Evolution

Languorously he rolled over onto his belly. His nest was just a mass of thin branches folded over and kept in place by his weight. Through its loose structure he could make out the troop scattered through the tree’s foliage, primates roosting like birds. With a soft grunt he let his bladder go. The piss sprayed messily from his penis, still half erect, and rained down into the tree.

It splashed Leaf, one of the senior females, who had been asleep on her back with her infant clutching her belly fur. She woke with a start, wiping thick urine from her eyes, and hooted her protest.

His time of reflection over, the last of his erection shriveling, Capo sat up and vaulted out of his nest.

Time to go to work. A great black-brown ball of fur, he proceeded to crash through the tree. He smashed nests, punched and kicked their occupants, and screeched and leapt. He kept this up until the whole tree was a leafy bedlam, and there was no possibility of anybody staying asleep, or not being aware of Capo’s dominant presence.

He made one very satisfactory hard landing right in the middle of the nest of Finger, a stocky younger male with a very agile brain and hands. Finger curled up, chattering, and tried to lift his backside in a gesture of submission. But Capo targeted the backside with one well-aimed kick, and Finger, shrieking, went tumbling down through the foliage toward the ground. It was high time Finger was taught a lesson; he had been getting too cocky for Capo’s liking.

At length Capo reached the ground, fur bristling, panting hard. He was on the edge of a small clearing centered on a clogged, marshy pond. He still wasn’t done with his display. He threw himself back and forth around the line of trees, drumming with open palms on tree trunks, ripping off thin branches and shaking them so their leaves cascaded around him, screeching and hooting the while.

Finger had picked himself up from where he had plummeted. Limping slightly, he crawled into the shade of a low palm and cowered away from his master’s display. Other males hopped and hooted in backside-kissing support. One or two females were already up. They kept out of Capo’s way, but otherwise maintained their own morning routines.

As he finished his display, Capo spotted Howl, a female with a peculiarly high-pitched way of calling. She was crouching at the base of an acacia, picking lumps off a morel and popping them into her mouth. Howl was not yet pubescent, but she wasn’t far off. Spying the tight pucker of her genitals, Capo immediately hardened.

Still bristling, panting a little, he swaggered over to Howl, lifted her hips, and smoothly entered her. Her passage was pleasingly tight, and Capo’s supporters hooted and growled, drumming on the ground, urging on their hero. Howl did not resist, adjusting her posture to accommodate him. But as he thrust, she continued to pluck bits of morel, not much interested.

Capo withdrew from Howl before he ejaculated: too early in the day for that. But as a coup de grâce he turned his back on his cowering subordinates, bent over, and ejected a spray of shit that showered over them. Then he threw himself flat on the grass, arms akimbo, and allowed a few of his more favored subordinates to come close and begin the day’s grooming.

Thus the great boss, the capo di capo of this troop — the progenitor of mankind, the ancestor of Socrates and Newton and Napoleon — had begun his day in suitable splendor.

The next priority was to fill his belly.

Capo selected one of his subordinates — Frond, a tall, sinewy, nervous creature — and, hooting loudly, delivered a series of slaps and blows to the cowering creature’s head.

Frond quickly got the message. His assignment was to lead the troop’s daily forage in search of food and water. He selected a direction — east, as it happened, into the light of the rising sun — and, his gait a mixture of clumsy knuckle-walking and upright sprinting, he ran back and forth along a trail that led that way, glancing back at Capo for approval.

Capo had no reason not to choose that direction. With a swagger, his big knuckles punching into the soft ground, he set out after Frond. The rest of the troop quickly formed up behind him, males and females alike, infants clinging to their mothers’ bellies.

The troop worked its way through the trees at the forest fringe, foraging systematically, after their fashion. Mostly they sought fruit, though they were prepared to take insects and even meat if it was available. The males noisily postured and competed, but the females moved more calmly. The smallest infants stayed with their mothers, though older youngsters rolled and wrestled.