Boys Life

clapping and writhing in the aisle. A woman whose stomach looked as big as a sofa pillow got up on her tree-trunk legs and staggered around sobbing and calling for Jesus as if He were a lost puppy. “Dance, Lucifer!” the reverend yelled. I thought he was going to start swinging that poor monkey round and round his head like a rabbit’s foot on a key chain. A man in the row in front of us spread his arms wide and started shouting something with God and praise be and destroy the heathens in it, and I found myself staring at the back of his sun-browned neck to see if I might find an alien X whittled there.
    The place had turned into a madhouse. Dad reached for Mom’s hand and said, “We’re gettin’ out of here!” People were gyrating and jiggling in rapturous ecstasies, and all this time I’d thought Baptists couldn’t dance.
    Reverend Blessett gave the monkey a ferocious shake. “Dance, Lucifer!” he commanded as the music thundered on. “Show ’em what’s in you!”
    And then, quite abruptly, Lucifer did just that.
    The monkey shrieked and, obviously fed up with the shaking and jerking, sprang for the reverend’s head. Those spidery arms and legs wrapped around the reverend’s skull, and Reverend Blessett squalled with terror as Lucifer sank his sharp little fangs into the reverend’s right ear. At the same time, Lucifer displayed exactly what he’d been fed up on, as from his rear end spewed a stream of foul matter as brown as Bosco all over the reverend’s white suit. It was a sight that caused all rapture and speaking in tongues to immediately cease. The reverend was staggering around, trying to get that monkey off his head as Lucifer’s bowels sprayed his suit with runny brown patterns. The woman with a sofa-pillow belly screamed. Some men in the front row ran to help the reverend, whose ear was being chewed ragged. As the men reached the struggling reverend and the gnawing monkey, Lucifer suddenly turned his head and saw the hands about to grab him, a bit of bloody ear gripped in his teeth. He released his grip from Reverend Blessett’s skull and with a chattering screech he sprang over the men’s heads, making them holler and duck as more Bosco streamed down upon them. The leash came loose from Reverend Blessett’s hand, and Lucifer was free.
    Like his nasty namesake, the monkey jumped from person to person, snapping at their ears and spraying their clothes. I don’t know what the reverend had been feeding him, but it must have disagreed with Lucifer’s stomach. Mom screamed and Dad dodged as Lucifer sprang past us, and we barely missed getting splashed. Lucifer leaped from the edge of a pew, swung on the light fixture, and then landed on a woman’s blue hat, where he fertilized a false carnation. Then he was on the move again, paws and claws and whipping tail, snapping teeth, a shriek, a splatter. The smell of rotten bananas was enough to knock you to your knees. A brave Christian soldier made a try at grabbing the leash, but he got a wet brown face for his efforts and Lucifer made a noise like a laugh as the man staggered back, temporarily blinded, and his own wife fled from him. Lucifer sank his teeth into a woman’s nose, anointed a teenaged boy’s hair with brown slickum, and leaped from pew to pew like a demonic little version of Fred Astaire.
    “Get him!” Reverend Blessett shouted, holding his bleeding ear. “Get that damn thing!”
    A man did get a hand on Lucifer, but he jerked it back a second later with a fang-stung knuckle. The monkey was quick, and as mean as hell. Most everybody was too busy dodging the flying streams to think about catching Lucifer. I was belly-down on a pew, and Dad and Mom crouched in the aisle. Reverend Blessett yelled, “The doors! Somebody shut the doors!”
    It was a good idea, but it came much too late. Lucifer was already in motion toward the way out, his beady little eyes glittering with delight. Behind him, he left his signature on the walls. “Stop him!” the reverend hollered, but Lucifer danced over a man’s shoulder and swan-dived off a woman’s head and with a screech of triumph he bounded through the open doorway into the night.
    A few men ran out after him. Everybody else started breathing a lot easier, though the air wasn’t fit to breathe. Dad helped Mom to her feet, and then he helped another two men pick up the fat lady, who had fainted and fallen like an oak tree. “Everybody stay calm!” the reverend said shakily.