Walker Smith

Walker Smith - Tuesday, 9 September, 1986

(from the unpublished novel, Rainy Season)

          Walker Smith woke up in a hospital bed. At first it wasn’t easy to focus, but, shit, yeah – looked like a hospital, sure enough. Probably Navy Hospital. That’s what they called it. He’d been here before, when he’d been a little kid, when his greasy, all-white hausta dad had been dying of cancer. It sucked.

          Fuck, his leg hurt. This black dude in a white get-up came into his view. Stared down at him.

          “Looks like you’re comin’ around,” he said. Then he smiled. “Just your luck to get a male nurse, huh, baby? No tits to stare at.”

          Walker looked at him with his usual look of just plain dislike. When it came right down to it, Walker just wasn’t fuckin’ into liking people, okay? “It sucks,” he said. His voice sounded funny to him. Maybe it was that fuckin’ tube in his nose.

          “Bet that leg hurts like a son-of-a-bitch, don’t it, baby?”

          It sure as shit did. Walker wasn’t that used to pain. His dad had left behind some family money. Early on he’d learned that if he came on strong enough the fuckin’ Tatoe, the locals, weren’t going to fight back. He shoulda never fucked with the haustas if he hadn’t wanted to get hurt. Sure as shit, it’d been a hausta who’d nailed him.

          The fuckin’ memory came clearly into his mind. He’d been running off with some people’s shit through some tangantangan out behind that dead shit hausta’s place, and it’d been dark, and he’d fallen over something, and this big, blonde hausta came up almost on him.

          ‘Hold it right there, you little shit,’ the hausta’d snarled, ‘or I’ll tear out your spine and jam it up your ass-hole!’, or something like that.

          Walker had reached into the deep pocket of his khakis and pulled out that little .22 he always carried, just in case. He’d picked it up in a burglary in Hahdsu about six months ago. Just having it gave him some creds in Guelgla.

          The fuckin’ hausta had made a move to the side. Walker had pulled the trigger, but the hausta had already moved the other way and Walker missed. Then he’d seen a fuckin’ gun in the hausta’s hand. He’d seen the flash, felt the pain, heard it boom. He’d dropped his .22 and groaned, felt light-headed, heard some talking that sounded like it was far away, and had woken up in this sucky hospital.

          “Don’t call me baby, nigger.”

          “Ooo, we is a tough little coconut, aint we? Here, baby, you gonna love me, cause I’m here to give you some drugs. Mmmm, yum! Gonna make you stoned.”

          Walker tried to get up, but his fuckin’ leg hurt too much when he moved it even half an inch. He groaned and leaned back down.

          “Those bullet wounds’ll slow you down a bit, won’t they, baby?” The bastard was chuckling. He swabbed Walker’s thigh just above the big bandage that was wrapped around it and jabbed him with a needle. “Now it’s gonna hurt less,” he said, “and you aint gonna go nowhere.” He disappeared from Walker’s field of vision.

          Walker felt like he was falling down into a big hole, sort of like when he’d been bleeding after he’d been shot. He didn’t even have the fuckin’ strength to turn his head to see where the nurse had gone. A few minutes, or maybe seconds, or maybe an hour or two later – Walker couldn’t tell, he was so fuckin’ woozy – an Asian-looking doctor came by and examined him – his leg, his eyes, his chest, his chart. “Are you experiencing much pain?” he asked.

          When Walker thought about it, he could indeed locate the pain, but if the bastard hadn’t said anything he wouldn’t have noticed it. “It’s fuckin’ there, you fuckin’ ass-hole,” he mumbled.

          “Good. Good.” The little gook seemed fuckin’ pleased to hear this. “You know, we almost didn’t keep you alive. You lost an awful lot of blood. You’re very lucky to be here.” He smiled.

          Walker thought he’d have been luckier not to have got himself shot at all. “It sucks,” was all he could get out.

          The gook doctor just kept smiling. Then he fuckin’ disappeared.

          Someone had turned on a TV in the room somewhere along the way. Some soap opera was on. It sucked. Walker wanted MTV, but didn’t see anybody he could tell to change it, and he didn’t feel like putting out the fuckin’ effort to look around for help. So there were all these fuckin’ white bitches on the tube havin’ at each other over these smooth-looking white dudes who looked like they never fuckin’ sweat. Then someone turned the TV off again and this fat old Tatoe dude was standing over him. The old dude pulled a badge out from somewhere and about shoved it into Walker’s face.

          “Hello, Walker,” he said, as if he actually fuckin’ knew him or something. Fuckin’ pig.

          “Get fucked.”

          “My name is Detective Inspector Santos ... ”

          “I don’t fuckin’ care if it’s Boy Fuckin’ George.” He heard his voice as if it were somebody else’s. His words sounded hoarse and slurred, as if he’d been doing pills. That fuckin’ nigger had been fuckin’ right about getting him fuckin’ stoned, all right.

          “I don’t know if anybody here’s told you, but you are under arrest ... ”

          “Is that like bein’ under a fuckin’ bad sign?” It was hard to get the words out.

          “... under arrest for burglary and for possession of an unregistered weapon.”

          “Suck my ass.”

          “Now, I’m sure you know that you don’t have to say anything, ... ”

          “You got that fuckin’ right.”

          “... but if you do say anything it can be taken down and used in evidence.”

          “Hey, I’m not fuckin’ sayin’ anything, all right?”

          “Of course it’s all right, Walker. I just said it was.”

          “So fuck off.”

          The old dude wasn’t going to give up, though. “You know,” he said, “this is the first time we’ve busted you since you turned seventeen. We’ll be seeing how you like being locked up for a while, once you get out of here. Some of your neighbors have been saying the most horrid things about you since last night.”

          All Walker wanted was for the old dude to fuckin’ shut up. “Eat shit, man. Can’t you see that I’m fuckin’ sick? Let me the fuck alone.”

          “If you killed that basketball dude I’m sure we’ll find out anyway. I don’t think the judge will grant you bail on the other charges while we continue with our investigations. Yeah, you’re gonna be locked up like an animal for a while. After all, you are a murder suspect.”

          “Suspect?”
          “Murder suspect.”

          Walker leaned up on one elbow. It made him dizzy, but he didn’t care. The whole situation sucked. “That sucks! I didn’t fuckin’ kill that ass-hole. I never killed nobody.”

          “No?”

          “No!”

          “You were going around telling half of Guelgla Village you were going to kill him, and then he got killed. That looks bad for you.”

          “That sucks. I told you I didn’t fuckin’ kill him.”

          “And then you get caught lurking about at his wake, with an unregistered gun in your possession. That doesn’t make you look all that good, either.”

          “Listen, night before last, that’s when he got killed, right? I was at a party all night long at my cousin Marty’s place in Tadza Ahdzoe. Marty Huvai. Look him up in the fuckin’ phone book and ask him.”

          “Oh, we’ll check it out, Walker, don’t worry about that. I’m sure everyone there saw you nonstop from dusk to dawn. I bet none of them even blinked.”

          “Ah, go fuck yourself.”

          “About this gun you had in your possession, Walker ... ”

          “What fuckin’ gun?”

          “I believe it was a 38 calibre Smith & Wesson automatic.”

          “You got that wrong, ass-breath.”

          “Do we?”

          “Hey, I aint never had no .38. That’s a fuckin’ fact.”

          “It was in your possession when we found you, Walker.”

          “That sucks. I never saw no fuckin’ pig find me. I was out fuckin’ cold.”

          “It was right by your hand.”

          “Somebody must’ve fuckin’ planted it there, man.”

          “We have a witness.”

          “Yeah. That sucks, too. The dude that fuckin’ shot me, right?”

          The old dude just fuckin’ stared back at him. Finally, he said, “Do you want to tell me what happened, Walker? You’ve got nothing to lose. We have a bunch of eye-witnesses for the car burglaries. You can wait until after I get you a lawyer here. I’m going to have to get you one anyway.”

          Walker sank back into the bottom of the bed. He felt so fuckin’ sick and exhausted that all he wanted to do was sleep. His leg was starting to hurt so that he noticed it again. “Yeah,” he said, “get me a fuckin’ lawyer. In the meantime, all I got to fuckin’ say is, I never killed nobody, and my piece was a .22. Go look for it. I bet it’s fuckin’ there somewhere.”