are now hungry, mine, and on death row.”

“Congratulations,” Tim says. “And, money?”

“No.There’s no mention of a collection of money here.”

“Read it again,” Tim suggests.

Tom sighs. He has many other, higher priority problems to neglect.

Tom sighs again, louder. “Well, either we go fetch the animals or the county will put them down.”

Tim looks skeptical, knowing where Tom’s thoughts are leading.

“Looks like we’re going to Mississippi,” Tom concludes.

“To do what? Fetch the monkeys? They’re even less permitted in Delaware, probably.”

“Yeah good point.” 

The roommates mull over the problem.

“You’re right,” Tom says.  “We have about one day to consolidate our shit before New Castle County comes and kicks us out of our apartment without any shit, and exactly four days to appeal the monkey execution before Oktibbeha County kills the animals.” Tom sighs again: “Let’s hit the road.”

“I was actually not suggesting that,” corrects Tim. “Will Oktibbeha County bill us for the cost of executing the animals? Could this problem, kind of resolve itself?”

Tim’s ringtone sounds. He checks his phone. It’s a wily debt collector who never changes the phone number from which he calls.Tim silences his phone and says, “let’s hit the road.”

---

Somewhere between Delaware and Mississippi, the pair stop for gas.

“Where did you get that?” Tom asks.

“They sell beer at the gas stations here!” Tim announces in delight.

Somewhere an hour west of the last gas station, Tom asserts: “I told you not to drink that enormous, dollar and twenty-five cent, foul smelling, I’m certain foul tasting, beer-adjacent premium malt liquor alternative.”

“Bro just pull over I swear I’ve never had to pee this bad,” Tim pleads.

Tom continues, “we don’t even know the open-container laws in whatever state this is.Indianois? Tennesota? There’s no shady place to pull over in Tennesota.”

“There!” Tim counters as the car goes on without slowing. “That was a perfectly shady place to pull over.”

Tom pulls the car over once satisfied with himself and his authority. He pops the hood and peers into the engine compartment, arms folded, feigning car trouble to deter any police officers from checking on them.

At the next gas station, Tim comes out of the store excited, holding a sorry looking pizza that was clearly underbaked and in fact looked microwaved. “They sell pizza at the gas stations here!”

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The house of Lucy and Caleb is modest and two stories. It sits near the wooden fence shared with a neighbor, on a very large fenced lot. The portion of the lot that is routinely mown is slightly overgrown since the landscaper gave up trying to collect payment. Grass grows quickly in the wet Mississippi summer. And the unmanaged acreage of the lot is a jungle with random single stalks of corn here and there visible above the flowering weeds, wild grasses, and ferns, though it has been some years since Caleb planted a corn crop. There are a couple mature trees on the property, one suspending a tire on a rope. The land is densely forested beyond the unmanaged grassy acreage. The whole place smells sweet and pure, of magnolia blossoms and honeysuckle, between intermittent wafts of various manures.

A monthly housekeeper watches Tom and Tim pull into the long dirt driveway, and she waves a friendly Mississippi stranger wave from the front steps. Tom and Tim and the housekeeper, Tam, chat. Tom explains that Tam’s clients had passed away not long ago, but that he didn’t have an explanation why no one reached out to her. Not needing a key to the house anymore, Tam gives the housekey to Tim, and quits the premises, promptly losing any concern for the proper custody of the key.

“Do we have permission to go into the house?” Tim asks Tom. “Like, legally?”

As Tam pulls out of the long dirt driveway, a boy on a bicycle rides up.He explains that he helps with the animals. He also has a key, and smells like farm work, and talks very courteously but not formally.

The boy, red-headed and freckled, who looks like his name ought to be Tanner, introduces himself as Ricardo, but invites the Delawareans to call him Ricky, which fits better anyway. “I haven’t heard from your folks in a bit,” Ricky comments. Tom explains that his great aunt and great uncle have passed away.The boy responds very maturely, “Oh, I’m sorry for your loss.” Then, he lets the men inside.

“The lizards are easy. They’re happy in these terraria …” Ricky whispers through the Latin pluralization conventions he’s been studying in school. “Terrarii …second declension, terrariae … terrariums,” Ricky capitulates.  “… as long as they get fresh water and fresh crickets every few days. I’ll do a clean on each terrarium when they start getting funky.”

Tim comments: “These exotic lizards look, like, regular lizards.”

“Yes, but they’re endemic only to one small island off the coast of Mauritius,” Ricky explains.

“Mauritius?”

“Off the coast of Madagascar,” Ricky clarifies.

“Ah, Madagascar…”

“Off the coast of East Africa,” Ricky continues.

“I know where Madagascar is,” Tim responds defensively to the child, but looks away with uncertainty.

Ricky leads the men through the house. “The Angolan Black-and-White Colobuses are a bit more work. These are Angolan Colobuses but are actually from a population in Tanzania.”  Ricky looks at Tim, who nods knowingly, and says, “Tanzanium… off the coast of … Madagascar …”

The boy knows it’s a guess, but Tim is surprisingly nearly right.

The back kitchen door opens into a short utility room, and the three enter. “Shut that kitchen door, please,” Ricky asks.

Ricky opens the back utility room door and walks into a giant outdoor monkey enclosure, almost an acre in area, as tall as the house but not visible from the front. It is constructed all around of chain link fencing. The close half of the top of the enclosure is overlayed with corrugated metal, which itself is overlaid with wooden roofing, because, Ricky explains, “the monkeys don’t like the loud noise of heavy rain on the metal.”

There are multiple medium-size fruit trees in the enclosure, strong enough to support the weight of small monkeys. Tree branches have grown up, through, and around the fencing.

“These guys are friendly, they won’t hurt you. Just watch your step,” Ricky advises, as Tim takes one step forward directly into colobus poop.

Five curious small colobus monkeys study the men. Tom is mesmerized. Tim expected worse. 

Ricky offers his evaluation: “The monkeys seem happy here. Lots of fresh air, and we give ‘em lots of fresh veggies.They are active all day, climbing and playing. They’re even like farmers: a tomato seed found its way into the edge of the enclosure, and grew and made tomatoes, and the monkeys loved them, and now there’s like a million tomato plants in here, and they eat tomatoes allll summer. I guess they, you know, spread the tomato seeds around, you know, when they ...”

“I get it,” Tom interrupts.

“Genius,” Tim responds, and considers pluralizing in Latin, but thinks better of it.

One monkey climbs a little closer to inspect Tom. Tim says, “I think he likes you.”

Ricky corrects: “She.”

Tom, still mesmerized, asks the little naturalist a litany of questions about the monkeys. The boy is happy to talk monkey.

Then Tom asks the pertinent logistical questions: How much does monkey food cost?How much of it is grown on this property? Is growing monkey food difficult? And, perhaps most importantly, what would it take to keep the boy on board at least for a little while?

Tim chimes in: Are the monkeys “fixed?” What’s a normal monkey generation? How many monkeys will there be in two years. Do the monkeys eat lizards?

Ricky answers the men’s questions, and informs them that he is going off to a boarding school in only a few weeks. He won’t be able to come by and care for the animals anymore.

“Well shit,” Tim offers, then looks at the boy and corrects himself, “shoot, I mean.”

A monkey makes a weird vocalization. “I think she’s a little wary of us,” Tim says.

“He,” Ricky corrects.

Tim snaps back, “Don’t gender the monkeys, dude.”

The boy shrugs and gets to his routine work. The men brainstorm. The monkey food stores are running low.

Tim: “I didn’t know they were the size of house cats. I was expecting these big gorilla sized things.”

Tom: “Maybe we could sell them to a zoo.”

Tim: “As leopard food?”

Tom: “As a monkey exhibit”

“Speaking of monkey accommodations,” Tim says, “are we sleeping here tonight?”

Tom replies, “I suppose we’d be squatting if we do, in a Stand-Your-Ground-and-Shoot-the-Squatter state. But yeah I’ll risk it. You can sleep in the car if you want. Honk if an armed citizen’s militia approaches the house. But not so loud that you spook the armed citizen’s militia.”

The boy approaches. “I hate to bring up my fee, while you are still grieving…”

The men look at each other. “Do you accept lizards?” Tom asks hopefully.

The boy rides off grumbling, with two dollars in change and an IOU decorated with a smiley face.

---

That night is hot, and still, and substantially quiet except for the chorus of cicadas from the trees. The front door knob jiggles, and it sounds like a man has bumped into the locked door at walking speed, expecting the door to open. Tom rouses.  Then more jiggling, then banging. Tom opens the front door grimacing with the anticipation of some long-lost cousins he doesn’t recognize, who rightfully possess the house, pointing guns at his face and hoping for a confrontation.

“It is soooo oppressively hot and muggy out there,” Tim, instead, explains, as he invites himself into the house.

“Holy monkey mess Tim I thought you were an armed citizen’s militia,” Tom exhales.

“The mosquitos are eating me alive and I can’t keep the windows up in the car,” Tim explains. “Given the oppressive mugginess.”

“Well the electricity just went off so keep the doors and windows shut to keep the residual air conditioning in,” Tom instructs. 

“The car windows were getting all foggy. It looks like I was making out with my homecoming date,” Tim observes.

“Tasha?” Tom remembers.

Tim smirks.

“And don’t leave the refrigerator door open like that,” Tom adds, by habit.

“But I don’t already know what’s in the refrigerator,” Tim replies.

“Spoiled food,” says Tom.

“Yeah, spoiled food,” confirms Tim. “I’d leave the fridge open to get the cold air out into the room but it kinda smells like spoiled food.”

---

Tim paces the house in the morning. “So, we gotta come up with a plan. We can’t keep squatting like this, it’s not a long-term plan, we’ve just gotten lucky so far.”

“Lucky?” Tim asks for clarification.

“And our monkey friends here – I’m beginning to take a liking to them,” Tom says as he opens the utility room door. “Wait, where’d they go?”

Tim looks puzzled as he steps forward into more monkey poop. There are no monkeys in the enclosure. There is a hole under the enclosure fence. “They burrowed out?”

A very happy mutt is running all around the property with the inexhaustible energy of youth, smiling at his freedom, tongue flapping about. There is another hole under the fence abutting the neighbor’s property.

“He burrowed them out,” Tom says, nodding to the dog.

“She,” Tim corrects.

“There they are, all four, up in that tree in the neighbor’s yard,” Tom points.

“Call the fire department?” Tim suggests.

“They’re not cats,” Tom replies. “Or flames.”

“There’s no way they’re not getting shot,” Tim observes.

Just then, the doorbell sounds and a banging begins on the front door. Tom spins around. “Oh no, the citizen’s militia.”

He goes through the house and opens the front door. Indeed of a militia, there are two men standing at the door holding shotguns: “I heard y’all got a monkey problem,” the first one says. “Can we shoot ‘em?” the other asks, hopeful. Tom says sternly, with growing frustration, “No,” and slams the door. He goes back out the utility room. 

The two men with shotguns look disappointed. They walk towards the neighbor’s house, presumably to ask for permission again to shoot the monkeys.

“Who was that?” Tim asks.

“Just some monkey hunters,” Tom replies. 

“Oh?” Tim sees an obvious opportunity.

“But the kind of monkey hunters that kill the monkeys,” Tom clarifies.

“Oh.”  Tim understands that Tom has formed a strange ethic to protect the monkeys’ interests, but will never understand why.

Tom cursorily pushes dirt back into the hole under the enclosure fence with is shoe and then tries to collect the monkeys for a few hours, but cannot recover even one, because every time he moves toward a monkey to catch it, the monkey moves away from him.

---

A few days later, a rainstorm leads the monkeys to reexcavate the enclosure fence hole and return to the enclosure. In a few more weeks, the monkeys and the happy dog find permanent employment running around and chasing birds away from catfish ponds at a Mississippi aquaculture operation. The job of keeping the birds away from the facility had long belonged to a tight group of rednecks who got paid to ride around in the backs of pickup trucks and shoot the birds. The two men who approached Tom about shooting the monkeys were not even among them.

The rednecks fall in love with the monkeys, and name them, and negotiate to keep their salaries and become primarily caretakers of monkeys. The monkeys groom the rednecks.

Tom and Tim, after successfully placing the animals in work, try to place themselves in work also. They are provided with the opportunity to work with catfish. Tom stops coming to work after a week because the job is really not very pleasant. Tim didn’t make it all the way through orientation the first day.

Tom’s family invites the pair to leave the house so that it can be sold. The endangered lizards are charitably released by the creek, and do very well, and quickly multiply, and become an agricultural nuisance.

While trying to sleep in a small car, on a hot night, during rain that was heavy enough that the windows couldn’t be cracked, the men decide that they really ought to have leased the monkeys to the aquaculture facility instead of given them freely.

A flashlight approaches the car from behind and taps on the driver’s side window.An Oktibbeha County police officer informs them that they cannot be in the park after dusk. 

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