Wally

Wally

by Headley Hauser

Wally didn’t mean to keep people away. He liked people, but most found him forbidding, stand-offish, and restrictive.

Maybe if I was made of field stone, thought Wally, or even decorative brick.

Wally, as you may have guessed, was a wall. He wasn’t just any wall. He was the 28 foot, razor-wired exterior wall to the Murphysboro State Correctional Facility for Men, and in spite of every attempt to look pleasant and friendly, people avoided Wally.

Maybe it was the three strategically placed sharpshooter towers. The guards were not at all understanding when friendly inmates socially scratched Wally’s mortar.

In spite of his isolation, Wally wasn’t bitter. He reflected the gentle early morning sunshine into the exercise yard when the highly violent inmates of C block lifted the weights and did their drug deals. He blocked the harsher afternoon sun when the mob enforcers of B block smoked their cigars and planned who needed to sleep with the fishes.

The mobsters and murderers lives would have been far less pleasant if it hadn’t been for Wally, but as he was off-limits, he had to content himself with listening the inmate’s conversations.

“So, we got a movie tonight?”

“We did, and it was a good one, at least my kid liked it when they showed it at Youth Correction.”

“Your ex-wife tell you that?”

“She might have if I hadn’t planted three nine-millimeter slugs behind her right ear.”

“You know? The metric system ain’t as bad as people say.”

“You got that right.”

“It’ll be nice to have a good movie.”

“It’s a no go. Bubba smashed up the flat screen to make shivs out of it for A block.”

“Why didn’t he ask me? I got a gross of ready-made shivs hiding in my mattress!”

“Tough break.”

“Yeah, the marketplace is a jungle – hey, don’t they still have that old projector?”

“Sure, they still got it, but Jerry’s blood is all over rec room wall.”

“Ain’t it like Jerry to get in the way of a good time?”

“Yeah, if he weren’t in a coma, I’d…”

Wally stopped listening as an amazing thought occurred to him. My surface doesn’t have any blood on it! No one leans on me, or paints gang symbols on me, or anything. Once the sun goes down, all these great guys could gather in the exercise yard and watch their movie on me!

But there was one problem. Having no mouth, not to mention lungs, diaphragm, or larynx, Wally couldn’t communicate with humans whether they were guards or serial killers. Wally blocked harmful UV radiation from Big Louie and South Side Gang as he contemplated his problem – Wally was an accomplished mult-tasker.

Suddenly he heard a squawk. Wally looked for blood, but everyone in the South Side Gang looked unpunctured.

“Stupid Wall,” said a voice. “What’s the big idea, putting all this sharp stuff up here where folks are supposed to land?”

Wally followed the voice to the razor wire on top of him, and saw a grey bird.

“Don’t move,” said Wally. Birds can hear walls – even ones without a mouth. “That razor wire can hurt you.”

“I figured that out on my own, Blockhead.”

“If you stand still, I’ll get you out.” Wally shifted his blocks, slightly stretching the wire in one spot, and opening a hole in another. The bird jumped out of the wire and perched on Wally’s central rifle tower.

“Thanks, Wall, you’re a pal,” said the bird. “Anything I can do for you – just let me know.”

The bird must have thought it was unlikely that a wall would need a favor – or maybe he was insincere in his offer because he was already in flight before Wally could shout, “wait!”

“What now?” said the bird with less than perfect manners.

“I don’t want the mobsters and murderers to miss their movie,” said Wally. “They could show it on my surface if they wait until after sundown, but they don’t know that because humans can’t hear me when I speak.”

“Yeah?” said the bird. “I can take care of that for you.”

“You can?”

“Sure. I’m Stoolie the Pigeon. Talking to the Warden is what I do.”

So that night the inmates of Murphysboro State Correctional Facility for Men got to watch their movie. There was less than the normal amount of violence because Wally the Wall reflected the movie in all its wonderful colors. (The sound was crappy, but Wally didn’t have anything to do with that.)

And yes, the movie turned out to be Wall-E, but Wally didn’t think the main character was any relation.

All I really know about the inside I learned from Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder.  Warning - language.

TnT Excerpt Part 1, The Preface.

“An excerpt!” he says to me.

“A hippo,” I reply, ‘cause I had no idea what he was talking about and figured we were playing word association.

I was never very good at word association . I don’t recall winning it once. I never could figure the scoring.

“You should put an excerpt in your blog,” he says more completely.

So the next five posts are excerpts from the first chapter of Trouble in Taos. It’s the story of Slimy Beach, a notorious gunfighter and gifted latrine digger as told by Walter Bego, his best friend. In 1934, decades after Beach’s death, Walter discovers a western novel written about his friend…

Slimy killed more men than any three gunslingers I’ve ever heard of. His twin double-barreled sawed-off shotguns looked scary as hell even lying on the bar. They looked even scarier flashing in Slimy’s hands. Even without them, no man in his right mind would get within horseshoe-tossing range of Slimy. He smelled worse than a skunk and was the most boring man alive.

No man in his right mind but me, that is. Slimy was my best friend.

I picked up the Slimy book. There weren’t a lot of pages, but they were nice and soft. Norry Basset gave me a wink. I wanted to punch him in the nose, but I winked back because bad things happen when small, eighty-six-year-old men punch large, middle-aged storekeepers.

I put my dime on the counter and, without asking permission, headed straight for Norry’s crapper.

“Walter,” Norry called, “why don’t you wait ’til the Sears and Roebuck catalog comes in before you use my toilet? The pages don’t clog up the works so much.”

I pretended not to hear him. There are advantages to being old. No one can say for sure what you hear and what you don’t.

Norry installed an expensive brass crapper back before Wall Street crapped on the country. It was one of the fanciest bits of seating I’ve ever been pleased to utilize, but it was too high off the ground for my taste. I guess a big man like Norry likes to keep his knees from cramping. It’s a good thing he didn’t have children. A three-year-old might fall right in a toilet that size.

I climbed up to take a seat and cracked the cover of my new purchase. The book had the usual illustrations of horses, saddles, and six guns you see in every western dime novel. I’d never seen Slimy shoot a six-shot Colt in my life. It wasn’t a promising start.

The text wasn’t any better. According to W. G. Chesterson Rawhide Colmes, Slimy was a large brawny brute with fists like railroad sledges. Such a statement indicated that Mr. Colmes probably acquired his “rawhide” from sitting on a barstool in Philadelphia.

I’ve been accused of being an ounce shy of pint-sized, but at five foot three, I had the clear better of Slimy Beach. Slimy’s railroad sledge hands were smaller than I’d seen on a few ten year old boys, and I imagine there were a few boys that age that could whip Slimy in a fair fight.

Slimy didn’t believe in fighting fair.

His perfidious reign of justice began when Beach was only fourteen. The rapacious giant, Mike Finn, forced his unwanted attention on Miss Purity Homebody, Beach’s beloved schoolmistress. Finn was an infamous brawler who routinely killed and maimed men with his bare hands. Young Beach traded thunderous blows with the titanic Finn before the exhausted villain reached for his gun. Beach drew his pearl-handled Colt 45 and spun the weapon twice in his hand – just to give his opponent a chance. Slimy Beach dropped that evil violator of feminine virtue with one shot through the eye. So the legend began.

W. G. C. R. Colmes, Slimy Beach, the Tornado of Taos, p.18

Well, the page was nice and soft anyway, but Norry was right. The pipes of the fancy brass throne didn’t sound too pleased after I flushed.

Just in case a flood was coming, I skedaddled as fast as an old fart can.

Next post, Slimy and his watch.