So good to be walking with this new boy through old limestone buildings. The air was heady with the smell of wood, books and decay, like Ireland, where she had left a part of herself behind. Lovely, old lady Ireland. She remembered the wind tearing through her hair at Dunluce Castle, a place she had begged Tony to take her. She thought again about the coast on his motorbike, as they sped from Dublin and talked their way across the border.
But goddamn the puking past. If she didn’t focus on the present, she would end up grieving this place, too. A fragment of a poem drifted into her mind: Grieving over Goldengrove unleaving … it is the blight man was born for …
Someday she would leave here, too. Except she would leave with Dace. The moment he got out. Well, maybe not too soon. In her mind, she heard her grandmother say: And what about your education? She had wanted to go to university for so long. She would have to finish school first.
Her reverie was interrupted when Mel stopped. They were passing a newspaper box in the entrance to the Student Hall. “Oh, shit,” he said.
What now? She followed his gaze and saw the headline of the Maitland Spectator, displayed in the yellow metal newspaper box outside the Great Hall. PRISONERS IN REVOLT, she read. Her white timetable fluttered unnoticed onto the grass by her feet.
Mel glanced at her, startled by her expression. “You look like you’re going to faint,” he said and laughed into her pale face, though not unkindly. Mel was kind and good and wanted to be a doctor, like his Dad. He steadied her shoulders with his smooth, brown hands until the life flowing from him almost revived her. “Don’t worry. The army will surround the bad guys and all you little campus girls will be safe.”
“But my cousin’s in Maitland Penitentiary.”
“A guard?”
“No. He’s an inmate, for God’s sake!”
“Why?” Mel looked nonplussed at first, then aghast. “What … what did he do?”
“I don’t know,” Liza lied. “But what if they go in shooting? Where will he go? They’ll mow them down like grass!”
“Hey now, relax. That’s a bit dramatic,” he said, shooting an appalled glance at the curious students swirling by them. “Better not make a scene. Look, your cousin will be okay. Christ, do you really have a relative in the Joint? C’mon, what did he do, pass some bad cheques?” He seized her shoulders and tried to look into her eyes. “Sell grass? Where you from, girl? I thought you were from across the pond, with the lilt in your voice and your black Irish eyes.” He paused, perhaps remembering, if not regretting that she’d asked all the questions and he’d done all the talking last night.
“I don’t know what he did.” And I don’t care.
“Oh, c’mon. What did you read in the newspapers?”
“I was in Toronto when it happened. I was fourteen.”
“Something bad then, if it’s been five years. How old is he? When’s he’s getting out?”
“Soon. He’s supposed to get out soon. He’s twenty-three now. And it wasn’t his fault.”
“Uh sure, if you say so.” Mel’s lips kept moving, so he’d said something else, but she didn’t hear. Mutely she pushed her clipboard at him and fled in the direction of their student residence, leaving him looking a little stunned.
Although she was panting and her upper legs were burning, she kept running. She had to think. She had to get Dace out. He wasn’t involved, he wasn’t. Even if the stupid Maitland Spectator was screaming: LAST CHANCE. What did that mean? It was their last chance to what? Jesus Christ. What if somebody had already died? She knew what their bargaining chip was. An accompanying headline had read: Six prison guards missing and feared dead.
Chapter 13
Anteroom to Hell
Psychiatrist Predicts Inmate Behaviour.
A prominent local psychiatrist, Dr. Dan Johnson, was responding to Maitland Penitentiary’s Warden assertion that only half of 723 inmates are believed to be actively involved in the now two-day-old riot. Because they “run in packs” to survive, few will be able to resist the pull of the inmate subculture. Tension is building and there will be a power struggle, Dr. Johnson added. Also, lack of sleep, lack of food and easier access to contraband drugs is likely to contribute to aberrant behaviour. There is an increased risk of sexual assaults, beatings and even death. *[ Maitland Spectator, September 3, 1971, p.5.]
Maitland Penitentiary, September 4, 1971:
Hours passed before he had enough juice in his body to send distress signals to the great beyond. Whatever the hell was going on, they couldn’t be in the middle of a riot. They couldn’t. Not with Sandy, that clown, in charge. When Dace wasn’t pacing, he jammed his face between the bars. He could just make out a narrow slice of catwalk encircling the domed amphitheatre and some empty cells on the other side. He didn’t hear any voices, any banging, nothing.
For years he’d had a black and white snapshot of his father and sister taped to the wall of his cell. “So what do you think, guys?” he asked them now. “Are they all dead?”
Something startled him—a rustle that might have been Sandy’s robe—but it was just a rat, streaking from one tier to the next.
How the hell had he ended up in this cesspool? Bang, bang. A Saturday afternoon, a madman, a toy gun and now this. Christ, nothing was supposed to go wrong! He had been nothing more than a boy who loved riding his bike—the wind in his hair, a girl he picked up along the way, the action, the excitement and the thrill of a chase. He looked down at his rough knuckles. The biggest thrill he got these days was smashing somebody’s face.
Enough of this bullshit. He had to concentrate. If this were just a minor insurrection, a protest, a sit-down or a slowdown, it made sense to wait it out. He’d gotten involved in one sit-down, the first year he was Inside. What a fuck-up that had been. Everybody had lost their “privileges”, their good time, and most of their personal possessions. Now here they went again.
If he could just get out! His eyes swept from the floor to the ceiling, as if he had a hope of finding a chink in the wall. At least he had his body, he thought, getting down to do more push-ups. He never talked about sparring—for him it was almost like breathing—but he was a prison house boxer of some repute, often approached by other convicts desperate for protection.
“Somebody’s trying to kill me,” they’d whisper. Poor, colourless schmucks, aging and flaccid. He hoped he never got that way. He felt sorry for some of them, he really did. Some guys just shook, and he knew. “I have a wife and children and I know I can make good,” they swore in the little prison library, whispering behind the stacks.
“Lucky you. B-b-blessed with a body well-nourished in infancy and early childhood,” the skinny little library con stuttered, observing these interactions. “My mother always fed me c-c–crap.”
“You should have seen the slop the priests fed me.”
“Still, you have more than your share of inherent muscle mass. Perhaps from some farmer ancestor.”
The prison librarian talked like Liza. He used big words. Dace missed some of his speech, but he could catch his drift, courtesy of the books he’d read. He liked listening to him. They all did.
“What, not a warrior?” he’d asked. Sure, the idea of a flaxen haired little farm wife to warm his bed and cook his meals held some appeal. He just couldn’t see himself mucking about in dirt or driving a tractor all day.
The librarian was wrong about his ancestry, though, if he meant blind luck was all men had. A man worked for what he got. Take him. He had strong shoulders, a thick neck and bulging forearms, but he worked out every day. Anybody could have had the same body with a little self-discipline and the right motivation. He had started weightlifting the first time he’d been incarcerated. Anything to keep from smashing his head into the nearest wall when he was a blind, scared, stupid, eighteen.
When the racket started up again, it was almost a relief. Somebody cursed God, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary and a lot of other people. They were probably looting the chapels in the Wes
t Block. God only knew what they hoped to find. To each his own, but Dace drew the line at throwing hymn books—or any books—in the air.
By now he almost wished that the resident goon squad would round up all the loose felons and toss them back where they belonged: in the slammer, in the clink, in the Hole. Where he belonged. In his darkest moments, he knew he belonged there, too.
If the gutless fucking bulls didn’t get control of his goddamn cell block soon, the army would come in. In his mind soldiers burst in and cut down every single upright cocksucker while Dace dove headfirst under his bed, his thin mattress exploding into a mess of chicken feathers, bonemeal, and plasma.
Calm down, he told himself. They’d use tear gas first, wouldn’t they? Even the guards weren’t total fools. Christ. Was that smoke? Instinctively, he held his breath and crouched down. No use hollering. Even if he got somebody’s attention, so what? They’d have a hell of time prying the lid off his can without the key.
His thighs ached. He raised his head from his knees, took a cautious breath and coughed. Jesus fucking Christ! He exploded, wasting more precious breath. Smoke. The sneaky little bitch was funnelling from the tier below his cell, probably from the same place where he’d heard all that screaming last night. Smoke was wending her way into his cell and invading his air space, hitchhiking on oxygen-carrying red cells, like the alcohol in his daddy’s bloodstream.
He lurched to his feet and yanked on the bars. Where the hell was everybody? He wasn’t Superman. In fact, he was seconds away from screaming like a snitch stuck with a shiv. And he fucking well didn’t want to start screaming. He didn’t want to die without anybody knowing. He wanted to see his family again. To make amends. To show everybody who said he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, with all the stupid, fucking choices he’d made.
The smoke was getting thicker. He yanked his shirt up over his head and scrunched back down, coughing and sputtering until there was a little pool of spittle on the floor. Christ. He’d had enough. “Open the goddamn door! Get me out of this fucking drum!” he shouted.
Sandy McAllister and his masked banditos appeared so fast he wondered if they’d been right behind the fire door. Dace staggered to his feet. “Who started the fire?” he demanded, suspecting it was one of them.
“Easy guy. My boys knew what they were doing. It’s all under control. My control,” Sandy said, poking an assortment of keys into the cell door lock.
Charlie the Crowbar got fed up. “Good old Charlie to the rescue,” Sandy said, watching the man pull a crowbar from his sleeve.
Dace could see all sorts of uses for this contraband tool. “Where d’you get that?” he asked, though it hurt to speak.
“Smuggled it out of upholstery workshop a long time ago,” Charlie said, wedging the crowbar between a couple of bars and prying with all his might. “It was bound to come in useful someday.” He grunted until a small crack in the old plaster above the bars appeared.
Somebody else took over then. They all had a go.
For once, Dace wasn’t much use. In an effort to conserve his energy, he had sunk back down to the floor. “Hurry,” he slurred, slumping forward.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait long. Chunks of plaster thudded down as two bars pulled loose. “The bennies help, man,” Sandy said with a grin. He slid in behind Dace and lifted him into his arms. Somebody else grabbed his feet.
Dace couldn’t remember the last time he felt so wasted. As far as he was concerned, Sandy’s boys could do whatever they wanted. Darkness came then, though he could still hear somebody screaming Fire!
Live, Dace, he whispered to himself. I want to go home.
When he woke on the damp floor of the Dome he was wet, either from dirty water or from his own sweat. He couldn’t tell. At first he thought he must have fallen, then some part of him recalled being lugged from his cell, an almost comatose man on a phantom stretcher.
He flexed his limbs, relieved to feel nothing was broken, and looked at the ceiling. It looked dark, but the Joint was always dark, night and day. Hooded faces loomed above him. Judgement Day, he thought. Sandy McAllister and the beefy guy they called Charlie were still there. Who were the other clods?
“Look,” somebody said. “I see eyes. He’s coming ‘round. I thought for sure he was a goner.”
“Yeah, I see ‘em,” said another voice, chuckling. “Except they keep rolling back up into his head.”
“Too fuckin’ tough, man.”
“He should have come with us last night,” somebody else said.
“Yeah, well, who the hell’s gonna mess with him?”
“Maybe he’ll stick with us now.”
“What’s happening, man?” Dace managed to ask. Why had he been saved? For what purpose? His eyes burned and his throat was parched. Rubbing his eyes with his numb hands, he tried to make sense of the sheeted figures around him, but it was like waking up in a recovery room with masked doctors all around. Or a clutch of jackrabbits from the Klan. Jesus Christ. Just what he needed!
“Ah, we’re just having a little fun, Dace. One little, two little, three little piggies … We’ve got six little piggies holed up in that big old heating duct on the first floor.”
And the wolf is at their door. Pain shot through his chest as he fought for a single, uncomplicated breath. Breathe, breathe, breathe, he recited. Christ. What if his lungs imploded? He’d read how people rescued from fires died later, their skin unblemished, their lungs a blackened mess.
Goddammit. I’ve been reading too much, he thought, momentarily forgetting that for the past six months, he hadn’t had anything else to do besides read. He liked books all right, but the library was no place for somebody like him. A man could go crazy knowing too much. His unschooled father had done quite well for himself.
“Are you nuts?” he sputtered.
“The creeps are okay,” somebody said with a laugh. “And ain’t they just the cutest little mother fuckers, all dolled up in our monkey suits?”
“You’ve dressed the guards in prison uniforms?” Dace’s smile stretched over his chattering teeth. Back off, he felt like snarling. “Real smart, guys,” he said instead. “They’re safer that way. You want some leverage, right?”
“Nah, we just wanna play with them. That Saksun guy’s a lot of fun.”
“What about your costumes? Did you raid the laundry or what?”
“Ah, we’re just playing dress-up, Dace. C’mon, wake up, you crazy mother fucker! You’ve already missed one hell of a party. Oh, shit, look at that. Some jackass spilled the hooch. Probably the last. We busted into Doc’s place too, but the bennies are gone now, man, they’re all gone.”
Dace folded his hands across his chest and crossed his feet at the ankles. He still wore his St. Christopher medal around his neck. His mother had given it to him. He recalled when—
Shit. His mind was wandering. He probably looked like a corpse lying there, but he didn’t care. Storm clouds scuttled across the skylight, far above him. He used to like being outside on a stormy day. That was when he’d had some sort of control over what happened to him. Or at least he’d had that illusion.
Christ, he couldn’t keep coughing. His audience was scattering. The minute he caught his breath, he choked to the diehards at his side, needing more information. “So talk to me. Why should I get up? What’s in it for me?”
Sandy McAllister was happy to oblige. Watching his rescuer, Dace briefly considered joining him. Sandy could be very convincing. With piercing blue eyes lighting his sincerity, he spoke for several moments about revolution and change. Then his rhetoric slipped.
“It comes down to this. We need a tough guy, man,” he said, reaching down and almost jabbing his long finger up Dace’s nose. “And that’s you, my fine, stalwart friend! We got crazies on the loose now. Look at Charlie. There’s no telling what he’d do with that crowbar if we let him. And the borderline nuts are cracking, too. They won’t leave the mother fucking hostages alone. Big Joe and his friends are threatening
to take the screws upstairs and toss them over the rail to the sharkies below. You’ve gotta watch crazies. You know that. Last night they had one of the screws hanging over a railing, screaming like a banshee. Sorta funny, but …”
Funny, right. Everybody’s crazy except me, Dace thought, allowing Sandy to yank him into a sitting position.
“Nah, I don’t have to do nothing,” he said. “What’s happening, anyway? Where’s the man? Are none of them inside?”
Nobody answered. Two of the younger men, teenagers really, stepped out of the circle and brandished their makeshift weapons at each other instead.
Swell, Dace thought. A couple of kids. And the rest of Sandy’s followers? No doubt the rescuers were the cons with the biggest balls, the solids or the more aggressive prisoners: various assailants and bank robbers, the heartbeat of his prison world. The ones on paper who were the most like him. He sensed only a solid could have instigated a riot, egged on by the larger circle of thieves and robbers. A chill passed over him as he recalled how he’d almost bragged to Liza about being a solid. He had never expected to end up like this: a reluctant rebel of sorts. What the hell would she think?
At least the solids were predictable. Their sneakier associates were not. The sneaks were probably busting walls or tunnelling through heating ducts right now, trying to sniff out contraband: alcohol, coffee, cigarettes, girly magazines, prescription drugs and maybe even some cash. Whatever was going.
His chest tightened. He was in a corner, all right. A place where a man was apt to chew his leg off if he got caught. For as often as he told himself to be careful, he had always loved excitement. He hated what being careful got him.
From the Chrysalis: a novel Page 12