SEVENTEEN: Ohglo Small

13.

Once a monkey cub name-of Oah-oah-oah-oah-glugg, Ohglo for short. Ohglo roam with his furry buddies down by the stream near the oah-oah-oah's sleeping tree.

oah: I, me.

oah-oah: you.

oah-oah-oah: troop, family, we.

oah-oah-oah-oah: friends, friendly beings, monkey, moon.

oah-oah-oah-oah-oah: life, spirit, water.

Concentric circles in a stone-struck pond.

The cubs play a game like hide-and-seek: every monkey hide and then all wait to see who give himself away first.

Ohglo hide in a hollow log just out of the water. Ohglo thirst. Ohglo reach into the stream with his paw to scoop some water into his mouth. The water turn to blood. Blood, blood, 1-2- 3 blood taste in his mouth. Stream open into a canyon. Out of the canyon swarm a host of insects -- white moths, white flying ants, white flies, locusts, cicadas, dragon flies -- all rise to the sky like souls of the dead. Ohglo spit out the bitter blood. Dazzling light from the spot where his spittle strike blind him. The stream turn to white sand. The sun glare off of it and burn his eyes.

Then Ohglo see a big bird, an ibis standing on a rock, looking at him, it's plumage all brilliant white except for the tips of four outer wing feathers, which are black. Its long stork legs are orange-red. Its long bill curve down from between its eyes, itself the shape of a scant crescent moon.

Ohglo say, "Hi, Ibis."

Ibis say, "Now you have seen it. One day you will fly like me over the great, great, 1-2-3 great water to join your own kind again, the gluggs, and warn them of what is to come."

glugg: human.

"Oh," Ohglo say. He do not really believe this bird.

14.

Ohglo travel with the troop, which the baboons call their oah-oah-oah, or oah for short. Baboons shorten all their words.

Ak is the biggest so Ak is the leader. Ak one-two times bigger than Smak. Ak have big old olive brown crinkly mane like lion. He have pink face with a thick, thoughtful brow, and a long snout like a dog. His mouth filled with many shiney white, sharp teeth.

Ohglo fear Ak. Ohglo wish he have a big mane and sharp teeth.

ak: father, bully, leader, sun, devil.

The oah travel every day at sunrise, looking for food. Ak go first with his brothers and cousins Ako, Hok, Dop, the scouts. Scouts climb up the trees here and there looking out for enemies: Leopard and Glugg.

Smak follow with Ohglo and the other cubs, with Smok and Smik, Ak's other females and with Sako, Smuk, and Sopi, their sisters.

Ohglo slow. Ohglo can't keep up with other cubs and have to ride on Smak. He small for a glugg. But he do load Smak down. Other cubs tease him. Glugg, glugg, glugg, nya, nya, nya.

Cubs wrestle Ohglo, bite and scratch. Ohglo cry. Ohglo's eyes gush with water. Monkeys never cry. Monkeys never see eyes gush with water. Monkeys suck Ohglo's cheeks for water.

Monkeys don't worship much, but they worship water. Savannah of oah-oah-oah-plotz is dry for much of year.

Oah-oah-oah-plotz is not large. The oah cover the whole habitat in 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 suns.

The oah stump the plains, hills, and forest of oah-oah-oah-plotz searching for water, for figs, for banana, for various roots and berries, for the capparis vine that grow in the umbrella trees, for termites and ants, for ibis, ostrich, and plover eggs, and sometimes small game like rock hares, steenbok, dik-dik, and klipspringer. There 1-2-3, 1-2-3 foods to learn, and what there is change all around from the full moon to the dark moon. While they learn what to eat and what not to eat, the cubs pull up the grass and chomp the meaty corms. They also listen for
the dance of the bees.

First time Ohglo see cubs find honeybee, cubs squeal and chatter. Cubs surround flower where bee buzzing and watch. Fuzzy baboon heads twist and turn to follow bee's dance.

Cubs follow bee to hive. Sneak up. Gok, the biggest cub, crawl up right under the hive which hang from the limb of baobab tree, bark real loud and hit the hive with stick. Ohglo watch bees swarm. Ohglo watch cubs flee. Ohglo too busy watching to flee. Bees catch Ohglo. Bees sting. Sting, sting, sting, 1-2-3 sting. Ohglo holler, 1-2-3 holler.

That night at dusk the oah come to rest in a grove of fever trees. While the cubs wrestle, the big baboons la-la-la.

la-la-la: groom, grooming, story-telling, dream-sharing, painting one another's dreams.

Smak la-la-la Ohglo for first time, smoothing over every strand of his hair, picking lice and soothing beestings. La-la-la excite every nerve and make brilliant pictures in the mind like wide-awake dreams. The pictures are visions, stories, folktales.

Baboon folktales very short. Here are some of the tales Smak la-la-la Ohglo:

The most popular tale is tzzz pop. Two words. "Once upon a time, the end." Smak tell this one over and over.

tzzz f-f-f pop is a ghost story. It doesn't sound like much, but when told along with heavy grooming, a young monkey see vivid images of old monkeys dying, dissolving into the dust, and then rising to the sky in wafts of violet smoke.

Ohglo's favorite is the love story, tzzz la-la-la-la-la pop. The imagery of this story show Ak chasing Smak, Smak sticking her rosey rear-end in the air, and Ak 1-2-3 fucking her. Baboons don't censor their stories for children they way gluggs do.

15.

As Ohglo grow, he learn baboon ways. Every month, at the time of the full moon, is the 1-2-3-oah-oah-oah, or the gathering of the oahs, along a bank of cliffs. Whatever baboon troops are anywhere near the cliffs come together there to argue and party. Such gatherings have close to a three hundred baboons, and the noise keep Ohglo awake all night at first.

The males and females argue in separate bunches, but they both argue about the same thing: the nature of the universe.

Ohglo listen to these frightening arguments, which often as not, end in all out brawls. As time go on, he come to understand that each oah have a different theory as to the nature of the universe. These different theories are the reason there are so many different oahs. If a leader (ak) can't convince his smak's relatives of his particular theory, he will organize his own oah from among the disgruntled baboons from the other oahs.

Ak and his followers are identified with the doctrine that "everything is a baboon." An oah is a baboon with Ak himself as the literal head. The moon is obviously a baboon as any fool can see just by looking at its face. By extension, the sun must be a baboon, with a ruthless, evil streak ("nothing but a baboon could be so mean," Ak preach). The earth too is a baboon with water for blood and grass for hair.

"The universe (oah-oah-oah-oah-oah-oah) is a series of baboons inside baboons," Ak would bellow, la-la-la-ing these ideas with whoever will listen. "Concentric baboons in a stone-struck baboon," he joke, butchering a traditional baboon saying. The "proof" of this notion is simple: "Look, you dummies, if you look straight into a still pond what do you see?" Most baboons know the answer, but Ak sometimes lead the denser ones to the
water-hole so they can see for themselves.

When Ohglo first understand this sermon of howls, grunts, and barks, he sneak off his sleeping rock down to the water-hole and look straight into it. What he see -- that he do not look at all like the other baboons -- so frighten him in its impossibility that he forget it right there and decide once and for all that Ak is right, everything is a baboon.

But Ak too can see that there is something different about Ohglo that contradict his concentric baboon thesis. To Ak, Ohglo is a baboon and he is not a baboon at the same time, a stubborn fact that fly in the face of theory. As a consequence, Ak hate Ohglo.

Fortunately, none of the other oahs notice that Ak harbor a living contradiction in his own oah. They are too busy defending their own theories. One oah that once gave Ak a terrific drubbing philosophically and literally, believe that the universe is a constant struggle between the force of water (good) and the force of sand (bad). Still another oah believe that the phallic banana tree create the universe, and no baboon of that oah eat bananas. When the ak of this oah die of starvation, the others quickly find other beliefs and join other oahs.

Smak and the other females of the oah stick up for Ohglo against Ak. Smak believe the concentric baboon thesis as strongly as the next monkey, but she simply accept Ohglo as an odd-looking baboon.

Of course she know he is a glugg, everyone know that. The question is, are the gluggs another form of baboon or something quite different?

Smak and the other females have their own bone to pick with Ak, and sometimes it is Ak's bones that get picked. They grudgingly accept Ak's leadership on account of his size, but they hate his schplurtz, a word that is wet with spit when sneered as only Smak can sneer it.

schplurtz: arrogance.

One time Ohglo lie awake in his fever tree and listen to Ak and Smak argue about him.

"He go," say Ak.

"He stay," say Smak.

"He go!" say Ak.

"He stay!" say Smak.

"HE GO!" say Ak.

"HE STAY!" say Smak.

"HE GO!!" say Ak.

Smak smack Ak. Smack! with her paw. Smik, Smok, and Smuk all jump on Ak.

Ak beat up bad. Smak won't nurse Ak's wounds, won't let Smik, Smok, Smuk or any other female nurse him either.

Ohglo nurse Ak, lick his sores. Ohglo hate to lick sores. But Ohglo think if he lick Ak sores, maybe Ak will accept him into the oah.

After three suns of Ohglo licking his sores, neither of them saying a word, Ak finally say "Ohglo, maybe you baboon after all, even if you is funny looking." Ohglo sigh and smile. Then he go wash out mouth in the water-hole.

16.

Here are some of the monkey proverbs that Ak picture to Ohglo when Ohglo lick his sores:

Nothing from nothing is nothing.

Fair is fair.

Life is life.

Life is tough.

Forget it!

I'll dream your dreams if you'll dream mine.

Life is death's dream.

To see the truth, you have to look up your own asshole. That's why you have an imagination.

17.

One day Ohglo stomping about with the oah when he come to a stream same-as old stream, trees same-as old trees, paths same-as old paths. He try to remember what his glugg-smak, Ma, look like, but he can't.

He do remember something else. He follow his nose down a familiar path to a spot he is sure is same-as where the old Luo village was. No village. Instead, there's a great big farm with a great big house, rows and rows of vines hanging with ground-nuts, fields and fields of pineapples shining sweetly in the sun, and 1-2-3 cattle.

Ohglo rush to tell Ak. He shout at Ak excitedly in his pidgin-monkey something like "Glugg-grub!" This sound like the monkey word for "human food." But it also sound like the monkey insult "you eat human shit." Ak clap Ohglo sharply on the ear.

Ohglo often have this trouble with monkey language, in which words, being few, have so many different meanings.

Ohglo try to grab Ak's paw and lead him to his discovery, but Ak brush him aside roughly. The idea that a glugg cub could know anything is ridiculous. Gluggs can't think abstractly.

After much wheedling and jibber-jabbering, Ohglo finally convince Smak to follow him. He drag her complaining to a hillock overlooking the vast farm. Smak see enough food to keep the oah in the gravy for the next fifty years. She yawn in amazement.

"Glugg-gluggs!" she swear.

glugg-gluggs: pink-faced Invaders, white people.

When Smak tell the others what Ohglo have discovered, Ohglo become a hero. The other cubs hug kiss, and la-la-la him. And they don't pick on him for the rest of the day.

At dawn the next morning, the oah descend on the glugg-glugg farm. At the first field they come to, the baboons fill up their arms with pineapples and drag them away to safety. But Ohglo's mouth water for beef.

Ohglo sneak away from the others and into the field where the cattle graze. He find five of the plumpest calves and herd them together. He rip a hole in the wooden fence. He grab on tight to the calves' tails. Then, with a piercing cry, he stampede the other cows through the hole in the fence, out to the wild savannah.

Ohglo pull his calves by the tails backwards, confusing any trail he might leave, and hiding from the view of the glugg-gluggs. In the distance near the house, he can see the glugg-gluggs scurry about in the clouds of dust raised by the stampeding cattle. He see them mounting horses and putt-putts, and raising their own clouds of dust to chase the cattle.

putt-putts: Land Rovers.

It is dusk before Ohglo's awkward progress finally catch up with the oah in its grove of fever trees, preparing for the night. The baboons are surprised to see him, as they have given him up for lost or killed. Baboons know all too well the murderous boom-booms of the glugg-gluggs.

The monkeys surround him and drown him in praise for his brave deed. Ak himself clap him hard across the back. "Oh you are quite the thief, Ohglo!" Ak declare. Ohglo feel his first flush of pride. Ohglo grab one of the calves by the ears and slam itsneck against a sharp rock, spliting the big vein so that the blood gush out hot all over him.

Ohglo get sick watching the creature die. He lose his appetite. So he offer the calf to Ak. Ak rip open the beast to get at the choice curdled milk in its belly. When he have eaten his fill, he leave the rest for the other baboons to fight over. Smak snarl her way to be next, and take enough meat for herself and the youngest cubs. Then come the others' turn to squabble. The biggest and toughest get their meat first, but the others don't have to fight that hard since there is plenty for all.

When nothing remain but bones, Smak haul Ohglo aside. "You think you big bad baboon now, Ohglo, but I don't know. I don't think we heard the end of this. I fear for you, gluggikins. I think you will bring us trouble. You will come to no good."

Ohglo answer her beyond his years. "Smak, don't scare me like I some little cub. I get the best deal I can for my oah. Why can't we be as fat as the glugg-gluggs? Why we have to scrounge for food and make our nests in nasty trees and bumpy rocks? I be the prince of thieves."

But Smak no fool. That night, the oah surprised by the rustling of horses through the brush. The glugg-gluggs hunting for their calves. "Ek-ek-ek!" come the shrill cry from the scouts in the treetops.

ek-ek-ek: leopard, hyena, jackal, glugg, danger. Watch out!
Help! Let's get out of here!

So in the middle of the night, the oah have to gather up its cubs and move on, leaving the calves behind. Knowing how stubborn gluggs can be when they hunt, the oah keep moving quickly for days until they get to the other side of oah-oah-oah-plotz. Without much thought, Ak piss on rocks to ring in the borders of the plotz so the oah won't come so close to the glugg-glugg farm for awhile.

18.

But it happen that the glugg-glugg farmer had seen a strange kind of monkey steal his calves, and he track down this "monkeyman" for many suns. The farmer dig booby traps all over the savannah.

One evening while Ohglo romp through the brush with his buddy Gok, Ohglo fall into one of these traps, a deep pit covered over by small trees overlaid with grasses and brush.

Gok yelp for the other baboons to come help, but the farmer close by and hear him. He come galloping up on his horse. Gok and the others take flight in the treetops.

The farmer hop off his horse and take aim at Ohglo with his boom-boom. Then he laugh. "Ach, you monkeyman!" the fat farmer seem to say in glugg-glugg language, "Why you steal my cattle?"

Ohglo guess at the farmer's words and answer him in monkey language. "Who me? Why you talk so rough? You see I am only a cub. I only care about sleep and monkey milk. Do I look like a robber of cattle? Believe me, glugg-glugg, I did not bring your
cattle home. I speak the truth."

But of course the farmer do not understand, and Ohglo's jabbering make him angry. He raise his gun to his shoulder again to shoot.

Just then, Gok jump down from the tree, bite the farmer in the left buttock, and butt him into the pit with his head. It the farmer's turn to yelp. The farmer drop his gun. He very fat. While he struggle to his feet, Ohglo grab the gun and use it as pole against the farmer's big belly to vault himself out of the pit. Ohglo hold the gun like he see the farmer do.

Monkey see, monkey do.

The gun go off in the air -- ka-BLOOM! Ohglo and the other baboons hair stand up straight. They scared to death. They run.

After that, Ohglo and Gok become the best of buddies.

Ohglo break up the gun and for awhile use the steel barrel to beat against the rocks to make a strange kind of music. This delight the oah. But by the next full moon, he have forgotten it someplace.

The farmer, however, do not forget about Ohglo. In time the oah would learn that glugg-gluggs are vengeful and have long memories.

19.

Baboon life no paradise. Your throat always dry. You always hungry. Ohglo lucky he like sweet-crunch bugs, because meat is rare -- very rare, as in raw. Baboons eat a lot of grass, and grass don't stick to your ribs.

But it fun to la-la-la, fun to wrestle. Ohglo wrestle his buddy Gok. Gok soft and cuddly, with big eyes and brownish fur spreckled with white. Gok, like Ohglo, is about half grown (baboons full grown at seven years old). He always nibble at Ohglo, never bite.

One time Ohglo and Gok wrestle. Ohglo accidently shove Gok so that he land with a rock between his legs, crushing his balls. Gok let out a shriek. His face droop in sadness. He looks like he will burst if he don't cry.

"Sorry, Gok, I no mean it," Ohglo say. Ohglo la-la-la Gok. "Gok you need to cry."

"Cry? Cry? How cry?"

"How cry? Well, what I do is I squinch up my eyes, squeeze my eyeballs, and imagine death."

"Death?"

"The end. Nix-oah."

nix-oah: death.

"Oh, yeah," Gok say. "Nix-oah." He get all deep and serious looking, and squinch up his eyes.

"That it, Gok. Now picture all that pain it take to die, to give up on that 'Gok' you been fighting for for so long."

Gok's face wrinkle like an ancient monkey. His head shake and tremble. He draw in his breath through his bared clenched teeth, like he in great pain. Out of his belly rise a mournful moan, "o-o-o-o-o-o-o-a-a-a-a-a-h-h-h."

But when he feel his eyes and his cheeks, they dry. Not a tear anywhere. Try as he might, Gok can not cry. Not for the life of him.