"El Mono Contento"

by J. Friesen

(Originally published as an abridged version in SurfShot, April 2006)

    He came out from behind the bushes with a monkey on his shoulder, wearing a sun-faded Dodgers hat and a big bushy beard – white and gray and stained yellow like a chain-smoker's teeth.  He had on a worn, white, v-neck t-shirt and shorts that were also covered in stains, and he stood quietly, looking us over.  At first it was uncomfortable – he and his monkey staring us down as though we were the misfits in this picture.  I reckoned that perhaps we were the first people he had seen in years, and maybe it was he who was adjusting.  And having just come from the waves and women and wine and frat party of the Caribbean, the sight of his seclusion began to stir in me a vague sense of belonging, like maybe I had finally gotten away, maybe I had finally lost myself in the middle of nowhere and this was what I was looking for the whole time.
    Despite their posturing, the man seemed apprehensive, and the monkey seemed a bit pensive himself, checking us out as he nibbled on his small, emaciated man-hands, popping out fleshy from beneath his coat of fur – white, brown, and black with wisps of yellow stain like his bushmaster.  The monkey's face was emaciated too, with the same fleshy color as his hands, and the fur on his head looking more like a hooded sweatshirt than a coat of hair.
    They stared at us with discretion and silent consternation until the man calmly asked us where we were from.  The monkey seemed to be listening as much as the man when we responded in cadence: "Switzerland"; "San Diego"; "New York"; "The Basque Country".
    "Well, good to meet you all.  I'm Sam, or Sancho as they call me around here, and this is Mickey," he said, pointing at the monkey.
    With the introductions over, Mickey seemed to ease up a bit, but keeping his eyes firmly focused on us.  He paced back and forth across Sam's head, hopping from shoulder to shoulder and back again, hanging from his ears and neck and scaling his face, without any of it seeming to phase Sam as he continued the conversation.
    "So, how did you find your way out here?"
    Dave, who had been the one to hunt him out of the bushes, answered for us all.  "We started in Bocas and from there took a boat to Almirante, then a cab to some bus stop, a bus to Davíd, another bus to Puerto Armuelles, and then stopped and got a place there for the night.  This morning we had to negotiate with some lady to let her husband take us in his boat here, but at El Medio he dropped us off because he didn't want to chance it and try and get his boat in past the waves."
    Sam pondered our trip for a moment as the monkey hung from his ear.  "Yeah, well, I guess that sounds about right."
    "Then from there we found some kid with a horse to carry our boards the last two kilometers."
    "How much did you give him?"
    "5 bucks."
    "How long did it to take you walk here?"
    "A little over an hour."
     He stood for a moment, doing the math in his head.  "Well, that's about a day's wages ... not bad."  He turned and started walking away.  It was hard to tell with his back to us but it seemed as if he was conferring with Mickey, speaking to him as though a small child, in this high and obnoxious voice, indiscernible and certainly embarrassing for a grown man.  They finally looked back and he waved us in, saying, "Why don't we go on a little tour of the place?"
    He brought us down along a small path away from the water that wound through some trees before we came to a small clearing.  In the clearing were set up a couple of open-air, thatched cabinas with a pair of beds, a sparse table with candles, and mosquito nets.  He brought us further down the path past the open-air showers and mango trees to the main kitchen area.  It was made of a high thatched roof with a couple hammocks, a picnic table, some gas burners, and rafters supporting a ladder covered in ropes.  A little bit farther on Sam had his own place with a big bed for he and his wife – who was visiting family in New Zealand, he explained – a table, stacked bookshelves, and a small patio with a hammock and sofas.
    After getting ourselves situated I walked to the bathroom, passing by Sam's place.  Mickey had followed me, leaping from branch to branch beside me all the way to the bathroom, and then inside even after I had pulled the curtain over.  At first it was uncomfortable: a wide-eyed monkey watching me, focusing on me as I lowered my boardshorts, trying to take care of my business.  But I soon figured that the novelty of the situation was once-in-a-lifetime – something to tell my friends, rather than get all worked up about – so I dropped my drawers, took a seat, and picked up one of the National Geographic’s lying beside the sink and opened up the first page to find an ad for BP's charge in the search for alternative energy.
    I quickly put the magazine down and it came to my attention that I was now accompanied by a second monkey, whom I had not had the pleasure of meeting until then. They were both watching me, crawling atop one another and out-maneuvering each other for a better position from which to stare at me.  I tensed up, interrupting my movement and tried to acclimate to the added company.  And then, without warning, they leaped simultaneously onto my head and I knew only to panic.
    They had lowered themselves down upon my lap and were taking swipes at my person.  I was afraid: mid-movement while being accosted by two monkeys.  I swatted at them without any regard for their small, frail frames but they kept bouncing back from the ground with almost superhuman agility, relentlessly swatting at my manhood faster than I could deflect them.  When I finally got the chance I slapped them both hard sending them against the wall, affording myself enough of a chance to lean forward and squeeze my legs tightly together.
    I rushed myself and pinched the rest out as quick as I could, but once I had finished it did not take long to realize that the wipe would be its own battle, leaving myself exposed to their merciless sadism every time I made a move to get underneath.  I soon scratched the wiping and just hiked my boardshorts up as fast as I could, hoping to get to the ocean as quick as possible.
    Escaping the toilet, I passed back by Sam's place.  The place was open-air with a thatched roof, like all the other structures, and out in front there were sofas and a table covered in children's toys with mobiles dangling from the roof.  Children's books were scattered across a table, and crayons and paper with scribbling on them lay strewn about.  I saw Sam and asked him if his kids had gone to New Zealand with his wife.
    "Oh, no," he laughed. "They stayed behind.  They don't really do too well on planes. They're still pretty young."
    "Where are they?  Sleeping?"
    He laughed out loud again.  "Sleeping?  If only.  They'd climb the walls all night if I didn't lock them up for bed."
    "Lock them up?  Really?  Ummm ... where are they now?"
    "Oh, they’re somewhere around here.  Well hell, you already met Mickey.  And George is hanging around someplace.  It's exhausting to keep an eye on them all the time so I tend to let them run free."
    I didn't really know how to respond.  I had met a lifetime's worth of misplaceds and self-exiles in my two years on the isthmus but this one was of another breed, a rare type among those who had escaped to the Cat's Titty.  And of all the outcasts and vagabonds I had met, this one was one of the only that I could truly say had fully come into his own reality.  It became nervous and awkward so I just kind of giggled and walked away to where my friends were.
    Luckily, I found them back at the hut, holding their boards as Stefan was putting on his rashguard.
    "So, we're pretty much stuck out here until we leave, right?" I asked Dave.
    "Yeah, more or less.  Sam said there was another little village about forty-five minutes up around the point and back inland."
    "Well, we might want to check that place out if things get a little slow around here," I added with noted enthusiasm.
    "Yeah, we should go in the morning.  I only have a few cigarettes left and I think meals only come here when they're served."
    "You’re probably right.  Worst-case scenario: we can always pick off the trees."
    Walking down the path to the waves I took careful note of all the different trees we passed, making mental notes of all the edibles I could spot.


* * * * *

 
    After surfing we sat at the picnic table, talking about Sam's travels over dinner – over a bowl of lettuce, leaves, sprouts, beans, rice and a couple tortillas.
    "Wow, ... uh, I think George just pissed on my shoulder,” Stefan explained with not the least amount of amusement.  “Yup, he sure did," he said after examining the damp that had fallen on his shoulder.
    "Ha, ha, could be," Sam said, without even picking his head up from his plate.  "But don't worry, they only eat organic."
    At first, George and Mickey were cool.  An ideal: domesticated monkeys in the wild.  Rascally little pets that would leap along the branches beside you as you walked down the path, sometimes pouncing off your head as though it were only another step to the next branch.  Acrobatic to the point of bewilderment as they wrapped themselves around your arm and you swung it like a propeller with them just holding on, tight as a snake, with great big round eyes that never blinked.
    Later in the day the other monkeys in the jungle would come down from the higher trees to get the bananas that Sam hung out for them every day.  He had lots of fascinating stories about all the monkeys that hung out around the place and how George and Mickey were scared of them all.  He said that their mothers had abandoned them as children because some of the campesinos had accidentally stumbled upon them after they had fallen out of the trees at birth, and contact with humans at a young age was automatic expulsion from the clan.  He said that they had both tried to get in with other groups, but they were never let in.  "We got plenty of love for them here, though," Sam concluded.  "We've been there.  We're foreigners too."
    But now George and Mickey were no longer cool.  They were damn annoying.  They were unruly kids with a ten-yard long jump, inexhaustible energy, and a clueless father.  He just laughed at them and spoke to them in that real high-pitched baby talk.  And he sang songs to them, too.  When he wanted to get Mickey's attention he would sing "the George Song" to George and then Mickey would get jealous and come over.  He had their personalities all dialed in and he felt he had to nurture their characters, adapt to their personalities as a parent, and foster who they really were –  which was as good of an explication as any of us could find as to why he continually allowed them to crawl all over his face and piss on him without so much as batting an eyelash.
    But what really cut the cake was after dinner, when I pulled out my last cigarette, the one I had been saving all day for that moment, when one of the mini-apes grabbed it from my hands and wouldn't let it go.  I grabbed him by the neck and wrestled him with my free hand, no longer sensitive to his fragile frame, and tried to finesse the cigarette loose from his grip, while doing my best to keep it intact.  But he had both of his meaty little man-hands wrapped around it and was trying to maneuver it under his arm like a rifle.  At last I wriggled it free, with more force than I actually thought the monkey's wishbone arms would've been able to stand, and I stood triumphant and gloating, mocking the leaping squirrel-rat.  But before I could savor the victory and enjoy my spoils the monkey had his measly little man-hands around my cigarette again.  The fight, for him, had never ended, and before I could react to out-muscle him for a second time, the cigarette was broken in two and all that was left to me was a filter and half an inch of loose tobacco.
    "You little bastard!  He tore my cigarette, my last one!" I complained to Sam.
    "Ha, ha, ha," Sam let out.  "That little rascal.  I should put a warning sign up or something.  They really like cylinders ... you should see what they'll do with a tampon!"
    The other monkey was pissing on us again and I picked up and went to my bed.  I read by candlelight until falling asleep, trying to escape this remote nightmare.


* * * * *


    In the morning, word had gotten out as to how much money Sam was said to be charging for the meals and the beds.
    "He's got us by the balls here.  We're hours from anything.  Maybe we should all pile into Dave's tent."
    "No," Dave shot out, defending his plot.  "It's only a two-person, and my friend's supposed to be meeting me here today or tomorrow.  Besides, Sam's charging me handsomely for this here patch of grass."
    Stefan and I were near broke, and quiet worried at that. When Sam came to ask us about breakfast, we, in turn, casually asked him about the walk to the village.  He said it was about forty-five minutes – up the coast and onto a path.  At the end of the path there were places where we could "get stuff."
    Stefan and I were on our way.  The heat, still at nine-thirty in the morning, had already taken on that overwhelming weight, making itself known in every step – as it had been yesterday, walking along the beach and through the brush with our boards, and the kid and his horse following with our packs, leading us farther from civilization and security and everything else I had counted on.  At that point, it seemed the perfect escape.  I had wanted out; I wanted to leave everything behind all at once, and I took for the coast.  My only direction was where the waves pushed me and at the time that seemed the best decision I could make.  But now things were changing.  I was lonely, tired, hungry and lost.  I hadn't escaped shit.  I was still me and it pissed me off.
    The walk to the pueblo was actually closer to two hours, and when we got there we found that there was only this little general store run out of the window of some guy's garage door, from where he sold chips, cigarettes, soap and Pepsi.  There were no restaurants for miles.
    We bought the chips and the Pepsi and some cigarettes and enjoyed them in the shadow of a palm tree.  Once we finished we went back and bought more and then inquired with a man sitting outside the shop window when we could catch the next ride out of town.
    "Have to wait for the tide.  Can only go during low tide.  Think that's at 6:00 in the morning.  There's to walk back to El Medio at about five.  A truck, green, goes along the beach and you just get on.  Nothing more."
    We smoked a cigarette with him and then started our walk back, pissed at Sam for his feigned laid-back approach and ready to get on the green truck right then and there and just wait it out.
    "I might just sleep on the beach," Stefan said.  "This guy's gonna break me before we get out of here."
    "Yeah, and we can always eat from the trees, too."
    It was a joke then, but by the time we got back to the beach we had digested our chips and sweat out all our Pepsi, and knew that only $10 plates of organic monkey food were awaiting us at lunch time, hours from now.  Upon finding them, we raped the first fruit-bearing trees we came across.  We tore at the skins of the fruit with our fingers and teeth, stuffing as much into our mouths as possible, not caring what fruit it was, ripe or rotten, and then discarding the remains to squeeze the next one straight into our mouths to wash the last one down.  We ate so many that by the time our citric orgy had ended I could feel the acids burning the lining of my stomach.  I felt nauseous and queasy, but I was full, satiated, and somewhat sedated by the overdose.  We lit cigarettes and I accepted that this was what my escape had brought me to and what it had left me with – a bittersweet ache in an overwhelming climate.
    When we got back to the cabinas Sam was sitting on his couch playing with his monkey.
    "Whoa, you sneaked up on me there." He had been talking to Mickey in that high-pitched baby-yap when we walked up on him.  "You guys find anything to eat up there in the pueblo?"
    It took us a moment to answer him, trying to remain calm.  "There's no restaurant up there."
    "I know," he chuckled.  "Who'da guessed?  They really ought to get something in there if they want to attract more tourists out here.  But I guess it works out better for us," he giggled, stroking the monkey’s head.  "Isn't that right?  Better for all of us," he cooed to the monkey.
    Left with nothing polite to say we went back to our roof and bed.  I sat down and looked around me.  I had escaped, surely, but to what?  I let everyone in on my next escape.
    "I'm out of here in the morning."
    "Me, too," Stefan said without hesitation.
    "Why?" Dave asked.
    "It's too expensive," I told him.
    "But we did so much to get here."
    "I don't mind the traveling.  And it's not sensible for me to stay here.  Besides, I have to be getting on anyway."
    Lies.  My mind was keeping me on the run.  I had come so far, hoping for so much, and had found myself right back where I had started: looking for something else.  I had arrived, and then found that what was I looking for wasn't there.  That was basically it: I was traveling just so I could feel like I was actually going somewhere.  The money was only an excuse, a manipulated half-truth.  I just needed to justify my escape.  I didn't know what I was looking for, but I knew it wasn't where I was either, so I wanted out and I didn't want to have to explain it to anyone.
    "Why don't you surf a little while and see if you don't change your mind."


* * * * *


    Hours later the swell seemed to weaken – as had been forecast –  and by the time I had paddled back to shore I was more convinced than before that I had to move on.  My arms were shot and my will was gone.  The sea had made a fool of me with its currents the whole time, tempting me with clean peaks, but pulling me away faster than I could paddle.  And that seemed to size it all up for me so far: a struggle between my stamina and nature's; having to fight just to stay in place.  But by the end I couldn't fight it anymore, I couldn't help but be pulled away by the current and I knew that it was time to move on.  I couldn't afford it.  I just didn't have the will, or the money, anymore.
    That night we ate pasta and more sprouts, which was all shared with the monkeys without any more complaining.  Sam actually turned out to be much more interesting than just ridiculous, telling us his story, as it were, about having come down from San Diego on a 22-foot sailboat.  He had surfed all Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, all the way to Columbia, for years, until he settled here with his wife fifteen years ago, and hadn't left since.  Guests came, but not frequently, and I couldn't help but wonder if he were trying to make the month's income off of us.
    But he knew all the breaks from El Salvador to beyond the Canal, and had almost lost his boat trying to get to more than a few of them.  He was the Search, the Crossing, the Indies Trader all in one, but no one had ever been there to record it, nor watch him, except, of course, the damn monkeys, and the few locals he'd never see again, but probably knew where they still were.  He just settled down and was now waiting for time to pass, like everyone else around here.
    "I've given it all up - I haven't paddled out in eight years," he said.  "I won't fight it anymore; it's just lost all its appeal.  I don't have the time to paddle out anymore."
    "The time?"  Fernando said.
    "Excuse me, I should say the desire to fill my time that way.  I could go out.  I'm not sidelined here.  I just don't find it all that fulfilling anymore."
    But Dave wouldn't stand for it.  "The more I surf, the more I want to.  I mean, isn't there something that's at least purifying about it, rejuvenating ... "  Sam and Mickey watched Dave and listened to him patiently, but knowing that what he argued had already been decided and defeated, "... the exercise, no?"
    "Oh, I exercise plenty.  I take a lot of walks and row out to the island in my boat sometimes with some of the local boys; and I'll walk out there when the tide is low enough on a full moon.  But I just don't surf anymore.  I don't even have boards.  I've simply given it up.  The more I did it, the less I enjoyed it.  My wife doesn't either ... but she had a real bad fall in Santa Catalina and never really felt like she wanted to get back into it."
    And who could argue with the guy?  He had done, was doing, all that we were doing, and for a real long time, and had come to the decision that it was all that he had wanted, except the surf.  So no one argued with him – no one could really agree with him either, but no one bothered to push it any further.
    "So I think that we're going to be leaving in the morning," I cut in.
    "Oh, really?  So soon?"  Sam sounded surprised, almost alarmed.
    "Yeah, we're trying to get back to the border so we can go on," Stefan added.  "I have to get a flight in Panama City and he's gotta get back to ..."
    "San José."
     "What, weren't the waves any good?"
    "They were, but the swell's dying.  So it's probably a good time to make a move."
    "Yeah, yeah.  I see what you're saying.  Well, that's too bad that you have to leave so soon.  It's good having company back here ... are you all leaving?"
    "No, just those two," Fernando said.
    "Ah, well, that's good.  Let me go and get my ledger – get you the bill so you can pay up now and be all squared away to get the truck at ..."
    "Five."
    "Right.  You'll need an alarm clock, there's already one there beside your bed.  In the morning you just have to walk back to the beach from where you came and it'll be the lime-green A-team truck just driving along.  It's only a buck, or maybe two with the boards.  I hope you have a flashlight."
    "We do."


* * * *


    It didn't take long for Stefan's flashlight to die in the morning.  It was drizzling and muddy, and it sucked having only my flip-flops.  But Mickey and George followed along and led us when they had to.  They weren't much help in giving us a beaten path, but they kept us going on the general trail when it wound away from the coastline. 
    At one point, when the sun had begun to color the sky, we passed a man and two women back off the trail amongst the tall grass, picking fruit from the trees.  They stared at us, and waved at us after we waved to them, and kept on staring at us as we passed on.  Eventually we got to the stretch of beach where we had been dropped off two days earlier, and we sat down.  We weren't sure if we were at the right place because it all looked the same and we were afraid we had to keep going, so we walked another half-hour to the next point on the coast and sat down in a place that looked exactly as the one we had just left.  We saw that the coastline kept repeating itself for as far as we could see and things started getting disoriented. With the sun still hidden in the east, and its reflection spread evenly across the clouds and horizon, it looked like the repeating reflection of two mirrors, duplicating palm tree after palm tree and point after point.  So we quit.   We would walk no further. We dropped our packs and boards and took some fruit from a couple trees Stefan found back off the coast and we ate the fruit slowly, sharing Stefan's last Pepsi and smoking a cigarette afterwards.
    Soon the lime-green A-team truck with off-road tires popped out from behind the trees a little ways back.  When it pulled up we threw our boards on top and got in.  Sitting in the truck I felt settled, being on the move again, surrounded by other locals that we picked up along the way as they popped out of the coastal brush and from beneath groups of palm trees.
    An hour or so later we got to the central bus terminal in Puerto Armuelles where we found the bus for the border.  At the border we tried to change buses to get back to Bocas and Bastimentos – the hammocks, the cabinas over the water, the five-minute boat trip to Carenero for a buck.
    "You can't go there."
    "Why not?"
    "The whole place is inundated from the rains.  All the roads are closed.  Everything on the Caribbean is either under water or washed away.  It's inaccessible and will be for a while so there are no buses running.  Where were you coming from?"
    "El Mono Contento."
    "Punta Burrica?"
    "Yes, sir."
    "You should go back."


January 2005