Last Words to Walker
May 5, 2020
Seven years ago today, on May 5, 2013, I had my last conversation with my brother Walker. He had called me in April to tell me that he had been invited to a birthday party for this online conspiracy theorist, Wayne Madsen, and it sounded like he was asking me, his little sister, if he should go.
It was going to be a weekend bash on some island off the coast of Washington, and Walker needed a break from his—pretty dull—routine. He had been part of this private online discussion group for years (I think he even had to pay for this privilege) and had been chatting with these people for years, so I said, sure, you should go and see what these people look like in real life! It could be fun! It was kind of sweet, like a role reversal for us. He seemed tentative, like he needed my permission to go have an adventure. I tried to be as positive as I could, despite my real thoughts about what kind of people he was going to be hanging out with.
He did go. While he was there, he sent me the only text he ever sent me, which said that he had been picked up at the airport on this island, and driven directly to a gun range, where, despite not having touched a gun since he was a child—he was disgusted by guns, by hunting, by the whole rural Southern male thing—he reported that he had done pretty well. He may have said pretty good, but I doubt it since it was his sixth-grade teacher who had told him that she knew good and well he knew the difference between good and well.
Walker still had a flip phone and I had my very first smartphone, but had not begun to text, so I missed that text until after I talked to him. He called on Sunday, May 5, his last full day there at Camp Conspiracy, and he sounded absolutely elated, like a kid. He was having a blast. He was giggly about his prowess at the gun range. He was imbibing staggering amounts of alcohol with his compadres. He and a fellow named Yoshi were planning to collaborate on a screenplay about Carlo Gesualdo, not because of his gorgeously tortured music, maybe about his murder of his wife and her lover, but for sure, they had cooked up some conspiracy story.
When I told him the difficulties we were having with this school where Emi was, where they had drunk a very creepy kind of Montessori Kool Aid, he wanted to tell me about similar difficulties our mutual friend Hanna was having with her son. He asked me if he had told me anything about that and I said no. And then he said this thing that to this day, makes my heart hurt, and that was “We never talk anymore.” It was true. At least we talked so much less than we used to. And that was my brother asking me in the only way he could to call him more often, to stay in touch, because he was truly lonely. It had become increasingly difficult to talk to him, actually because of the way his brilliant mind had been poisoned by all this shit he read on the internet. There were years before then that we had talked at least once a day, often more. We had been best friends, really. We had always been there for each other.
Walker nattered on about whatever other activities were upcoming, and then I heard a car horn, and he said in this very excited voice, “They’re here! Yoshi’s here to pick me up! I’ve gotta go!” He sounded like a kid running off to play with his friends. It made me so happy to hear that. His life had been such a struggle for so long.
I yelled “Have fun!” and of course, what we had always said, our whole lives, at the end of a phone conversation, “Love you!” I didn’t know those would be my last words to him, but I am so thankful that they were.
“Have fun! Love you!” And Walker was off to his next adventure.
©2021 Joy Cunningham