Dead I Well May Be

by Adrian McKinty

  All the agonies of memory and the present. Pain and guilt and recrimination.

  Of course, I can never tell the boys what I suspect, that they’re here because of me. And that makes me think about her. Hair, eyes, but distant, fading, and I try for them, all the long day.

  The same old view. Fergal, Scotchy, flies. Change position, lean back, look up.

  The story, the movie, food. Exercise and slop on the third day. A scramble for dry straw. Lockdown. Water and then a squat above the bucket as only liquid comes out. Dry yourself with straw and try not to rub too hard. Last thing you need is a bleeding arse.

  Sometimes Fergal mutters a Hail Mary. It irritates Scotchy, but he doesn’t say anything.

  Watch Fergal at his pick. Watch Scotchy scratch himself.

  Stare at the ceiling when light comes in.

  My story continues.

  Above me the big war has begun and it progresses in a terrible, infantile bloodbath. The door continent has committed half its resources on a broad attack on many fronts. But its initial success has led to a crisis of supply and logistics, and both armies are bogged down into a static line of trenches. Wave upon wave beating against one another. It’s Shiloh or Ypres or, again, the Somme. A slaughter of innocents. With the resources of continents this could go on for decades. The press is becoming discontented and the governments introduce censorship at source; victories are proclaimed. It’s always victories.

  More night. More days.

  We take out our wet straw and replace it with dry stuff. Our hair is long and our beards are shaggy. We stand out even more from the Indian prisoners, who somehow manage to groom themselves. Occasionally, we hear a truck in the yard and prisoners are moved in and out. There are some new inmates, you can tell by their clothes rather than faces. For everyone else, this might be a transit prison, but I know that we’re here for the long haul. Maybe the longest haul.

  At night and sometimes in late afternoon, now on a regular basis, giant rumbling thunderstorms shake the prison. The rains drip down on us from the ceiling and the floor floods. We move our bodies pathetically onto little hills of unevenness on the concrete and thus on any convex mound we try and sleep.

  The floors dry but never for very long. It’s a little cooler, but we’re heading into what must be the wet season. I try to remember from my geography whether we’re in the tropics and I believe we are.

  Thunderstorms, dry patches. More night. More days…

  And then, wonderfully, amazingly, incredibly, finally, something fucking different:

  A hand on my shoulder.

  Fergal wakes me before daybreak, holding something in his hand. I look up. It’s an object, I can’t make it out. Everything is a bit out of focus still. It’s curved and round. I stare at it for a while and then sit.

  What is it?

  Fergal cannot fully contain his excitement. He punches me on the shoulder.

  It’s my fucking leg iron, you stupid wanker, he says.

  I sit bolt upright.

  Jesus, your fucking pick worked?

  ’Course it worked.

  Does it just work on yours? I ask anxiously.

  No, man, it’ll work on them all; all the locks are interchangeable. They just put ’em in a bag, you know. They’re old, twenty years old, I’d say. They test them for brittleness, but that’s all. Old, easy. Tell ya, it was piss easy.

  It took you four fucking weeks, Fergal, I say.

  Yeah, but with the tools I had, he says.

  I’m grinning at him, and he’s practically laughing.

  Do mine, Fergal, do mine, I say, excitedly.

  Ok.

  He sits down in front of me and grabs the lock attaching my ankle chain to the ring bolt. He works on it for about ten minutes and incredibly the lock clicks. He lifts it up in slo-mo and dangles it in front of my face.

  You’re a fucking genius. All this time, you’ve been a fucking genius, I say, biting back something like a breakdown.

  I am, too.

  We gotta wake Scotchy.

  We walk over to Scotchy. We fucking walk over. Delight in it, and stand behind him, something we haven’t been able to do since we’ve been locked in.

  Scotchy, I whisper, and he wakes instantly and turns to us, gobsmacked.

  How in the name of fuck, he says, far too loud.

  That wee shite did it, I say, gleefully.

  Fergal is beaming. Scotchy thumps him in the leg.

  You bastard, you tricky wee sleekit wee bastard. Wee fucking sneaky wee fucking shite, Scotchy says.

  Fergal bends down and undoes Scotchy’s lock. This time it takes him only about five minutes.

  Every time it’s easier, he says.

  Scotchy is momentarily thunderstruck and silent.

  What now? I say, excitedly.

  Can you do the door at all? Scotchy asks.

  Fergal shakes his head.

  You need a big key. We don’t have the metal, and even if we did, it would be a tough job. Loud, too.

  Scotchy’s spirits are up, though, and I’m thinking even if we can’t get out, at least we’ve got one over on the bastards.

  Scotchy tenses and turns on us.

  Hands, he says.

  Our wrists are manacled together by a foot and a half of chain: one end of the chain is welded to the left manacle, the other attached to the right by a lock. These locks are never undone, and I think that they might be rusted or harder, but Fergal says that they’re all standard issue. He goes at mine for a few minutes and that lock clicks too. Scotchy insists he’s next, and Fergal does himself last. We have complete freedom of movement for the first time in weeks. I do jumping jacks and touch my toes, and the two boys stretch and laugh at me.

  Scotchy huddles us close.

  Ok, boys, got to get our shit together. All right, let me think, ok, something I’ve wanted to do since I got in here. See what’s out that fucking window. Bruce, you get Fergal on your shoulders there, hoist him up.

  I nod. I’m still the strongest; Fergal is the lightest. It makes sense. We go over to the barred window. I cup my hand and he stands on it. I lift him up, and he clambers onto my shoulders.

  What do you see? Scotchy asks almost frantically.

  Ok, there’s the towers at the corners and guys on them, two, I think. There’s a fence beyond our cell wall here. It’s, um, I suppose twenty feet high and there’s razor wire in two loops at the top of it.

  How far between the wall and the fence? Scotchy asks.

  I don’t know. Thirty yards, twenty, I can’t really judge.

  And what’s beyond it?

  Beyond the fence?

  Of course, beyond the fence, Scotchy snaps.

  About another thirty or forty yards of grass and then there’s trees.

  All right, get down. You’re fucking killing me, I groan.

  Scotchy is pumped, and I am too. But Fergal still on my shoulders is all business:

  Even if we get through the door and into the courtyard and up over the cell-block wall and we do get out, there’s still the fence. I mean, it’s a big fence, and they probably have guard dogs all along it at night, Fergal says.

  Would you just get down, ya eejit, I say.

  No, wait, tell us everything again, height of the fence, how far, how far to the trees. Are there spotlights on the towers? Scotchy demands.

  Scotchy, we can look again later, I say, and Fergal climbs down my back just as I’m about to collapse on the floor.

  Scotchy comes over to Fergal and sits down beside him. He looks serious.

  Fergal, tell me again, slowly, why you can’t pick the lock on the cell door, he says. He doesn’t want his hope to vanish so quickly after it just appeared. None of us does.

  Fergal shakes his head.

  The locks I just opened are easy, standard, from years ago. Once I had his belt buckle filed, it was pretty straightforward. The lock on the door is different: it’s big and needs a big key and there’s no way I could pick it with this, it�
��s impossible. I’d need the key itself, or a big wad of metal to mold, and even then it would take me months, maybe years, to file it into the right shape.

  Fergal has said all this with great patience. Scotchy is quietly appalled. There really isn’t a way out, even with our leg irons off. We could never tunnel through the wall. They’d notice that, and the floor’s solid concrete. It has to be the door or nothing.

  So what’s the fucking point then? What difference does it make if we’re fucking free in here if we can’t get out of the fucking cell? Scotchy says, antagonistically.

  I didn’t say it makes any fucking difference, Scotchy, so why come on with the attitude to me? Fergal says.

  I’ll come on with the attitude with whoever I fucking well like, Fergal, Scotchy says.

  Aye, well, save it for the tough guys of Crossmaglen, Scotchy. You’re not impressing anyone here, Fergal says.

  Aye, well, when you did ever impress anyone, ever?

  I got us out of the fucking lock.

  Aye, and what good is it?

  What have you done apart from fuck us up in Mexico with your bollocks? Fergal says, at breaking point.

  Now you listen, boy, Scotchy says with menace.

  No, you listen.

  Let me fucking tell you one or two things.

  They start pushing one another. I close my eyes to escape it. I put my hands over my ears.

  You fucking can’t tell me anything, Scotchy, you have to know something first.

  You wee fuck, I was fucking fucks like fucking you before you were born.

  Aye, Scotchy, so you say, and you can …

  I drift out. I can’t hear anymore. It’s morning and the show’ll come on soon. I lean back and look at the rivers and the towns and the canals. There’s a railway I haven’t noticed before. It connects two of the larger provincial cities on the left continent. Even with its water shortage and irrigation problems it still seems the most technologically advanced of the two kingdoms. There’s a new invasion plan that will break the war wide open. The war minister looks at his minutes and notes that this scheme is coming along nicely; that railway line will help. A feint to the south and then a rapid movement of troops to the north and across the Great Ravine. The window continent’s forces will still be stuck down in the south. They won’t be able to deploy fast enough. They’ll be outflanked. The whole northern side of the window continent will be captured before they can do anything about it. Unless they can retreat, draw the army back to the funnel cobwebs, aye, into the Pripet Marshes, into Siberia. Draw them in, bleed them. I smile. The show’s starting. The shadows of the bars are progressing from right to left. I stare at the ceiling. Hmmmm. I-stare-at-the-ceiling. At the ceiling. At the bloody ceiling, and then I have it.

  Eu-fucking-reka, I whisper to myself.

  It had taken a week, but finally we had made a hole big enough for a man to fit through in the ceiling. We had worked with our bare hands and the manacles on our wrists. (Fergal had refused to let us use his delicate pick. After all, he had to lock us up with it every day when our guards came and he didn’t want to damage the thing.) We’d scraped the underlayer of concrete almost the whole way through to the bitumen roof covering.

  The prison roof was made of reinforced concrete that had been prepoured into long slabs, craned up, and placed on thick ledges that ran the length of the cell block. The roof was basically a series of simple bridges. The walls were supporting structures, so the whole thing was pretty rigid. It was a cheap job and I wouldn’t like to be underneath it if an earthquake hit, but it was good for our purposes.

  The concrete was about six inches thick, but the years of weathering had not been kind to its components. It crumbled easily, and the only thing you had to watch was tearing too big a hole in case a chunk of it caved in or the ceiling collapsed on top of you.

  As additional protection against rain, over the flat reinforced concrete roof, a layer of tar had been laid down, a sort of bitumenlike substance, that allowed water to run off. That had obviously been years ago and it had warped, torn, and buckled since then. Over the bigger holes they had placed aluminum siding. Still, it was no obstacle at all.

  We’d all been builders at some point and knew what we were doing. The cell-block roof was flat, and we checked from the exercise yard that we could get onto it without being seen. At night it would be very dark, and from our observations it seemed that the searchlights only scanned every once in a while. Fergal had done most of the scraping, working on my shoulders and then Scotchy’s, but we’d all done our bit. Like I say, the concrete was flaky, pathetic stuff and we’d have got through sooner had we not been careful about not puncturing the bitumen, and that stuff we could rip with our hands the night we decided to go. No point doing it too soon.

  We’d made the smallest possible hole in the cell corner and we’d used the Great Escape tactic of concrete down our trousers to get rid of the evidence in the yard. Our only problem would be if they decided to do an inspection on the flat roof. Someone walking along might notice, or worse, might fall through it.

  If you were in the cell itself and you looked straight up, you might see it or you might not, depending on the light and shade. But none of the guards ever did that anyway.

  Our moods had changed. Fergal upbeat. Me, a second wind. Scotchy recalled to life. When we weren’t scraping the ceiling, Scotchy had Fergal up on my shoulders checking ambient temperature, the phases of the moon, the regularity of the searchlights, the weather, the terrain beyond the wire, and, seemingly satisfied, he said that we were ready to go in the next few days.

  The plan was simple: I’d hoist Fergal up, he’d break through the tar and get on the roof. I’d hoist Scotchy up onto my shoulders and then Scotchy would pull himself up to his waist and I’d grab hold of his ankles and then both of them would pull me up. Once on the roof, we’d drop down onto the grass on the other side of the cell block and make a break for the wire. If there really were dogs (and Fergal in many, many observations hadn’t seen one), we’d just have to kill them, and then we’d climb over the wire and make for the forest. Scotchy would head us north to the sea, using (he claimed) the Pole Star, and then we’d steal a boat for the U.S.

  Objectively, the plan seemed a bit dodgy, but none of us was or could be in the objective universe quite at the moment.

  I think it’ll work, Scotchy, I said one day, but if we don’t go soon, I’m a little concerned that the guards will discover the hole. I mean, a heavy rain could mess with that film and crack it.

  It’ll be ok, Bruce. Dark of the moon we go, couple of days, Scotchy reassured me.

  Two things we haven’t totally thought through, Fergal said.

  I smiled at him.

  What?

  Well, one is food when we get out, and the second is the whole dog thing again, Fergal said.

  I looked at him.

  We live off the land for food, and really, Fergal, you’ve got to stop worrying about the dogs. It’s something we’ll just have to deal with if it happens, I said, doing my absolute best to sound reassuring.

  No probs, Fergie boy, Scotchy said.

  And Fergal: sure, they’d be Chihuahuas. You know, those wee small ones with yon ears, I said. No probs for the likes of us.

  Oh aye, those wee, wee ones, Fergal said, taking what I suggested seriously. It clearly comforted him, so I didn’t press it.

  I gave Scotchy a look that he didn’t see.

  Your man Jimmy Deacon had one of them dogs, used to carry it round in his sea jacket, Scotchy said, getting all ruminative with us.

  God, Jimmy Deacon, I haven’t heard of that name for a while, Fergal said.

  I hadn’t heard it at all, but I was saying nothing since we seemed to be well off the subject of attack dogs now.

  Aye, you remember him, Bruce, don’t ya? He was the boy with the one arm that saved yon boy from drowning.

  That was Scotchy McMaw, Scotchy, who you don’t know before you pretend you do, I said.


  I do know him, Scotchy said.

  Fergal was speaking, but I was tuning out. It was good to hear the boys talk about home. Talking about anything. I snoozed and I smelled chimneys and peat fires and there were chips in the chippie and hot whiskeys in the pub and the craic was good.…

  Later the same night, and Fergal was looking at us skeptically. He had just climbed down off my shoulders, counting the seconds for the scanning searchlights again. There really was no time period as it turned out. The guards just shone the light haphazardly wherever they liked, but it was rare that they would come back to the same place quickly after they’d swept it.

  Soon, Scotchy said. In forty-eight hours no more moon, and we’re out of here.

  Fergal shook his head. Fergal, even with his optimism, sometimes had a bit of a knack for seeing the black cloud.

  What is it, Fergal? I asked him.

  He said nothing for a while, but then sure enough it came to pass:

  Ach, this fucking plan’s full of fucking holes, he said, clearly the culmination of a mounting concern that had grown within him.

  Hopefully one big hole, anyway, Scotchy said, giving me a wink.

  I laughed, but Fergal wasn’t to be diverted.

  Well, look, if it’s so fucking simple, why haven’t they tried it? Fergal asked, jerking his thumb towards the other cells.

  ’Cause they’re remand prisoners; they’re awaiting trial, be stupid to escape, Scotchy said.

  I was now a bit peeved. This was typical Scotchy.

  How do you know that, Scotchy? How could you possibly know a thing like that? I asked.

  They are, he insisted.

  Aye, Scotchy. How can you fucking know anything? What if there still is dogs, wee or not, between the wall and the fence? What if the fence is electrified? Fergal asked.

  Electrified. We’re in bloody Mexico, Scotchy snorted.

  So what if we are? It could be mined. They have mines, don’t they, Fergal insisted.

  Come on, Fergal, be realistic, Scotchy said, soothingly.

  We all wanted to believe. But we were terrified. Why hadn’t the other prisoners made escapes? What did they know? Maybe they didn’t have the gumption. Shit, maybe they had made escapes, maybe there’d been lots of escapes. How would we know?