The Walking Man (7 page)

Sixty days after our final confrontation, Dr. Bonjour visited Room 302 at three o'clock in the morning. I pretended I was asleep. He was carrying a tape recorder and a pillow.

"Arthur, for the last time, are you sure you want to go through with this?" Dr. Bonjour whispered.

"Yes, Doctor. I need to go."

"I understand," Dr. Bonjour said.

I heard a click, the tape recorder.

"Okay, Arthur, repeat after me," Dr. Bonjour said. "I, Arthur Slank, being of sound mind, do hereby authorize Dr. Horatio Bonjour to terminate my life."

"I, Arthur Slank, being of sound mind, do hereby authorize Dr. Horatio Bonjour to terminate my life," Arthur Slank repeated.

"You ready, Arthur?"

"Do it," Arthur said firmly.

Five minutes passed. There was not the slightest sound. Then, Dr. Bonjour removed the pillow from Arthur's face and said, "Peace, Arthur."

During the suffocation, I could have yelled out, but I decided to respect Arthur's wishes.

I understood.

As Dr. Bonjour left the room I said, "Goodnight, Doctor."

And without the slightest hint of panic, Dr. Bonjour responded, "Goodnight, my friend. I hope you're proud of yourself."

I wept until morning, when Nurse Judy arrived and discovered Arthur.

"You poor thing," she said to me.

"I need to talk to Maria."

Chapter Four

Smitty and Rodrigo

I've heard psychiatrists call it a "suffering hero" daydream—honey bunch, I have a brain tumor, now will you finally love me…

I should have known better. I was nearly a thirty year old man, but my first reaction to Arthur Slank's death was to bare my soul to a nineteen-year-old girl in hopes that my tragedies would somehow make her want to love me forever. It was another poorly considered act by a man who stopped growing up the day he started falling down.

Two days after Arthur's death, Maria stopped by. She was as bubbly as ever, anxious to tell me about her new used car and share her opinion on the upcoming Presidential Race.

"Hi, Buddy," Maria smiled. "Guess who's driving a new Toyota?"

I didn't respond; instead, I broke down and tearfully told Maria about my war with Arthur Slank. I disclosed everything: our
Tom and Jerry
battles, the black fly attack, and the terrible things I said about the death of his wife and children. And then, as if that wasn't enough, I went on to tell Maria the unforgiveable words that caused my mother to end her life. Maria listened carefully without saying a word until I stopped. Then, she began to cry.

"Buddy, I'm a nineteen year old girl. My parents and grandparents are still alive. I like to go shopping, and chatting with my gal pals. The worst thing that ever happened to me was the death of my guinea pig. And that happened ten years ago. I have no idea how to help you." Maria began to cry. "I think you need to see a shrink, better yet, a team of shrinks."

"Don't cry, Maria," I begged. "I'm an idiot; I shouldn't have dumped my problems on you. I am so sorry. Please forgive me."

"That's okay, Buddy. That's okay," Maria said. "Maybe I should read to you later."

"No, no, no, please stay. Read," I said. "Read."

"Okay," Maria sobbed. "Do you want to me to read about Michael Dukakis, or George Bush?"

"Dukakis," I said. "I think we've had enough excitement."

~ ~ ~

I knew Maria was right. I needed help. I was a mess. But I couldn't turn to Dr. Bonjour. I lived in fear of the man. I spent half my nights waiting for him to enter my room with a pillow under his arm.

The day after I disclosed my badness to Maria, Father Frank Malarkey entered Room 302 to console me about the loss of my long-time roommate. Father Frank, as he was known, made the rounds a couple times a year, usually around Christmas and Easter. He was the sole parish priest at St. Beatrice of Shyshire. It was difficult for the good Father to visit the one hundred plus quadriplegics at the hospital who claimed to be Roman Catholics. So in general, Father Frank just said hello then sprinkled our legs with holy water. My guess was Nurse Judy asked him to pay me a visit.

"I hear you are troubled, my friend," Father Frank began.

"I am."

"Would you like to make a confession?"

It'd been a while so I asked for a clarification.

"You tell me your sins, then I'll forgive you in the name of God."

"So if I tell you I killed a man, you'll forgive me."

"Yes, my son."

"Then what?"

"I assign penance, typically a series of prayers. Usually five Our Fathers and three Hail Marys."

"Sorry, Father," I said. "I think I'm going to pass on that one."

"Not sure you believe in the sacrament of penance?" Father Frank asked.

"Actually, I'm not sure I believe in the whole God thing," I responded. "At best, I think He's on an extended vacation."

"I see," Father Frank said, without the slightest hint of disappointment. "Sprinkles?"

"Sure."

"Very good." Father Frank smiled as he spritzed me with a Windex bottle turned holy water dispenser. "See you next Christmas."

Today, I'm still not a religious man, but I do believe in miracles and I'm open to the whole Jesus story, angels and all. The main problem I have with faith is that you have to believe in nonsense to get some. I think any honest person endowed with a minimal level of deductive reasoning would have to conclude we simply don't know shit about anything, and religions happen to convince us otherwise. This being said, I'm fairly certain some sort of spiritual world exists. I say this because the extent of my awfulness during the 1980s was so thoroughly inexplicable that I have reluctantly concluded it was partially powered by an external force best described as evil. I can come up with no other explanation for my obsessive desire to harm a fellow quadriplegic, regardless of his distinctly nasty disposition. Also, I am one hundred percent certain evil has a counter force that connects people in a manner that extends far beyond the constraints of a human body. And as the song goes, it is the power of love.

In my life, I've been fortunate enough to experience varying degrees of love, including my passionate love for Maria, a child's love for my parents, and my brotherly love for Hal. I've also experienced a warming love generated by memories of friends who have come and gone, including the numerous patients and nurses from Leicester County Hospital whom I've remarkably out-lived. And strangely, despite my condition, I'm also familiar with fatherly love for I have two unofficially adopted boys. Their names are Smitty and Rodrigo.

Following the death of Arthur Slank, I was slow to recognize the power of selflessly connecting with others. Consequently, I formed relationships based upon my needs; friendship was always a secondary motive. It was during this particularly selfish phase of my existence that I "befriended" Smitty and Rodrigo.

I call them my boys, but I never knew the childhood versions of Smitty or Rodrigo. When I first met them, they were grown men, albeit teenage inmates at the Leicester County Correctional Facility. Originally, as a backhanded reminder of my inability to father a real son, both my boys referred to me as "Daddy." At first I was put off by the nickname, but I now recognize it as a term of endearment; for over the years, I have established a long track record of taking care of my boys, who now, like real sons, look up to me and compete for my affection, usually by trying to impress me with good words and better deeds.

Being a dad, I don't want my sons to perceive a favorite so I take great care to mete out equivalent doses of affection. But the truth is, Smitty occupies a higher tier of my heart than Rodrigo because he alone provided the guidance and relentless support I needed to turn my life around. In fact, he's more like a father than a son. And without question, Smitty's a better person than Rodrigo, who remains to this day quite a piece of work…

~ ~ ~

As I previously mentioned, due to budget cuts enacted by my "hero" Ronald Reagan, to meet the needs of its patients, Leicester County Hospital was forced to employ inmates from the Leicester County Correctional Facility. Smitty was one of my initial inmate assignees. I first met him when he entered Room 302—two days into a six-month prison sentence. Being big, his assignment was to roll me.

A half-year was an exceptionally long stay for an inmate at the Leicester County Correctional Facility. But having recently killed an elderly spectator while competing at Shyshire's Annual Scottish Highland Games, Smitty's sentence was relatively light. Originally, the State intended to charge Smitty with murder, but they had to settle for manslaughter due to a lack of sober witnesses. The lesser conviction caused Smitty's frustrated prosecutor to accurately describe Shyshire's Annual Scottish Highland Games as "an excuse to drink disguised as a sporting event."

The sad fact was, like most prisoners incarcerated for violent offenses at Leicester County Correctional Facility, Smitty's crime involved alcohol. Since all of the participants and spectators at the Shyshire Highland Games were drunk, accounts of Smitty's "accident" varied. But it was generally agreed that Smitty, a participant in the festival's "heavy events," became disorientated and tossed his caber into a crowd of spectators, killing one and injuring three. Subsequent testing revealed, at the time of the "accident," Smitty had a 0.2 percent blood alcohol level, twice the legal limit for driving an automobile, thus by inference, an inappropriate level of drunkenness for tossing things about that weighed more than a Volkswagen.

For those of you unfamiliar with Scottish sports that don't involve a little white ball, the Highland Games supposedly replicate competitions held in the Scottish Highlands during the eleventh century. The core events of the "games" involve throwing heavy things such as boulders, hammers, and cabers—a caber being a tree without branches, usually pine, usually thirty feet long, and usually weighing three hundred pounds.

Smitty got sucked into the "sport" of caber tossing because he was huge and his smaller "friends" from his high school got a free keg pass for being part of his entourage. Later in life, Smitty also admitted he secretly enjoyed wearing a kilt because it let his boys dangle like the good Lord intended.

In appearance, Smitty looked like a giant Bartlett pear. Being cool, I never asked him his exact size, but I'd estimate he was six foot eight inches tall and I'm certain he weighed, at minimum, three hundred fifty pounds. I have no idea what percent of Smitty's weight was muscle, but he could pick me up and toss me around like I was a Beanie Baby.

The intimidation associated with Smitty's size was compounded by a look that could make a Hell's Angel soil his Harley. Smitty had a brown hillbilly beard, a furry back, and slots for eyes. He had a gap between his front two teeth, which I once witnessed him use to strip a wire. He had a tattoo on his arm that read "moM," so it looked like it was spelled backwards. And he often wore painter's pants à la Jason of
Friday the 13th.
Due to an innocuous heart condition that over-stimulated his nervous system, Smitty was also diaphoretic, which meant the slightest physical exertion caused his body to sweat profusely—like he'd just exited a sauna. Fortunately, I couldn't feel the wet spots Smitty left on my clothes after picking me up, and gratefully, perhaps due to the excessive consumption of Gatorade, Smitty's odiferous sweat was usually masked by the scent of lemons.

To sane people, Smitty's perspiring bulk cast him as an imposing character—until he spoke. Smitty had a slight nasal voice that slurred as if he had a cup of peanut butter in his mouth. His sound caused people too busy to listen to instantly conclude that Smitty was mentally retarded. Unfortunately, this misdiagnosis was bolstered by the fact that Smitty was illiterate due to dyslexia; a condition Smitty once told me caused all multi-syllabic words to resemble "crocodiles." I thought he was trying to be funny, but I wasn't sure. Smitty had a wicked sense of humor but it was rarely aired for the entertainment of others.

Most ironically, Smitty's physical presence effectively disguised that he was an outright genius with prodigious perception skills. To convince him of this, I once gave Smitty a verbal IQ-Test and he scored 154. Smitty's intelligence enabled him to draw extensive inferences from the slightest fact. This skill gave him an astounding ability to interpret the words, deeds, and looks of others. Smitty could tell exactly what people were thinking just by looking at their faces. On a daily basis, he would demonstrate this skill by commenting on each passerby as he pushed me down the hallways of Leicester County Hospital in my wheelchair. "Oh no, Nancy just found a lump on her breast," he would say. "Angie's pregnant… Whoa, Mary's in love…" He was never wrong. He could even read the deadpan Dr. Bonjour, whom he called "Doctor Death."

But, even more profound than his weird physicality and hidden intelligence, was Smitty's infinite kindness. Smitty was a proverbial Teddy Bear. He had a deep appreciation of beauty, patted small things gently, and worried about his friends. Once, during an extended mid-winter power failure, in tears, Smitty removed frozen fish from the ward's tropical aquarium and buried them outdoors, not wanting to mock their prior existence by flushing them down the toilet. Then there was me… Perhaps due to the fact that we filled in each other's missing pieces, Smitty treated me as if I was the most important person in the world. He visited me every day and advocated for my every need. Also, he wasn't shy about telling me the obvious things I needed to do to live a better life. In short, Smitty cared about me like no other. So, over time, we became "ABFs," absolute best friends.

~ ~ ~

My other 'son', Rodrigo, was nothing like Smitty. He was unlovable, yet possessed an irresistible comical rogue nature and a dysfunctional relationship with money. Rodrigo was tiny and he looked like a rat. In fact, if you saw him nibbling cheese you would instantly call for an exterminator. When I first met Rodrigo, he was doing three months in Leicester County Correctional facility for running a pyramid scheme out of the Shyshire Elks Club. I never got the details, but it involved raffle tickets and land in Florida. It was Rodrigo's goal in life to make money without working. He once told me "scamming was part of his DNA."