Wally

Mrs Cash told the CEO, Charles, I was stealing her bananas
I was just a cleaner
I liked my job
I could do it any time I wanted so long as I turned up
Twice a week
I could wear my headphones
Rock out while I vacuumed and wiped and scrubbed
Sometimes I got sidetracked
Talking
It didn’t matter, I was paid for the task, not by the hour
Just a kid
I guess
Learning to work as a contractor
No clue I'd end up as a cook and a carney
Figured I'd be a politician
I told people proudly, I worked “flexitime”
It sounded important
I got a meal every day too
Someone else cooked, yay!
Mash and peas and silverside
And I ate with the nurses and they, well we, were all friends
It was nice
I liked my job when I was sixteen and seventeen
There was a meal for me, and people
We usually discussed the resis
But some days we'd talk about how I should eat more
Always a hilarious topic for me

Lay it down for me mate
then watch me vomit it out in ropes
with respect, I don't so much swallow food as make a choice
Let it sit or throw it away


Mrs Craven’s daughter was always sitting with her
I didn't have a daughter then so I didn't get it really
When I went to vacuum the room they would say no honey
Not today

Then one day I poked the vacuum in the door and Norah said “Oh OK if you must”
Her daughter hadn’t come
“You’re a bright thing aren’t you” she said. “Do you just clean?”
No” I said proudly. “I go to university”
“Do you? You clever thing”
Anyway we got talking
We discovered I’d never read the lord of the rings
Didnt even know what it was
I took it home
Turned up the next day too early to work, and she laughed and gave me the next book
And so on
And when the lotr was finished, I turned up for work and her bed was bare
Stripped
And I still have it
The third book
And tears squeeze out of my eyes because I was a kid, with a hard life and a hard attitude, and a lady named Norah showed me Lord of the Rings and she took such delight in how much I enjoyed it

There was a man called wally too
He was kept in a room by the cleaners closet
His son never came
He liked me
I would poke in the vacuum and he’d clap and come alive
Come on you little asshole
He’d say
And he’d offer me a longneck which I’d take
Because I was 17 and raised by drunks so I knew how to neck one
And we’d sit and talk a bit, about politics (which i studied) and law (which I studied) and I’d rant and rave and have opinions
And he thought that was just fine
And he always kept a longneck in his little fridge, for me, the cleaner
It became part of my day, get the work done then have a chat and a drink in 22B

It came to my 18th birthday
Wally wrote me a card
He drew a picture and he got a nurse to wheel him out while I was having lunch with the nurses
It said a few lines but the one I remember was “I hope darkness never crosses your door”
The next morning my boss called to say he’d hung himself
Used his wheelchair, well you get the idea

I’m 50 now and I still wonder, if I’d been less eighteen, could I have sat with him?
His last act was to draw me a picture and write a card
He was my mate wasn’t he?
I still have the card. I’ve kept it for some thirty years,
And part of the reason I haven’t ever succumbed to the darkness
Is that I spent a lifetime wondering
and I wont leave a child wondering
So you can pry my life from my clenched fists
And all I want you to understand is the dark parts were lived with compassion. And love.
And I’m a grown up now and I know I couldn’t have saved him, and I was probably a comfort to him. But if I could go back in time and just linger a minute. If I’d known it was his last day.