The Monkey and the Dog

This is the story of a dog and a monkey. A real dog, and a sock monkey, also real but in a different way.

The monkey, whose name was Monkey, lived before the dog. A grandma made Monkey for her oldest son's first child, but that child gave him to the middle child. Monkey became the high prince of the middle child's country, Elenaland. He and a blond china doll with snarled hair and a kind face were the queen of Elenaland's oldest children. In the queen's early years, I believe he behaved in a more monkey-like fashion (he broke his tail once, swinging by it) but he grew increasingly noble. He always accompanied the middle child on her journeys; he was very important to her. When she finally decided to serve the King of Kings, she lay on her bed and said, "Jesus you can have everything--even Monkey."

Monkey's long middle grew thin with hugging; he fit just right between the middle child's hands. Love wears through a stuffed animal's outside, so Monkey had to travel once to Arkansas where the grandma gave him some new skin. Another grandma sewed a white tube sock across the holes in his back. The top of the sock, ending just under his cap, had pink and blue stripes. And so, Monkey grew venerable, and the middle child grew up. And the grandma's oldest son, the middle child's dad, died. And the dog came.

The dog's name was Frank. He was big and black, and very, very happy. The almost grownup middle child did not like him. He belonged to a new life, a life without the dad. She was not happy about that new life, and Frank was so very alive and so awfully happy. Sometimes she kicked at him, but he always forgave her. He loved socks. He liked to trot into a room with a sock in his mouth, looking at her from the corners of his eyes until she growled, "Frank, leave it." Sometimes he would.

One night, Frank went upstairs looking for something to do. He found the door to the middle child's room open. Inside, in easy reach of his snuffing nose, he found a thing made of socks. As there was no one around to try to get the socky object from him (which would have been the most fun), he made the best of things by tearing the socks and stuffing to bits.

When the middle child climbed the stairs, she found clumps of mottled brown sock and white stuffing mounded outside her bedroom door. There was nothing left of Monkey to be patched. In fact, Monkey was gone. She shoved the pieces into a plastic bag, barely looking. She didn't want to see an eye or a bit of absurd, kindly smile. She pushed the bag into the kitchen garbage can and shut the lid. Perhaps she should have buried it. It was worth burying--and worth crying over, but she didn't, because she was nearly grown up and because it seemed silly to care too much about Monkey when something sadder was happening already that night (which is not part of this story).

The middle child did not kick at Frank for eating Monkey. I think she had got beyond kicking. I don't think she even yelled. She is quite grown up now, but she still sometimes misses Monkey, and other things that can never be got back. She still pretends not to think so very much of Frank (mostly to keep the youngest child, who thinks Frank is the best, better than the old dog, from crowing) , but sometimes she strokes the soft blue-black hair of Frank's face and talks to him and smiles at the brown eyes under their twitching bumps of eyebrows. Maybe she is beginning to learn that the gifts the King gives today are just as precious as the ones he gave her before.