Jimmy's Zoo Read online

  Joe now put in, “What was east, Mike?”

  “Huh?”

  “What was east? When you left last spring you said there was something east. What was it?”

  “Oh. Well as it turned out it was a man with a crippled child. He had no insurance and no money for an operation, but after a while it all worked out. The child is going to walk just fine now according to the experts. Right, Doc?”

  “So I hear,” Doc said.

  Mike now said to all of them, including Doc, “You know I’m glad to hear about Jimmy doing so well, because it has occurred to me that there may be others like him around the country who would jump at the chance to do similar work. You know…hard, but honest work, with good pay, and good treatment.

  “The problem, as I see it though, is that none of us will live forever. What happens when you find a man like Jimmy Peters and then in a few years you die? What happens to the ‘Jimmy Peters’ of this world when all of us are gone?”

  “What exactly do you mean?” Joe asked, with some confusion.

  “I mean that we can’t always control what happens to our affairs after we die. What if the heir to the property doesn’t see the benefit of Jimmy Peters and he is turned back out to fend for himself? You can’t leave him the ranch, because he couldn’t handle it himself. Someone would fleece him out of it in a minute.

  “Oh sure, a guy could put his land in trust with a provision that the help be kept on, but that’s no guarantee. There has to be a firm structure in place to carry on. You see what I mean?”

  Joe answered, “Yes, I never thought about that. Jimmy is younger than even Bob and he’s the youngest. The ranch would probably go to our kids, if any, but there is no guarantee that Jimmy would be kept on and treated like he is now. I would hope any kid of mine would treat him like I do, but like you say, no one can tell for sure and none of us has kids yet,” he ended in contemplation of a thought that had not occurred to him before. His death and what would happen afterward, to the ranch and to Jimmy.

  Everyone sat silent for a minute or two while the donuts were consumed and Doc refilled the coffee cups.

  Bob asked, “So what’s the answer? What can be done to protect the ‘Jimmy Peters’ of the world when we are gone?”

  “I’ve given that some thought lately and I think what is needed is a home for them. Not a home like you read about the state running. Not a shelter care home or an orphanage type home, but a real home. A ranch, a farm, or a combination of both. Some place set up to run forever. Some place with provisions for its continued existence and a mechanism for continuing to hire the ‘Jimmy Peters’ of the world and hire other people who would supervise them and treat them properly. A place where the ‘Jimmy Peters’ of the world could call home, but still work and earn a fair wage and get the help they needed to live in this world. To be educated as best they can to their maximum ability. The operation would need to make enough money to pay the workers and buy supplies.”

  “That could take quite a bit of money,” Bob said in response.

  “Initially, yes. But if it was set up properly, the farm or ranch could support itself and maybe even show a profit. After all, the residents would be working for a fair wage and the whole ranch would be expected to make money to support itself.”

  “I see what you mean, but I’ve heard of places like that before. Youth ranches for troubled kids,” Bob said.

  “Sure, but where is there one for people like Jimmy Peters? Not kids, but adults whose mental capacity is still that of a child’s and may never get any better. Not a state run or even private institution, mind you, but a real home with a job. There is a big difference. This place needs to be self-sufficient, not depend on someone else’s good-hearted donations.”

  Doc now put in, “Use my place, Mike. It’s perfect for something like this. I’m not going to be around forever and I have no one to leave the place to. What if I left it to you, Mike, in trust or something for the ‘Jimmy Peters’ of the world? You could set that up. I could live here until I die and then it would be put to a good use. I often wondered what I would do with the place when I died. What do you need to set that up?” Doc finished.

  The table again dropped into silence and Mike’s brain began turning in high gear until finally he said, “Well, Doc, you have about 25 acres here, with a small lake. That would do well for grazing a few sheep, cows, and horses.”

  “Cows!” Joe exclaimed, “Don’t tell us that. You know we hate cows. We’d all rather be tied to a snake than feed a cow,” he ended laughing, but it wasn’t with complete mirth.

  “Okay, so we start with sheep and a little farming by way of fruits and vegetables. Can we get some good sheep stock?”

  Joe put in, “Sure, I can fix that. I know all of the sheep ranchers in the state and most of them out west. I can get some good breeding stock for a reasonable price. Not necessarily blue-ribbon winners, but good stock.”

  “That will be good, but how many hired men can we take on with what we have here now?”

  Doc now said, “Not more than four or five, Mike. This house isn’t big enough for more. I figure I would be out front on my enclosed front porch, the supervising family would live in the rest of the downstairs and the men upstairs with a room each. There are four nice rooms upstairs.”

  “Supervising family?” Mike questioned.

  “Sure. You want this to be a home don’t you,” Doc stated and continued, “what better way to make it home-like than to have a husband and wife team supervise? Some kids would add a little spice to the lives of everyone. Shouldn’t be hard to find a good family to take up residence in a nice house, if the husband got paid a decent wage and they had the run of the garden.”

  “Good thinking, but four or five hired hands is not much of an operation.”

  “But the house is only big enough for four upstairs and the family may even need more room than just the downstairs,” Doc pointed out.

  Mike got up and walked over to the wall phone, consulted a note pad he had pulled from his hip pocket, picked up the phone’s receiver, and dialed a number.

  “Hello, Fred Johnson, please. This is Mike Maltby.” After a moment of silence he said, “Hey, Fred how’s it going? Fine thanks, and you? Good. How’s the family. That’s good… Mary, no, she’s gone...she died a couple of winters ago. Yeah, me, too. Thanks, Fred. Getting by…can’t do more I guess. Wish I’d done a lot of things different, but I can’t change that now.

  “Say, the reason I called is that I need a favor. I need a building erected pretty quick. Yes, that’s right. Well, I need a housing complex of sorts. Not your run-of-the-mill military barracks. Something sturdy for farm hands, but with a little class, more like apartments. Not real fancy, but clean and workable. Something very presentable. I want the workers to know they are home, not just in their quarters or their room. You know what I mean? Okay, yes. That would do.

  “Say big enough to house forty in separate units with their own bath. No, kitchens aren’t necessary. We will need a mess hall though. All right. Can you get me together some plans to look at? How long to put something like that up? No. Money is not a problem. I want something that will last. Really…you sure of that? Well if that’s the way you want it, okay. I’ll talk to you soon,” he finished and hung up.

  He turned back to kitchen table and said, “Old acquaintance of mine. Did him a good turn once or twice on some government contracts.

  “He will come out to look the place over, draw up some rough plans, see what we think of them, and then put an architectural firm on to it. He said he would be the general contractor and line up the subs and supervise the work.”

  “Did he have a cost estimate?” Joe asked.

  With a puzzled look on his face Mike replied, “No, but he said his time was free. He said anything he did for me had to be for a good cause. Said he had heard a few things about me lately. Whatever that means.”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you last spring, Mike. The word’s out,”
Joe said and smiled. “Now I’m going to get to work on that stock. Won’t hurt to have it lined up for shipment. We will need to get that supervising family soon and get some help. There are a lot of things that need done to this place before it will be ready for stock.”

  “What about the farming angle, Mike?” Sam now asked.

  Mike replied, “We need an expert farmer for that. I think we can find a couple around here…I….”

  “What is it?” Joe asked as Mike stopped in mid-sentence.

  “A supervising family, with kids you say? Let me run this by you...Stephens,” he said with enthusiasm.

  Doc exclaimed, “Sure! Vern is fully recovered now, he only rents that place where he lives, he has a hard-working wife, who is a good cook by the way, and two great kids. Plus, Vern was an excellent farmer in his time until he lost his lease on the land he was working. Getting Vern will kill two birds with one stone. The Ranney boys can teach him sheep. He really only needs to work them awhile and he will pick it up, but mostly he’ll be doing the farming. Yes, I like it, Mike. What do you guys think?”

  They all nodded their heads in unison and Joe said, “Perfect. Vern could use the steady paycheck and I’m sure he would love to live in a house like this. Doc would love it, too. After all, Vern was his success story. A great tribute to Doc. The man he helped to cure will be helping less fortunate people.”

  At that Doc turned red and jumped up to get more coffee before his embarrassment became too obvious. It was still not known by anyone other than he and Mike just who was behind the Vern Stephens’ affair. Mike had sworn him to secrecy and though Doc protested he had kept his word.

  Bringing the coffee pot back to the table Doc now said, “Good. Then that’s all settled. Mike, I’ll leave it to you to set it all up and make it nice and legal. Maybe by spring we can have it up and running. I’m getting tired of my own cooking and I’d love to have the Stephens’ kids here to play with.”

  “What about you, Mike?” Joe now asked.

  “Oh I’ll have plenty to do setting this up by spring,” Mike responded and continued, “we’ll have to have the ranch quarters up because if Vern’s family agrees to this they will need the upstairs, too. Plus, twenty-five acres isn’t going to be enough room for a ranch employing forty people or more. There’s two hundred acres for sale west of this place and adjacent to it, just across the creek. I’ll work on that end.”

  “I never heard about that,” Doc said.

  “Well, it isn’t generally known just yet, but I made some inquiries last week and my sources tell me it is available or could be available for the right price.”

  Doc got a strange look on his face then and said, “Last week. Mike Maltby you conniver. You had this all figured out last week already, didn’t you? How’d you know we’d all go along?”

  “I know people, Doc. I can read them like you can read an x-ray. Besides, good folks like you would just naturally go along with something like this and if it turned out I was wrong, I’d figure out something else. It’s what I do, Doc, it’s all I know.”

  Joe now asked, “You going to hang around and help?”

  “No. I set things up, but I don’t stay around. Come spring I’ll be on the road again. Someone has to find these ‘Jimmy Peters’ to live on the ranch.

  Joe now responded, “Okay, but Sam, Bob, and I are going to take a trip out to California in the summer. We got a flyer about a livestock show out there and we thought we would take a couple of our best show sheep on out there. Funny though, we never got a flyer from this outfit before. Bob, he keeps up on the shows and he never heard of this one before. Maybe it is new, but just the same, we thought we would all go out. Why don’t you come along? Be a nice change for you, Mike. You’ve been sleeping out too much lately.”

  Mike studied on the idea a while and then said, “Okay. Sure, Joe. If I can, but when the weather breaks I have to go east.”

  “East. What’s east now?” Joe asked.

  “Can’t say. I just feel a need to go east again, but not right away, come spring and it warms up enough for a motorcycle ride. If I can though, I’ll come back west for the show next summer.

  “Right now we all have a lot of work to do here. I’ll get started on that land acquisition and the ranch quarters. Doc, could you go see Stephens and pitch our idea to him? If he doesn’t go for it we’ll have to find someone else. Joe and the boys will work the stock end, okay?”

  Everyone nodded their agreement and Mike said, “As far as Jimmy goes, I don’t want to push him into anything. Joe is probably in the best position to talk with him about moving over here when the time is right. No hurry on that, either. Jimmy is just getting settled over at the Ranney place and we don’t want to upset his apple cart. Maybe he’d prefer to stay there and not move over here until he has to. What do you think, Joe?”

  “Probably best he stayed put until spring at least, but we can start looking for other residents who qualify and would be suited for this life. That won’t be an easy task. I’m going to have to come up with some kind of screening. Not every person of less than average intelligence will fit in here. This place should be for people very akin to Jimmy’s condition, not much better and not much worse. We can’t be running a nursing home and we don’t want troubled kids, there are already places for them.”

  “Well, that’s your expertise, Joe. I do the dealing. You do the screening and teaching,” Mike responded.

  ~*~

  Doc hadn’t been to the Stephens’ place for some time. He had come a couple of times after Vern had gotten out of the hospital just to check on his progress but that really hadn’t been necessary. Vern was being followed by his surgeon at the hospital and Vern had made a monthly visit there until released.

  The place hasn’t changed much, he noted. Still, it looked better than it had when Vern was unable to even get off the porch. It was old and rundown, but not from lack of effort, just lack of money to buy what was needed to fix it up. The landlord didn’t do much to help since the rent he charged barely covered the taxes and small mortgage he had on the place. Vern tried to keep it up as part of his rent, but without money it was a losing battle.

  The dogs came running as soon as Doc pulled up and Billy bounded out the front door and off the porch to rescue Doc from their over exuberance. The dogs weren’t hostile toward Doc, not anymore, after the first few visits they took to him as another family member, but they could knock a visitor over with their excited jumping.

  “Howdy, Billy, your Pa around?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s inside working on a broken table. Come on in. He’ll be glad to see you.”

  Doc followed Billy inside and as he crossed the threshold, Billy yelled, “Pa! It’s Doc Collins come to see you.”

  Vern had the kitchen table flipped upside down in the middle of the floor and was finishing off putting in a screw. He looked up with a smile through crooked teeth and said, “Howdy, Doc. What can I do for you? Need something fixed?”

  “Not really, Vern, but I do have a proposition for you that might mean a steady income and better place to live.”

  “Do tell? You going to get me on at the mill again? Ain’t had no luck there myself, since I had to quit, they replaced me. They got no more openings. No place else around here a hiring, either, just odd jobs. Ain’t complaining though. Thanks to you I don’t have them headaches no more and I can work when I can find it and play with the kids when I can’t. Still, I ain’t heard of no steady work nowhere around here. You know something I don’t?” he finished, stood up, and flipped the table back upright.

  Vern’s wife, Julie, came around the corner saying, “Howdy, Doc. Stay for supper?”

  “I’d like that, Julie, thank you.” Doc had timed his visit for near suppertime knowing that if he hit it right Julie would invite him to stay for supper and he dearly loved her cooking. He had never had a bad meal at the Stephens’ house. Doc was a bit of a conniver himself. He was lonely and got tired of his own cooking. He had a feeli
ng Julie knew he timed his visits for suppertime, but she never let on.

  There was a good hour before supper so he urged them to sit at the table and hear his proposition. It didn’t take him long to lay it out for them and when he was finished Billy and his sister were all smiles. Vern was stunned into silence and Julie had tears in her eyes.

  Julie was the first to break the silence saying, “This is the second time you’ve answered a prayer from this house, Doc. The first was Billy’s and now mine. I’ve longed and prayed for years that we could find something better than what we have, not for me and Vern, but for the children. I want them to have more than we have had. A better shot at life.”

  Doc cleared his throat and it was all he could do not to tell them that Mike Maltby was the instrument behind the answer to their prayers, now and in the past, not him, but he held it in. He glanced at Billy and could tell that Billy knew the truth, but Billy was wise beyond his years and held his tongue, too.

  “God answers prayers, Julie, not me or anyone else. I suppose he uses certain people from time to time, but I doubt it is me. I’m not an instrument of God, just a country sawbones.”

  Doc glanced at Billy again, but he sat passively, staring straight ahead.

  ~*~

  Spring came before anyone even realized it was coming. The winter had passed at a hectic pace. The ranch quarters were completed ahead of schedule. The construction business, always a little slow in the wintertime in Illinois, had allowed everyone the ability to focus on this one job and those who didn’t donate their time after hearing about the endeavor, discounted their services and materials. Mike didn’t ask for that, he was willing to pay and to arrange the necessary loans, but most of those involved seemed happy to just be a part of a Mike Maltby deal. It amazed Mike how people began to accept him and his plans. He was a far cry from the Mike Maltby who first came to his area, full of himself and his self-centered plans. He was more than a little ashamed of his prior self.

  Vern and his family had settled in the house with Doc and were earning their pay. Much to Doc’s delight, Julie did all of the cooking for everyone involved. The workers didn’t even have to pack a lunch if they didn’t want to because Julie cooked constantly. She had given up her job in town, which had paid very little at best, and took care of the house. Mike made sure both she and Vern were paid appropriately and together with Doc, made sure the groceries were in abundant supply.