Monkey Business

               

               

               The leather straps of Jason’s backpack dug deep red fissures into his shoulders as sweat stung his eyes and mosquitos buzzed around his head.  The heavy humidity of the forest made him feel like he was swimming instead of walking, but without the benefit of weightlessness. His arms stung every time a plant brushed against them from the sunburn he got two days ago when he still thought this vacation was a good idea.  In the middle of a rainforest, they brushed against him often.

                Further up the trail he watched his wife, Katie, laugh cheerfully with the insufferable couple from Australia.  She caught him looking and waved her fingers at him, grinning at some inside joke with her and her new best friends.  Not wanting to entertain thoughts of murder, Jason turned his attention back to the mud and bug-infested trail in front of him just in time to trip over a root and faceplant into black boot churned earth.

                “Oh no! Honey, are you ok,” called Katie.

                “Just. Fucking. Fine.” said Jason through a mouthful of soil, “help me up.”

                He felt the weight of the backpack ease and two strong hands lifted him up by the arms.  The first thing he was his wife cover her mouth with her hands as her shoulders shook with suppressed laughter.

                “Oh dear,” she said.  The glee in her voice made his eye twitch. “Someone get a picture of this!”

                Jason was blinded by a flash and heard a peel of laughter, this time coming from the Australian couple, “Glad to see you are finally getting into the hike!”

                “Alright, move outta the way.  You okay Jason,” their tour guide asked?

                “Nothing hurt but my pride,” Jason sputtered out of clenched teeth.

                The guide patted him on the shoulder, “That’s the spirit. Our stop tonight is just about a half-mile away, it’s got a nice falls, we should be able to get you rinsed off.”

                “Good.”

                Jason spent the next twenty minutes swearing under his breath at himself, his wife, the rainforest and anything else that dared cross his mind.  Why did he agree to this stupid trip? It was everything he hated: trees, fresh air, the outdoors, mud.  But Katie made it sound fun and romantic.  Camping out in the stars, making love to the sounds of exotic birds, following in the footsteps of some of the world’s greatest explorers.

                “Fucking bullshit. I got a bridge to sell her…”

                Jason was pulled from his misery by the sound of thundering water.  He found himself standing with the rest of the group on a precipice that looked up toward a towering waterfall.  The tumbling water took his breath away as he watched rainbows flit up and down its height.  The guide gestured to Jason to take off his bag and to go wash off in the pool beneath the falls.

                It was a bit of a scramble down the cliff, but Jason felt the weight of the world lifted from his shoulders as he slipped into the warm waters.  A half an hour later, he emerged a cleaner man.  He smiled as he crawled back up the cliff to where the camp was being made, breathing deep lungfuls of the clean forest air.

                Katie was standing on the edge of the cliff waiting for him.  He drew her into a deep embrace.  As he released her and watched a howler monkey crawl down from the trees next to his bag.   He turned Katie around by the shoulders so she could watch the magnificent animal just as the monkey pushed his bag over the side of the cliff.

                Jason’s yell sent hundreds of brightly colored birds to the air.