TUESDAY: Big Chimpin’

BY JEFFREY DUPUIS

Copyright is held by the author.

THE OLDEST chimpanzee known to science is a retiree named Jiggs who lives in Palm Springs and spends his days lying by a pool, never daring to go in because he lacks the body fat to make himself buoyant. He doesn’t smoke or have tea parties, doesn’t wear suits, or do most of that stupid stuff humans make trained chimps do — although he did dabble in karate as his film career went the way of the jungle where he’d come from.

Jiggs had traded plucking leaves off plants and inserting their stems into anthills to suck bugs out for making it big in the pictures. Everyone was doing that back in the day — throwing a suitcase in the trunk of their car or hopping on a bus and heading for Hollywood. Jiggs got his start in the role of Cheeta in the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies. There were a lot of white men saving Africa back then: Tarzan, The Phantom, Congo Bill. Plenty of work for Jiggs too. But times changed and poor Jiggs wasn’t even wanted in the space program anymore.

A fly lands in the half-coconut Jiggs is sipping the water out of and he can’t bring himself to make a play for the delicious, fat morsel. He just stares lazily at the fly as it shoots its straw-tongue out and dabs up moisture from the rim of the coconut. The glass door slides open and Burke comes out wearing a bathrobe and aviator sunglasses, a Cohiba between the index and middle fingers of his right hand. He looks over at Jiggs sitting in the director’s chair with his name printed on the back, one furless hand holding a drink, the other gripping the armrest.

“Doctor’s coming to see you today, pal,” he says. “You boys are gonna have a great little chat.”

Jiggs knew this day had to come sooner or later. He would hear a car door slam out front, then the gate would open and a skinny man — the type who lacked strength but made up for it with cunning — would enter, with a black case at his side. Inside the case would be just enough poison to send Jiggs far, far away. He used to fear this day, but Jiggs has come to realize that he’s been dead for years, dead since that fake, that hack, Tongo beat him out of the lead in Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp. This is how they all died, Old Yeller, all the Lassies; the skinny man came for them all, sooner or later. Even that pretender Tongo.

He still has most of his teeth, unheard of for any wild chimp, but he has sired no young, fought off no rivals, done nothing a successful male is supposed to. None of that mattered when the cameras were rolling, the lights hot like the tropics. Only after his career dried up did Jiggs get a chance to reflect, spending long afternoons thinking about what might have been.

Burke walks over to the patio table where there is a cocktail shaker beaded with moisture and a bar towel with a knife and some fresh fruit laid across it. He pours the contents of the shaker while singing “Luck Be A Lady” into a martini glass. He slices up an orange rind and drops it in his glass, carrying the glass and the naked orange over to Jiggs.

“One for you,” he says, handing over the orange, “and one for me.”

He takes a long sip of his cocktail.

“Breakfast of champions, right, Jiggs?”

Jiggs stares at the orange with the same lackluster look he gave the fly. He looks over at Burke, sees the anticipation slathered on his face like sunblock, and stuffs the orange in his mouth. Burke smiles and raises his glass. Burke is Jiggs’s only friend left on planet Earth, or anywhere else, and all Jiggs really cares about is keeping him happy.

Burke’s Uncle Fen was an animal trainer in the so-called golden age of Hollywood. He worked, however indirectly, with the biggest stars and once saw Natalie Wood making out with director Nicholas Ray on the set of Rebel Without A Cause. Burke was doing matinee shows at The Magic Castle when his uncle died. Uncle Fen had one son, but he died early, being caught in an explosion on the set of Rambo: First Blood Part II. Fen left everything he had, even his animals, to his only sister’s only son, Burke.

There was a time, a couple of years back, when the telephone rang and Martin, Jiggs’s agent was on the line.

This is the project we’ve been waiting for. I hope you’re ready to hit the comeback trail, kid. They’re making a Planet of the Apes prequel. I know, everything’s a remake or reboot or prequel these days, but this one calls for a real chimpanzee, not a human in a rubber suit.

What? Yeah, it’ll be huge, a blockbuster. James Franco is already attached. He’s got a James Dean thing going for him and the director’s trying to court Frieda Pinto for the romantic lead. I know, she sounds like a car from the seventies, she was in Slum Dog. No, no, that was Air Bud. Slum Dog Millionaire was that Oscar fave from a few years back, the Danny Boyle picture.

Well, she’s a spicy dish, and I’d like to sink my teeth into that butter chicken. I’ll arrange a screen test, but I know this one is yours, I feel it in my bones. I’ll get in touch with a guy I know over at Fox and hook it up, then we’ll go out and celebrate. See if we can find you a nice female to hit the monkey bars with, you know what I’m saying?

Jiggs went outside and swung around the bars in the backyard with a vigor Burke hadn’t seen since the last Tarzan movie. He couldn’t tell if it was genuine excitement or if Jiggs was trying to get back into shape. Living in Palm Springs had been good for Jiggs, he had kept his teeth and maintained a thick coat of fur. But this exuberance, like all energy, had its limits. The phone rang again.

Sorry, kid. The director is using a human. Yeah, I know, but he doesn’t see it that way. Yes, it is racist, like Amos and Andy, but, you see, they got these computers that can make him look like you. It’s a raw deal. But hell, we’ll still hit the town, maybe do some networking, I’m serious. Let me give you a call back when I have a better handle on my schedule.

That was the last Jiggs heard from Martin.

One day, when Burke was looking at two girls swimming in the pool next door through the binoculars he had bought himself for his birthday, Jiggs hobbled to the end of their own diving board and threw himself into the water. As the water sealed up over his brow ridge, his dense little body sinking like a stone, he could swear he heard the Austrian yodel that Johnny Weissmuller had used as his Tarzan call. Jiggs was back on set, with Fen, waiting for the director’s signal. He wasn’t afraid. Then he heard another sound and felt arms clasp around his chest. He could breathe again and feel the sun warm his face.

“You gotta stay with me, Jiggs,” Burke said, “We’re amigos.”

So Jiggs decided he could wait. The skinny man—the one with more brains than muscle, the one with the low-breeding-success-rate — come when Burke was ready to let Jiggs go. He was happy to be there for Burke until then, even if everything else made him unhappy.

Jiggs hears the car door, then a high voice call over the fence. The gate squeals open. The man with the case comes to the pool. He looks at Burke, says hello, then looks over at Jiggs.

“How are we doing today, movie star?”

This is said without any sarcasm. Jiggs watches the case that is rigidly still against the man’s leg. Burke, however, was wrong. The man with the case is not a doctor, but a graduate student working on his thesis detailing chimpanzee behaviour. He walks around the pool and approaches Jiggs.

“It’s all right,” Burke says, “he’s pretty sedated these days.”

“Is he sick?”

“Not that I can tell. It’s more like depression.”

“This is a new phenomenon?”

“I’d say so, I’ve known him for years and I’ve never seen him like this. He tried to off himself a while ago, but only once. He’s been a zombie ever since.”

The man looked from Burke to Jiggs and scratched the side of his nose.

“Then maybe it’s the perfect time.”

He pats Jiggs on the arm, then kneels down. The man removes not a syringe from his bag, but a device. Jiggs recognizes it immediately. It’s a camera, a much smaller camera than any he’d ever seen. But that doesn’t matter. As Burke has told him, there are no small parts, only small actors.

Jiggs immediately comes to life. He shoots out of his chair and races to the monkey bars at the far end of the yard overlooking the hills, climbing to the top then pausing there to look over his shoulder into the camera. The grad student is temporarily stunned. He doesn’t hit the record button.

“Great profile,” Burke says. “Show us your lovely teeth, now climb down and get the ball…”

Jiggs brachiates across the bars, somersaulting in the air as he dismounts.

“Are you getting this?” Burke asks.

The grad student presses record as Jiggs approaches the monkey bars again.

“Thattaboy, amigo!”

Jiggs nimbly mounts the bars again, climbing all the way to the top, walking over the bars that he’d swung from just seconds before. He looks over to see Burke smiling. Burke also has most of his teeth. They both have most of their teeth and they are amigos.

***

Jeff Dupuis is a writer and editor living in Toronto. He is the author of The Creature X mystery novels and numerous short stories. Jeff is the editor, alongside A.G. Pasquella, of the anthology Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food, which will be published in 2025 by Dundurn Press.