0812994523.pdf

privately.
“Are you feeling better?”
It was not a sensible question, but I was a little unnerved seeing Walter like this. He’d lost
weight, and his gown wasn’t tied in the back, which he didn’t seem to notice. I stopped him.
“Wait, let me help you out.”
I tied the strings on his gown and we continued to his room. He moved slowly and
cautiously, sliding his feet in his slippers across the floor as if he’d forgotten how to pick them
up. He grabbed my arm a few feet down the hall and leaned on me as we slowly made our
way.
“Well, I told them people I got plenty of cars, plenty of cars.” He spoke emphatically, with
much more excitement than I’d heard from him in a while. “All different colors, shapes, and
sizes. The man say, ‘Your cars don’t work.’ I told him my cars do work, too.” He looked at me.
“You may have to talk to that man about my cars, okay?”
I nodded and thought of his field of metal. “You do have lots of cars—”
“I know!” He cut me off and started laughing. “See, I told them people, but they didn’t
believe me. I told them.” He was smiling and chuckling now, but he looked confused and not
himself. “Them people think I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I know exactly what
I’m talking about.” He spoke defiantly. We reached his room, and he sat down on his bed
while I pulled up a chair. He became still and quiet and suddenly looked very worried.
“Well, it looks like I’m back here,” he said with a heavy sigh. “They done put me back on
death row.”
His voice was mournful.
“I tried, I tried, I tried, but they just won’t let me be.” He looked me in the eye. “Why they
want to do somebody like they’re doing me is something I’ll never understand. Why are
people like that? I mind my own business. I don’t hurt nobody. I try to do right, and no
matter what I do, people come along, put me right back on death row ... for nothing.
Nothing. I ain’t done nothing to nobody. Nothing, nothing, nothing.”
He was becoming agitated so I put my hand on his arm.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I said as gently as I could. “It’s not as bad as it seems. I think—”
“You’re going to get me out, right? You’re going to get me off the row again?”
“Walter, this isn’t the row. You haven’t been feeling well, and so you’re here so you can get
better. This is a hospital.”
“They’ve got me again, and you’ve got to help me.”
He was starting to panic, and I wasn’t sure what to do. Then he started crying. “Please get
me out of here. Please? They’re going to execute me for no good reason, and I don’t want to
die in no electric chair.” He was crying now with a forcefulness that alarmed me.
I moved to the bed next to him and put my arm around him. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Walter,
it’s going to be all right. It’s going to be all right.”
He was trembling, and I got up so that he could lie down. He stopped crying as his head hit
the pillow. I began talking to him softly about trying to make arrangements so he could stay
at home and how we needed to find help, and that the problem was that it really wasn’t safe
for him to be alone. I could see his eyes drooping as I spoke, and within a matter of minutes
he was sound asleep. I’d been with him less than twenty minutes. I pulled his blankets up and
watched him sleep.