Jimmy's Zoo Read online

Jimmy’s Zoo

  by

  Robert James Allison

  Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  First Suitor Enterprises

  www.RobertJamesAllison.com

  Copyright © 2013 by Robert James Allison

  October 2013

  Cover photo taken by the author:

  An anonymous horse near Louisville, KY

  All rights reserved

  Table of Contents:

  Title

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  End

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Mike was rolling up Interstate 55 from St. Louis, north to Chicago. He was passing very near his house in Central Illinois and Doc Collins, but he didn’t stop, nor think of stopping. He may have had a house there, but it wasn’t a home. Home was where he was and had been since Mary had died. He felt no urge to even pass through his former area of residence.

  After leaving Idaho in January he had gone far to the south to warm up. For three months he had cruised the southwest and then crossed over to the southeast. He was purely wandering and sightseeing. Nothing drew him to the south except the warm temperatures and the scenery. Nothing occurred in the south except that he slept out a lot and saw a lot of places he had been to before, but had never seen.

  Now, however, he felt drawn north. It was late April and the farther north he came, the colder it got. He slept out less when he got north of the Mason-Dixon line, but then he wasn’t really sightseeing anymore. Something was calling him north. North to where he still wasn’t sure.

  Though he was on the main road to Chicago he didn’t know that he would stop at Chicago. All he knew was that he felt compelled to go north and when it was time to stop he would stop.

  ~*~

  Jimmy Peters could not have told you that the letters IQ stood for Intelligence Quotient. He knew a lot of things though. He knew he liked animals and he knew how to get to work and he knew how to dress himself and bathe, but not much more.

  None of this was his fault. His mother had been a heroin addict and was using heavily while she was carrying him. As a result his brain did not develop as it should have and his capacity to learn and retain knowledge was limited from the beginning of his time. Although it was not his fault, it didn’t help much, because the last time he was tested he scored an IQ of 51, but then he didn’t know that, either.

  He was 24 years old and had been living by himself and on his own for eight years. His mother had died of an overdose of heroin five years after he was born. He never knew his father and after his mother’s death he was put in a foster home. Actually, he was put into several foster homes, since no one wanted a little boy who could not seem to learn and tried everyone’s patience. Eleven foster homes later he decided, in his limited way, that he didn’t want to be in another and ran away.

  No one looked for him and he made it to a one-room flat in the “Loop” in Chicago. That flat is where he still lives, to his way of thinking. Most people would consider it barely existing, but he wouldn’t know about that. You never miss what you never had and he had never had anything.

  Right now he was at the Brookfield zoo. He liked to watch the people almost as much as the animals. In April the zoo always seemed to be crowded and he spent almost all of the warm Saturdays there. He knew all of the animals and they all seemed to recognize him. The zookeepers knew him, too and were always pleasant to him. Not like the other people he had to work with, or ride the bus with, and meet on the streets. The world could be a cruel place—and for him it was worse than normal. People tended to take advantage of and make fun of him. But then he didn’t always know when it was happening, so most of the time it didn’t bother him.

  He couldn’t write, but he sort of printed his name, in a writing way. It passed for a signature, but he rarely used it. He was paid in cash for his work at the box factory and though it wasn’t a lot, it paid for his room and the meals he ate down the street at the diner.

  He paid cash for everything, because he would not have known how to open a checking account or what to do with it if he had. His landlord came to the door of his room every Friday to collect the weekly $60.00 rent. That was half of his paycheck, but he didn’t realize that, either. The rest of the money went its own way every week to one or more people who helped him along, except for two Lincolns. He gave money to the nice lady at the diner and she told him what and how much he could eat that week.

  He didn’t know what a five-dollar bill was, but he knew that if he kept two bills that had a picture of President Lincoln on them he could give one of them to the bus man and get a pass to ride for a week and the other one would get him into the zoo and into his favorite attractions with just enough left for a soda. Someone at work had told him who the picture was of, he had not known who President Lincoln was or what his picture looked like.

  The nice lady at the diner gave him a little coffee to take back to his room so that he could brew himself a cup or two each day for a week. Once in a while he would have some coins or a bill or two, he wasn’t sure which kind, left over, if he worked extra hard that week. When he did he would give some, he wasn’t sure how much, to his church and stuff the rest in his sock, which he buried deep in his closet.

  He wasn’t saving money for any real reason. He just kept it. No one asked him for it, so it was extra. He didn’t need more than he regularly used, but he kept it in case someone asked him for it.

  One time he remembered having taken an extra Lincoln down to the grocery store to get a tube of toothpaste and that was the end of it. There was nothing left of the Lincoln to put in his sock. He didn’t know that the particular tube of toothpaste he had bought was $1.49 and that he should have gotten back $3.51 in change. It was enough for him to have just been able to get the toothpaste without being made fun of and he was quite proud of his accomplishment.

  Usually, George Molen, a man who lived down the hall, took some of Jimmy’s extra money and got what things Jimmy needed while he was at the store shopping for himself. Jimmy never told George about the toothpaste. He was embarrassed. He didn’t see how a tube of toothpaste could be worth a trip to the zoo, but then he was used to not understanding things. He didn’t want to ask George about it, so he kept it to himself.

  Another time on his way to the zoo a man stopped him and asked him for some money. Jimmy gave it to him, because he had asked for it. That day he only had enough Lincolns to get in the zoo—no attractions, and no drink.

  He looked at the clock near the entrance to the zoo and realized it was time to go home. He could not really tell time to any great degree. However, he had learned that some positions of the hands on the dial meant it was time to do one thing or another. One position on a weekday meant it was time to go to work, another meant it was time to go home.

  He always left the zoo at the same time. The hands on the clock would say it was time to go home and he would go. Plus, he knew which bus to get on at that particular time and if he went past that time he might not recognize the right bus. He couldn’t read, so he memorized the shapes of the letters and knew which bus went where by the shape of the letters on its lighted sign.

  The bus he took home from the zoo had much different shaped letters than the one he took out to the zoo and
he also recognized most of the bus drivers. Once or twice when the bus he was used to seeing wasn’t running, because of mechanical failure or the driver was off, he had to ask for the right bus. That usually resulted in strange looks and snide remarks, but it couldn’t be helped.

  The bus with the right shaped letters, and a familiar driver, pulled up outside the zoo entrance and he climbed aboard. “Hi, Mr. Buthman,” he said to the driver and sat down in the first seat in the front on the door side.

  “Hi, Mr. Buthman!” A scroungy-looking youngster said mockingly, as Jimmy took his seat.

  He looked at the youngster and smiled, not realizing the youth was making fun of him.

  “Can’t you read, dummy?” the youngster said, “The bus driver’s name is Dick. See the name tag on his uniform?”

  Jimmy just gave the youngster a perplexed look and said, “No. I don’t read so good. So I just call him Mr. Buthman. I call all the drivers Mr. Buthman. They don’t seem to care,” he said seriously and twisted his face up in deep thought. “Is that wrong what I do?”

  The youngster just laughed and moved to the back of the bus to sit with another boy his age who had heard the conversation and was laughing, too. Jimmy just sat with his perplexed look and tried to figure out if he was doing wrong.

  He really wanted to sit in the back of the bus, but the kids were there and his favorite seat had already been taken. He liked the back because he could watch the people get on the bus and he liked the bounce in the back when they hit a bump. The bus made a couple of more stops and the kids got off the bus making ugly faces at him on the way out the door. The looks didn’t mean much to him, he thought they were funny. He just got up and moved to the back since his favorite seat was now empty.

  ~*~

  Mike sat on the veranda of his sixth floor hotel room and looked out over Lake Michigan. He had his coffee, but he was not content to sit and idle away the hours. Something was pushing him to somewhere. One story above street level and to the north he saw a computerized flashing sign which read, “Visit the Brookfield zoo!”

  Why not? he thought. Why sit here all day? He realized that he had been to Chicago probably a hundred times, but he had never been to the Brookfield zoo. Later in the hotel lobby he picked up a brochure from the rack. The brochure said that the Brookfield zoo covered 215 acres and had 385 species of animals. I wonder how I missed a place that big so many times? But he knew the answer, any of the other times he had been here he had been more intent on making another deal, and more money, than anything else—including Mary.

  He decided that the best way was to go by cab, but there was a bus that went there, too and he could catch it just down the street. Might as well take the bus, decided. Beats trying to find a cab and I sure don’t want to ride the motorcycle. Navigating Chicago is dangerous enough in a car when you know where you are going—a motorcycle didn’t stand a chance.

  After Breakfast he walked the two blocks over to where the brochure said the bus to the Brookfield zoo could be found. The bus location was just inside the “Loop” and already the crowds of morning business commuters were growing. He did not care for the crowds that he encountered in Chicago and especially those inside the “Loop” area. Everywhere you went in the “Loop” you were following someone or waiting on someone. There were lines everywhere and you had to be careful just negotiating the crowded sidewalk. After a few months in the country he could not see why anyone would choose to live in the city. Especially a city as crowded as Chicago.

  He guessed that many of the people were trapped in the city because of jobs. Some though, he knew, really liked the hustle and bustle of the big city. There was always something going on and something to do—day or night. He could remember when he prided himself on being able to make his way through the city crowds with ease and out push the next guy into a cab. Not anymore though, he thought, those days are gone and I’m happy for their passing. I was drunk on power in those days and power was in the big city. Power wasn’t what he sought these days. He wasn’t sure what he sought now, but it wasn’t power, not since Mary’s death. He slipped through the throngs of people at the bus transfer point and to the bus with the sign “Brookfield Zoo”. He almost wished he had elected the cab, because he was being jostled about regularly just trying to get close to the bus.

  Finally he made it to the bus, and once on, he found that the bus itself was not all that crowded. After all, even though it was a Saturday, a lot of people were still headed for work and not the Brookfield zoo. He dropped into a rear seat and while waiting for the bus to pull out from the curb he watched the crushing throngs of people passing by on the sidewalk below. What a mess, he thought. Day in and day out in this would be a real drag. Then he realized that not long ago he was in a similar situation and hadn’t thought it a bad life at all.

  His attention was drawn back to the inside of the bus by a deep, but juvenile sounding voice which said, “Hi, Mr. Buthman.” He looked up to see a rather large man who looked to be in his mid-twenties coming down the aisle. His walk was steady, but not quite normal. Mike couldn’t figure it out, but from the man’s appearance he could tell something wasn’t quite right with him.

  It wasn’t anything he could put his finger on, but there was something about the man that said to Mike that this man didn’t have the normal intelligence of someone his age. Something about the way he walked and held his head. The way his mouth did not completely even out. Mike noticed that one side of the upper lip protruded slightly over the lower lip on the right side. The man’s hands did not quite swing like a normal person’s hands and arms swing when they walk. Not clumsy, but in a slightly erratic manner that was not in keeping with a normal gait. Although the man was walking down the rather narrow aisle of a bus, Mike could still detect a difference in his movements. All of those things coupled with the pronunciation of “bus man” and the manner of speech which was thick and muddy made Mike believe that the man just didn’t have the level of intelligence that someone of his age should have.

  Not that any of that mattered to him. Of late he judged people by their actions and not their looks or speech. It was just that he sized this man up as possibly being mentally impaired. He wasn’t judging, he was just impartially observing. He held nothing against the man, because of the apparent deficiency. He only noted it.

  In actuality, he would have given this man more deference because of his mental impairment than most other men. He had a soft spot for people of less than average intelligence. Most people had a choice in life and they could do well or poor based up on their own performance and ambition, but not mentally impaired people. Those people were behind from the start, through no fault of their own and no matter how hard they might try they could never quite catch up. No matter how ambitious they might be, they could never truly succeed at most of life’s simplest challenges.

  He also knew that many times mentally impaired people faced tougher challenges than most other people. It seemed that some “normal” people, whatever that term means, he thought, made life even harder for the mentally impaired, as if it were not hard enough already. He guessed it made those “normal” people feel even more superior when they made fun of or belittled a mentally impaired person. He had to admit that not so long ago he acted superior to others himself.

  The man came to the back of the bus and sat opposite Mike. The man glanced over at Mike and said, “Hi, nith day, huh?”

  “Hello to you, and yes, it is a very nice day,” Mike responded and thought that his deference to mentally impaired people was well placed. He had been in Chicago for one entire day and not one stranger had even ventured a “Hi” or “Hello” or “Good Morning” except in the line of duty. Yet this person spoke to him without the slightest hesitation and the greeting was followed by a wide crooked grin. Mike could see that the man was completely at ease and content with himself no matter that he was not “normal”. He suspected this man was more “normal” than three-fourths of the people he had jostled with on th
e way to this very bus. Mike continued with a question, “Are you going to the zoo?”

  “Yeah. I goes every Saturday. It’s my day off from the work I do. I wished I could go twicet a week, but I have to work too much extra days.”

  “You like the animals?”

  “Oh yeah, I do. They’re the best. The striped horses is my best friends,” the man said with another crooked smile.

  Several other people finally got on the bus and two boys, who looked to be in their late teens, came to the back of the bus as it pulled from the curb. The movement of people and the bus broke off their brief conversation.

  “Hey, dummy! You’re in my seat!” One of the latest to get on the bus declared to the man.

  “Sorry. I sit here all the time. This is my best favorite seat. I didn’t know you was sitting here.”

  “Well I was, dummy! I bought that seat last week and no one can sit in it but me. You hear!”

  “Bought the seat?” the man said in awe and continued, “I didn’t know you could buy a seat. Alls I ever buy is a bus pass. I didn’t know you could buy a certain seat.”

  The brash teenager laughed and said, “That’s ‘cause you’re a dummy and I’m not. Now get out of my seat!”

  The man’s face turned crimson from embarrassment and he immediately got up, moved up the bus about half way, and sat down.

  The brash kid and his buddy sat down in the seat with a smug look and began laughing and chuckling.

  The bus stopped for a red light and Mike got up and went forward to the bus driver.

  When he got to the driver he reached into his front pocket and pulled out a roll of bills. He peeled off a twenty as he watched the driver watch him from the corner of his eye. He handed the driver the bill and the driver asked, “What’s this for?”

  “This is so you will stop at the next corner by that police car and tell them that the two clowns in the back have been harassing your passengers and you want them off the bus.”

  “Mister, I’d have done that for nothing. I don’t like those two yahoos anyway. They ride all the time and they are jerks.”