THE CORPSE ON THE WALL
By
Christopher Hawkins
(Originally published in Wanderings Magazine, September, 2005)

The wall was there. The wall had always been there.

For as long as anyone could remember, it had stood at the edge of their little town, towering high above the rooftops, surrounding it the way a mother’s arms surround a child. The circle of its sure, steady timbers was thought to be a good thing, when people stopped to think about it at all. "Keeps the bad folks out and the good folks right here where they belong," the old farmers were often heard to say, and when they said it, everyone agreed. Still, no crops were grown in its shadow, and no one in the town would walk too near it after the sun went down.

And so it was until the day that someone chanced to glance at the wall and saw a shape hanging dark and heavy against it. It had appeared in the middle of the night, or so it was thought since no one could recall ever seeing it there before. But, every last person in the town who looked up at it knew in an instant what it was, for there was no mistaking its shape, or the shadow that it cast.

It was a corpse, suspended high against the weathered wood.

It hung low enough to be seen but high enough to be far out of reach of the crowd that began to gather below it. Around its chest was a coil of rough-spun rope, the other end of it stretched taut to where it disappeared over the edge of the wall. Its head was pitched forward, as if with dead eyes it watched the townsfolk who stopped to look up at it. Though they squinted and shaded their eyes, not one of them could make out its face.

A cry went up throughout the crowd. "Murder," they cried. "Murder! It’s one from our own who hangs before our eyes! One of our own is a killer!" Voices rose up in anger and grief as they eyed each other with suspicion. But when the shouts and accusations fell away, it was clear that everyone in town was gathered at that spot. Not a single soul was unaccounted for. The corpse could not be one of them.

Relief washed through the crowd, and silence prevailed until an old crone stepped forward, and cleared her throat as she smoothed down her apron. "It’s one of them folks what live on the other side," she said, and the others nodded at her wisdom. "Ain’t a single one of them that’s got respect for life nor fear of God. Don’t know what it means to make a proper burial, neither. They kill their own and hang it in the air like so much laundry and expect us to do what they ain’t got the decency to do in the first place."

Murmurs of agreement went through the gathering, as if they had all been thinking that very thing all along. "Push it back," they cried. "Push it back over the wall! They killed it! Let them bury it! Push it back to the other side, to their side! Push it back where it belongs!"

Yet, for all of their shouts and cries of righteous indignation, not one of them took a step toward the wall. Not one among them raised a hand. It was then that they began to notice the grey and sunken tone of the corpse’s skin, how the flesh of the bare arms and chest seemed to have dried to dust beneath the leather-dark skin. Had it been that way when they had first seen it, or had it withered and changed right before their very eyes?

"I won’t touch it," came a voice in the crowd. "It’s unclean, that’s what it is. Who knows where its been and for how long? The filth! The disease! Let it hang there forever for all I care. I’ll not have any part of it, nor truck with anyone who does."

The nods began again, but they were quiet nods now. The voices in the crowd were low and full of secrets.

"But, it can’t stay there," someone else cried. "My children will see it there on our wall. They will pass it on their way to school and reach up to it, and poke it with sticks. They will see it but their young eyes will not understand and fear will overcome them. They will lie awake at night and all their innocence will be lost!"

"Then we will build another wall," came the reply. "We will build a wall around this corpse that none should ever have to see it. We’ll go about our lives and never look in its direction. In time we’ll forget that it was ever there."

Hushed approval spread among them, but no one stepped forward to hew the wood or drive the posts. Each looked to the others, but no one wanted to be the first to speak. The work was too much, they thought, too much for just one of us. If someone else would step forward, then certainly I would as well. But I will not be the first. I will not be the only one.

Then all was silent but for the tapping of a cane which rang across the cobblestones. An old man, the oldest in the town, pushed his way to the center of the crowd, and all bowed their heads before him. "Do any of you see," he asked. "Do any of you understand? That corpse belongs to all of us now, as surely as if it was one of our own. Pretending it’s not there will not make it go away. It’s on our wall and we have to deal with it, no matter who put it there. It’s our corpse now. Ours and ours alone."

The old man finished speaking, and surveyed the crowd around him, but not one of them would meet his gaze. They just hung their heads. The corpse looked down, as if in judgment on them all.

The silence remained until the mayor cleared his throat, and in his booming voice, he said, "At the very least, it should be taken down. Will someone step forward to do that much?" But no one did. They stood in the square at the base of the wall and looked at the ground.

"Let it be, then," the mayor said with a heavy sigh. "Before long it will rot, and it will fall. It will turn to dust and the wind will take it and not long after it will be little more than a memory. Let it fall. When it does, we’ll be shut of it, and not one of us need think of it anymore." With that he turned, and walked away.

Then, one by one, the rest of them followed. They left the shadow of the corpse, the shadow of the wall, and went back to their homes without looking back. Night fell and morning came and still the corpse hung in its place, held tight by the rope around its chest. There it stayed, for the next day and the next day and the next. Through rain and sun, through winter cold year after year the corpse was there. The corpse had always been there.

THE END