Walking the Dog by Elizabeth Swados Read Free Book Online Page B

I also managed to earn the respect of the strangest and most demented prisoner in maximum security. Her name was Fits, a six-foot-three Viking who wore undershirts and sweatpants, and had fists the size of bowling balls. Plus, she was epileptic, or psychotic, and once every couple of months she’d have a seizure where she shook and struck out like a cartoon creature zapped by an electric wire (thus, her nickname). It would take three or four male guards to hold her down. I think they had to shoot her with a quart of Thorazine to keep her from becoming the Hulk. She was slow, but far from stupid. She simply had impulse-control problems and the strength of a grizzly bear. She’d been in solitary so many times she had permanent red stripes—like a zebra—from crashing into the bars. She had scars on her head from trying to butt the metal doors. Her arms were misshapen from how many times she’d broken them. But she stood tall.
    She was in for four or five life sentences. The story went that on the outside a couple street boys made fun of her on a basketball court in her suburban town as she kept missing baskets. The more they mocked Fits the more she kept missing baskets. I will never know the true details (few of us ever do on the inside), but my impression is that Fits went into some kind of standing, abominable snowman seizure. They found half of a pickup game with their necks broken and Fits sound asleep on the gravel. She didn’t resist. She took on a kind of blankness that people interpreted as retardation. I think it was more likely her chemistry or wiring. She came from a poor farm family where the mother had run off, so no one had ever cared enough to try to get her medicated. They just called what she had the “devil twitches.” The defense claimed that the boys attacked Fits, even though she couldn’t remember.
    I was going through a nonstop Ferris wheel of hell at Powell’s—everything from getting beat up, to finding shit in my bed, to getting stabbed with needles, razors, and tacks. My broken fingers made it hard to fight back. That’s probably a good thing, because if I had blown up in my usual way I’d be dead. Every now and then I think it might be useful to be alive. But back then, given that everyone on the outside had completely disowned me, I was prime for just doing a cannonball off the top tier of cells and ending up like a jellyfish on the filthy plywood floor. I was ready. But then Fits, in her quiet bear, spaceman manner, took on the job of becoming my husband.

PRISON WIFE
    One nameless day Fits ducked into my cell (she was taller than the gate) and sat on the bed next to me. I thought, This is it, and a shiver of simultaneous terror and relief went through me. I waited to be murdered at Powell like I waited for Fits’s seizures. My unconscious knew an attack was inevitable. I knew she’d crumble me like soft rock. But she kept her huge hands in fists on her lap.
    â€œYou have a mark on you,” she grunted. “They want to wear you down. I saw some of the boys back home do it to a dog. They like to watch you go slow. You’ve got that mark. They’ll bring you back to life and start all over again. It’s nothing personal. Just an activity. But you haven’t done anything to deserve it. And you don’t complain and you don’t fight back and that pisses off the Royals. They see you as conceited. And everybody gossips, says you’re rich. Is that the truth?”
    â€œ . . . Yes, from my art . . . ,” I answered. I was still shaking in fear.
    â€œAnd it got all famous when you got busted.”
    â€œYeah, it did,” I admitted; no need to explain that my work had been selling since I was a kid. “But I’m here like everyone else.”
    â€œHere’s the thing. I’m not some big lug with a heart of gold.I don’t believe in justice, neither. I don’t kill just for fun like the