It all ended when m.o.f.ongo allied himself with the Communist freedom fighter, Comrade Carnage: half man, half clockwork terror ruled by an atomic brain. Their dreams of domination died in the nuclear fires unleashed by Steve Savage in his cowardly sneak attack. m.o.f.ongo"s hover plane had risen up out of the glowing rubble of his Necro-Palace, another hairsbreadth escape, another last-minute dodge that left him at large to go on to greater and more grandiose schemes, and then the cold push of Steve Savage"s sten gun against the back of his skull, the poaching b.a.s.t.a.r.d having hidden in the co-pilot"s seat until m.o.f.ongo was distracted. m.o.f.ongo knew he should have whipped around with his lightning-fast reflexes and punched Savage in the face, but he was so tired, his limbs were filled with lead, he just couldn"t do it. And so, in a split second, m.o.f.ongo"s days of freedom came to an end.
Trapped in a cage, m.o.f.ongo traveled with Savage, his parole officer, his warden, his captor, his keeper. He became Savage"s meal ticket, the highlight of his road show. But the venues got smaller, the crowds got thinner, Savage got older, m.o.f.ongo"s mental rays got weaker, and twenty-five years ago they became a single-o show, a traveling psychic ape and his owner floating from one redneck carnival to another, endlessly spinning through the southeastern United States, crossing paths and sharing midways with the same bunch of increasingly marginalized attractions as the big conglomerates took over the funfairs, pushing the sideshows further and further to the side.
There were a few years, though, when things might have gone differently. Savage had knocked up Nancy the Snake Girl and they had a daughter. Nancy was a woman of infinite practicality and limited patience for the male ego. She was in love with Steve, however, and gave him eight years to get his life in order and to give up the carnie life. While Steve was busy wasting every single one of those years, little Theresa Savage discovered m.o.f.ongo.
What little girl wouldn"t want to befriend a talking gorilla? And what talking gorilla wouldn"t welcome a captive audience? And when Theresa went missing and everyone a.s.sumed she was hiding near the teacups or gorging on cotton candy, it was m.o.f.ongo who used his mental rays to locate her and it was m.o.f.ongo who sent Dogtag Donald racing over to Bombo"s Baby Show trailer to drag her out in the nick of time. It was m.o.f.ongo who identified that the drug in her system was nothing more than vodka, and it was m.o.f.ongo who planted a phobic aversion to children under eighteen deep inside Bombo"s mind.
Not that anyone ever said "thank you."
Three months later, the eight years were over and, on the dot, Nancy Savage ditched the carnie life without a backward glance. She didn"t even listen to Steve"s weak protests and pathetic rationalizations. She just picked up Theresa, got her real estate license, and vanished into an alternate America where people lived in houses, went to school, and paid their taxes, leaving Steve Savage and m.o.f.ongo to return to their interminable bickering and to try to forget the eight-year interruption as best they could.
Now, every year m.o.f.ongo gets fewer visitors, and every year his mental powers fade, and every year he and Steve find new insults for old injuries, and every year he smokes his Dutch Masters and reads his paper and dreams about revenge until it is an abstraction worn smooth and featureless by constant fantasy.
It"s been thirty years without a whiff of Theresa Savage, yet here"s her smell again like a golden oldie.
"We need to talk," she says, standing outside m.o.f.ongo"s cage with three men in dark suits.
"Let me guess," m.o.f.ongo says, sitting up. He is excited to have some new playmates, especially ones who wear suits. None of his visitors ever wear suits, and he hasn"t seen a human being in forty hours. He can mentally dampen his hunger and thirst but his boredom knows no bounds. He points to them in order. "CIA, FBI, NSA."
"CIA, FBI, and Animal Control," the youngest suit man says to him.
"I am not an animal," m.o.f.ongo says.
"You"re not exactly human, either," the man says.
m.o.f.ongo"s nostrils flare.
"What is this, Theresa?" he asks. "Why did you come back?"
"Dad"s dead," she says.
"What?"
"He"s dead," she repeats.
"Who did it?"
"A bottle of Southern Comfort and a handful of Vicodin," she says. "Day before yesterday."
"Wrong," m.o.f.ongo says. "One of his enemies, returned for revenge."
"Mo, I appreciate that you"re upset but this isn"t part of you guys" soap opera. He killed himself."
"No," m.o.f.ongo says, and he feels fear because he really does not know who did it. Old allies can turn into new enemies, old friends can become new foes. Men of Adventure are no stranger to psychosis. "One of his enemies is here. I may also be in danger. You must free me so I can defend myself."
"I can"t let you come to the funeral," she says, ignoring him. "People will want to know why a talking ape is there and you"re kind of hard to explain."
"I don"t want to go to his funeral," m.o.f.ongo snarls. "I want to defend myself!"
"I"m sorry," Theresa says. "I really am. On the plus side, we"re getting you out of here."
"Yes, free to defend myself. Free to destroy my enemies."
"There"s a Primate Refuge outside Austin," the Animal Control man says. "They"ve agreed to take you. You"ll fit right in. That chimpanzee who did all those Geico ads is there."
"Chimpanzees? Chimpanzees! Masturbating, s.h.i.t-flinging, pants-wearing attention wh.o.r.es! I am m.o.f.ongo: Gorilla of the Mind. I am a threat to mankind! I"m on the UN watch list!"
"You"ve been off that list for twenty-six years," the CIA agent says. "No one remembers you anymore."
"If men do not still feel fear," m.o.f.ongo snarls, "why do they send the CIA? Why the FBI?"
The FBI agent shrugs. "I just wanted to see a talking gorilla," he says.
The CIA agent takes a picture of m.o.f.ongo. "You"re just one more thing on my to-do list."
"I"m sorry to dump all this on you at once," Theresa says. "I really am. I"ll come visit you in Austin. We can catch up. I"ve got friends I can stay with and we can just hang out. Like we used to, right?"
"You are making a grave mistake," m.o.f.ongo says. "I still have my secret Science Bases hidden throughout your country. You put me in this refugee camp and I will break out and go to them and manufacture a cloned army of super-apes and together we will grind your country beneath our paws!"
"There are no more secret Science Bases," the CIA agent says. "We got them all back in "51."
"But what if I have one location locked away in my subconscious?" m.o.f.ongo says. "What if it"s buried down so deep only my mental rays can find it? What then? Will you risk humanity"s future if you"re wrong?"
But m.o.f.ongo can"t even convince himself.
"m.o.f.ongo," Theresa says, "you"ll be out in the sun again, able to live a normal life. I"ll check in on you and make sure you have everything you need."
"I should have snapped your neck when you were a child," m.o.f.ongo says.
"I"m sorry I left you alone for so long, Mo," Theresa says, then she turns and walks out of the tent with the government men.
"Don"t be sorry," he shouts at her back. "Be afraid! Afraid of my wrath!"
But she is already gone.
It takes m.o.f.ongo all the cash hidden inside his Power Turban to convince Herman to let him out of his cage.
"If Theresa finds out I did this, I"m dead meat," Herman says.
"Pathetic," m.o.f.ongo spits. "The power of a computer in your skull and yet you tremble like a chimp."
"The power of a million brains in your skull and yet a Yale lock has kept you prisoner for thirty-some odd years," Herman says.
"I will have my revenge," m.o.f.ongo says.
"Yeah, yeah," Herman says. "I only let you out because it"s cruel to keep you locked up if some old archenemy"s come back to b.u.mp you off."
m.o.f.ongo enters Steve Savage"s trailer. It"s dingy and stained, depressing and undersized with no room to walk around. m.o.f.ongo expected wall-to-wall photos, Steve Savage shaking the hands of presidents, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, sc.r.a.pbooks, posters from the old movies, the radio shows. But there"s nothing here except McDonald"s wrappers and empty bottles.
m.o.f.ongo lets his mental rays scan the s.p.a.ce. They strain to detect a trace of any number of old enemies and allies: The Cat, Red Charlie, The Beast with Five Thousand Fingers, Two Gun Chang, and all the rest.
Nothing.
There is no trace of murder. No hint of death. No whiff of vengeance. No deathtraps, no mantraps, no exotic poisons or mechanical ants. The only psychic residue in this trailer is despondency, despair, and the deep ache of a man who wanted to die long before he got this old.
m.o.f.ongo"s nose begins to bleed and he feels a headache throb deep within his brain. He wipes the heavy black blood running from his nostrils with the back of one hairy paw.
The chair in front of the thirteen-inch TV is worn down to fit Steve"s body. m.o.f.ongo sniffs it and detects something familiar. He reaches underneath and pulls out a dried leather sc.r.a.p, black with age: Shaira"s leather headband. Pa.s.sed down the generations, it was made of the hide of a thirty-foot Mokele-mbembe lizard living on a riverbed near Boyoma Falls, a great beast that had a taste for Oparian flesh. The Third Blind Prince of Opar killed it, fashioning armor from its hide, and three thousand years later the final surviving piece was pa.s.sed to Shaira, the most valuable of her possessions. It once commanded the respect of thousands, and now it is lying on the floor of Steve"s trailer.
m.o.f.ongo runs his finger along it, but it crumbles at his touch and the brittle pieces fall to the linoleum. He and Steve Savage had fought a bitter war over Shaira the Jungle Empress, each of them in love with the seven-foot warrior queen who ruled the city of Opar. Their battle reduced her city to cinders, and she died in the crossfire. m.o.f.ongo hadn"t thought about her in years. He always wondered which of them had loved her more, and now he knows.
There are only two of us left who remember Shaira even existed, he thinks, then corrects himself: With Steve gone, now m.o.f.ongo is the only one.
There are no enemies here, only bad memories. Let them come and put him in the primate refuge. He deserves to be with the bad monkeys now. The chimps will be his new companions and he will not speak of revolution or revenge. He will just pray each day to remember less and less until finally he dies.
Transporting a nonhuman primate over state lines is complicated business. There are protocols, procedures, shipping-container regulations, squeeze-box quarantines, OSHA guidelines, permits to be displayed, licenses to be stamped and the least important thing in all of this is the nonhuman primate himself. m.o.f.ongo sits, not eating, not drinking, staring off into s.p.a.ce.
"You are a giant pain in my a.s.s," the Animal Control agent says. "Seriously. It"s going to be a relief to get you out of my hair."
He clanks out of the tractor-trailer, leaving m.o.f.ongo alone. Theresa Savage walks up the metal ramp.
"Hi, Mo," she says.
m.o.f.ongo says nothing.
"I was just with those weird collectors. They"re buying all the old advertising canvases and one sheets. It"s not a lot, but it"ll pay for some of this, you know, getting you down to Austin and all."
A fly lands on m.o.f.ongo"s nose. He doesn"t notice.
"I"m glad you"re not fighting or anything," Theresa says. "But would you just talk to me?"
But m.o.f.ongo will not talk to anyone anymore.
"I want you to be happy," she says. "I want you to think of this as a vacation. It"s not a punishment, it"s a time when you can relax. Like retirement. People really look forward to retirement. I"m already looking forward to mine! You"ll have fun. You"ll have a really fun time."
m.o.f.ongo does not care.
"It"s pretty hot down in Texas," she says. "I really will come to visit. I want to talk to you about stuff, my dad and things. You were the only person he was close to. The only gorilla, I guess, not really person."
The air is thick and heavy.
"After we moved, I pretended you could still hear me. I"d lie under my bed and talk to you like you could still hear me through your mind rays or something. You couldn"t really hear me though, right? I mean, you never actually heard me," she says. "Could you?"
It"s getting hot in the tractor-trailer.
"Mom sold Dogtag Donald a split level outside Atlanta. He"s a born again Christian now, with two little boys and everything," she says. "He told me what you did, about the baby show guy."
m.o.f.ongo will not look at her.
"You saved my life," Theresa says. "All my good memories from when I was a kid are about you."
A ten-year-old girl with an iPod jammed in her ears, pink tennis shoes, and a denim mini skirt stands at the bottom of the ramp.
"Mom!" she hollers. "Are we going?"
"That"s Chrissy," Theresa says. "My daughter." She yells back. "Come up here and meet m.o.f.ongo."
The girl gracelessly tromps into the trailer.
"It stinks," she says.
"I didn"t even notice," Theresa says. "Do you want to talk to her, m.o.f.ongo? Say "hi" to my daughter?"
Silence.
"He used to talk all the time," Theresa says. Then, thoughtfully, "Mostly cussing."
"Mom," Chrissy says. "You"re so dumb. He can"t talk. He"s a monkey. It was a stupid carnival trick."
"He"s a gorilla," Theresa says.
Chrissy rolls her eyes. "What ever."
"Hey," the Animal Control agent says, standing at the bottom of the ramp. "Come sign these final permits and let"s get this show on the road."
Theresa turns to go.
"I"ll be right back," she says, and she leaves m.o.f.ongo and Chrissy alone.
Chrissy contemplates m.o.f.ongo. She goes outside and comes back with a few small rocks. She tosses them at m.o.f.ongo. One bounces off his chest, one bounces off his forehead, then she aims one at his crotch.
"So, do you do anything?" she asks. "Or do you just sit around and smell like s.h.i.t?"
She takes a step closer, and pings m.o.f.ongo on the beaner with another rock, but m.o.f.ongo doesn"t notice. Because deep within m.o.f.ongo"s mind a door has opened and he sees a future where everything Theresa says is true. He will have friends. He will relax. It will be like it was, and he will astonish Theresa"s sp.a.w.n with stories of the marvels he saw in Africa and Theresa will thank him for helping him raise her daughter, for being an inspiration, and the spirit of m.o.f.ongo will live on.
"Will you come to Austin?" he asks, throat rusty with disuse.
Chrissy stares at him. m.o.f.ongo repeats himself.
"Will. You. Come. To. Austin?"
Chrissy"s high-pitched screams bring everyone running, and she crashes into them as she barrels out of the trailer, sobbing.