Oscar Casares by Brownsville Read Free Book Online

window and told him to shut the hell up.
    Bony was sitting in the lawn chair when his father turned off the porch light. It was almost eleven o'clock. He sat in the dark staring at the monkey and barely making out the shape of its head. Usually there would've been more light in the yard, but some pendejo had busted out the streetlight again. Bony finished his last beer and closed his eyes. When he woke up a few minutes later, a cat was sniffing the monkey. “¡Pinche gato!” Bony yelled and threw a rock at it. He pegged the cat on its backside right as it was starting to lick the monkey's ear. Bony went over to make sure the monkey was all right. He cleared the dirt around the palm tree so there wouldn't be any bugs crawling on the head.
    It was time to go to sleep, but he couldn't leave the monkey outside. Not if he wanted to see it again. If you left anything in the yard overnight, it was as good as gone. People chained their barbecue pits to trees. Unless you drove some cucaracha, your car better have an alarm on it. Most of the neighbors who could afford them had steel bars installed on the windows and doors of their houses, and even that didn't always keep the cabrones out if they thought there was something worth stealing. The Sanchez family had a full-grown chow in their backyard, and one day it disappeared forever. No way was he leaving the monkey in the yard.
    Bony found a plastic trash bag on the porch, but he wasn't sure how to put the monkey's head inside it. He hadn't really touched the monkey, and the truth was that actually putting his hands on it was kind of freaky to him. He told himself it wasn't because he was afraid—he just didn't want to mess up its hair. If he were a monkey, he wouldn't want some guy grabbing him by the head. He wrapped his hand inside the white bag and held the head against the palm tree until he could scoop it up. When he walked into his room, Bony could see the monkey's black face pressed against the white plastic.
    Where to put the monkey was the next question. There was room on the dresser if he moved his boom box, except he liked having it right under his team poster of the Dallas Cowboys. He also had a poster of the cheerleaders hanging on the back of the door, where nobody could see it and his mother wouldn't complain every time people came to the house. Two leather basketballs were sitting on the recliner he didn't use anymore. He tossed the basketballs in the closet and placed the monkey's head on the recliner. The monkey looked sharp, looked like a king sitting on his throne.
    Bony turned off the lights and climbed into bed. It was pitch-black in the room except for the eyes and shiny white teeth that he swore he could see on the chair. Bony turned towards the wall, but he kept seeing the smile in his mind. He imagined what would happen if the monkey grew back its body in the middle of the night. Hairy arms and legs, long skinny tail, sharp pointy teeth, hands that looked like feet, feet that looked like hands. And what if this new monkey was out for revenge against the people who had cut off its head, but since it was a monkey, it didn't know any better and attacked the first person it saw? It started by ripping out the person's eyes so he couldn't fight back and then it chomped on his face and neck, eating up his cheeks and tongue, gnawing on the bones and cartilage, until the whole room was covered with blood. Bony folded the pillow around his head and tried to make himself fall asleep. After a while, he stood up and put the monkey in the closet and pushed the chair against the door.
    He woke up earlier than usual the next morning. His parents were sitting at the kitchen table when he walked in holding the plastic bag. The monkey was pressed against the white plastic, staring at the chorizo con huevo on the table.
    “¡Ay, Bony!” his mother said, “No me digas que you brought that chango inside my house.”
    “I didn't want somebody to steal him.”
    “Who's going