THE MIDDLE OF TIMBUKTU
Robert Lopez
I am almost finally asleep when I hear Pity Jimmy say he’s gonna whittle me into kindling come morning time. My room is right next door to Pity Jimmy’s which is why I can hear him say things late at night when the both of us should be sleeping. This room next to Pity Jimmy’s has no closet to hang clothes in and no windows to look out of. The only thing you would see out of a window is the woodshed so not having a window to look out of doesn’t bother me too much. I hate it when they send me out to the shed for wood to burn and Pity Jimmy knows it. This is why he says he’s gonna whittle me into kindling late at night when the two of us should be sleeping. He says this also when I come in from the shed with a pile full of wood in my arms. I’ve never seen Pity Jimmy whittle anything into anything so this is almost like when he says how I was born in the middle of monkey in the middle. Time was this is all Pity Jimmy would ever say but since he said something about protein he talks like a regular person now except for you can’t understand him. What Pity Jimmy never talks about is his room which is bigger and better than mine. Pity Jimmy has both a closet and windows but I guess they think I don’t need those things. I have to keep my extra clothes in a valise I keep under the bed. I think I have two extra shirts and an extra pair of pants in the valise but I never have to wear them because they give me clothes to wear every two or three days. I haven’t opened up that valise since that first night I put it under the bed. The pants and shirt they give me are always gray and are always too baggy for me to wear right. I have to fold the pants over and down onto my hips because I forgot to pack a belt in my valise when I left home. I never needed a belt before because my old pants always fit me right which is why I forgot to pack a belt in the first place. The shirt I button up to the top button because there’s no reason not to. Even buttoning the shirt up this way leaves my neck plenty of room so it could never feel like I’m being strangled. I tried to trick Pity Jimmy once into wearing these clothes but it didn’t work. What I did was I went into his closet and took his shirt and pants from their hangers and hung up my baggy shirt and pants in their places. Pity Jimmy is even smaller than I am so he’d look like an even bigger idiot in my clothes which isn’t why I did it I don’t think. I wanted to wear my own clothes and thought maybe I could get away with it since most everyone here is blind. After I made the switch I went back into my room and waited for Pity Jimmy to get himself dressed. The problem is I chickened out before I could see if he would know the difference. I didn’t want them to give me what for when they saw Pity Jimmy in my idiot clothes. They might think I did this as revenge on Pity Jimmy because he keeps me up at night. This is not what we pay you for is what they’d say and I’d have to shake my head yes and look sorry. I’d rather have Pity Jimmy whittle me into kindling than have to hear them tell me this one more time. That’s the thing with Pity Jimmy no matter what you do with him you get in trouble for it. This is one of the maybe ten thousand reasons home is better than here. Another of those reasons is how cold it is here all the time. Back home we never had to burn wood to keep warm and we didn’t need a shed to keep wood in neither. Back home it was never cold like this. This is why I think I might be at the North Pole up here. Or else it’s Timbuktu and nobody knows it. That’s where people on my TV always were when they didn’t know where they were. One of them would be lost and another would say they were in the middle of Timbuktu. I don’t know if it is supposed to be cold in Timbuktu but it wouldn’t surprise me if it is. This is what makes me wonder how long I was on that bus for when they first brought me here. It probably takes days to bus all the way to the North Pole or Timbuktu. I should’ve paid attention is what I think. If I knew for sure I was in Timbuktu then I might know how to get back.