Some Walls Fall

"Two weeks later, Dad had a heart attack. When I got to the hospital, he was in a bed in the mergency room, his eyes closed. Mom and Lori were standing next to him. "It's just the machines keeping him alive at this point," Mom said. I knew Dad would have hated that, spending his final moments in a hospital hooked up to machines. He'd have wanted to be out in the wild somewhere. He always said that when he died, we should put him on a mountain top and let the buzzards and coyotes tear his body apart. I had this crazy urge to scoop him up in my arms and charge through the doors-to check out Rex Walls- style one last time. Instead, I took his hand. It was warm and heavy. An hour later, they turned the machines off." (Walls 280)

Throughout the book, Rex Walls is seen as inventive, paranoid, abusive, inebriated, and more. He and his family overcame hunger, homelssness, and problems at every turn. He went from drunk to sober and back in the memoir. Rex Walls was not taken out fighting people attempting to collect on a debt or fighting Tuberculosis. He died of a heart attack.

'Why are you growing a beard, Dad?' I asked. 'Every man should grow one once.'

'But why now?'

'It's now or never,' Dad said. 'The fact is, I'm dying.'

I laughed nervously, then looked at Mom, who had reached for her sketch pad without saying anything. Dad was watching me carefully. He passed me the vodka bottle. Although I almost never drank, I took a sip and felt the burn as the liquor slid down my throat.

'This stuff could grow on you,' I said.

'Don't let it,' Dad said.

He started telling me how he'd acwuired a rare tropical disease after getting into a bloddy fistfight with some Nigerian drug dealers. The doctors had examined him, pronounced the rare disease incurable, and told him he had anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to live. It was a ridiculous yarn. The fact was tht, although Dad was only fifty-nne, he had been smoking four packs of cigarettes a day since he was thirteen, and by this time he was also putting away a good two quarts of booze daily. He was, as he had put it many a time, completely pickled.

But despite all the hell-raising and destruction and chaos he had created in our lives, I could not imagine what my life would be like-what the world would be like- without him in it. As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had. " (Walls 178-179)

In this passage Rex Walls is telling his daughter that he is dying. He spins a wild tale of catching a tropical and incurable disease from Nigeriandrug dealers he fought. Jeannette, being of sound mind, knows that her father is telling a story. She humors him, as she had done all her life when she heard his tales. Despite the humor in his story she knows he's going to die, not from a disease, but from the liquor and cigarettes he consumed his entire life. Jeannette can not picture life without her father.

"I kissed them both, and at the door, I turned to look at Dad one more time. 'Hey,' he said. He winked and pointed his finger at me. 'Have I ever let you down?' He started chuckling because he knew there was only one way I could ever answaer that question. I just smiled. And then I closed the door."

This is a touching reunion between them and the last time she sees her father while he is sentient. He repeats what had become a sentimental saying. This reunion between father and daughter is, although difficult, ultimately, seemed to offer Jeannette some closure.

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