Somewhere Over the Google

If Ham had stayed where he belonged , he would never have found the rainbow.

He wanted to share his beautiful discovery, but no one would climb as high as he had.

So, he watched the gorgeous arch of colors all by himself. The rainbow didn’t stay long. Misty clouds above the rainforest dropped down and cloudy mists rose up from the foliage. Together, they hid the rainbow from sight.

Then, very slowly and very sadly, he lowered himself hand over feet, down through the treetops, to where his six brothers and sisters were waiting on a broad branch in the all-too-familiar canopy.

“You’re going to be in trouble!” his brother Rocky yelled out when Ham’s face popped out of the thick leafy ceiling over their heads.

“Mother’s going to be mad!” his brother Mooch shouted as he swung his body down through the leaves and dangled his feet just above their frowning faces.

“We’re telling!” sang his sisters Spark, Missy, Gee, and Little Doodies when he dropped down right in front of them onto their branch. Then, with a nasty laugh, all of his brothers and sisters leapt away, from branch to branch, in the direction of home.

Ham sighed. He looked up at the tangle of leaves and branches, vines and flowers. He cocked his head at the sound of twittering birds and buzzing insects. He flared his nostrils to absorb the rainforest smells – some sweet and fragrant, some stinky and rotten. He opened his mouth and pretended to taste everything on his pink tongue.

Nothing could make him forget. He missed the rainbow.

When he finally arrived home, he was very late. He had not leapt from branch to branch. He had not swung on liana vines. He had moved very slowly, pretending to be one of those odd upside-down animals who always ignored his questions and never laughed at any of his tricks.

His brothers and sisters were waiting on the branch just below their family nest.

“We told!” Spark, Missy, Gee, and Little Doodies giggled.

“Mother’s mad,” Mooch chortled.

“You’re in trouble!” Rocky sniggered.

Ham ignored them and climbed into his nest.

His mother pointed a long finger at him, “Your brothers and sisters told me what you did. Do you have any idea how mad I am and how much trouble you are in?”

Ham sat and stared at his feet. His tail wrapped nervously around his waist. He held its tip in both hands. “I wanted to see over the treetops.”

His mother threw her head back and howled once at the puzzle of leafy branches that blocked every bit of the sky. Their rainforest neighbors echoed her angry shout. Ham heard his brothers, his sisters, lots of other monkeys, all kinds of birds, and even what sounded like a jungle cat from way down in the shadowy understory. Ham gripped his tail tightly. He looked up into his mother’s fuming eyes.

She pointed at his chest. “What are you?”.

“A monkey,” he replied.

She nodded and gestured at the branches surrounding the nest. “Yes, and where do monkeys play?”

“In the canopy,” he answered softly.

She nodded and bared her teeth. “Yes! The canopy! Play there and stay there! Never go lower…”

Ham remembered the cat’s scream and nodded vigorously.

“…and never climb higher,” his mother warned. She stared at him as though waiting for him to nod. He didn’t.

“But monkeys climb trees,” he whispered instead. “And some trees go high, much higher than the canopy, way up into the clouds, up almost to the sky. If the trees go there, why can’t we climb all the way up, too?”

His mother arched her back and howled a second time, even louder than before. Ham wanted to cover his ears with his hands, but he just held his tail more tightly.

As the echoes died, she lowered her face close to his and hissed, “Why would we, Ham? There is no reason to go up there! We have everything we need right here in the canopy!” She waved at the nest around them.

Ham looked at the stockpiled of food his family had gathered. He looked at the plump greenish-purple figs, the funny-looking starfruits, the papayas, the heaped cacao nuts, and a even a few delicious beetles creeping about. He closed his eyes and thought about how fantastic all those things tasted. He remembered all the other wonderful things he’d seen and heard and smelt on the way back to the nest.

He opened his eyes and looked sadly at his mother. Behind her, he spied the eyes of his siblings peeking over the edge of the nest. He turned his back on them and covered his face with his hands. His mother had to lean in closely to hear his whispered words.

“But we don’t have any rainbows.”

Home Is Where the Heart Googles

“How ‘bout ya play somethin’ we know, Checkie!” someone yelled from the back of the old warehouse depot. I couldn’t see who, but it sounded a lot like Eightball.

“It’s Czechie, ya igmo!” I yelled back. “Ya gotta get your tongue all up ‘gainst the roof of ya mouth to say it right! Cizzz-ZHECK-ee! Like that – did ya hear it?”

A bald, grease-smudged head popped up from behind some wooden pallets that we’d stacked up to block some of the wind comin’ off the lake. Just like I thought, it was Eightball. He had his ugly face all pinched up like he always did whenever he got mad. I knew he didn’t see me right away ‘cause he didn’t say nothin’. He just blinked his big eyes at Czechie, who stood on some rocks just outside the shelter on the lakeshore. Czechie didn’t see him and probably hadn’t heard him either since he kept on playin’ that same foreign tune on his trumpet. I was sittin’ a little off to the side, up beside one of the rusty supports for the depot’s shingled roof, with my legs dangling off the side into the weeds. I had to wave to get Eightball to see me.

“How ‘bout I stick my foot ‘gainst the roof of yer mouth? Huh, Ajax?” he yelled, spraying spit all into the air ‘round him. “How ‘bout that, huh? I weren’t talkin’ to ya noways, so why don’t ya keep yer big mouth shut!”

I snorted and leaned back on my palms. I didn’t look at him, just stared straight up at the sky through one of the holes in the roof, and said, “Ah, go wash yer bald head, ya filthy monkey!”

Eightball cussed, and I heard him hock up a big mouthful of snot. I twisted and looked just as he reared his skinny neck back like a copperhead and spit at me. The big glob of yellow snot spun in the air but barely cleared the pallets. It didn’t get nowhere close to where I sat, and I just shook my head sad-like.

“That was just sorry. I’m shamed to have ya as a brother if ya can’t spit better than that,” I said, tryin’ to sound like I remember our dad’s voice bein’ when he was mad at us.

Eightball cussed again and ducked back behind the pallets out of sight.

Maybe half a minute later, he shouted from back there, “Whyn’t ya go wash yerself! Ya stink, ya dirty gorilla!”

I couldn’t help but bust out in a big laugh. Growin’ up, my brother never had been good at tradin’ insults, and now that we was out on our own, he still stunk at it. He must have heard me laughin’, even over Czechie’s foreign music, because he started bangin’ around and bein’ all noisy with somethin’ back behind those pallets. He probably had his collection of plastic bottles stashed back there. We took most to the ‘cycling plant to get money, but Eightball always liked savin’ the green ones for some reason or other. When winter came, those’d have to go with the rest.

I probably sat and laughed for five minutes, banging both my heels against the crumbling concrete the whole time, before I got real bored. I had always enjoyed makin’ Eightball mad, at least ever since he got old enough that Mama didn’t care when he cried anymore.
I was hopin’ that he’d come back out to yell at me some more, but he was still poutin’or maybe he dozed off.

That just left Czechie. He’d been livin’ with us in the old depot for nearly a year but kept to his part of the shelter most of the time. He was a lot older than me and my brother, but I didn’t mind him much. He’d been a lot of help, collectin’ food and addin’ old plywood and boxes to keep the wind and rain out of our place. It seemed no one but us cared ‘bout this place ‘cause no one ever came ‘round and messed with it. I was glad of that, but it did make life pretty borin’ most of the time.

Czechie’s foreign music was getting’ me pretty bored, too. I felt like I wanted to sing somethin’, but I couldn’t sing to what he was playin’. It was too foreign for me to even try to make up words, too. I needed somethin’ old and familiar to really get my voice movin’ and my blood stirred up. It was almos’ time to go down the lake and walk the fencerow to see what people tossed out on the overpass.

“Hey, Czechie!” I said, sayin’ it right and sayin’ it loud in case my brother might be awake after all. I cupped one hand on the side of my mouth and said it again even louder. “Hey, I’m talking to ya, Czechie!”

I had to yell a third time before he stopped playin’ and looked at me. I waved and drummed my heels against the concrete as I made my offer.

“Czechie, I wonder if ya can play ‘Oh Say Can You See’ on that goofy foreign trumpet? I’ve got half an orange I’ll give ya if ya can play it good and loud.”

The old man licked his lips a few times, then hocked and spit something brown into the weeds off to the side of where I sat. He cocked his head and rubbed the grey whiskers on his cheek with one hand. He looked at his horn, and then he looked at me.

“This,” he said, cradling the instrument in one hand like it was made of gold ‘stead of tarnished and dented, “This is not trumpet – this is rozhok … like me from Czechia … and my name is Bretislav Svoboda …not Cizz-sheki as you try to say … and as for your ‘Say Can You See’ song…”

He looked away and lifted his horn to his lips. I heard snickerin’ from back behind the pallets. I opened my mouth to say somethin’ smart but didn’t get out a word before the song started. Oncet the first note played, I couldn’t do nothin’ but sit with a dumb look on my face until the whole thing was over. Blamed if the foreigner didn’t play the song better than I’d heard at any ball game or parade in my whole life. I didn’t even mind when Eightball came out and sat down beside me to listen.