The Boys from Binjiwunyawunya

by Robert G. Barrett

  Norton continued to stare at Max almost in amazement. Bernie was right about the truck driver. He definitely had to have a loose cannon rolling around on the top deck to come out with a statement like that. He was about to elaborate on it when he heard voices outside.

  ‘That’s muster,’ said Max, clapping his hands together. ‘They check our names, then we get dinner.’ Max smiled at Les, winked and ran his tongue over his lips. ‘The food’s great too. Come on.’

  Still shaking his head, Norton got up and followed Max outside. Along with the rest of the inmates they stood in front of their cells while two guards with a clipboard walked past and called their names, which were answered with a ‘yo’ or a ‘yay’ or whatever. After they were satisfied everyone was there they let them form a queue outside the servery.

  Norton got behind Max and was given a tray with his eating utensils and a mug. Then came the food. Fried lamb-chops, peas, carrots, mashed potato and pumpkin; plenty of gravy and a lump of bread. Sweets were some sort of rice pudding with stewed fruit and custard, plus a mug of tea. There was plenty of it and although it wasn’t quite as cordon bleu as Max made out it was okay. The only fault, if any, was that it came from the other side of the gaol and was a little cold by the time it got there. Some of the men took their meal into their cells, but Max and Les ate theirs seated at a bench near the pool table. After they’d finished Norton returned his plate and cutlery but kept his mug for another cup of tea.

  ‘You were right about the food, Max,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t half-bad.’

  ‘Wasn’t half bad?’ replied Max. ‘Mate, those lambchops and vegetables were bloody beautiful. And I haven’t tasted sweets like that in years.’

  Norton looked at the side-levered truck driver and smiled; he’d barely known him a few minutes and already he couldn’t help but like him. He was open and friendly, without being a crawler, and incongruously happy at the same time. Yet there definitely had to be something wrong with someone who referred to a cell in Long Bay Gaol as the grouse and plain food as bloody beautiful. In the short period he was going to be there, Norton was determined to find out why.

  ‘So what happens now Max?’ asked Norton as they sat beneath the blaring television, sipping their mugs of tea.

  ‘What happens now? Not much,’ replied Max. ‘They lock the wing off after five o’clock muster then you can sit around and watch TV or whatever till they bundle us into our cells at ten. Then you can do what you like. Read, think. Listen to the radio. Have a pull if you like. Or you can put your head down and have a good eight hours of beautiful, unbroken sleep. Which is generally what I do,’ Max added with a wink and his lopsided smile.

  ‘Sounds... just great,’ Norton smiled back.

  ‘It is, it’s heaven.’

  The more Norton spoke to Max, the more curious he became. Now the truck driver actually referred to being locked up in that filthy graffiti-ridden cell for nearly ten hours as heaven. Where the fuck had Max come from? Devils Island? A North Vietnamese prison? It was a funny one all right.

  Most of the other prisoners had drifted back out and were sitting around staring vacantly up at the TV. Now that the sun had gone they nearly all had their blankets over their shoulders and sipped at mugs of coffee and Ovaltine to keep warm. Jimi Hendrix had resumed his spot outside his cell, and guitar in hand was mercilessly putting the cleaners through ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’’ before absolutely crucifying ‘Hey Jude’. Luckily the TV still drowned most of it out so no-one seemed to take much notice. Norton nodded and half smiled to some of the blokes seated around him; and got a half smile back for his efforts. They were a pretty average looking lot, no real heavies amongst them. Except maybe for two rugged-looking blokes standing unsmiling as they earnestly discussed something out of earshot down by the bookcase.

  Before long another two guards came in and did a quick muster before a rattling noise told Norton they’d locked off the wing as they left. Norton bummed a bit of coffee and sugar from Max and with his blanket across his shoulders watched the news and some boring shows on TV. Between checking out the faces around him and watching programs that he didn’t at all like Norton felt like going into his cell and reading. But he’d be getting locked in there before long and wasn’t actually relishing the thought, so why hurry. Before he knew it, that time had arrived.

  The same two guards returned and the taller one switched off the TV. ‘Righto girls,’ he said, rattling a large set of keys. ‘Time for beddy byes. Come on. Let’s go.’

  There was a general discontented muttering, a few quiet curses and they all shuffled into their cells. Max was already laying on his bed reading a Penthouse when Les walked in.

  ‘Thank Christ they’ve turned that fuckin’ TV off,’ he said as Norton stood in the muted light with his back to the door.

  A queasy feeling suddenly hit Norton as the door slammed shut behind him and the locked turned; much queasier than the ones he’d already experienced. It was a feeling of finality. Now he was well and truly locked in and he couldn’t get out if he wanted to. A few little butterflies gave a slight but noticeable flutter in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘Ahh! Peace and quiet at last,’ said Max, resting his head back on the pillow and momentarily closing his eyes. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’

  Norton looked at him for a moment or two before sitting down on his bed. ‘Yeah. If you say so,’ he shrugged.

  ‘You sleep like a top in here, Les. I’m tellin’ you.’

  Norton noticed that the truck driver’s head was only going to be about two feet from his own. ‘Hey Max, how do you get on if you get some cunt in here that snores?’

  Max reached behind him to the cabinet and handed Norton a plastic container. ‘I use these. Anti-noise wax earplugs. Do you snore Les?’

  ‘I’ve... been known to get a bit of a rhythm going now and again. What about you?’

  Max nodded. ‘Yeah. I saw up a few logs on the odd occasion.’

  ‘All right if I borrow a couple of these?’

  Norton started to soften up the cotton wool covered earplugs in his fingers while Max did the same. ‘Hey what time do they turn the light off?’

  ‘They don’t.’

  ‘What do you mean — they don’t?’

  ‘They don’t. They leave it on all night.’

  ‘Christ.’ Norton frowned at the dull fluorescent tube above their heads. ‘How do they expect you to get to sleep?’

  ‘Easy. Just shut your eyes. In fact it’s way past my bedtime, so if you want to watch me I’ll show you.’ Max stuffed the earplugs in his ears, closed his eyes and lay back on the pillow with his blanket up under his chin. ‘See you in the morning.’ Norton stared at Max lying there as if he was having the time of his life. ‘Yeah. See you then Max,’ he finally said.

  It seemed like no time at all and Max was snoring away softly, almost like a baby. Norton watched him and shook his head. Well if that don’t take the cake, he chuckled to himself.

  Norton had been up early that morning and he made sure he trained extra hard, so by now he was starting to feel more than a bit tired himself. He gazed absently at the earplugs sitting in the palm of his hand and started to think. I dead-set must be an idiot to do something like this for the sake of a lousy $53. But a bit of a taste of this won’t really hurt I s’pose. And you never know, something might come out of it. Can’t see what though. Except maybe that lousy $53. Anyway. Who gives a stuff? I wouldn’t mind knowing Max’s secret to life though.

  His tired eyes drifted up to the graffiti on the wall in front of him. Most of it was obscene or cursing the screws and Long Bay in general. One lot did catch his eye though. A few lines of verse with a rough drawing of a bong next to it:

  I used to pull cones.

  I used to suck piss.

  How the fuckin’ hell will I ever handle this?

  Easy, chuckled Les. He put the earplugs in, lay the edge of his towel across his eyes and rested his head back on the pillow with the blanket up unde
r his chin; just like Max. Before he knew it he’d managed to switch himself off and he too was snoring away, dead to the world.

  Norton woke up a few minutes earlier than Max, just before seven. Apart from a little stiffness in his back and neck he didn’t feel all that bad. They both had a leak and Max suggested that if either of them needed a crap, to bake it until they opened the cell door as the odour from two men in a ten-by-eight cell hung in the air for hours, like mustard gas. They lay there listening to Max’s tiny radio for a while before the guards unlocked the cells.

  It was a little cloudy and cool when they stepped outside, blinking into what sunlight there was. After a quick muster they got cleaned up and it was time for breakfast. Porridge, cereal, toast, it was nothing marvellous but there was more than enough and it filled the gap. Before long, the TV was blaring again, Jimi Hendrix had his guitar out and was mutilating ‘The Long and Winding Road’ and it was just another day in the warrants section at Long Bay.

  Les asked Max what he intended doing.

  ‘Absolutely nothing. Maybe read a book,’ Max replied. Norton thought that was as good an idea as any and ambled over to the bookcase. They were mostly hardbacks. Classics, biographies, early Australiana and that. There were one or two paperbacks. Norton picked one up. Franz Kafka. Stories, 1904–1924. That’ll do, he thought. I can handle a few short stories.

  He walked back to his cell, got his blanket, and folded it on the ground outside, made himself as comfortable as he could and opened the book up in the sun. This story looks okay he mused. ‘Metamorphosis’. Didn’t Roxy Music have an album out called that. Oh well, sounds all right anyway.

  He was about to start when an old sweeper came though pushing a broom. He was a wizened little bloke with a broken nose like a piece of squashed putty sitting on a thin, lined face. He had heavily lidded eyes that seemed to be darting everywhere at once, like a small animal in the wild expecting predators to pounce on it at any time.

  Norton had his legs stuck out in front of him. ‘Sorry mate,’ he muttered, pulling them in so the sweeper could get around him.

  ‘Sweet pal,’ was the clipped reply, straight out the side of the old sweeper’s mouth.

  Norton ismiled to himself and started reading.

  It wasn’t all that easy to concentrate with the TV blaring; and Jimi Hendrix sounded like he was saving his ghastly best for ‘Hey Mr Tambourine Man’. Norton went into his cell, got his earplugs and jammed them in before resuming his original position. That was a bit better, the noise was no more than a blur now. He continued reading.

  ‘Metamorphosis’ was definitely nothing to do with the Roxy Music album, and Kafka would have starved to death trying to make a living as a gag writer. It was about a bloke that wakes up one morning in his room and finds he’s turned into a giant dung beetle. It was awful — and the writer’s style, although excellent, was pure misery. Christ! What a place to read something like this thought Les. I’ll have bloody nightmares tonight. I’ll dream I’ll wake up in the morning and find I’ve turned into a giant cockroach. Fat chance, he snorted. A cockroach wouldn’t live in that cell. He read on.

  Les was almost halfway through the story when he felt someone kick one of his outstretched legs. He looked up and the two toughs he’d noticed talking by the bookcase the previous night were standing over him. Apart from one being a shade taller than the other they looked identical. Sour, florid faces. Bushy black hair and equally black and bushy Pancho Villa moustaches. Their arms were covered in tattoos. Gravestones, panthers and dragons with great blue spiderwebs wrapped round their elbows. The taller one seemed to be snarling something down at him.

  Screwing up his face, Norton stared up at him for a moment before taking out one of the earplugs. ‘What was that mate?’ he muttered.

  ‘I said how about gettin’ your feet out of the fuckin’ road. Are you deaf or something?’

  ‘I didn’t hear you,’ replied Norton. ‘I had these earplugs in.’

  ‘You oughta clean your fuckin’ ears out now and again,’ said the shorter hood.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ replied Norton slowly. He put down the book and his eyebrows started to bristle slightly.

  ‘Yeah. Fuckin’ yeah,’ snarled the first hood.

  There was a bit of a Mexican stand-off for a few moments as they all glared at each other. The hoods were pretty confident; they looked tough and Les was on his own. Les glared back up at them for a few seconds before finally putting his earplugs back in, picking up his book and continuing with his story. The hoods said something else to him which he couldn’t hear, then went over to the pool table, abruptly interrupting the two smaller men playing on it and started up a game of their own.

  Norton’s eyes had narrowed and his face had darkened. What a nice pair of mugs, he thought. I might just go over and shove those pool cues right up their tattooed arses. Then he remembered what Bernie had said to him: ‘Take it easy, Les. It’s a different ball game in here.’ He snorted and continued reading, but he wasn’t at all happy.

  He finished the story and it only made him worse. Jesus! What a lemon of a book, he thought, slamming it closed and dropping it down beside him. God, I can’t see myself reading any more of this. I’ll end up slashing my wrists. All I need now is for Jimi Hendrix down there to start playing some Neil Young. He worked the earplugs out and couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Jimi was getting stuck into ‘Southern Man’ like there was going to be no tomorrow. Ohh no. Norton closed his eyes and slumped back against the wall. I don’t bloody believe this. He opened his eyes up towards the sky. You wouldn’t do it to me boss. You couldn’t be that cruel.

  But he was, and all Norton could do was sit there shaking his head. He slipped the earplugs into his pocket and tried to figure out what he could do. The boredom of prison life was starting to get to him already, plus he was still more than annoyed at the gobful he’d had to cop from the two hoods with the Pancho Villa moustaches. Looking up he noticed they were having another earnest conversation next to the bookcase. After drumming his fingers on the concrete for a few moments, Les decided this would be as good a time as any to put Franz Kafka back where he’d found him.

  The hoods stopped their conversation. They bristled slightly when they saw Norton approaching and gave him a sour look. Les returned this with a strange half smile as he stepped in between them and carefully placed his book back in the case. In the space between the bookcase and the shower block the punching bag was moving very gently on its chain. Les ambled over, stood about a metre or so away and studied it for a moment or two. There were no bag mitts around but this wasn’t going to worry the two calloused legs of ham that passed for Norton’s fists. The hoods frowned and exchanged dark glances just as Les bent slightly at the knees, and with a whack that made everybody in the wing look over from what they were doing, drove a murderous right rip up into the heavy bag. The bag jackknifed in the middle and flew back with a great rattle as far as the chains supporting it would allow. While it was still suspended in midair Les slammed in a left hook that spun it crazily towards the shower block; this was followed by another sizzling left hook, just as hard and just as loud. Another right rip jackknifed the bag again and another two left hooks spun it back towards the showers. As the bag spun back Norton stepped back and let go with a thundering straight right that nearly tore it and the chains holding it off the wooden beam. He then moved away and left the heavy bag rocking and bucking violently as if an earthquake had just hit the place.

  After a nod of his head and a little grunt of satisfaction, Norton turned and, calm and quiet as a cat, walked back past the two hoods, now very wide-eyed, giving them an evil grin and a little wiggle of his eyebrows as he did. They didn’t say anything, but somehow their droopy moustaches seemed suddenly to droop a lot further. Norton resumed his original position on the concrete outside his cell as every eye in the wing settled on him. He gazed briefly back at the fifteen or so faces around him before closing his eyes and leaning back against the wall.r />
  It wasn’t much longer and they were mustered for lunch. Sandwiches. Norton walked down with Max to join the queue at the servery. The two moustachioed hoods were about to join in a step or so in front of him when the taller one turned around and noticed Les. ‘After you mate,’ he said, letting Les and Max get in front of both of them. Norton gave them both a thin smile. It wasn’t hard to see they’d got the message.

  After several corned beef and salad sandwiches, washed down with plenty of prison tea, Norton returned to his position outside his cell. The sun wasn’t all that warm and he was soon bored and fidgety again. Ah bugger this, he thought, I may as well have a fair dinkum workout on that bag, do some exercises and have a shower. Better than sitting around here like a battery bloody hen. He got his towel from his cell, walked over to the bag and slipped off his brown prison jumper. He was about to do some loosening-up exercises when he heard voices, curses and slapping sounds accompanied by short cries of pain coming from inside the shower block. Curious, he stopped what he was doing and walked inside to have a look.

  It was the old sweeper Les had seen earlier. He was lying on the floor with his back against the wall, hands and arms around his head, his broom on the floor next to him. Another powerfully built prisoner, with his back to Les, had hold of him by the shirt with one hand and was punching into him with the other. The sweeper was trying desperately to protect himself but he was about a third the size of his assailant and having absolutely no luck at all. Norton stood there for a moment trying to figure out the best thing to do. It was none of his business and the first thing they tell you when you go in the nick is never stick your head in where it doesn’t belong. But he couldn’t stand there and watch an old man being beat up. He had to do something.

  ‘That’s two ounces of tobacco you owe me now, you old cunt. And I want it. Where is it?’ The big prisoner had just said that and given the sweeper another couple of thumps when Norton tapped him on the shoulder.