He and I laughed together and he bragged about how the officers were going to make grog
So each of them had a big keg of it and they all got wasted together looking after us
Which was why I went over the wall on the nineteenth of December the way I done
And ran into that Salvo Hewitt whom I was supposed to assault with the rifle
I never did and he just got hurt somehow like I tripped and hit him accidentally
But the Herald played it up big as if I were heartless and a violent criminal
I lie here and know that I’m not violent like the Cabinet of the Liberal Party are
Who demand my death by hanging as they break bread with their children and their own priest
I sat up all last night my last one
I listened to the Christians and trade unionists down there in Champ Street
Singing their splendid verses and sacrosanct tunes of hope
Singing so all who hear can hope for my life still beating in this cell like this
I cut myself deliberate so I see my wrists bleed but only to see the red of it happen
Not for suicide but to check out the man-alive pulse of a man
I am the pulse and I am the last life
And still they sang and murmured hope for me whom they don’t even know at all
I am a symbol of something inviolate and unviolated therefore
I am an enlightenment
I am the Holy Ghost of D Division itself of itself and for itself which is Love of God
I lie here and am terrified
I can hear the coffin organisers screw the lid on made of despair and oiled with havoc
Oiled with vengeance to win the next State election by a landslide at least
I’m just a man who has three daughters and I miss them more than the noose can say
I have three sisters I miss more than the fear of never seeing them which is Love of God
My father shot through on me so I despise him for his cowardice and slovenliness
He couldn’t be bothered and you must be
He got wasted in a filthy fruit picker’s shack and hated his body
He thought it was funny to live and it isn’t
My beating pulse I can hear it no matter the spirited and strenuous singing of the unions
The unions that don’t want the death penalty back
I’m just a symbol of what the unions don’t want
None of those singing so angelic would like me if they bumped into me in a dark lane
My God I laughed
I laughed at what I said
I’m still amusing a minute to go
My mother she came in a different time ago
She sat on the kapok bunk and said something that really hurt me
She said, ‘Just think my darling you’ll be no more bother for Mr Grindlay the Governor!
Thanks a lot Mum!
It felt good looking in her eyes of wisdom and bright cobalt blue
With no sandy blight in
She was so utterly relaxed it was as though we were two old jailbirds!
Pecking at the seeds of all the days left on Earth
Dear is the Earth
Dear is the face of my mother who invented the original of love and not the copy
I am the copy of original sin
I sinned by shooting someone at least they made me believe I did!
They got me in a room and beat me up for nothing believing I did it George!
They hit me all the day with an open phone book
And then had me photographed looking slightly resentful
Every wanted poster had that hate look in it
Because they got the look they wanted
I need to hold one of my young daughters immediately
I need to hold my father’s head and kick it into the Murray
I need my mother with me when they put me on stage in a minute
I can look into her unjudging eyes
She knows how innocent I am
She knows the wind off Bass Strait
She knows Jesus personally on a first name basis
Christ she knows Him well!
I can hear them coming for me now on the bluestone warped-by-time steps
The Governor has been crying for me as well as praying for me
His wife Audrey has been crying and praying because we know each other well
And have joked over dinner and laughed and wept together in the shared past of Communion
The Condemned Cell door it opens and smiles like a dreadful grin
The Roman Catholic priest says goodbye Ron
He sits patiently under the gallows with the holy gel to put in my nostrils and what have you
To stop my soul from entering hell
The heat is so hot I feel like fainting let along hanging like some exhibit for people to gawk at
The heat is hotter than when we broke out Peter Walker!
That incredible heatwave when we got out of here—remember it do you?
With all that junk we tied together like dressing-gown cords and bits of wire
And scrambled out like two very natty rats with our hair oiled in a glossy way!
Now we are on the stage together like ordinary actors
Except it’s real
That’s the difference Peter it’s real alright me old!
Now I can see the press and the photographers gawking at me
I can smell the pong of wine on them all!
They wrongly think it’s going to be Our Boys Own Annual!
It’s dreary and it’s macabre and it’s me
The Hanging Man tugs me so roughly, so roughly I lose my poise
That’s all you have—poise!
He tugs me so toughly and insensitively I lose all propriety
I say, ‘For God’s sake make it quick!’ and he shoves the hood on my head in a second
I’ve seen him before you know—he comes from WA.
Now he works for the Department of Treasury, I’m not joking!
I didn’t shoot you George you know that
I didn’t do the things the press made out—none of them!
I remember everything
Everything that ever occurred
The births of my three daughters in the bush
Me and my wife on either end of a bush saw together cutting up weatherboard planks
When I lived in Cranbourne near the railway line
In that shack furnished with stolen property and thieved towels from the Cranbourne Public Baths
I showed up one night after leaving you for dead
And I had a pinched big furniture track filled with pinched walnut tea tables and heaters
And you said, ‘It’s a bit late for a delivery isn’t it love?’ and you laughed
Even though I lobbed at four in the morning
And I said, ‘It’s the only time the truck is available my lamb!’ And we both laughed.
I guess I imitated Micawber
I guess I was hopeless
I guess it’s time to die but I don’t want to!
What can they stop me seeing once they execute me for something I didn’t do?
Who can they stop me from loving or from joking with after they do it?
I feel so giddy like I’m in freefall or something like that
Why don’t you just not do it?
‘And send me home to my sisters and daughters and my missus if she’ll still have me?’
She came in to see me like Mum did on her Pat Malone
She told me like a grim story she’d remarried
But he croaked it sitting up having a cup of tea only last month the poor thing he is!
Here are my black gym shoes lined up together to sail through the trapdoor
Here are my shaking legs
Here is my dick doing wee on my own pants sort of thing
They tighten the rope so hard I can hardly concentrate
One of the journalists has cause t
o rapidly vomit on seeing me go through
Now my face is black and Father is administering Last Rites
He is saying the Mass or at least I think it’s the Mass or something impressively gloomy
My heart is racing like a rocket even though my neck is broken
It beats for nearly twenty minutes as they just leave me hung
The way they bury me is to chuck me in a lime pit to disintegrate my name of Ryan
I have slugs as fellow escapees now
And worms as confiders
They like to confide in a man like me
A no-hoper like I was
It’s all incredibly peaceful in jail now
The prisoners have ceased weeping and know I am home in Balranald in New South
I am home at last like a whirlpool is home at last in its safe home—the mighty Murray River!
There is nothing more they can do to me except forget me forever
They won the State election after all that fuss
Then abandoned the death penalty forever too
I’m sitting up nice and straight in Balranald again in the merest finger of sun
And my mother is of course and naturally enough singing to me
I keep waiting for my reprieve
Three reprieves in point of fact
Three sheets of truth telling a lie
That I never shot you George Hodson
Not once and certainly never twice nor thrice
The jury swore they believed the witnesses in Sydney Road
The witnesses swore and you ought not to swear in a Christian society
The particular rifle I pinched off that sleepy guard
Didn’t make smoke from its breach
It didn’t simply because it didn’t
Yet the witnesses testified I went into a kangaroo shooter position
And shot you but I didn’t dear old friend of the eternal punishment
The eternal refreshment that is my daughters
The eternal laughter that is my family
The eternal whimsy that is the sunny park and the sunny attitude of relaxed trees
You with whom I used to play chess
George Hodson with whom I shared many a joke
And bold were the jokes and casual the repartee
You walked up to me and said, ‘Give it away Ryan you haven’t got a chance!’
And there we were together me and Peter Walker
Smack dab in the middle of bubbling-hot Sydney Road—tested
And that Greek guy in his Mr Whippy van nearly ran us over deliberately
Trying to make a big man of himself
Even Mr Whippy wants to be a folk hero
Even Mr Whippy gets up in the stand
To testify
Whether it shall be almond or strawberry ice-cream is the sticking point
I knelt dear friend but I did not fire at you
I didn’t understand just how to fire it at you
I just knelt and saw you tumble into the hot steel rail tram barrier
I saw you spin and seem of course to faint next to put-out travellers to Town
We always called Melbourne Town when we were kids
Two officers shot you George from their high towers
And they committed suicide because they knew they did it together
So that’s the information
Enough for a play
Or an epilogue
Or a psalm or a piece of pathos or theatre
Which it is and which it was
That a no-hoper like me got hanged for doing nothing
Doing nothing but knocking off junk in a warehouse but I was armed
That is why George I got seventeen years of smashing bluestone into fragments
Like the portions of my life
That are the record of my wife’s births of our three little kids
She had her babies in the scrub
With her and me on one end of the bushman’s saw
She was strong as well as pretty George
Now they are weighing me for the execution
And one of them said I’ve put on weight since my trial
It’s the porridge that whacks it on
Now they are summoning my hanging fellow
Who I hear gets time and a half
Because he’s in the Public Servants Union and fully paid-up!
Now it is now and not before
The judgement second is upon my neck and secret spirit and shy soul from the countryside
I never killed George Hodson
I never did and yet they do it to spite my family and despite my innocence!
Just a white t-shirt and Bob’s your uncle
Just gymnasium pants and nothing in my pocket
Not a cheap transistor I thieved from our community or anybody in transit
My soul’s in transit by the way
They hang it as they do the rest of Ryan
They hang my family as they do me to spite my innocence and my athleticism
My mysticism and my sacred word I never shot anybody not once
I swear by George’s own family I didn’t do it!
But nobody listens and nobody ever cares about scum like me
I can hear the rodents and the rats scurry down there below the scaffold
Looking like a whole lot of murder trial juries by the by
My hanging is actually being sponsored by a rope company in Footscray
Kinnears Ropes are worldwide
Famous for their intensity of purpose and colossal willpower
My ghost might join the Footscray Bowling Club when I’m dead
And enjoy a family night with the jury that did me in at the Supreme Court
Where I was handcuffed to you
You my audience
And my redeemer
And you Peter Walker who escaped with me
On the 19th of December 1965 in an incalculable way
Got over the impossible wall in an impossible way
Using bits of rope and wire all chained together to do it
Standing there in our prison-issue clobber with printed black arrows on it
And me saying to crazy motorists, ‘Give us a go! Give us a go!’
As if they’re going to give us a lift to dreamy Saint Kilda Beach or Luna Park somehow!
We are standing there pointing rifles at them saying, ‘Give us a go!’ ‘Give us a go!’
The looks on their faces was worth recording I tell you that for nothing!
The Salvation Army man Hewitt came at me real forceful-like!
In the manner of all Salvos!
He accidentally got clocked by my carbine not that I meant it or anything like that
Then the Herald newspaper crucified me for a thing I didn’t do
And the Herald artists made my face the devil’s own one
For the repugnance and repulsion of the simple reader of their simple paper
My fate was sealed with that wicked face on the front page of the Herald newspaper!
Anything to sell a paper!
Just like I who never did anything but pinch a lady’s watch at the races
Last evening past in the Condemned Cell
Listen to me you who care
Last evening past in the Condemned Cell I saw George Hodson’s immortal ghost just once
Just once I saw it and believe me once was more than enough
He said he realised I didn’t do it
He said he forgave me even or especially because I didn’t do it
He said he loved me as a screw can love a prisoner
Like a brother I never had
Like a friend I wished I had now
Like now dear friend at five minutes to
Five earthly minutes till I go through to hell or Balranald
One or the beautiful other
The bush or Bass Strait all hosed away to Bass Strait like a sob
But Father Brosnan waits for me down there unde
r the scaffold so impatiently
Like he wants to put on a bet
Go to Caulfield on a sure bet
I just said to him
Because I just saw him before a second ago it really was
I said as I shook hands with the Roman Catholic priest of D Division
And every other frightful Division of Terror and terrible things I said
‘Always remember you were ordained for me!’
And he seemed to imagine I quoted it but I made it up to big-note myself
Now they are singing the everlasting word out in Champ Street
The trade unionists are even singing and they hate singing
Unless it’s ‘Solidarity Forever’ or something gloomy like that
The Teachers Union are linking arms and singing just for me
And it’s over a hundred in the shade of Champ Street
Last night in the Condemned Cell I had a visitor I tell you!
An old lantern-jawed Salvation Army woman with a copy of the Bible
She used to get a few shillings from drunken waterside workers in pubs
And dig her collection box hard into their ribs and hurt them by the bar
And say to them with pots of watered down beer in their paws
‘You’ve had enough of that poison I think. Whack a shillin’ in my box for the needy!’
It always worked because collective guilt always does in the end
My daughters are out there in suburbia with their sobbing boyfriends
My three sisters resemble the Three Sisters at The Blue Mountains
Carved out of sympathy
Carved out of longing
Carved out of outrage
Carved out of our collective innocence
They just listen to the idiotic tick of disappearing time
Time nicking off
Time getting away with murder
The old lantern-jawed woman from the Salvation Army doesn’t know how to crumble
She leant me her Catholic Bible with its golden-leaved pages of misery
And I didn’t have it in me to tell her how I’d been sodomised each day at Rupertswood
In their seminary by their bishops who raped me every day and called it charity
One day they will be executed instead of a fool like me
Such as Ryan who was a pub dudder
Who flogged faulty pop-up top-up electric toasters to fellow Catholics who’d fallen
What I should give to be pardoned by the third reprieve
The third reprieve coming through the big iron-hearted door
Shall it be liberty or shall it be my busted neck in the official Government telegram?
Soon they shall flit it through the keyhole
If it says life then they shall stay the hanging and my pulse shall be returned to my chest
Remember Ronald Ryan Page 10