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  The midget’s warning shot’s recoil knocked him on his back. Cam pulled out a Derringer from his pocket, pointing it at Marco’s face.

  “Everybody just stop!” I said. “I’m sure we can find a solution to this.”

  Then I looked around the tent. Norm had drawn a huge pistol, waving it around the room, and the bearded “lady” had emerged with what looked like a blunderbuss. Moe dropped to the floor, whimpering.

  “Look, nothing has happened yet that can’t be fixed. If somebody gets shot, we’ve got a real problem here,” I said.

  “Not if it’s just a damn chimp!” Cam said, cocking the hammer. “Ain’t no law against a man killing his rabid pet. Everybody here saw him attack me. I don’t see a problem.”

  “Stand down,” Norm said, pointing his gun toward Cam. “No need to discharge another weapon today.”

  The midget had regained his feet and had his pistol at Norm’s knee.

  “What do you know?” Cam said, “I’ll spread monkey brains across the entire tent!”

  “Let’s all take a deep breath,” I said, looking down the blunderbuss, now pointed directly at me. I couldn’t move. “Let’s clear out the spectators and talk this through. The last thing we need is a dead bystander.”

  “Fine. Show’s over folks, go home!” Cam said. The crowd dispersed, and my state of panic eased slightly.

  I looked to the chimp. “Marco. Drop the razor. Come on, drop the razor; it’s going to be okay.”

  Marco pantomimed that he intended to slice Cam’s jugular vein and how the blood would spray across the room as Cam desperately tried to stop the flow.

  “No. Marco, drop the razor. You are fast, but you’re not faster than a bullet. Trust me. Drop the razor, and I promise I’ll get you out of here, safe and sound.”

  “Don’t be promising something you can’t deliver!” Cam said.

  “Work with me, Cam. You shoot him; you have nothing but a dead monkey. Who wants that?”

  “We can stuff him like we did Fluffy. That worked.”

  “Yeah, that worked really well. Cam, look at Fluffy.” I nodded toward the stuffed lion. “He’s just a shadow of what he was. Your circus is in trouble, Cam. Don’t make it worse.”

  “Make it worse? This chimp was the best part of my show. Now he’s a problem. There’s a rule to the circus; the boss is always the boss. You talk back to the boss and you’re gone. This chimp has gone too far, so he’s gone. But somebody’s got to pay. Pay with his life.”

  “His life isn’t payment; its revenge. Revenge for striking back at you. Keep in mind, you drew first blood.”

  “Well within my right as his owner.”

  “So you own Marco?”

  “I own this chimp. Bought him myself.”

  “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s make this a civil negotiation. Can you all lower your weapons?”

  “Get this chimp off me and we’ll talk further.”

  “Marco, put the razor down and come over here to me. Trust me on this.”

  Marco looked at me and studied my face. Then he dropped the weapon onto the ground and sprang across the tent onto my lap. He wrapped his arms around my neck and squeezed tightly. “That’s better.”

  I could not believe those words came out of my mouth, considering the one beast that had caused me more trouble than any other now hugged me. Guns lowered slightly. I drew a long, deep breath. “What did you pay for this chimp, Cam?”

  “What I paid for him isn’t the issue. The issue is what he’s worth.”

  “And what do you think he’s worth?” I said, clenching my teeth as I waited for the answer.

  “Let’s see. A chimp that that understands what I tell him, can dance with expert precision, and draws crowds of thousands to my circus—”

  “Cam, there were maybe thirty people here.”

  “Word was just getting out. Tomorrow’s show would have had double that. It’s the way of the circus.”

  “Let’s get down to the number. What’s he worth?”

  “A thousand dollars. No less.”

  “That’s insane. Nobody pays a thousand dollars for a chimp.”

  “That’s my price. Not a penny less. Worth that for me to see him die.” Cam raised his derringer toward me and Marco. The bearded “lady” approached closer with the blunderbuss, and the midget sighted me with his huge pistol. “Do we have a deal? We’re out here in the middle of nowhere. I know how to make things and people disappear. How about you first, Raka?”

  Cam directed the derringer toward my head, his eyes tightening, his arm stiffening as he took deliberate aim.

  “Norm. Pay Cam the money.”

  “But, that’s my life savings,” Norm said.

  “It does you no good if you leave here dead. Trust me on this, I’ll make it straight with you.”

  “But…”

  “Do it now and we all leave alive. Right Cam?”

  “Right. If he’s got the money.”

  “Norm?!”

  He fumbled through his wallet and counted out a thousand dollars with trembling fingers, handing it to Cam. “Fine. Here.”

  “Now get lost, the lot of you!” Cam said. Marco untied me from the chair and we ran to Norm’s car.

  And that is how I bought a monkey that I hated, from a crazed circus-owner, with someone else’s money.

  Chapter 14

  Irma Gurd, a Wedding!

  I never expected to marry. Most of my relationships started along the lines of some awkward, intoxicated flirting followed by getting my face slapped, a drink thrown at me, or a knee to the groin. Occasionally, I’d get a positive reaction, and that made me nervous.

  What was wrong with this girl if she was desperate enough to be interested in me?

  Those relationships usually lasted a short time and ended up with crying, further damage to my self-esteem, and often a restraining order against one party, or both. After a while, I started to see success in my broadcasting career, and I lived that life. Traveling from planet to planet, occasionally hooking up with some fame-groupie who knew me from the show and considered me a star. That never lasted long, but something is better than nothing. It also helped to build up a wall around me. I didn’t let anyone in and I learned to live that way. I actually had a certain disdain for anyone interested in getting close, and you can imagine how that worked toward building a relationship.

  But with Gina, everything had been different. She didn’t think of me as famous, and she took care of me when I had been at my most vulnerable, never asking for anything in return. She smiled; not a fake tight smirk you give someone you know and just acknowledge, but a smile that said she liked to be with me. That filled my heart with true joy, and I found myself hating the time we spent apart. Gina always had patience, understanding, and forgiveness; a truly good person.

  Case in point: The night I came home from that bachelor party with Marco the chimp, I didn’t know what to expect. She had every right to be angry, but she just smiled and said, “Look at you, little mister!”, holding her arms out. Marco ran to her, jumped into her arms, and treated her like royalty. She earned immediate respect from him, and, as time went on, she could look at him and say, ‘Marco, this room is a mess; you should be ashamed of yourself”.

  He’d jump up, clean up the room, and get it looking really good. Then he’d come to find her, take her by the hand, and lead her into the room. ‘That’s a good boy!’ she’d say, kiss him on the forehead, and send him on his way.

  Marco would smile a huge chimp smile and run off to some adventure on the farm.

  Marco still had an ornery streak toward me, but it had been toned down considerably. His tricks tended toward things like hiding my shoes or stealing fruit from my plate than to do something truly disgusting. One day, I mentioned that he had been getting easier to live with, and Gina told me that she’d had a long talk with Marco, and he understood that he should respect me. Personally, I think the chimp saw the good in her and would have done anything
to please her, even if it meant being nice to me. We came to an understanding, Marco and I. If he knew that Gina didn’t have her eyes on him, he might try to embarrass me, like spraying water on the front of my pants right before I went to work. I’d tell him that Gina would be disappointed when she found out what he did, and he’d look to the floor and run off to bring me another pair of pants. I learned to recognize when he acted bad-tempered, mention Gina, and he’d stop. This had become tolerable.

  I learned about the rules of engagement, so to speak, when it comes to the wedding. The first of which, I couldn’t see Gina the day of the wedding until she walked down the aisle. Second, we needed someone to preside over the ceremony, and since Reverend “Goliath” had gone “away on business”, that meant we had to have another reverend do the duties. Luckily, a replacement had been assigned to her church, so Reverend William Joseph Walker III had been tapped to fulfill the role. Reverend Walker, a thin man of average height, prematurely white hair, with sun-darkened skin. He had a down-to-terra nature about him that I appreciated. He didn’t pretend to be something he wasn’t, and he didn’t expect Gina and me to pretend anything either. He truly seemed more interested in seeing us happy together than to press me about my religious background, why I had no family, why a monkey following us around all the time, etc. Unfortunately for us, the Reverend Walker had memory difficulties and lived by his pocket calendar. The same pocket calendar he had left in his jacket pocket, to be sent to the cleaners the week of our wedding.

  Moe agreed to be my best man, and Gina insisted that Marco could be our ‘ring bearer’. We had an unfunny ongoing joke about him being a monkey, not a bear, so he couldn’t be qualified to be the ringer bearer. I expected this to be trouble, but she insisted, and he listened to her. She made him a little suit to wear, gray and styled like a tuxedo with a double-breasted jacket and white shirt. He looked as dignified as a chimpanzee could; like a short and hairy version of a movie star, with big sharp teeth. We practiced what he needed to do, and he carried a little ring box during our rehearsals.

  The day of the wedding, I drove to the Pentecost Church of the Divine Spirit. The number of cars in the parking lot surprised me, as well as and how many people had come to this little church for our wedding. The crowd appeared to be at least a hundred, and as I looked around, I didn’t seem to recognize anyone. I finally saw Moe and pulled him to the side.

  “Who are all these people?” I said, looking around trying to get a sense of the demographics. I noticed an unusual trend of gray-haired women in the crowd.

  “Don’t ask me. Must be friends of Gina.”

  “They don’t really look like her friends. Family perhaps? Grandma she never mentioned and her fifty closest friends?”

  “Probably,” Moe said as we walked inside the church. He grabbed a flyer from the sign-in table, stared at it for an instant, then his eyes widened. He pointed to the flyer and handed it to me.

  Funeral Service for Irma Gurd.

  I turned to Moe. “Oh my God! Irma Gurd? Who the hell is Irma Gurd? Oh my God.”

  A little old lady came up to me. She wore a long black pantsuit with a white scarf pinned to her chest, using a kitty-motif stickpin. “It’s so sad, isn’t it? Such a nice lady, and to die the way she did.”

  “Sorry, I’m in shock here. What were you saying?”

  “It’s all right sweetie. The loss is terrible for us all. To think that Irma died the way she did.”

  I tried to wrap my head around what was going on. “The way she did?”

  “They think she tripped over one of her twenty-some cats and fell down the stairs to the cellar. It was so sad, and then nobody knew she was down there all that time, and you know, cats do get hungry…”

  “I’m, uh, here for a wedding… Did you say cats get hungry?”

  “Yes, so sad. She was down there for weeks before anyone knew that she was missing. They think that she died when she fell down the stairs. But some of my friends aren’t so sure she was dead before they started, you know…”

  “Oh my God! Irma Gurd was eaten by her cats?!”

  “Not so loud sweetie. We’ve got to find homes for those precious little furballs, you know. Besides, we don’t know if they were all ‘her’ cats; some of them may be feral. Doesn’t matter, they’re here and we’ll find homes for them.”

  “They’re here?”

  “Yes, we were able to gather them all up and cage them. It’s sitting right next to her casket. We’re hoping that as people go through the line to pay their respect, they’ll take one of those precious babies home with them.”

  “I have to go and see this,” I said as a sharp pain pulsed behind my eyes. “Thanks, I guess.”

  I walked into the sanctuary, to find it basically as the lady described. A casket, thankfully closed, with a portrait of a little old lady on top of it. In the picture, she held a cat on her lap. My mind started to wonder if that cat was the one she tripped over, or perhaps the first one to take a bite out of her. A wire cage had been placed on the floor next to the casket, filled with cats of all different types, ages, and sizes. They hissed, meowed, and growled, probably due to the fact that Marco, in his little gray suit, bounced up and down on top of the cage, agitating them, occasionally reaching into the cage and pulling tails. I considered telling him to stop, but decided ‘why bother at this point?’, so I walked toward the Reverend’s office. I found him sitting there, behind his desk, preparing a prayer.

  “What are you doing here, Raka?” he said, as his eye’s turned toward the ceiling.

  “Married. Me, Gina, today? Remember?”

  His face reddened. “Oh my. Seems that I’ve forgotten something. I’ve misplaced my calendar, and am lost without it. I went to bed last night thinking there was something I had overlooked. I guess it was you, and not brushing my teeth.”

  “What are we going to do?!” I said, louder than intended.

  “We’re getting married!” Gina said, and, as I turned toward her, she yelled, “Eyes left! Don’t you dare look at me yet!”

  I turned my head away from her and raised my hand up to act as a blinder. “But there’s a dead woman and cats, and—”

  “And we’re getting married. You two figure it out while I finish getting ready.”

  I heard her walk off, louder than usual.

  “Reverend? Any ideas?”

  “We’ll just have to combine the services. One ending marks another beginning. There’s a certain poetry about it if you think about it.”

  “There’s poetry to a cat-mauled woman lying dead in a pine box with a cage full of feral cats ten feet from where I’m getting married? I think I missed that day in poetry class.”

  “The Lord works in mysterious ways, Raka.”

  “That’s an understatement. Let’s get this over with.”

  I worked my way toward the sanctuary. Henry caught my eye and waved me over.

  “Raka, I swear nothing surprises me anymore. How did this happen?” Henry said.

  “I think the reverend simply forgot. Did you know Ms. Gurd?”

  “It’s a small town. I knew who she was, but I don’t think I’d ever really met her. She had a ‘crazy-cat-lady vibe’ about her. So, what are you going to do?”

  “Marry Gina. The Reverend is going to combine the services.”

  “Regardless of the circumstances, I know that Gina loves you, and you make her happy, so that makes me happy. This will be a wedding that we’ll never forget!”

  “I don’t see how anyone could.”

  “I think they are ready for you.”

  Henry motioned toward the front of the room. I nodded, gave a nervous smile, and made my way forward.

  “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here for an unusual symphony; a melody of an ending and a beginning. Many of you have never met, two circles unlikely to every come together, for many are here to celebrate the life of Irma Gurd and usher her into the Kingdom of Heaven. Also, here among us are the friends and family of Raka Varoule
and Gina Roberts, who are to be joined in the Holy Union of Matrimony. All things come in God’s time, and in his Holy Wisdom, he has brought us all together for this momentous occasion. Irma was a friend to her animal companions to the end, providing for them until her final days…”

  And then some, I thought.

  “She never married, but she certainly knew love. I was told by her good friend, Beatrice Hanson, that Irma was always happy to take in a stray kitten, saying ‘Oh, I just want to eat you up, you little sweetie!’”

  I snorted, Gina elbowed me, and the Reverend’s eyes narrowed, his brow furrowed. I feigned wiping a tear, and he went on.

  “Psalm Twenty-three does not say that the Lord will always protect us from danger. Rather it says that we will all feel that we are walking through a dark and dangerous valley, the ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death’. God will be with us to comfort us and sustain us on this journey, and we shall never be alone. In recent days, Irma could certainly have thought that she went through this valley, but I can guarantee that through this, she was never alone…”

  One of the cats screeched, “Mrrrroooow!”

  I pulled my fist up to my mouth, coughing into it to keep from laughing. Gina elbowed me again.

  “She was never alone. Even in death, the Spirit of the Lord was with her. She was never alone, and is still not alone. Her family is here with her in the congregation as well as in the cage by her casket. I am here to tell you that the death of a Christian is a wonderful thing. We live in a tough, cruel world of injustices, hardships, hunger, and suffering.”

  “Mrrrroooow!”

  “We tend to look upon death as the end, as the enemy of life, but when a Christian like Irma Gurd dies, she is in the presence of the Lord. In Psalm one sixteen, we learn ‘Precious in the sight of God is the death of His saints’. I’m not saying Irma was a saint, but I think she would have seen the beauty in the second reason we are here today, to join Raka and Gina in Holy Matrimony. We are gathered today in the sight of God and this company to witness and celebrate one of life’s greatest moments, to give recognition to the union of Raka Varoule and Gina Roberts. When Raka and Gina came to me, several months ago and asked me to perform their service, I was thrilled to agree. I know they wanted the service to be memorable, and I think we have been successful on that front. Without any further ado, is there anyone here that objects to this union? Speak now or forever hold your piece.”