Frank cracked open another beer.
“But—but here’s the only rule. You can only hunt with the pistol you won here today. That’s the only rule.”
The guy who won the .22 groaned; so did Asshole #3. He’d won a snub-nosed .38, which was accurate all the way up to about three or four feet. Everybody else laughed.
* * * * *
Frank found himself in Sturm’s cab as they drove to the vet hospital. “First off,” Sturm said, “you have to realize a couple of facts. One. We don’t have enough cash to pay the winner of this particular operation. Two. We don’t pay these boys off, then this whole operation is bust. You add that up, son, and you’ll come to understand that if we don’t win here, you don’t get paid. You understand that?”
“Yeah.” Frank understood all right, but he wondered where the hell all of Sturm’s cash had gone. Sturm had gone down to Chico a few days earlier and cleaned out his bank account, bringing back at least five Army duffel bags full of bills. Frank got the feeling that it was bullshit, that all that was really going on was that Sturm simply didn’t like to lose.
“So here’s the deal.” Sturm laid out the facts.
When they got to the hospital Frank cracked open another beer and led everyone into the barn. Sturm pointed out the monkey. “There’s the little fucker. See his earrings? Okay then. You’re gonna watch us load all these monkeys, every last one ’em, into that truck. Then you’re gonna follow us to the park. There, you’ll have a chance to get your guns ready, and we’re gonna let these monkeys loose.”
Getting the monkeys into the horse trailer wasn’t tough. They backed the trailer up the side of the barn, pried off a plank, and Frank coaxed all them, including the wanted monkey with the earrings, into the trailer with a pile of dried apricots. Sturm made a big deal of locking the gate with a chain and a padlock, presumably to prove that there would be no cheating. He gave the key to Girdler to hold.
Chuck and Frank jumped into the cab. Then, with Sturm following directly behind Chuck’s truck, the Assholes next, and Girdler at the rear, the convoy pulled slowly out of the gravel parking lot. As they turned left onto the highway, Chuck said, “Go,” dropping the pickup’s speed to just a crawl. Sturm made the turn slightly tighter, angling his truck so he was partly blocking the view from Escalade and the Winnebago. Frank stepped out of the pickup and crouched, waiting until the running board of the horse trailer had reached him, hopped on, and crawled inside through the front window.
He had a pair of pliers and ten minutes.
He had kept some of the dried apricots in his pocket and pulled them out now. The movement of the trailer spooked the monkeys, but they quickly surrounded Frank, making grabs at his fistful of dried fruit. He located the big monkey with the earrings and held an apricot. Just before the monkey could snatch it away, Frank dropped the fruit, and in the split second the monkey’s attention was diverted, he grabbed the back of the monkey’s neck and went to work. The hard part was avoiding the nails at the ends of the fingers and long toes. Sturm had warned him about getting any cuts on his face; he didn’t want Frank showing up at the park with any fresh wounds to spark suspicion. The left earring was the easiest, because Frank could handle the pliers with his right hand. The right ear took a while, but Frank had just finished when he heard Chuck start honking the pickup’s horn, pounding out a rhythm.
This was Chuck’s signal that they were nearly to the park. Sturm started hitting his out horn as well, and pretty soon, both the Escalade and the Winnebago horns joined in, the mechanical bellowing echoing down the empty streets. The horns had a sort of formal effect, heralding the arrival of the hunters.
Chuck made another left, slowing down as much as possible, and Frank slithered out of the front window. He scurried up to the cab and hopped inside. Chuck pulled out of the turn and circled the park, turning into the alley in the center of the block on the park’s south side.
Sturm had all the hunters line up along the north sidewalk, facing the bank, while Chuck backed the horse trailer back across Sutter Street. This way, the hunters would be turning and shooting into the late afternoon son, just to make things more interesting.
Girdler returned the key and while Frank and Chuck drew back the bolts and got ready to drop the gate, the hunters loaded their handguns. Sturm said, “As winner of the last competition, I’m sitting this one out. It’s all yours, boys. Get your guns out.”
Everybody already had their pistols and revolvers ready.
Sturm raised one of his new pistols. “But before there’s any shooting, understand this. There’s rules here. We can’t have our own men under fire. You get five seconds. Understand me? You’ll watch as the monkeys get loose. There will be no shooting, none at all for a full five seconds. I’ll be going by my watch here. Anybody fires, anybody—and I’ll shoot them myself.”
Chuck and Frank propped the gate shut with 2-by-4s, and didn’t waste time hopping into the cab. They crouched low in the bench seat.
Sturm held up the other revolver as well, aiming both arms, arms straight, elbows locked, at the bank across the street. The pearl handles shimmered and flashed in the sun.
Sturm fired. Chuck floored it. The bullets punched the bank sign; the sign buckled inward slightly, but the damage was small, like someone getting playfully hit in the gut. A few pieces of glass the size of quarters hit the sidewalk. Everyone snapped their safeties off and jerked their guns up, itching to turn around and shoot, as the trailer door fell open and monkeys scampered through the cloud of dust and dead grass. The truck tires gripped first grass, then sidewalk and a quick jolt of grass again, finally bouncing down onto pavement.
“Three seconds,” Sturm hollered. Nobody knew if he meant that three seconds had passed, or if there was three seconds left.
Chuck’s truck made it to the alley and started gaining speed. The horse trailer bounced once as the hitch hit the center of the road. Most of the monkeys went for the trees immediately, but some stayed in the trailer, looking for the dried apricots that Frank had wedged between the loose slats in the floor.
“Set” Sturm shouted.
Hammers clicked back.
The monkeys shook dust into the air as they clambered into the dead trees.
Sturm turned his pistols to the bank sign again, yelled, “Shoot!” and kept squeezing the trigger until he was empty.
The hunters turned and fired, nearly as one, an explosion of gunfire that reverberated through the town and went rolling out through the pasture and fields until dying in the ravines and creeks and hills.
Girdler had thought ahead. Where the Assholes had laboriously spent half an hour carefully shoving shells into brand new bandoliers, he’d simply dumped all his shells into the hip pockets of his safari jacket. He’d fired and reloaded a thirteen round magazine four times before Asshole #3 could pinch six shells out of the bandolier to reload just once.
Dead and dying monkeys fell out of the trees like rotten fruit.
* * * * *
Chuck and Frank pulled around the block and parked alongside the lunch tables. The tubs of ice were just tepid bowls of water, now alive with wasps. Frank got low and tried to come in under the wasps and ended up getting stung twice as he groped for three warm beers. He danced away, crushing one wasp in the crook of his neck, and another against his chest with a beer can. A couple followed him for a while, but gave up when Frank dumped two beers in his pockets and shook up the third one, but instead of spraying it at the wasps, Frank cracked the beer open into his mouth and then spit beer at the insects. He was glad that that all of the hunters were too busy shooting monkeys to see him. Chuck didn’t see Frank either, because he was too busy going for his shotgun in the back window of his truck. Chuck pumped it quick and announced he was gonna join the hunt.