Mangled Fairy Tales
I’ve heard it all my life. I had a great fall, and I won’t deny it.
I fell.
There’s no honor in pretendin’ otherwise when half the town heard the crack.
But I object to the way the matter has been handled in public memory. “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.” That’s what they say, like the whole tragedy can be folded into two lines and handed to children before breakfast.
Not one word about the wall.
That wall was downright disgraceful.
I said so before I fell, and nobody cared because I am shaped in a manner that makes people think I don’t understand masonry. This is a common prejudice against the round. Folks look at a person with no elbows and assume he has no engineering opinions.
Let me assure you, I had opinions. Still do.
The wall ran along Ladiga Street, just past the mill, where the ground dips and collects rainwater. It had been leanin’ for three years. Leanin’ ain’t always dangerous. A politician leans whichever way the wind blows him and may live to ninety. But stone should not.
Every spring, the mortar washed out a little more. Every winter, frost got in the cracks and spread them like gossip. By the time I sat there, that wall was less of a structure than a suggestion.
Now you may ask, “Humpty, why sit on it?”
Fair question.
I ask myself the same thing in damp weather.
The honest answer is that the wall had a fine view. You could see the mayor’s pasture, the bend in the road, Mrs. Peabody’s laundry, and three counties of other people’s business. I am not proud of bein’ curious, but I was born without much neck, so elevation has always been dear to me.
Also, the bench near the pool hall was full.
So, I climbed up.
Yes, climbed. People are forever actin’ like an egg can’t climb. It is difficult, I grant you, and undignified from behind, but not impossible. I had a system involvin’ a stick, a low root, and considerable faith.
I reached the top and settled myself careful.
That was when I noticed the wobble.
Not a dramatic wobble. Not the sort that announces itself with trumpets. Just a small shifting under me, like the wall was considerin’ a change of location. I looked down and saw the stones had loosened around the very place I was sittin’.
“Somebody ought to fix this,” I said.
There were three royal (erm, City) workmen nearby eatin’ lunch under a tree.
One of them looked up. “Fix what?”
“This wall.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s movin’.”
He squinted. “Looks all right from here.”
That sentence has killed more people than war.
I told him the mortar was gone. He told me a crew had inspected it last Easter. I told him Easter wasn’t a building material. He said the forms had been filed. I said forms don’t support weight unless you fold a great many of them and wedge them in the cracks.
He didn’t appreciate my tone.
Now, I’ll admit my tone can get away from me. Being fragile gives a person urgency.
I asked whether the mayor knew about the wall. The workman said the mayor had a great many walls and couldn’t be expected to personally inspect every one of them. I said perhaps he might inspect the one bearing citizens. The workman said I wasn’t meant to sit there.
And there it is.
The whole defense of bad construction: you weren’t supposed to use it wrong.
No railin’. No sign. No warnin’. No “Eggs and Other Delicate Persons Prohibited.” Just a public wall beside a public street, built and maintained with public taxes and kept up by men who could nap through an F5 tornado.
Then the wind came up.
It weren’t much of a wind. A respectable sneeze would’ve matched it. But it caught my left side, which is unfortunately similar to my right side, and the wall shifted beneath me.
I tried to steady myself.
This is way harder than it sounds.
A man with arms may wave them. A cat may twist. A bird may flap. I had neither wings nor waist. I had only determination and a poor relationship with gravity.
I rocked once.
The wall groaned.
I rocked back.
A stone dropped out from under me and bounced into the ditch.
The workmen stood up.
“Careful!” one called.
That was useful. I had been plannin’ on reckless plummetin’, but his advice opened new possibilities.
The next moment, the whole top course gave way.
Now I won’t describe the fall in detail because it has been dramatized enough. I remember sky, road, wall, sky again, one offended crow, then a sensation best described as being scrambled.
When I came to, if “came to” is the right phrase for an egg in pieces, there was a crowd.
Crowds love an accident. They arrive breathless, stay judgmental, and leave with improvements to the story. Mrs. Peabody screamed. The undertaker said he always knew that wall was unsafe, which was the first I’d heard of his prophecy. The workmen discussed whether this counted as their break.
Then came the mayor’s horses.
Why horses?
That’s another question history has dodged.
I hold no grudge against horses. They are noble animals, if you enjoy large teeth and sudden opinions. But when a citizen has suffered structural collapse, the first responders ought not arrive shod in iron.
The mayor’s horses gathered round me, snortin’ and steppin’ careful but not careful enough for my taste.
“Can you put him together?” asked somebody.
A horse looked at me.
I looked at the horse, to the extent I was able.
We both understood the limits of the profession.
Then came the mayor’s men, which was an improvement only because they had opposable thumbs.
They brought glue, rope, linen, spoons, sealing wax, a prayer book, and one fellow who claimed he had once repaired a chamber pot under similar conditions. I objected to the comparison, but from several locations at once, which weakened the effect.
They tried.
I’ll give them that.
One man held up a piece and said, “Is this important?”
“Yes!” I said.
“Where does it go?”
“How should I know? I’ve never seen myself from that angle.”
They argued over the diagram, but there was no diagram. There never is. Nobody thinks to draw plans of a person until after he has become a puzzle.
By sunset, they had assembled what I will generously call a proposal.
It was not me.
It leaned left. It had gaps. It contained pebbles. One of my eyes faced toward town and the other toward Vigo. The mayor’s chief physician stepped back, frowned, and said, “He may need rest.”
I said, “He may need a mason.”
But the official report had already begun to write itself. It was cleaner to say Humpty Dumpty fell than to say the city-owned wall collapsed under foreseeable conditions after years of neglected maintenance. A fall is a misfortune. A wall is evidence.
So, the rhyme was born.
Short. Catchy. Cowardly.
Children sang it. Nurses taught it. Teachers tapped it into little heads as if it were wisdom. Everybody learned that I sat, fell, broke, and couldn’t be restored by horses or men.
Nobody learned who signed off on the wall.
Nobody learned whether the workmen had inspected it properly.
Nobody learned why the mayor maintained cavalry for trauma care.
And nobody asked whether a round citizen with a fondness for views should have to risk his yolk for lack of a bench.
So yes, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
But I maintain, before heaven, masonry, and all sensible breakfast foods, that the fall was assisted.
If you take one thing from my sad example, let it be this: when the powerful call something an accident, look for the cracks they painted over.
And if you must sit on a wall, bring a lawyer.
olbigjim 