A cloudy late morning. Naughton walks down the short narrow hall, three doors on each side, two for the nuns’ quarters, one each for the four residents. From one a murmurous complaint, from another a clatter so muffled it may be a cracked human voice or the rattle of dishes and silver, though it’s long after breakfast. He walks past them without turning. At the end of the hall is a large window that looks out on a small rough greensward rounded with a motley of untrimmed greenery—thistle, spiderwort, vetch, pokeweed with cones of red-black berries, a rare but hearty patch of wild geraniums, its shy violet stars half hidden among the green, and the inevitable white flower-heads of Queen Anne’s Lace. Behind them in soldierly rows is a deep stand of yellow birch extending left and right beyond the confines of the window frame. There is no sun, no shadow, only a dull pewter, the source of light off somewhere in the gray sky. Just to one side of the window is a wheelchair, in it Charlene. Naughton stops and stands before the window surveying the drab scene and then turns to Charlene. Her huge black eyes are wide open, but there’s no evidence she’s looking at him. He comes a step closer. “You know, Charlene, eyelids are common walls. But they’re moveable. You can lower them, like the portcullises of old castles.”Nurse Vera appears in a white uniform. She’s large, face and hands bronze against the pale fabric. Naughton says, “I think Charlene may need to shut her eyes, Vera.”
“She does not shut her eyes, even when she sleeps.” It’s obvious that English isn’t Vera’s native language. She speaks with a practiced precision.
Charlene moves as if to retreat farther into the chair, but there’ no space between its back and her spine.
“Was she born without eyelids?”
“No. She does not use them.”
“And she never says anything?”
“One time she said no, we believe.”
Naughton returns his attention to Charlene. “I am the wall man, Charlene. Sister Claire said I could talk to you.”
Vera looks pityingly at Charlene and steps away. “I must go to Mr. Gerrity.”
Naughton puts his hands behind his back and speaks in a meditative tone. “It was just recently, Charlene, that I began to search for walls. I had the idea, and still have it now, that I could find on walls everything I’d lost.”
Under her white robe Charlene tightens as if to shrink, but there’s little of her to shrink.
Naughton nods, “I understand.” After a pause he says, “Do you like visions? Here’s one. “You’re up on the highest wall in the world, Charlene. Perched right on the edge. The sky is all around you. Not a blue dome, welkin, that kind of poetic stuff because it doesn’t matter to you if it’s glowing or weeping. You don’t care what your talons are grasping at the moment, scrabble, saxifrage, a sapling in a crevice. You depend on no such frailties. The updraft is ruffling your feathers. You feel the power. You move your telescopic eyes over the world below. Lots of quarry down there you could readily seize. Wandering wobbly calves and kids, a neglected infant in a crib, fat pigeons, rabbits, downstream salmon washed up in the shallows, the whole world in your talons. But you don’t want any of that easy prey. You’re after something bigger.”
A hint of movement crosses Charlene’s face, but there’s not enough flesh to tell exactly what it is—a twitching in the corners of her mouth, a flaring of her nostrils.
“What do you want to strike, Charlene? You launch and furl your wings. A hundred miles an hour, all the resistant air will allow. Who do you want to strike, Charlene? They’ll never know what hit them.”
Naughton abandons his meditative posture and tone. He paces like one in a condition of urgency and anger. It’s difficult to tell whether this radical change is genuinely reflective of an inner turning or is theatrical. “Charlene. Listen. We’re not going to let them take what’s ours.”
Now Charlene’s eyes roll left and quickly back to their steady forward stare, at nothing it appears.
Naughton bends down until his mouth is not far from Charlene’s ear. “Charlene. They’re gentle folks here. Lovely folks. Even smart, like Sister Claire, but they can’t help you with this. Because we’re talking about eating or being eaten. It’s not in their theology. And those others are dining on us, Charlene, one morsel at the time, at their leisure. Sure, we could slip out death’s back door. The good sisters have tried to lock it, God bless them, but they’ve got no head for numbers, Trinitarians. You and I could crack the combination in a minute. I learned that from my son Joshua. But we’re not going down that dark hall, Charlene.”
Naughton steps back, looks out the window for a long moment, nods as to himself, then turns back to Charlene. “I’m your friend, Charlene. I’m the wall man. You’re the eagle. We’re in this together.”
On Charlene’s face a faint hint of rubescence.