The Bankrobber I Knew - Part One

For the entire story, click the Bankrobber topic at the end of this post, in the sidebar to your right, or just click here.

This is the story of me and my bank robber roommate.  Not many people actually rob banks because it's a losing proposition.  Fewer people who aren't incarcerated ever meet any bank robbers because they tend to get caught and separated from society for very long periods of time.  So, I count myself among the very few people in this country to have ever been friends with, and roommates with a bank robber. 

I met Westley Walls at Southern Transformer in Oklahoma City.  I worked there as both the supervisor of their quality assurance program and as a transformer designer, which really just meant I crunched numbers.  A transformer in simplistic terms is just two coils of copper wire over iron cores enclosed in a neutral oil, but the mathematics of transformers is actually a fun exercise – calculating the number of turns of copper in each coil, the amount of paper insulation, the space between the copper and the space between the coils, and the type and depth of the oil insulator.  The best part of the job was hitting these tremendous transformers, some of them the size of an average house, with strikes of lightning-strength electricity.  We had banks of capacitors that would charge over the course of several hours, then when enough electricity had been stored, it would all be released in a beautiful blue crash of lightning right at the transformer and an array of sensors would measure every part of the device to see what damage it'd taken.  A transformer has to be able to withstand lightning, so it was the ultimate test.  Westley hooked up and maintained all the electronic test equipment for the testing booth.  He was an electronics genius, but we'll get into that later.

It was a hard time for me.  My wife and I were in the process of splitting up and I had many sleepless nights and a lot of distractions with the full compliment of emergencies and drama.  I needed someone to talk to and Westley was always willing to listen, so we talked while hooking up all that equipment and charging the capacitors. 

“You're a really patient listener,” I once said.

“I had a lot of time in the joint to learn to listen to people,” he said.  This was my first introduction to him as an ex-con.  He was open about it to me, but usually something so pronounced would be news long before even meeting someone in the workplace.  'pssst, he's a jailbird'  'see that guy over there, he's a con' 'you'll see a guy named Westley, he got sent away for robbing banks'  Things like that would be expected.  But no one seemed interested in talking about Westley's incarceration. 

Westley basically looked like a stereotypical biker, but that's where any stereotypes ended.  He had male-patterned baldness, but the hair he did have was long and pulled into a pony tail.  He normally wore a blue bandanna, but sometimes he'd wear a trucker-style baseball cap. He was a pretty big guy, slightly over six foot and perhaps two-hundred twenty pounds, a lot of it muscle but enough left over for a beer gut to be proud of.  He wore jeans, flannel shirts and black leather boots all the time, for any occasion.  His eyes though, showed a bit of what lie underneath, a sharp wit and a vibrant memory recording every conversation, every detail behind crystal blue, he missed nothing and his eyes flittered about like scanners on a digital processor. 

Not only was he an ex-con, but he was presently on parole, and he had a great job that he'd gotten on his merits regardless his record. Southwest was one of those companies that cared more about what you could do now than what you might have done in your past.  It assembled some talent that's for sure, but some of the characters in that shop were as rough as you'd ever see, and others were just pitiful, like Casey Watkins. 

Casey had been in maintenance procurement for the State of Oklahoma's legislative complex.  He was soft and pudgy and had the kind of white skin that can only be nurtured under fourescent lighting in a cubicle.  Unfortunately for him, he'd been caught embezzling money and equipment from the state and had just completed a lengthy trial. He was at Southwest as a temporary worker, oiling machinery and doing some cleaning, but that was only going to last until his sentencing hearing and then he'd be sent away.  He was understandably nervous about it. 

One day Westley, Casey, I and several other guys ended up sitting around the loading dock during our lunch break and the conversation gravitated toward Casey's hearing.  Westley wiped some bread crumbs out of his beard and looked right at Casey.  “Kick a leg out of your pants when you shit,” he said.

It came out of nowhere and other conversation stopped.  Casey looked at him for a minute and then turned away.  Westley repeated, “I'm serious.  Kick a leg out of your pants when you shit.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Casey asked. 

“You're going to the state pen in Macallister.  It's a rough joint, man.  I'm giving you a survival lesson and I guarantee no one's going to tell you shit about survival once you get there.”

Casey's eyes filled with tears.  His lips trembled as he blurted out, “I don't want to talk about it.”

“Fine, man.  Learn your lessons the hard way, but when a gang comes in – the skinheads or the blacks or the Mexicans, whoever, it doesn't matter because someone's going to be pissed off at you sometime when you're there.  When they come into your cell while you're taking dump it's going to be a hell of lot easier to try to fight back without your pants at your ankles.”

“I said I don't want to talk about it,” Casey screamed at Westley. His hands were shaking and as he got up he knocked over his folding chair and ran to the warehouse bathroom. 

Westley shook his head for a bit and then said, “It's too bad for him. He'll never make it.”

Westley was right.  Casey Watkins killed himself in the state prison two months after being sentenced to twelve years behind bars.  He left behind a wife and two daughters.  I asked Westley how he'd known that Casey wouldn't make it. 

“You can just see it in some people.  They don't know what to expect when they do a crime.  The ones who don't know what they're getting into are the ones who getting eaten up by the system.  The ones who know what they're doing and what it'll cost are the ones who do alright.”

“You knew what you were doing?” I asked.

“Not only that, but I picked the prisons I'd serve my time in.  I decided everything before I walked into the first bank,” he said, smiling. “And I'd decided it was worth it.”

“And I was right,” he finished.

- rick, another adventure in knowing people.

Comments

[a rose is a rose]

i don't condone bank robbing but then again i don't know what westley's reasons were. i don't know if he was armed or not.

at any rate, other than robbing banks westley sounds like a stand up dude

p.s. i always thought a transformer was a truck that changed into a giant robot

[Graeme]

that's a crazy story dude

[Sideon]

"...it would all be released in a beautiful blue crash of lightning right at the transformer..."

Wonderfully electrifying metaphor for both Westley and the narrator's story-telling skills.

[Jane]

Thanks for the great story!

Didn't Westley rob any banks while you knew him? That would also make for a good story :)

[CV Rick]

He never robbed any banks while I knew him, but there's plenty more of this story to come and he did some crazy things.

[SML]

I'm sitting here in my hotel room in SLC, grinning from ear to ear because once again, you've got me completely hooked on another great story. God, you're good. I can just see Westley in my mind's eye, and I want to draw him right now. I hated how the weaker guy killed himself in prison.

You really know how to evoke emotions in your writing.

[CV Rick]

Thanks, SML . . . I ought to be a writer.