The Great Escape of Dr. Alyokhin

It was just about the last thing I expected, running into Gus Shoatley like that. It’s been almost twenty years since he pulled out on El Caballo Marino bound for Ecuador with the cunning Dr. Alyokhin stowed away. Not that I was sorry to see you go Doc. In fact, I was kind of pulling for you. And now, almost twenty years later, I hear you did it. Gus said they saw you in the shadows from time to time, and they found food missing, but no one ever laid a hand on you. You son of a gun you. You deserve a lot of credit. Why, you’re a regular hero. I know you’d agree since, like your namesake, you were never burdened with undue modesty. And you know what? As a hero you deserve a tribute. Like Odysseus, Roland, or Prince Igor you deserve an epic of your campaign. Like Gilgamesh and Enkidu, your quest must not be forgotten. And who is there to compose this paeon but me? Who but I can tell the world of your exploits? The task is mine and I must rise to the occasion. I call, therefore, upon the gods of your people, Dr. Alexander A. Alyokhin, second of that name, and upon Calliope, muse of the epic, to sustain and inspire me in the singing of this hymn.

You were no doubt born in a tree. You no doubt spent the first part of your childhood clinging tightly to your mother, and the second part romping with your chums. You were, no doubt, a normal, well-adjusted member of your community. But then along came the great Gringo hunter, Augustus Shoatley, and suddenly you found yourself in a cage aboard El Caballo Marino, Capitan Jorge Fernando Azuela commanding, bound for Tampa, Florida, USA, laden with bananas, tarantulas, and monkeys from out of Guayaquil, Ecuador. The bananas were aboard by virtue of Chiquita Banana, the tarantulas by virtue of the bananas, and the monkeys by virtue of a small enterprise between El Capitan, Gus Shoatley, and me. I lived in Tampa and had a pick-up truck. When El Caballo Marino docked, the first order of business was to unload the bananas, with Gus Shoatley gleaning the tarantulas from them. Then the tarantulas and monkeys were put on my truck and delivered to local pet stores. El Capitan got his cut for providing El Caballo Marino.

I don’t suppose you ever got to know Gus so I’ll tell you about him. This business with El Caballo Marino was merely the extension of a business he’d conducted since he was knee high to a racoon. That’s when he caught his first rattlesnake and sold it. You probably don’t realize it, but the area around Tampa Bay is just about the most snake-infested area in the whole United States, and Gus Shoatley has caught at least one snake of every kind there, from the harmless sort like kings, whips, rats, bulls, and chickens to the venomous variety such as copperheads, moccasins, corals, canebrakes, pygmy rattlers, and the big guy, the diamondback. Why, I myself once ran over a cottonmouth with my lawn mower, chopped his head clean off. It was this yard up the street, belonged to a cop. You could tell from the prowl car parked in the driveway weekday afternoons. No doubt the officer swinging by for a lunch break. Made a heck of a noise, that snake did, stalled the mower in fact. I was squatting down checking it out when the officer’s three daughters came out to see what happened. Odd thing, they were all in their late teens, early twenties and still wearing the frilly nighties they must have slept in even though it was the middle of the afternoon. That time of day, you’d have thought they would at least be dressed and at school or work. Their hair and makeup were all done so I guess they were in the process of getting ready for evening classes or jobs when interrupted by the ruckus in their back yard. Nice looking girls too, make a fella forget all about snakes.

But that was later, after Gus had left. Back in the days I’m talking about he had a pet raccoon that he walked on a leash, and he spent nearly every night, school nights included, in the little patch of jungle behind his house dining on possum and swamp cabbage, smoking a post-prandial vine, and performing certain evacuative functions from the tops of tall trees, a custom of which I know you approve. He was almost as fine a hunter as you, Doc, and he even bagged you once, in your own backyard too, so you see he’s the real deal. It was certainly more than I could do, and even I tricked you once or twice, didn’t I?

Of course I’m the first to admit I was no match for you, Doc. I was from too different a milieu to compete with you, or Gus. I hailed from the Great Northeast, from the land of concrete where we climbed lampposts instead of trees, and wielded stickball bats instead of fishing poles. Not that I didn’t want to climb trees and go fishing. I tried, Lord knows I tried. I used to walk three miles to climb a tree, and such a pathetic little tree it was, something you wouldn’t be caught dead in; and the river that ran through the center of the city was so polluted you could run, or rather slide on the oil slicks, straight across it with out getting your socks wet. Huge carp could be seen knifing along just beneath the surface, but they avoided bait assiduously. Big city carp, they probably subsisted on tin cans and inner tubes. As a hunter, my largest catch up to when I met Gus was a sizable praying mantis, a mere hors d’oeurve to you. You can easily imagine how I fared with Gus Shoatley. He was Paul Bunyan and Huck Finn all rolled into one, while I was a big-city bumbler. Our first meeting set the tone. It was in a small park by the bay. My family had just moved down to the Sunshine State, and I was endeavoring mightily to lay hands on one of those little lizards you used to like so much. You remember those don’t you? You used to just walk right up to them and pick them up. They wouldn’t let me anywhere near them, but they failed to see any harm in you. Big mistake. I at least had no intention of eating them, but you, you little barbarian. First you’d bite off the legs one at a time, then you’d start at the tail and work your way up, blithely munching away, taking no notice of the wriggling lizard or the nauseated people around you. Well, we aren’t here to commend your manners now, are we? A good thing too. But back to Gus Shoatley. There were quite a few lizards on that tree, but, needless to say, I proved utterly incapable of catching one. They gave me the slip every time. If I so much as twitched they’d scramble around the trunk so I couldn’t see them, then up out of reach. I was frustrated to the point of tears when Gus rode up on his motor scooter.

“Whatchall trying to do?” he laughed. “Catch some lizards?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” he drawled. “Yall can’t catch em at way. Gotta catch em onna ground.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Sure. Come on, I’ll show ya. Get onna back.”

Well, I’d never seen this guy before but he had a motor scooter. I had to walk everywhere which in Tampa in the middle of the summer is not fun. So I hopped onna back and off we went.

About a mile down the road we pulled into a lazy little drive-in hamburger joint on the edge of civilization. Beside the parking lot was a patch of jungle which Gus headed straight for.

“I noticed this the other day,” he said. “About a year ago they did some work on the place. They put up a new sign and threw the old one over here in the weeds. There are probably a lot of lizards and stuff under it.

I wondered vaguely what he might mean by “stuff” as I looked where he indicated and there indeed among the weeds lay an old wooden sign with the paint all chipped and peeling.

“C’mon,” he said. “When I say three we’ll pick up the sign and then you hold it while I show yall how to catch em.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Three,” he said, and we started lifting up the sign.

Just then a carhop in short shorts came out of the drive-in and sat on a tall stool. Now some things are more important to a teenaged boy than lizards if you get my drift, so by the time we had the sign standing up I was no longer watching what we were doing.

“Jump back!” Gus hissed.

“Wha?”

“Jump back!”

I looked down, and there was a fine example of “stuff”: a diamondback rattler, all coiled up, looking at me with one scary pair of eyes. Of course, having never before seen such a thing I wasn’t sure what it was, but when it stuck that tail up and jiggled it, well, I felt like I leapt right out of the county. To my surprise and dismay, however, I only traveled about three feet.

Doc, it seemed like that snake just followed me right along.

As I jumped, he struck, and snagged his fangs on my pantleg. I tell you Doc, I very nearly did what you were always doing, only I had a little more control than you ever had. Oh, I know it wasn’t your fault, I found that out years ago. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I tried to shake off the biggest, scariest reptile I personally had ever encountered, but couldn’t. He was stuck. It was only a second, though, before Gus had hold of him. With one hand behind its head and the other controlling the tail he carefully disengaged it. Even in my state of shock I was impressed.

“Quick, roll up your pants,” he said, standing up concentrating on the snake. “See if he scratched ya.”

Fortunately, he’d missed, getting nothing but pantleg.

“Nice work,” said Gus, apparently a master of irony. “Now go into that restaurant and get me a bag to put him in.”

“To put him in?” I yelped. “Why would you put him in a bag?”

“Gonna sell him. Dollar a foot.”

So off I stumbled, into the drive-in. I went to the cash register. There were no customers inside or out. A young woman came out of the kitchen.

“Can I help you?”

“Uh, yeah. Ya got a bag I can borrow?”

“What kind of bag?”

“What kind ya got?”

“Well, let’s see,” she said as she rummaged under the counter. “How about this?”

She held up one of those little brown paper bags you put candy in.

“Uh, okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

A moment later Gus Shoatley was staring at me with a look I would come to know all too well.

“What am I supposed to do with that?” he asked. “Put it on him like a hat?”

I trundled back into the restaurant. The same young woman was still at the register.

“This is too small,” I said. “Got anything bigger?”

“What do you want it for?” she asked.

“Well,” I said. “We, uh, caught this rattlesnake out in the parking lot and…”

She squealed and ran into the kitchen and a moment later there was a lot of yelling back there. I waited a few minutes then went back outside. As I was about to confess another failure the screen door at the rear of the drive-in banged open and the young woman and the carhop emerged carrying a large aluminum trash can between them. We met them halfway and amidst their oohs and ahs Gus dropped the snake into the can and put on the top.

“Now,” he said looking at me and speaking slowly and distinctly. “I’m going to that gas station across the street to see if they have an old inner tube or something. Yall stay here and mind the snake. Don’t take the lid off.”

As if I would do such a thing.

And away he went, leaving me with the ladies and the snake in the parking lot at the rear of the restaurant. The ladies went back inside. I heard some tittering and a minute later the cook came rambling out. Great big guy he was.

“Wheah’s dis heah snake?” he says.

I point.

“Oh yeah?” he says and snatches off the lid. “Whew! He a big’n ain’t he?”

I concur.

“Be rat back,” he says and picks the open can up by one handle and carries it tilted into the back of the drive-in. Then Gus returns with an inner tube with a gaping tear in it, looks around, and is just about to ask me where the hell the snake is when everybody comes running out the back of the restaurant yelling bloody murder.

“Nice,” he says with that look, and tromps in after the snake.

He closed the door and since nobody was about to go in there with him nobody saw how he did it. We did hear a heap of racket, pots and pans crashing, a lot of running to and fro, and then out he came with that snake in both hands again. He stuffed it headfirst into the inner tube, then just as cool as you please said to me, “Let’s go. You hold the inner tube while I drive.”

In response to my look of stark terror, he said, “Don’t worry, he won’t do anything inside the inner tube. It’s dark in there. See how calm he is?”

Seems most critters when they find themselves in a completely dark place, go into some sort of trance. You wouldn’t know about that, though, would you Doc? Anyway, Gus sold the snake for six bucks and he and I became friends. It was an uneven union however. He was Tarzan, I was Cheetah. He showed me around the Florida jungle which means I watched admiringly while he bagged everything that crept or crawled or slithered. So you see Doc, being taken by Gus Shoatley isn’t something to be ashamed of. Yes, he was the real deal, and I was the sidekick. That’s how it was that first day and that’s how it was all through high school, right up to, and including, the last night before he shipped out for the first time. We spent that night in the little patch of jungle behind his house. There was a guy who had some pet ducks in his back yard and we swooped in amidst a bunch of quacking and stole one. Wise now in the ways of nature I held the duck’s head under my shirt to keep it still. It’s not easy to run with a huge water fowl stuffed under your shirt but every time I took it out it would wriggle up a storm. I believe it was trying to convey an objection to being held by the neck. There was a stump near our camp we could use as a chopping block so that’s where we went. It was pitch dark.

“You hold it while I chop off its head,” Gus told me.

That may sound like I was getting the short end of the stick, but neither one of us wanted the axe in my hands. Well, Doc, that duck was darn big and it fought like the dickens. What with that and the pitch dark it took Gus a number of whacks and just as he finally severed the neck the duck got away from me and, like the proverbial headless chicken, darted into the underbrush before keeling over. We knew it keeled over because we could no longer hear it. Unfortunately, we could also no longer see it and we went hungry that night because we couldn’t find it until the next morning.

When we graduated Gus went to Ecuador while I went to college, where I took a course in Behavioral Psychology and learned all about Skinner’s pigeons and Pavlov’s dogs, so I commenced to feeling pretty learned and convinced myself I’d finally got the jump on old Gus. He, meanwhile, was building his modest business. He started as a regular deck hand on El Caballo Marino, but then he began catching tarantulas. Naturally. They were there, he was there, it was just a matter of time. He spent most of his time below decks with the bananas, combing them for the furry little beasts, and only came out on deck in order to snare some sea bird that had the poor judgment to venture anywhere near El Caballo. By the time he reached Tampa he’d have quite a collection. He gradually expanded trade to include geckos, salamanders, parrots, monkeys, and the occasional ocelot. Soon he only went near bananas to catch tarantulas and was partners with El Capitan Azuela. I was added, as I said before, because of my truck.

By then I was an insufferable know-it-all. I ran off at the gums to Gus about my hifalutin education, so I can’t really blame him. That’s where you came into the picture. Gus bet me I couldn’t even housebreak a monkey, much less train it. Well, I had seen these little books showing what nice pets monkeys are. Really Doc! You’d just die laughing. They always have pictures of monkeys dressed up in cute little suits with bowler hats and ties, and brushing their teeth, and even flushing the toilet. I told Gus to pick the monkey.

Well, Doc, we know who he picked, don’t we?

It was me gave you such a high-toned moniker of course. You were named after a man who was chess champion of the world from 1927 to 1935 and again from 1937 to 1945. He was also a very nasty character. He was a Russian pseudo-aristocrat, a tsarist, and so became an émigré after the big revolution they had there. Maybe you heard about it. From then until World War II, another big event for us, he did nothing but play chess and disport himself disgracefully. He gloated when he won and threw tantrums when he lost. After one such game he bellowed, “Why must I lose to this idiot?” When he lost a game of ping-pong he would crush the ball. Folks who entertained him in their homes found their spoons missing and their wives insulted. There was one period when he tried to hypnotize his opponents, and himself wore dark glasses to avoid same. He was the only great master to have been taught the moves by his mother and he was married four times, the last three to women at least 25 years his senior. For many years an alcoholic, he once urinated on the floor at a tournament. In 1927, he upset the personable but lax genius Jose Capablanca for the world title, then never granted Capa a rematch. Instead, he played his old chum Efim Bogolyuboff, twice, winning easily each time. Bogo was a so-so master who could only be considered a championship contender by someone looking for an easy mark. In 1935, however, Alyokhin’s next handpicked nobody turned out to be somebody, and Alyokhin drank too much to boot, so Dr. Max Euwe of Holland was the new champ. Alas, this respite for the chess world lasted but two years, for Euwe, always the sportsman, immediately granted Alyokhin a rematch and, with the Mad Russian on the wagon and really bearing down, it was all up for the genial Dutchman. Alyokhin spent his second reign as he had his first, avoiding Capablanca. During the war he made himself even more odious by collaborating with the Nazis. He wrote treatises on how only Aryans could play creative chess, completely ignoring such great Jewish players as Steinitz, Lasker, Rubinstein, Nimzovich, etc., etc., etc. In fact, each of these had triumphs over Alyokhin himself that maybe he forgot. Even as he wrote there were two Jewish-Americans, Sammy Reshevsky and Rueben Fine, that he wanted no part of. Instead, he spent the war beating a host of no-names and winning a passel of meaningless tournaments. 1945 found him hiding in Spain, that last bastion of Fascism, where he at last died by choking on a chicken bone. He was probably awaiting passage to South America to be with his Nazi cronies, but his Caballo Marino never came. He hated to be called Alyokhin, that being the Jewish pronunciation, and always insisted on Alyekhin, the aristocratic pronunciation. So, naturally, I always say Alyokhin.

I named you after this man not from any malice. It’s hard to explain, but I suppose I owe you an attempt. You see, much as I hate to admit it, this despicable, cowardly, vile man who was on the one hand stupid enough to be a racist, was, on the other, a brilliant chess artist, one of the game’s geniuses. Like many another chess genius he was an enigma. Like Steinitz, who claimed he had a special telephone he used to talk to God, once offering Him odds of Pawn and move, like Nimzovich, who stood on his head between moves to stimulate his brain, and like Fischer, who hated women but loved Richard Nixon, Alyokhin could produce sparkling gems of pristine logic, then turn around and act like a horse’s patootie. This jackass, this boobie, attained heights to which I could never aspire, so I named a monkey after him, thinking here was one Alyokhin I could lord it over. Pretty funny, huh? Yet, though I was clearly delusional, it turned out to be the perfect name for you. You and he shared so many traits, though you at least had some excuse. And you each had as your trademark that vulgar audacity.

There was your take-over of my house for example. Do you remember? I brought you home in a small box and intended to transfer you to a spacious cage I’d installed in the kitchen. Well, as I was saying previously, most animals go into some kind of trance when they’re in a bag or box where it’s dark. Like that duck I hid under my shirt, or the rattler Gus stuffed into the inner tube. And when you first open the bag or box, it usually takes the animal a few seconds to snap out of it, to get going, to get their wits about them. They are vulnerable then, and I naively expected the same from you. But you’re not like other animals are you? You had your wits about you the whole time. You knew exactly where you were. You were in a box and you intended to escape. I can just see you sitting in there, coiled up, waiting, listening to every sound. At the first crack of light you shot out of that box like you were spring loaded. You bowled me over. That brashness, that bold seizure of the initiative, that was pure Alyokhin. From that moment we struggled, you and I, and I might as well have been pitted against the wily Russian for all the success I had.

What was it Napoleon said? “L’audacite, toujours l’audacite”. Well, that was certainly you and your namesake. There you were, at large in the living room. You scattered the women of the house and I chased you about fruitlessly for a while, you may recall, before you discovered the valence above the curtains of the picture window. This gave you a perfect perch, just beyond my reach. Do you remember how I hobbled around with that kitchen chair? I’d step up on it at one end of the valence and you would saunter down to the other. Then I’d hop off and scurry with my chair down to that end, and off you’d go back to the other. And with such a bored air. Not only were you as audacious as your namesake, you were also as insufferable. Of course, looking back I can’t imagine what I was thinking with such an obvious approach. Did I imagine you wouldn’t think of shuffling from one end of the valence to the other? Clearly I grossly underestimated you, so maybe you had some right to be scornful of my feeble attempts. Do you remember what happened next? I got a second chair so I wouldn’t have to shuffle the one back and forth, but it brought me no closer to you. Oh, you made me look the proper fool, didn’t you? But you weren’t done yet were you? Oh no. My sister was a perfectly nice young lady who had never done you any harm, but you always were the most awful male chauvinist pig weren’t you? Helpless alone against you, I enlisted her aid. I had her stand on one chair while I stood on the other.

“Chase him down to this end,” I told her.

“I’m not gonna touch it,” she said grimacing.

“Don’t worry,” I assured her in my folly. “Just wave your arms at it a little. Make faces.”

Which, in her innocence and faith in her big brother’s sagacity, she did. And you, you savage, you leaned back ever so casually and urinated down the front of her shirt. That was my first inkling, as I watched her run away screaming, how appropriately named you were. If I could have gotten hold of you then I would have wrung your scrawny little neck you pipsqueak, but of course I couldn’t lay a finger on you.

And so began your reign of terror. The South American jungle had invaded our happy home. So began our life in a monkey cage. All I ever did was clean up after you. Droppings on the TV, wet spots on the couch, debris everywhere. You were a vandal, you defaced indiscriminately and offhandedly, showing not the slightest scruple. Nothing was safe, nothing was sacred. Remember how you mangled our Easter baskets? An animal with hands was new to me so I’d never fully appreciated their full potential for mischief. Our custom was to hide the baskets at bedtime behind chairs and under tables, then in the morning my two sisters would find them. But of course you found them first, didn’t you? You strewed that shredded-paper grass everywhere and stole all the chocolate kisses, not for the chocolate, which you discarded, but for the silver wrappings, which you hoarded. You may not have cared for chocolate but jelly beans were another thing entirely. There were gnawed jelly beans all in amongst the rejected chocolates and swarming over the whole mess were myriad cockroaches, which was fine by you since you were dining on them. And all accomplished in one short night! Where did you get the energy? But in those days you were indefatigable, inexhaustible, your stamina boundless. Where did it come from? When did you sleep?

I know it wasn’t during the day because I was always after you. I had, in fact, squandered whole days in your pursuit. Had the redoubtable Shoatley been on hand things might have been different. Oh yes, I would have gladly enlisted his aid. By then I was more than willing to admit defeat if only it rid me of you. Housebreak you? I couldn’t even catch you. Alas, Gus was off on El Caballo Marino and I was on my own.

So I got tricky. I was, after all, homo sapiens, secure in the knowledge that my one great advantage over my co-inhabitants of this great planet lay in my superior intelligence. Man is smarter than the apes, they say here. The humans in South America may share this conceit, though there they may admit to a smaller differential. At any rate, I decided to regulate your food supply. Oh yes, I was Rommel, the Desert Fox. I would get behind you, disrupt your lines of supply, cut you off from your base, then pluck you exhausted from the withered vine. I can almost hear you laughing from here you little monster. Like your namesake routing and trampling upon his opponent’s best laid plans with a contemptuous sneer you didn’t even deign to notice my campaign. What a chump I was. For you were from the jungle, you were the consummate guerrilla. It wasn’t your supply lines that were harassed. It was mine. You terrorized anyone attempting to eat anything; you disrupted and routed any attempt at food preparation; you staged clandestine raids upon our stores. Yes, you ruled the roost you tyrant.

You bullied the females especially. For them no demonstration was too lewd, too gross. You did things unmentionable in print, but it was the poor cat that suffered the most. She was getting old by then, though she could still have disemboweled you with a single swipe if only she could forget how terrified and repulsed she was by you. Where did you get the audacity to oppress an animal so mortally dangerous to yourself? You’d hear that scratch at the front door and knowing she wanted in and knowing the exact path she would take to her bowl in the kitchen, you would sit in ambush on the coffee table and jump on her back as she passed below. You were like some simian bronco buster. The poor thing couldn’t even sleep without you dumping water on her or worse. Remember when you woke her up with the cockroach on her face? That was lovely.

It was days before I managed to catch you by swatting you out of mid-air with a broom and momentarily stunning you. Finally you were encaged, but not for long. Those big brown eyes worked wonders on the women of the family. Pretty soon one of them just had to put her arm into the cage to comfort you. You wrapped yourself around a forefinger and visibly languished. Aw, how cute, how sad, how pitiful! And meanwhile you were inching slowly up the forearm, closer and closer to the open door until the lightning-like spring over the shoulder to freedom, and once again you were free to terrorize us.

Don’t get me wrong though. I’m not vilifying you. You were conducting a guerilla campaign to secure your freedom from a stronger, if stupider, opponent. I understand that. You were justified. If I sound vengeful it’s only because I am the defeated enemy and it was a bitter pill to swallow. But I concede. I offer you my sword, tip my King. You won.

Though I did have my little victories. I refer specifically to the times I did manage to capture you. The first time with the broom was brute force, but the second time, you have to admit, was cunning. I had to do something. My family was on the verge of evacuating the house, of abjectly fleeing and leaving the field in the possession of a squirrel monkey that stood, what, maybe eight inches high and weighing in at half a pound? Two adolescent females and one fully grown, plus two adult males running away from a monkey. It was unacceptable Doc. We’d be letting down the side. But what was I to do? I simply could not run you down. That’s when it hit me. How did Euwe beat Alyokhin in ’35? What enabled a near-great master to defeat one of the all-time great masters? One thing and one thing only Doc. Booze. You loved orange juice and I had vodka. The mixture, Doc, not that you care, is called a screwdriver and it certainly drove you screwy didn’t it? Well, we needn’t go into all the gory details, all the preposterous things you did, in this your tribute. Suffice to say you got drunk as a skunk and were completely, for once, in my power.

And I’m sure somewhere in that small but effective monkey brain of yours lurks the memory of the following day. First of all, you woke up in a cage, a rare occurrence for you. Second, you were a sight. We humans call it being hung over. You ate nothing and curled up in a far corner where you spent the day studying the newspapers that covered the floor of the cage. After that you were up to your old tricks of looking forlorn and pathetic and trying to sucker some soft-hearted human into opening that cage door. What you didn’t realize is that I had put a lock on it and hid the key so that only I, the cold-hearted bastard that would have to catch you, was even able to let you out. After a week of moping, though, you even got to me, which is when I thought of the leash.

Ever the optimist, I thought if I did you a good turn you might cooperate more. So far, my training program hadn’t even gotten off the ground. Indeed, I hadn’t so much as gained your attention unless I was chasing you. Maybe now, I thought in my jailer’s mind, in return for limited freedom you’d feel a little gratitude.

So I suckered you for once. I opened the cage door and thrust my arm in up to the shoulder, offering my hand for you to cuddle. Of course, I knew your trick by now and knew you were just cozening me, looking for the chance to scamper up my arm and out the door. But I fooled you. Instead of passively presenting my hand I grabbed you. You were fooled because I didn’t have on the gloves I always wore when hunting you, and sure enough you gave me several sharp reminders why I needed them. But I was triumphant, if bloodied. My father held you down while I buckled the belt around your waist. The leash was a simple affair: a tiny belt with a loop in it, and the leash hooked into the loop. Instead of the short leash that came with the belt, though, I had, in my magnanimity, prepared a long rope. We let you go and away you went, only to be brought up short by my tug on the rope. What a feeling of power! At last I, the human, was in charge. At last the project could begin to proceed according to the plans I had laid. Or so I thought. I let you hop and howl and screech for a while until I was convinced the leash would work. Then I took you outside, out into the glorious Florida sunshine, neath the brilliant azure sky, the puffy white clouds, and the sumptuous verdure. I had foolishly imagined you swooning with pleasure, overcome with gratitude, but you, you son of a gun, what did you do? You went straight up that cherry laurel tree, scampered out on a branch right above me, undid the belt like you’d been wearing one all your life, and threw it at me.

Thus did the reign of terror metastasize to the entire neighborhood. Remember that poor Irish terrier next door? He was the perfect foil, wasn’t he? Big, dumb, energetic, just made for a bit of monkey business. How many times did you run him around that tree he was tied to and nearly choke him half to death? He never caught on. Any time you wanted a bit of excitement all you had to do was present yourself just outside the limit of his rope and run around the tree in ever decreasing circles. He fell for it every time, thinking, in his dim doggy mind, that this time for sure he’d catch that furry little whatever. But he never did, did he? Would you believe it Doc? There are people who think dogs are smart. Of course, no one thinks lizards are smart, and they justified that opinion nicely by their reaction to you, didn’t they? They didn’t have enough sense to run for their lives, to flee, to scramble madly with all their four legs and feet, to jump clean out of the tree if necessary. Anything to get away from you, but instead they did nothing. They let you just amble over and pick them up like I might pick up a tasty treat at the grocery store. The woman with the big hair who lived across the street had enough sense to try to evade you, fat lot of good it did her. We nearly got sued for that one. Her husband had to squirt you (and her) with the garden hose to get you off her head. What did you think you were doing? Did you think she had some sort of bombshell monkey on her head, or are you just a pervert? You rascal, what didn’t you do to the peaceable, conventional citizens of my neighborhood? Why, I even saw you take candy from a baby once, and the Good Humor man wouldn’t come near us.

Of course my continuing efforts to recapture you were utterly doomed to failure. If I couldn’t catch you inside a small house, how could I get you in the great outdoors? Not even booze worked. You wouldn’t go near it unless I was well away, and then you’d gulp it down before I could get close. And then! Then would ensue a drunken carousel with every sort of lewd performance imaginable before, much to everyone’s relief, you’d retire to the top of some palm tree to sleep it off. You know, it’s a wonder no one tried to shoot you.

And they might have if it hadn’t been for the blue jays. What had you done to them, eh? Steal their eggs? Grab one of their hatchlings? Whatever it was, they fixed you didn’t they? Apparently they don’t have blue jays down in the jungles of South America, and you didn’t know their trick of ganging up on cats and snakes and other predators. First I ever knew about them was one time on the back of Gus’s scooter. He stopped suddenly, hopped off and started looking up into this tree.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Hear those jays?” he said.

Well, I hadn’t really paid no mind to them before that. Just a bunch of birds squawking. Birds do that. So what?

“They got something up in that tree,” said Gus, and just then down come this long yellow snake that Gus caught like he was Willie Mays playing centerfield.

“Rat snake,” he said grinning. “Not worth as much as a rattler but worth a couple bucks anyway.”

Those jays harassed that snake right out of that tree and it was plumb lucky Gus caught it before it hit the street. They did a number on you too didn’t they? You were quite the sight scurrying around on that tree limb trying to protect your tiny noggin from those avian dive bombers. Lucky for you the grass underneath was thick and soft since Gus wasn’t around to catch you, but you were stunned for a moment and that’s when that really big one swooped in knocked you out cold. I probably saved your life, you little heathen, because you were helpless at that point and they would have certainly finished you off if I hadn’t scooped you up and scarpered into the house. The neighborhood actually had an impromptu block party that evening to celebrate. Public enemy #1 was back in custody. I was lucky you looked so ridiculous during the air attack, because it put everyone into a good mood and kept us out of court. Everyone who happened to see it had a good laugh, and those who hadn’t seen it had perhaps an even better laugh from hearing the various embellished eye-witness accounts. In fact, it’s taken on legendary proportions so that, like the story of Babe Ruth pointing to center field, you can’t find anyone at all who doesn’t claim to have seen it personally.

So once again I had you. While you were still unconscious I was divinely inspired. After all, I am a homo sapiens. I put the belt for the leash back on you, but this time I cunningly turned it around so that the buckle was in the back. Then I sat back and watched. The first thing you did when you came to was to start fussing with that belt, but you couldn’t find the buckle. Oh, how proud I was, how full of myself. And proud for my species too. It had been downright embarrassing, having a college student outwitted by a squirrel monkey. But now I could hold my head erect again, now I could parade around with an air of accomplishment. Just to be sure, I let you stew in solitary for a few days and gleefully observed your every failed attempt at that belt. From the cage we graduated to the garage where I let would let you wander a bit, then draw you back, heels dragging, to my gloved mitts. Oh, you hated it, you little stinker, and yet… I still am not quite able to accept that you were playing me all that time, consequent events to the contrary. But if you had me bamboozled in the garage, it was nothing to what happened when I took you outside again. Just like the first time you darted up the cherry laurel, but this time you made no effort at all on the belt. In fact, you devil, you seemed utterly resigned to it. How easy life became. You roamed the back yard, unable to get at the Irish terrier or any of the neighbors, though you still wreaked havoc on the lizards. Then, whenever I wanted, I would don my gloves and reel you in kicking and screaming. I was in control. Those were heady days my friend, I even began to dream again of training you. Visions of Doc dressed in a suit, bathing, and squatting over the toilet danced in my brain. Is there no limit to human folly? Apparently not, for when El Caballo Marino put in I decided to take you down on your leash to meet Gus Shoatley and ask for an extension on our bet.

Doc, the ancient Greeks called it hubris and it’s a sort of arrogant pride. It’s being so cocksure you dare the world to do its best. It’s the pride that goeth before the fall, and I had it. True, I hadn’t won the bet. Yet. But I considered now it was just a question of time. Science was on my side. I was set on being magnanimous however, I had every intention of giving you your due as a defeated but worthy opponent. Oh brother. I wonder how many suckers thought they had Alyokhin down and out just before he swallowed them up? Well, that was me, standing there on the dock with that rope wrapped around my arm, casually letting you cavort while I related the story to the great Gus. As he roared with laughter, my grandeur cracked a bit and soon I was chortling along with him. After all, I was the winner, I could afford a laugh or two at my own expense. My theories hadn’t proved completely valid, but we were still working on them. It was while we talked that you ventured out onto that hawser. I watched smiling as you clambered atop the rat shield. That’s what they call that big round thing. It keeps rats off the ship but it sure wasn’t much use against a monkey was it? I was just telling Gus how I wanted more time, and he started laughing again and finally told me your big secret, the point of his practical joke. Not that you care, Doc, you don’t even know what one is and if you did you’d be at a total loss as to what good it might be, but it seems squirrel monkeys don’t have sphincters. So even if you were cooperative, I couldn’t housebreak you since you simply have no control, you couldn’t hold it in if you wanted to. I guess none of the monkeys pictured flushing toilets in those books of mine were squirrel monkeys. Gus told me to just give you back to him and he’d sell you to a pet store, which would then, one presumes, sell you to some other unsuspecting victim, and I had just handed him the leash, with I have to admit a huge sigh of relief, when you did it. Tell me Doc, was it a sudden inspiration, or the culmination of a devious simian plan laid long ago? It seems ludicrous to consider it, but you did it once before didn’t you? The first time up the cherry laurel. This time, perched atop the rat shield, you deftly turned the belt around so the buckle was in the front, undid it, and dropped it ever so delicately into the drink. I could almost swear I saw you wave as you scooted up the hawser and onto El Caballo Marino.

“Nice,” said Gus, looking at me in that same old way.

Well Doc, we searched for you from top to bottom, stem to stern, fore and aft, above decks and below. All that day and the next. You were holed up somewhere so you may not know it. Gus hoped he’d get you later, at sea, when you were hungry, but I was pulling for you. That’s why I didn’t tell him about your drinking problem. I figured if he thought of it himself, so be it. He didn’t though. He wasn’t city enough to come up with such a degenerate trick. And so Doc, you did what the great Alyokhin couldn’t, you escaped to South America. Gus Shoatley told me so tonight when I ran into him after all these years. The nightwatch saw you leaving the ship. That first night in Guayaquil, about 3 in the morning, a most unmonkeylike hour to be out and about, they saw you scamper down the hawser onto the dock and into the city. From there we figure you had little trouble gaining the jungle which is nearby. So my hat’s off to you Doc. You stuck a blow for simianity. As I retire tonight I’ll think of you down there in your trees, a venerable old chap now, surrounded by your devoted clan, and I’ll marvel at what a monkey you made of me.