The Note

The Note



To Thomas Williams

It’s simple; if it wasn’t I wouldn’t have written to you about it. I have this friend who for lack of a better word, seems misguided. He doesn’t seem to realize what he’s getting himself into. No one actually does. To everyone, it seems like some big joke. Let’s all laugh it off go to sleep and in the morning everything will be peachy keen, for lack of a better euphemism. I must apologize, I seem to be speaking in a mundane fashion and for that I am truly sorry. It’s just that I’m terrified of my own thoughts. If I allow them room to grow, who knows what might be harvested from the garden of knowledge that has taken root in my subconscious. It’s terrible, but no one wants to do anything. I cannot live unless I have some sort of guidance. Please allow me to see how this can get any better because I can’t seem to find a single silver lining in this awfully big grey cloud that has covered me and taken away my sunshine. It’s taken away my happy days. In its wake it’s only left disease and ruin.

I wrote to you but now I can’t remember why. No… I know the reason but I can’t bear to speak it aloud or even scribble it silently among a piece of drying parchment.  To let go of this secret would kill me but to hold onto it would seal me in my grave. So please I ask… might we meet someplace? Might we talk? Might we converse and not lose our heads in the conversation?  For I fear I’m very close to losing my own. I’m very close to watching it slip right off of my shoulders and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it. The world has gone mad and I see red in every corner I look. Every shadow is naught but blood painted on the walls and doesn’t every smile have a sinister motive?  I fear  I’ve gone mad, but I was not always this way. Might you make sense of it all? Might you fix me? I daresay counsel and console not to confuse the two though they  are similar alphabetically, the meanings are infetessimally different.

I talk now as an intellectual but I feel I was not always this way. At one time I knew the wall was brown. If someone were to tell me Joe, the wall is brown I would reply with a yes, but now I’m not so sure. Perhaps I would question it for exactly the same reason I used to treasure and respect it. The words themselves are innocent but they came from a person who knows no bounds of his wickedness. Sir, pray I tell you, pray for me for now for I believe the wall is white. It was brown but since I was told it was so, I must reply the opposite of what I was told. Even though I clearly see a brown wall it must be white. For how else could they lie to me and persuade me?  I believed what I was taught for so long that somehow it has embedded in me. There is no way to free my mind from this nightmare. The wall is white. I will not listen or even be led to think otherwise for if I even allow them to suggest a second shade of color I’ve lost the war.

Where was I? Rambling was it? No one wishes to hear the mutterings of mad men and again I must apologize for leading you off course I suppose and wasting paper writing these foolish incoherent thoughts but they must have a purpose right? Otherwise I wouldn’t spend my time furiously scrabbling at some worn out piece of paper with a pen older than my own years, would i? Perhaps if I was insane but this isn’t the case. You must see that I have the right to contradict myself as everyone else does. If what I say doesn’t always match up with the previous utterings, that doesn’t make me a stuttering fool.

Now I am to appeal before a court for my crimes. I had done nothing wrong in the eyes of the lord but others will see to it that I am sentenced to my death. Pray for me. Pray for me, Thomas Williams. Kneel on the rug of your fancy office and sit down and say, “Lord forgive Joey Walker for his sins he knows not what he has done. Nor do I, but I see he is innocent in the eyes of the lord.”

If you will not, it will not matter. Let’s be honest, I will never know If you took the time out of your busy schedule to pray for some old fool and when we meet I will assume that you have. Only your conscience will decide the path that you will choose Thomas. Now I must write it. This last part will be hard to take in. I could have summized this whole long begotten note in the form of one sentence but I’ve been shying away of writing it. When you read this I wanted to make sure you knew enough about me not to make some quick and unjust judgment about what must now be said. I warn you it may seem unpleasant and to me the news rattled me to the core. Just writing this sentence I’m about to tenses up my fingers and chills them to the bone as my heart stops. “I am in prison for crimes of war. I am not here because I am a spy, or a terrorist. In fact i am the exact opposite, I’m more like a freedom fighter. I am responsible for a soldier going AWOL. I myself am not a soldier nor have I ever been one but I did rescue a soldier from the cold unblinking eyes of the infantry. My brother was never meant to go. He was too young and I couldn’t stand by and let him die!”



                                                                               Sincerely Joseph Walker