Here, we want to empty the bucket, Scotchy said, but the guard didn’t understand.
Bucketo uh, Andy tried, but the door was already closed.
In the night, something big bit me—a spider, I think—and I was concerned that it was poisonous, but in the morning I was fine. Scotchy kept us all talking, and that night our morale wasn’t too bad either.
The black bucket was close to overflowing with piss now, and most of us had succumbed to a drizzly diarrhea. We hoped that today was the day they let us empty it. But we were wrong. We eventually learned that you slopped out every third day. The prison was on a quadrangle, but one of the cell blocks was empty, so there were three walls of prisoners. Every third day, a cell block was allowed to slop out and spend the morning exercising in the yard. We had heard them come every morning and knew that sooner or later our turn would arrive, or at least we hoped so.
There was no prison work and no canteen and no medical facilities. Prisoners stayed in their cells all the time except for that one morning every three days. We guessed that the prison held three or four hundred prisoners, with maybe thirty or forty guards, though it was impossible to tell for sure.
When the prisoners were let out we heard a lot of talk, and once a voice outside our cell said:
Gringos. Hello, America.
On that first third morning the guards came and undid the padlocks on the ring bolts at our ankles. They put the padlocks in a sack and went out, leaving the door open. We were still shackled at the wrists, but we all immediately got up. The guards yelled at us to sit down. They jabbered something important in Spanish that I hoped Andy was getting since he had the language.
What’s he saying? I asked Andy.
He’s saying we have to wait until, a word I don’t know, I think the whistle, I think, Andy said.
Andy had done O-level Spanish. He’d only gotten a C, but it was better than nothing. I thought I’d heard a whistle the two previous mornings, so maybe Andy was just guessing.
We waited and, sure enough, there was a whistle, and we heard the other prisoners start to come out into the yard.
Have to empty that fucking bucket, Scotchy said. Fergal, you grab it.
Why me?
Because I say so, Scotchy said. And when we get out we all stick together, is that clear?
We nodded.
Complaining, Fergal lifted the bucket gingerly, urine slopping over the sides and onto his hands. None of us had been capable of a big shit, though, so at least that was something. When we got outside, the sunlight was intense, and it took us all a minute to adjust. The other prisoners on our block came out of their cells and the guards watched warily from the towers. I imagined this was the most dangerous time for the guards, for if we’d chosen, we could have all run out and overpowered the four guys who’d been going from cell to cell unlocking us. Probably there was some kind of rule that if anyone came out of his cell before the whistle went (at which point presumably the guards were clear), he got shot.
Prisoners emptied their slop buckets at a latrine near what we discovered later was the disused cell block. The rest walked around the yard. They were a skinny, badly dressed crew, Indian looking. About a hundred of them. The majority barefooted, bareheaded. None of them looked at us. They talked in low tones, most walking, a few immediately setting up to play dice games on the dusty ground.
We walked over to the latrine with Fergal.
Again the big sky and the dust from the prisoners’ feet rising in spirals like djinns over the cell wells. The smell of openness and air and jungle and a great mass of human beings that weren’t the boys or me.
Swarms of flies over the latrine and a streaking bird, whose plumage reflected back light in wavelengths I had missed: red and emerald green and gold.
Four guard towers, two guards a tower, shotguns, searchlights, I said to Scotchy.
He was looking at me and grinning.
Bruce, dear, it isn’t the fucking Great Escape. We’re sitting tight and not doing anything stupid, is that clear? he said, cheerfully.
Is that what you did in the Kesh? I asked him.
Aye, it is, as a matter of fact, he said.
I’d tried to catch him out because he had said that he had been in the Kesh, but Scotchy never remembered anything and I was hoping he’d confound me by saying No, actually, I was in the Big Bad Magab or something.
How long exactly were you in? I asked him, conversationally, but before he could answer I interrupted and pointed to where some of the prisoners were making for a big pile of straw that had been left near the front gates. I elbowed him.
It’s bedding, look, that’s what it is, I said.
Ok, we all go, he said.
He called Fergal and Andy over and we stuck together. We went over to the pile of straw and grabbed a bunch each. We wanted to take it back immediately, but we got the impression you had to wait for the whistle before going back to your cell.
Let’s just shove it in, Fergal said, but when he edged over to the cell a guard walking along the cell-block roof pointed his shotgun and yelled something at us.
What’s he saying, And?
But Andy couldn’t make head or tail of it.
See, sorry, lads, but uh, I learned Castilian, not Mexican Spanish, he explained.
So we stood there near our cell block and waited for the whistle. We were pretty conspicuous, not just as the new boys but also as the only non-Mexicans there.
Straw’ll make things easier, Fergal said, and sat down on the dust. Scotchy pulled him up, and he almost tripped over the chain still dragging behind his ankle.
Let’s just keep our eyes peeled, Scotchy scowled.
And he was right, because before we knew what was happening a gang of about a dozen or more guys had come up to us. They’d just walked over, taking a detour from their circuit, but it was so quick and confusing that suddenly they were on us from four sides. They started saying things in Spanish and pointing at us. Aye, where’s the guards now? I was thinking.
What are they saying, Andy? Scotchy asked, but Andy couldn’t get it. The head guy was a small man in a string T-shirt and baggy blue jeans. He was pointing at Scotchy’s red hair and grabbing his own and making a joke. They had surrounded us completely now and had done it so incredibly fast we hadn’t even been able to get to a wall. They were all smaller than us, but some of them had leather belts and were wrapping them around their fists. Others brandished their manacle chains. The yelling was so loud now I was sure the guards were going to intervene. I looked up at the watchtowers to see what was going on, but no one paid any attention.
Here they come, Scotchy said simply, and they rushed us. I took a swipe at some boy, but before I could do anything I’d been kicked in the back and I was on the ground. I got a kick in the head and the legs. I felt my sandals getting pulled off. Someone was trying to get my T-shirt. I curled into the fetal position and waited. The guards would come. The kicks came in again and again. There was no pain at all. Nothing. I bundled myself tighter and moved my arms down to protect my ribs. Someone started pulling my hair. Dust was in my throat. A foot came onto my neck and I grabbed the ankle and bit into it until I got bone. A belt buckle thumped me in the ear, but still I bit into the ankle. I could taste the blood now. A bare foot kicked me on the forehead and I went backwards over my head and scrambled up and found that I was standing. I hit the guy next to me with my elbow and I felt his nose break. There was a whistle and through the dust I could see the men run back to their cells.
Now I started to hurt.
I’d been scraped all over my back, and despite the head kicks, that was the worst. I’d bitten my tongue and I spat blood. I felt an arm underneath mine and Scotchy yelling at me. I couldn’t understand a word. He yelled, and then he saw that I wasn’t getting it and he showed me. Andy and Fergal lay flat out on the ground and he wanted me to help get them up. The guards were yelling at us to get back in the cells. It was a fucking joke. I bent down and lifted Fergal under
the arms, but it was impossible. I slipped, went on my arse. Before I could try again, the guards were there screaming at us and hitting us with billy clubs. They shoved us back towards our cell. I was shouting, but they cut me off with a dig in the mouth. They pushed us inside and beat us down and locked our ankles into the ring bolts.
A minute later, two guards dragged in first Fergal and then Andy and locked them in too. They were both unconscious. All of us had been robbed of our shoes. Andy had been in nice new high-tops that Scotchy and I had bought for him at the airport. He’d put up a real fight to keep them. He was covered in dust and blood. They seemed to have got his T-shirt, too, but I couldn’t tell, because my eyes were stinging. Fergal lay beside me, though, his polo shirt torn off him. Scotchy was bent over and hacking now.
Jesus, I said.
I closed my eyes, and when I opened them it was night. My sides were on fire and my back felt like I’d been flailed. There’d been a noise all this time, and I realized it had been Scotchy, as close as he could get to the door, yelling for medical attention. The guards came in and beat him quiet, and it stayed that way until morning. I shivered through the night, and when I woke I dry-heaved for fifteen minutes.
Bruce, Bruce, Scotchy was whispering.
Name’s not Bruce, I managed.
Bruce, Scotchy said.
What?
Are you ok?
Aye, no. Aye, I suppose, I said.
Scotchy crawled over to me. He was right at the limit of his foot chain and his whole body was stretched out so he could talk to me.
Bruce, are you hurt bad?
Not bad, I said.
Fergal’s in and out of sleep, Scotchy said. He’s ok. But Andy’s in a bad way. I think his ribs are broken. Do you know anything about first aid?
I shook my head, but we both crawled over to Andy anyway. Fergal was moaning on his side. He was in terrible pain, but at least he knew he was in pain.
Andy had been stripped to his boxer shorts. He breathed erratically in shallow, desperate little breaths, blood in his spittle. His face gaunt, horribly pale. He wasn’t conscious, but he wasn’t out, either. His lips formed words, but there was no sound. I looked at his chest. His ribs didn’t seem right, and I could see blood beneath the skin, pooling there at his lungs.
Jesus Christ, Scotchy, I think he’s dying, I said.
Scotchy looked at me, one eye closed over, his face puffy and blue.
When they come in to give us dinner, you pull the guard down and I’ll wrap my chain around his neck. We’ll say we’ll kill him unless they get a doctor for Andy, Scotchy said, cold and deliberate.
I nodded. I really didn’t see how it could work, but what choice did we have?
I heard you yelling, I said.
Aye, they just come in and shut you up, Scotchy murmured.
We waited and girded our strength, and the light started to come in the little cell window. We heard the whistle blow and the prisoners get let out. The afternoon became very hot and the day dragged by.
Andy’s lips were parched, and he was paler than before. Each breath was a tremendous effort. We crawled over to him.
Andy, if you can hear me, it’s going to be ok. We’re going to get you some help, I said.
Aye, we are, big lad, we’re not going to let you down, Scotchy agreed.
The afternoon ended and finally the door opened. I rugby-tackled the guard, but he kicked me off easily and I sprawled against the back wall, my chain going taut and almost dislocating my ankle.
Doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, Scotchy was pleading and pointing at Andy.
The guards ignored him, left the food and water, and went out. We tried to give Andy some water, but he choked when we brought it to his lips.
The guards came back for the wooden bowls, and we grabbed some handfuls of rice.
Dying, morto, morto, I yelled, hoping they would understand. The guards looked at Andy for a moment, then closed the door. They went away, talking, and we held out hope that they would send someone. We waited and waited, but no one came.
In the evening, Fergal was fully awake and doing a little better, and we took turns cradling Andy’s head in our laps. We didn’t know what to do. None of us had any medical experience. All I knew was the recovery position thing. I held Andy and told him it was going to be ok. His breathing was even shorter. Fergal relieved me after a while, and I lay down. Night came, and sometime after midnight Scotchy shook me awake. Fergal was beside him, his eyes vacant in the moonlight.
What is it? I asked.
Andy died, Scotchy said, simply.
I sat up. I looked at Fergal, who nodded.
Are you sure? I asked. It was a stupid question. Scotchy didn’t answer it.
I suppose he wasn’t fully recovered from that first hiding, Fergal said.
No, they murdered him, they murdered him, Scotchy whispered. They killed him.
I crawled over to Andy and touched his hand. It was cold. They’d closed his eyes.
Jesus, Andy, oh Christ, I am so sorry, I said. Fergal patted me on the back. Scotchy spat and then, turning to the pair of us, he said:
If I don’t get back I want youse to promise me you’ll see to Big Bob. You’ll see to him, promise it.
We both nodded.
Scotchy lay down on the floor. I wiped a mantis off my arm. I put both arms under my head and curled my knees almost up to my chin.
I closed my eyes, and, after a time, I slept.
6: THE LOST WORLD
Y
es. It’s true. We’re lost. We’re in a boat on the wild ocean. The seas are high, and there is no compass. We’re fucked. Blind. Ignorant. The night bewildering and there is no dawn. We are outside latitude or longitude or maps. No land, no dead reckoning, no horizon. Fucked in spades. In this cabin of stale air, with asthmatics, fellow fools before the mast, who know no shanties but who cough nocturnes for me. But they’re more doomed than me. I’m ok, really, for I’m not with them. I am not a boy or a man, rather I am a cow, or a black buffalo, or a bird, or a tiny caterpillar crawling under the door. I am, that is, until one of the others wheezes or says something and I’m back again, a haunted passenger, seasick, lost, fucked.
I close my eyes and lean back and open them.
Days go by.
And it’s not that bad, for I have, as contingency, made myself another world. I’ve been staring at the ceiling, lying on my back, head on the straw, arms on my chest. There are above me valleys, ridges, craters, lines. Funnel cobwebs in the corner. The color is a washed-out gray. Often I imagine they’re cities, rivers, an aerial map of a country. The topography is surprisingly uneven; it’s a mountain kingdom. We haven’t been talking much, so I’ve been building a story of an imaginary civilization. The big crack down the middle separates two continents that are at war. They’re always at war. There are canals, too, like the ones Percival Lowell used to see on Mars. The continent nearest the door is drying up, dying, so the inhabitants want to conquer their neighbors. The continent near the tiny barred window hole has plenty of water; those people live an agricultural, tractable existence, though occasionally death comes to Arcadia, for there are damp and flood marks. The window continent also has the spiderwebs, and I imagine these are desperate, impenetrable morasses where only fools go, of which in a pastoral idyll there are many.
There are wars and negotiations and sometimes individual narratives within the grander themes. There are factions and religions, and perhaps down here we are gods.
My story gets interrupted in the morning for a feature. The window lets in the sunlight and every day there’s a black-and-white movie: shadows marching across the canyoned ceiling surface, slowly, for about three hours and then they disappear. It’s not much of a show, but the plotting is at least linear and unconflicted.
It’s been a fortnight, and we are lousy, scabrous, and covered in bites. Our wounds have not healed well. Fergal sits towards the corner nearest the light. He’s filing part of my belt buckle into a
lock pick. He thinks the locks on the leg irons could be reasonably straightforward to pick since they’re all standard bolt jobs from the seventies. Fergal was a jemmy for a while, so maybe he would know, but Scotchy and I, unfortunately, know Fergal too well to hold out much hope. In any case, the lock on the door needs a big thick key and we don’t have the metal, so Scotchy doesn’t see the point of getting us out of the leg irons if we could never open the door. But he’s only saying that. He needs it as much as both of us.
It’s been ten days since they took out Andy. He’s buried by now, or cremated, or whatever it is they do around here. Eaten in some Mayan ceremony, for all I know. No one has said anything to us about him. No one’s said anything to us about anything, but I imagine now we’re pretty much screwed sideways. A dead gringo—that can’t be something you’d want the world outside to know about. They’ll bury the case, do nothing about us, let us rot. I mean, they couldn’t hush this up if we ever got out to tell the papers. I really don’t see how they can bail us now, of course. It’s the word of a drug smuggler, but the whole thing would still stink. I haven’t said anything about this to the others. Scotchy probably has his outside hopes still pinned to his friendship with Darkey, and Fergal’s energy is concentrated on his silly little pick.
We’ve been out to the yard several times and no one has bothered us. I think Andy got killed because they were after our clothes. It sounds stupid, but now that they have our shoes they’re leaving us alone. We got some straw for bedding, and for a while Scotchy had us making an attempt to clean the cell out a bit. He’s stopped in the last couple of days. It’s not the futility of the thing; rather, I think, he just doesn’t have the energy to boss us and keep himself together.
So there’s Scotchy sleeping, Fergal filing the belt buckle against the concrete. The flies, caterpillars, roaches, the sweat on my skin, and of course the ceiling.
The movie’s over, and it’s only four hours until dinner. The narrative kicks in without me. Agriculture, herds of animals. The dust rising from pilgrims coming to wash in the sacred river. Millions of them. The primary cult of the two kingdoms is shared by the majority of the population, but like the Endians, they hector one another over trivialities. One says you bathe only up to the waist, the other that the head must sink beneath the water. Scholars at universities debate it. Everyone wears turbans, incidentally, but some tie at the front and others at the back. They argue over that, too, it’s crazy. It’s like that Frank Gorshin episode of Star Trek.
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