Mama's Boy Behind Bars

by David Goudreault

  * * *

  Denis was always the first one to come back from the visiting room. He’d walk across the communal area and head back to his cell, without even deigning to glance at us. I was burning with desire. He would look at me, he would recognize me, and sooner rather than later. Denis was going to fall off his high horse and break his neck.

  Denis looked like Big Dick but whiter. Slim like his boss, except even skinnier, and a few years younger, in his late forties with an immaculate mane of hair that matched his shirts. He had pale skin and suspicious eyes behind large gold-framed glasses. Just from looking at him, you could tell he was an observer, a visual person with a sharp eye. A day owl. He only ever spoke to Big Dick, but he spied on everything and watched over everyone. On rare occasions he might whisper a word into Butterfly’s ear. This was rarely a good sign. Faces would be punched in the next few minutes. But Denis never laid a finger on anyone. He was white collar, he didn’t get his hands dirty. He had nothing to prove to himself, still less to other people.

  Inside, guys fight, happy for their testicles to take a pounding to show they’ve got balls. But swelling doesn’t make you brave. Denis had internal confidence, the authority of competence. He emanated a quiet strength, just like my librarian, the Sage.

  * * *

  After lengthy negotiations with my lawyer, and backed up by pressure from Edith, who thought the privilege was appropriate for my rehabilitation, management had conceded. I was allowed to leave the protection wing once a week to go to the prison library. Of course, this all had to happen outside the times the so-called normal inmates might use the library, even if the cramped room of the prison’s literary pantheon was barely visited. Hydroponics aside, criminals have no interest in culture.

  The majority of inmates come from that half of the Quebec population that is proud to be functionally illiterate. They behave by instinct, they’re just animals with rights. The intellectuals like me, who know how to read, find this shocking. Democritus, the inventor of democracy, would back me up: illiterate people should have no rights, and especially not the right to vote. They can’t even form an opinion from reading the crap the journalists spout.

  So I had the four shelves and the hundred or so books all to myself. Or almost. One guard kept an eye on things, and the librarian, the Sage, gave me recommendations.

  The Sage was ordinary in every way, so ordinary that he put the common in communism. Around thirty, brown hair, brown eyes, no noticeable features. Not even any tattoos or scars to make himself stand out a bit. A wooden cross on a necklace, but that’s pretty standard. God’s very popular in prison. Guys cling on to his robe as if they were petticoats. Faith is a pathological manifestation of hope.

  You have to jump through a whole bunch of administrative hoops to get access to your mail, your packages, or your lawyer. And it’s years before you can hope for a ministerial pardon. God is the last remaining route to instant gratification for members of the penitentiary population whose ability to put in effort has atrophied. And he clears what remains of their conscience. Truly stupid is he who refuses free absolution. Epistle of Mark, verse 24, or somewhere round there.

  The Sage never smiled. Credit where credit’s due. People who never smile are always honest. A smile is just bait, and the biggest fish aren’t in the ocean. He was honest but looked stupid. I would soon discover that his notable expression was more down to depression than gangsterism. Which was sad for him; depression kills ten times more people than criminals do, it’s well documented.

  Being average is dull. I told myself that at least he had a nickname, the Sage. Turned out that Sage was actually his surname, but since I’d been calling him the Sage for months, I just carried on.

  The prison library was a pretty small place to contain all the knowledge an uneducated person might need. I’d have burned through the whole lot in a few years, maybe even a few months. Fortunately for me, you could order books. The librarian appreciated my eclectic interests. I got them to deliver everything to us, from engineering manuals to the Hardy Boys, and of course comics. I took up the whole of his little budget. I liked reading everything. With or without pictures, and in my own language as well as the languages of the immigrants, and the thicker the better.

  The only genre that left me cold was contemporary poetry. Whether short or long, it’s always boring and wrong. And it doesn’t even rhyme! The Sage tried to get me into it. I tried to tell him that my life was already full of poetry, that rap was poetry, but he kept going on about it. Listen, young man, you can’t just rhyme posse and pussy and call it poetry.

  It’f urban poetry, you’re juft too old to get it.

  And he went on about the wealth of Quebec poetry, and insisted that I read Gérard Godin, Marie Duguay, and Denis Vanier. I like Vanier a lot, he’s the exception to the rule. I understand nothing, nada, absolutely not a single word of what he writes, but he does use the words cunt and tattoo a lot, which is good.

  But it was still nothing compared to rap. The proof? Rap sells. I was in a hurry to drop my first album and have those greenbacks rolling in. I had so many ideas for the cover and the title. I’d even polished up some nice Franglais couplets, to represent our culture—or lack of it. The Sage pretended to be unimpressed, but he still asked me to repeat the first verse of my latest creation.

  Je suis le best

  Cool as fuck

  Le hottest rapper in town

  Si tu try to fuck

  Je te laisse down

  Represent Donnacona

  From Québec to Canada!

  Braaah! Braaah!

  Just to annoy me and stoke the embers of our friendship, he swore he couldn’t hear a word of poetry in it. He showed more bad faith than a priest. But sadly, it didn’t stop me coming back to him. Friendships based on a shared love of books are strange relationships.

  Books save lives, especially medical books. And The Little Prince maybe—I guess it could make psychotics feel better about their condition. They might feel less alone and hang themselves less. I’m speculating here. In my case, the library was a refuge, a bubble of shelter away from Butterfly. A chance to get out of my own head. Books are still the best way of escaping, even if you’re an inmate in a maximum-security prison. But most of the inmates don’t know that. The Sage knew it. He read as much as I did but he remembered more of it. I got the stories muddled up and only remembered the bits I liked or could use. It wasn’t about my memory, I’m just more selective.

  * * *

  My librarian admitted he was straight out of Sainte-Madeleine-de-la-Rivière-Madeleine. It’s in the Gaspé. Obviously that’s a long way away; someone must have come from a long line of inbreds to think that would be a good name for a village. When I said that, he almost smiled. Yeah, maybe. Anyway, I should have stayed there. It was a bad idea to move to the city, especially the suburbs. He murdered someone in Montreal’s northern ring. A crime of passion, like mine. But also a neighbourly crime.

  I had to ask him every week, but after a few months he agreed to tell me the whole story. Deep down he was the victim, the victim of those suburban jerks, those little assholes who got laid every Saturday night, those snowblower-lovers.

  It was rudeness… Rudeness is the disease of the century, man’s downfall. I should have seen it coming, I should have moved to the country and hidden away from the world. The world is grey… Fucking city, fucking suburb… There’s always some neighbour who loves crashing his lawnmower into your peace and quiet. At dinnertime…there was always this unemployed Mike Holmes type banging away in his yard…

  I listened to him silently, enthralled. I rarely listen without talking at the same time.

  It pushed me to the limit… It wasn’t the lawnmower on its own, nor the lawnmower and his endless renos. Nor the lawnmower plus the renos plus his garbage can on wheels that he used to park outside my window with its noisy fucking exhaust that always woke
my daughters up. It was all that on top of my own tiredness, I think… When I decided to go and talk to him about it, it was already too late, I couldn’t find the words. I snatched the hammer out of his hands and then opened up his face with it.

  Woah, are you feriouf? You fmaffed hif fkull in with a hammer? I was impressed.

  No, his face really… The sinus holes opened up to join his eye sockets… With his jaw pulped, his face was a hole, just a hole full of red mush, and I couldn’t stop hitting it. Apparently I went at it for a good ten minutes with his girlfriend trying to pull me off. Even the hammer was in pain… I can’t really remember…it was intense.

  I’d like to get myfelf a condo one day.

  He looked at me for a long time before murmuring to himself, Yes, it’s safer if it’s soundproofed.

  4

  Honesty

  There were no Tic-Tacs in the Tic-Tac box. This should have been good news. I finally had some drugs, just for me, to take secretly when I was alone like a real druggie, which I always will be, anyway. Despite the withdrawal. Whether I’d underestimated how much I was in withdrawal or whether it was just really good speed, I couldn’t say—but it was definitely a big stash.

  The theft from Pedo’s cell had been discovered. The worst awaited me if I was caught. I prayed to remain an anonymous addict, but nothing was less certain. They’d do anything to get their drugs back, even if it took twelve steps.

  That evening the tension was so thick it would have taken a chainsaw to cut it. Denis was going from one cell to another, talking to Colossus. Butterfly was fuming, banging his fists on the table and looking round at everyone. I was afraid he would literally rip my face off before the end of the evening. I absolutely had to get rid of my loot before they started searching. I raced into my cell and gulped down the five orange pills. I’d already ground up a couple and snorted them an hour earlier but couldn’t feel any effect. The five remaining pills I swallowed down, with difficulty, with a big glass of nothing.

  Once I was rid of the fruits of my crime, my relief was short-lived. The pills themselves could no longer incriminate me, but I had a corpse on my hands: the box. I thought about swallowing that too, but that seemed unrealistic. Other orifices crossed my mind, but it would end up coming out one way or another. I had to think of something, and fast.

  Too late. Butterfly and Denis appeared in front of me. The twin towers crashing down on a New York junkie. I was going to die.

  It has to be him, the fucker, he was alone in the wing with the other crazy. Denis didn’t take his eyes off me.

  I held the Tic-Tac box in my right fist. I would have let them cut off my hand rather than be caught with it.

  Did you find a stash of pills, you ratfucker? Butterfly started the interrogation, Denis chimed in, and I panicked.

  I-I haven’t done anything. I haven’t taken your pillv, Bu-butterfly.

  He was gripping my chin when Paul, the guard on duty, showed up in the doorway. We’re done here, gentlemen. Be so kind as to let go of each other and leave the cell until quiet time. We want the whole lot of you where we can see you.

  It’s hard to admit for a gangster like me, but a correctional officer saved my life that night. Or at least bought me some time to find a way out. Closely followed, I went to sit next to Pedo, who was still high as a kite. While my accusers were sitting down opposite me, I placed the incriminating box on the crazy man’s lap and then put my hands back on the table. All I had to do now was weather the storm and stick to my story.

  I never went in Pedo’v fell! The guard would have feen me, you can afk him. I wav alone watching TV and Pedo was in hiv fell. Maybe it wav him that hid your pillv.

  The inmates at the adjacent tables were hanging on to every word of my defence. He’s so bullshitting you, Butterfly, don’t believe a word of it.

  Denis whispered in his henchman’s ear, keeping his inquisitor’s eye trained on me. I could hear the questions he was asking, but Butterfly reworded them and added a few swear words. Everything went silent whenever a guard went past. The session was dragging on, I could tell they were going to go from sentence to execution in the same breath. Would it be a classic stabbing? Or the more sporty option of jumping on my head with both feet together? Or would they go down the erotic route and just get Butterfly to poke my eye out the next time he raped me?

  After this had been going on for a while, Paul called Pedo over. It was time for his evening injection. I kept my hands well in sight on the table at the moment when, after being called two or three times, Pedo finally stood up. Click clack! The Tic-Tac box tumbled to his feet. Fucksake, it was Pedo having himself a little party all along… Philippe put the evidence into words. I turned white, Butterfly was pale, and Denis smoothed his hair back with an incredulous smile.

  * * *

  Never again! The word of someone hooked on multiple drugs is as worthless as that of a drunk, but I believed it. No more unknown pills for me. I survived a long night of paranoia. As if the stress of the interrogation had just been a warm-up, I didn’t sleep a wink the entire night. Really. I didn’t even manage to blink. All my nerves and muscles were in a state of extreme tension. I couldn’t move, talk, or jerk off, and I spent the night just hoping to make it through to the morning. My heart was being dribbled at forty beats a second by an epileptic god. Crazy pills. They’re a powerful stimulant; I see why the guys were so keen to get their hands on them.

  The section’s criminals showed better judgment than most judges and recognized Pedo’s lack of responsibility. He wouldn’t be punished, they’d find another cache in his cell, and prison life would continue as before. Breakfast was relaxed, almost bucolic. We just needed a few bunches of dried flowers to complete the scene. Compared with the tension of the previous day, our section was finally loosening up and chilling out. As was I, luckily, since I was going to have to give another incredible performance. Playing a mentally ill person takes focus.

  * * *

  The doctor looked like a quack: he was tired and had a moustache. He was as professional as anything, which made me suspicious. He asked how he could help me. Procure me your finest psychiatric drugs, my good sir, so I can impress this goon and climb up the criminal hierarchy of my wing of the prison… I didn’t put it quite like that. Instead I listed off the symptoms I’d learned off by heart, with my defeated expression to back me up.

  My heart was pounding in my chest. BAM! BAM! I was afraid of breaking a rib from the inside. I gave it everything I had, abandoning myself body and soul to the performance, more determined than a pole dancer in debt. I was aware that I had everything to play for, sitting on that little plastic chair, with Dr. Moustache in front of me and Jocelyn, the unfriendliest of all the guards, behind me.

  The notorious Jocelyn, the boss of the cell block himself. The only one among them who was fair, straight, and consistent. What’s the point of giving us a guard who can’t be manipulated? He might as well be a robot. I hoped he wasn’t going to intervene during my evaluation.

  If I couldn’t manage to get myself a prescription, Butterfly would beat me up and rape me more brutally than ever. Worst of all, I’d lose my chance to impress Big Dick. I had to give it everything. I emphasized each symptom, explaining that it was becoming more frequent and increasing in intensity. I bit my cheeks until they bled to give me a good expression of unbearable pain.

  The doctor casually stroked his moustache. Mmm-hmmm…

  I thought: Mmm-hmmm what, for fuck’s sake? Are you going to give me my smarties or not? The doctor ran his index finger along his jaw and looked at me with a face that veered between suspicion and compassion. I had to convince him right away. I had to turn myself into a woman and start in with the trembling and crying. Go!

  I thought of my mother, my mother who screams, my mother who loves me, my mother who kills herself, my mother in the ambulance, ripped from my love by social services. My emotional-negle
ct trigger had kinda atrophied. Dry-eyed and panicking, I thought next about finding my mother again, that same bitch who came to testify against me at the trial. But the tears still wouldn’t come; all I could do was clench my fists, my eyes filled with rage more than sadness. Then a picture of Edith came into my mind and shot straight to my heart. Edith a few days earlier, worried about how I was doing. Edith of the soft voice, saying I needed someone to listen to me.

  Dr. Moustache handed me the box of tissues. I wiped away my tears, proud and disturbed at the same time. I don’t know what to do anymore, waah, privon, waaaah, it’f too hard, I want to die. I had it in the bag. Butterfly would get his drugs and Big Dick would be sure to give me more important missions. But the doctor wanted one final confirmation. Holding out the last tissues, he stood up, looking over my shoulder. He spoke to the unit boss, asking him what he thought of my mental state, and if it had deteriorated.

  I turned to look at Jocelyn, my gaze more imploring than a depressed spaniel’s. He seemed surprised at being spoken to; he came out of his daze and the suspense seemed to drag on forever. Well, I couldn’t really say, he’s not my case, you’d have to ask Edith. All I know is that he sees a lot of violence, all kinds of violence, every day. If it was me, I know I’d be deeply depressed.

  Thank you, Jocelyn! I swung back to face the doctor and waited for his verdict. I was like a kid in a candy store, wanting to know what kind of pills I’d get.

  * * *

  As I was being escorted back to my cell, I thought of Edith again, and about the physical reaction I’d had when I thought of her before. I’d achieved my goal of fake crying. But I’d seriously had difficulty with the stopping part.

  You’re not that bad, you know, not a lost cause, anyway. Jocelyn was beating the same drum again. What did he know about criminality? Just because he swims in it every day doesn’t mean he knows how deep it flows. Looking at the countryside doesn’t make you a landscaper. But I played along.