I saw a car with a license plate with a two and a five, and it even slowed down as it passed. I searched around for cover. I contemplated diving into the bush but decided against it. My ears were ringing from the intense crack high, and I almost slipped on the ice and dropped my payload of explosives.
The blast of rock also brought out those Ewok-looking shadow creatures who shot death rays at me with their galactic sorcery. Their chatter drove me nuts; they sounded exactly like they did in Star Wars: “Mechipy chuwa, ah!” Fuckin’ terrifying. They were stealthy creatures, melting in and out of the shadows. They reminded me of those demon shadows in Ghost that dragged that Puerto Rican—Willie Lopez—to hell for killing Patrick Swayze after he got hit by that car. I didn’t want to end up like him. I lit my pipe again, hoping to rid myself of my paranoia, but an Ewok groaned from the darkness over near the curb.
They’re coming for me!
I ran as fast as I could into the middle of the street where the light was strongest. My heart pounded until it hurt. I slapped my face to snap out of it. I slapped it again to remind myself that none of it was real. My arm knocked loose the dynamite and it tumbled down around my waist inside my jacket. I placed it back in my pocket and continued on.
When I got to the dope house, one of Green’s men was guarding the door.
“Hot Boy!” he hollered as I approached. He held out his fist and I dapped it. He kept his eyes on my every move. The brown-black hilt of his Glock was exposed in his waistband, his shirt purposefully pulled up, warning people not to fuck around. It didn’t faze me.
“Green around?” I smirked back, trying to play it cool. I felt a thunderbolt radiate up my leg. The Oxy had worn off.
“Inside, in the basement.” He stood up and reached toward me.
I jumped back. “What the fuck?!” I said, pushing his hands away from my torso. He was going to pat me down. “You know me, dog.”
His face hardened, and he put a hand near his pistol. “New policy.”
“What do you think? I got a stick of dynamite on me?! Chill.” I laughed and nudged his shoulder.
He laughed back. “Wouldn’t be surprised.” He eyed me one last time, then motioned toward the door with his head. “G’wan in.”
My bluff had worked. I dapped his hand and passed.
The house smelled of crack and meth. The walls were caked with a clear layer of resin, enough to get high on if I scraped it off and smoked it. Half the light bulbs were missing or shattered on the floor; the whole place was lit by candles. A dim light radiated from the bowels of the basement. I steadied myself and made my descent.
A few crackheads were in the corner hitting their pipes near the foot of the stairs, and a few tweakers were over near the bathroom smoking broken light bulbs. The door at the back was closed. That was a good sign—it meant the ladies were turning tricks with Johns because there was dope around; no one used that room but them. Green emerged from a door in the hall. He had a sock in his hand—his trademark dope carryall. It bulged with a load of luscious rocks.
“Crackula, my man,” he said to me. “What can I do for you?”
I stood there a second. I felt the explosive press hard against my ribs. Green must have sensed something was up and backed away. I reached into my coat, yanked out the dynamite, and thrust it above my head.
“GIVE ME ALL YOUR FUCKING DOPE OR I’LL LIGHT IT!” I screamed and waved the red cylinder around, my lighter held near the wick, ready to ignite it.
Green’s eyes opened wide and all the heads in the room spun around, a look of terror on them. Everyone jostled for shelter, tossing their gear. Green backed up against the wall, almost dropping his plump sock. The gunman at the front door appeared at the top of the stairs and stood there motionless, seemingly stunned. Another emerged from the door where Green had been earlier, gun in hand. He, too, was shitting himself.
“I’LL LIGHT IT—I SWEAR!” I yelled again. I flicked my lighter. A bead of sweat trickled down my forehead, and I wiped it away on the sleeve of my dynamite arm.
Green cracked a smile.
That wasn’t the reaction I’d hoped for.
He grabbed the explosive out of my hand. “A fucking road flare?” He laughed and tugged at the wick and it fell onto the floor. He sniffed at the red stick like he was examining a fine cigar. “Doesn’t smell like sulphur to me.”
Silence fell over the room like a blanket, until I heard the safeties on the guns click. Green stared at me. I was trapped.
I’d picked the flare up near the gravel pit by my old public school. It looked like a stick of dynamite, so I stuck a piece of string in it to make a wick, and hatched a scheme to come to the dope house and threaten maximum carnage to get a rock. I’d gotten the idea from an old story Uncle Ron had told me about when he went into a biker clubhouse with a live grenade to scare the shit out of everyone. It had worked for him, but my plan failed miserably. I waited for Green’s men to open fire.
To my surprise, Green giggled. “That’s why I like you,” he said. “Because you’re fucking crazy like me.”
He reached into his sock and pulled out a twenty rock. “Here.” He placed it in my hand and waved his men off. “Great joke. You had me for a second.”
PUSH-UPS
I WAS IN JAIL IN 2007 for assaulting a couple of police officers.
I’d done a huge toke of crack after breaking into a car and was having bad hallucinations and thought the Ewok creatures were coming for me. I ran into the middle of the street hollering that I needed help and was dying and losing my mind.
From a side road, a van flew at me then slammed on its brakes and five huge bearded men jumped out and began chasing me. They looked like bikers. I hobbled as fast as I could, headlong into traffic, cars veering out of the way, horns honking, but the bikers were all larger and faster than I was. They tackled me, but I fought back with all my might until I saw a police cruiser pull up. I knew I’d be safe—the bikers couldn’t murder or kidnap me—but they still choked me from behind, and I almost lost consciousness, my arms punching forward until I heard a loud crack and gurgle in my throat.
I was dumped in the back of a paddy wagon, scratching the steel sides and growling, like an injured mountain lion in shackles, and brought to Maplehurst, where I was charged with assault with intent to resist arrest times two, possession of a scheduled substance, break and enter, and theft.
The guys on the range were impressed that I’d fought off so many undercover police—the bikers, as it turned out—and had gone fist-to-cuffs with three uniformed police officers, and in the process re-broke my wrist and fractured my jaw. Truth was, I was just terrified and high and had gone mad, there was no toughness involved.
One.
My arms wobbled as I pushed up. Hands: shoulder-width apart. Feet: together. Body: straight. The latest song from Rihanna blasted across the protective-custody range in the jail in Milton, Ontario. A dank scent of male swamp entered me as I sucked in air for energy.
Two.
The pressure increased in my head as my sternum touched the floor, and my wrist throbbed, but then my arms straightened again. I peered down at myself and saw a rack of bones and a stomach that sucked back toward my spine. My skin was grey and lifeless.
Three.
I gritted my teeth and felt a burn in my triceps as I dipped down and up another time. There was a tightness in my core I hadn’t felt for years. These were the first set of push-ups I’d attempted to do since I’d been arrested again.
Four.
I tried with all my might to keep straight but as my nose touched the floor first, my bum shot up in the air. I glanced over at my cellmate, who was drinking his orange crystal drink out of an empty shampoo bottle. A stain of blood near his foot had seeped into the pores of the cement.
Five.
Faintness overtook me. I kept going. My blue jail underwear dangled low, finding the ground before I touched down and hoisted myself up again. The echo of the cell wasn’t as bad as the hole
, but it still made focusing difficult.
Six.
Halfway down my muscles failed. My arms locked and wouldn’t push up anymore. I gave it one more go—they wouldn’t budge.
I tucked my legs underneath my bum and pulled myself upright using the side of the steel table. I swayed as my knees buckled and I found myself clinging to the bars of the cell. Last thing I remember was my hands letting go, then the hollow sound of my skull smashing into the pavement.
When I awoke I was in another wing of the jail with an attendant hovering above me.
“You shouldn’t be exercising, Mr. Thistle,” he said. “Your blood pressure is too low, you’re still too emaciated.”
“But how am I supposed to defend myself?” I asked. I tried to raise my arms but couldn’t. I swallowed and heard a click in my throat.
“I wouldn’t worry about that right now.” He pulled back the cover revealing my foot. “The disease in here is way more serious than the other inmates.”
I wasn’t sure if he was talking about my infection or the detention centre.
INCEPTION
I SAW A GUY ON our range at the sally port talking with an older man in a red-and-grey uniform. The geezer wasn’t stiff like the guards. He had a peaceful presence about him, but still a hardness about his body language, like he’d been one of us, like he’d done time in the past.
“Who is that?” I asked my cellmate.
“That’s the chaplain.”
I watched as the inmate gave the chaplain an envelope and took a pile of papers to the back table where he always sat.
When I walked over and asked him what he was doing, he said, “I’m getting my high school. You do that through the chaplain. It’s a great way to pass the time.”
I observed him for about a week. He was quiet—the mark of a true gent, like Priest said. He never bragged or talked bad or gambled chocolate bars or traded dope—the guy just did his time real classy like. I admired that. I thought maybe I could make a better life for myself in those books, too, like he was trying to do. Or maybe it was silly.
“I’d like to try that out,” I said to him one day after I’d finished working out with the water bags. “School. Give it another go.”
He lifted his head from his notes.
“But I can’t read too good. I dropped out a long time ago. And years of drugs and hard living—well, it’s kind of done my head in.”
“Nah. It’s easy—don’t believe those lies.” He turned around a piece of paper. “This is my reading assignment. Try reading the first line.”
My eyes had trouble focusing, I stumbled and stuttered, and I messed up pronouncing a few words, but I eventually got through it.
“See. Walk in the park. I can help you out if you want.”
A week later, I received my first assignment from the chaplain in English. I got help with my reading from other inmates when I needed it and handed in my work the following week. A month later, I got an 85 percent on the final.
Something within me shifted.
Philosophy and world religions classes followed. I got 83 percent in philosophy. World religions was way harder—I didn’t finish because I didn’t understand all the big words. The local school board, however, recognized my efforts and gave me six maturity credits. Three months into my sentence and I was only two credits short of graduating high school—it was a miracle.
Unbeknownst to me, most of the guys on the range were suspicious. Rumours spread that I was flying kites to the screws, squawking, because cell raids always happened right after I’d handed in my homework or sent a letter to Grandma. After I submitted one of my last assignments, I was confronted in the washroom by a group of inmates.
“Why would you chirp on your brothers?” they asked and slammed me up against the shower wall.
“I’m just trying to finish my schooling,” I said, afraid but determined.
They roughed me up some, clocked me in the eye a few times, but eventually stopped, satisfied, I assume, by the fact that I didn’t break.
THE MESSENGER
I HAD A VISITOR. I was so excited. No one ever visited me or sent me letters—ever. Grandma didn’t even respond. That didn’t bother me anymore.
The guard handcuffed me and took me to the visitor’s area. I was surprised to see Jerry on the other side of the Plexiglas. Somehow he’d found my hiding spot—again—like he always did. No matter where I ran—to a shelter, jail, or to some far-off random street corner across the country—the fucker kept tabs on me and would track me down. Trying to hide from him was like a souped-up version of that TV show Mantracker, except Jerry didn’t have a horse or cowboy hat, and I wasn’t running and leaping through the bush. This, however, was the first time he’d actually come to see me in jail.
“So, here you are,” he said, “hiding like a frightened rat. When is this going to stop?”
“Fuck you,” I said. “I’ll go back to my cell! You watch!”
“Go then, go back to your hole and die alone, you sad, sad man!”
I wanted to kick the Plexiglas and have it shatter in his pudgy face, blinding him for life.
“I see through your macho bullshit,” he said. “Always have. One day I’m going to stop searching, then you’ll be fucked.”
I fidgeted with my coveralls.
“You put up all these walls to keep people out. Literally—look around. I just don’t have the energy to break them down anymore. No one does. I’m the last—no one else gives a shit anymore. I had to dig really deep to come see you here today. I hate seeing you penned in like some animal, but I forced myself to do it because I have a message.”
I looked up at him.
“Grandma is sick. She doesn’t have many years left. You living like this is hurting her, and it makes me want to beat you up—seriously. She’s been waiting all these years for you to stop living this way. If she dies and you’re like this, you’ll never recover. I hope you realize that.”
I slammed my fists on the counter in front of me and closed my eyes. I didn’t know what to do. When I opened them I saw Jerry’s hand pressed hard against the Plexiglas. I didn’t dare lift my hand to his, but looked up at him.
“See, I knew you were still in there. That’s the little brother I remember.”
As soon as he said that, the buzzer of the timer went off—our visit was over. As the guard snapped the handcuffs back onto my semi-healed wrists, I turned and saw Jerry’s hand still on the glass, his eyes locked onto mine.
A couple weeks later I was released with time served. I felt hopeless—I’d come so close to finishing high school, only to be released right before I could see it through, to be released right back into the life that I knew was slowly killing me. I was in bondage to the dealers, a twenty-four-hour money-generating machine, and the thought of lurching forward, and the pain that shot up my leg with every step in the desert out there, terrified me.
STEAK KNIFE
I WAS STEALING BIKES FROM people’s backyards. My dealers took them, thirty dollars a pop, without question. I desperately needed the money to get high. I’d been up for a week solid since being released from jail, and my addictions were worse than ever.
The street I was on in Brampton is gang territory. Crack in Brampton travelled through there before being distributed throughout Peel County. I shouldn’t have been jacking bikes there, I knew better. But I was desperate, and my mind wasn’t working well. Jail time had softened my begging and thieving skills, too. People just didn’t believe my lies anymore. “You’re a healthy young man,” they’d say. “You should be working.”
I spotted a BMX bike, with gold pegs and chrome handle bars, and hauled it over a fence. Before it hit the ground, a group of angry young men confronted me from behind.
“Hot Boy!” one of them hollered. “You know this block’s off limits!”
They stripped me of the bike and shoved me into a parking lot. There were five of them. Bandanas flying.
“Now we gotta make an example
of you,” the smallest one said as he circled behind me to cut off my exit.
A guy in front of me pulled out a steak knife and lunged at me. The knife hit me right in the mouth. I tumbled onto the ground, smashing the back of my head on the concrete. Blood poured down into my throat and I choked, but I swung forward, wildly, punching up at the sky, the instinct to defend myself kicking in.
“Look at him,” one guy said. He kicked my ribs repeatedly, pushing me sideways. I felt nothing but heard the dull thuds echo through my body. I saw the knife handle sticking out of my face and covered my head.
I heard laughing, followed by the close whine of sirens and wheels grinding on concrete, and raised my head, saw my attackers running off in all directions like cockroaches as a cop car mounted the curb. I yanked the knife out of my face and tossed it in a bush. A stream of blood gushed onto my shirt—it looked like a massacre. My hands fumbled over my head. The left side of my face was numb. There was a hole above my upper lip. I stuck my finger into it and it slid over my front teeth.
Right down to the bone.
A policewoman ran over. “Who did it?” she asked.
I stayed quiet, fearful that people in the complex nearby were listening.
She helped me to my feet, then put me in her squad car and drove to the hospital.
I was shipped to 21 Division after and charged with theft. Didn’t matter. The arrest probably saved my life.
After being attacked by a gang, I was taken to the hospital to get stitches; then the police processed me and shipped me back into custody. The scar is still visible today if you look hard enough.
RANDOM DUDE
“NAME. BIRTHDATE. SOCIAL SECURITY,” THE shelter worker rhymed off, thrusting a clipboard at me under the Plexiglas. She looked like she was having a rough day, her hair all frizzed out.
I grabbed the clipboard. “I don’t have any ID,” I said. “I just got out of jail, and I’m going by bus to Ottawa to rehab tomorrow. The chaplain bought me a ticket.” I pushed my Greyhound stub against the glass.
From the Ashes Page 23