“Look at us!” another shrieked, leering in Saksun’s terrified face. “We’re free! We’re free!”
From what Dace could see, several subgroups of prisoners controlled the living quarters in the cruciform. Those all appeared to be in a drug induced fool’s paradise. The outside yard was No-Man’s land. Fifty or so men were packed into the Dome in growling groups of four or five, like roving packs of dogs.
Although everybody figured the army was at the gates, their estimated entry time and choice of weaponry was still a matter of heated debate. Every time a shout went up, the rebels stampeded to the wall furthest from the broken gate, anticipating a tsunami of soldiers equipped with rubber hoses, truncheons or worse. Sometimes somebody shouted just for fun.
One end of the Dome, where the floor sloped down, was deep with filthy water, overflow from the broken toilets. When they reached this point, Saksun slipped and fell, his eyes rolling back in his head. An onlooker shouted, “Leave him, we’ll take care of him!” but young Saksun didn’t react. The other hostages took over and dragged him the rest of the way.
It concerned Dace that things were going relatively well. In his experience, when things got easy, it was time to watch out. Guards were wily. Their docility could be an act. On the other hand, the loss of their uniforms—a retributive tactic they themselves had employed many times before—could have contributed to their co-operation.
Had he been in one of their places, Dace would have been pondering his personal worth. It was in their own best interests for the Joint to negotiate for these guards, but he wondered if they would. Why negotiate for a guard who could easily be replaced when you could just throw him to the dogs? Sure, the public didn’t want them hurt, but what if there were a greater good?
From the moment Dace had entered the heating duct, he’d known the captives were no longer prison guards, they were just scared people. But the thought was so uncomfortable he’d pushed it away. They got as far as Cell Block B before Murray, the oldest and heaviest of the hostages, saw the stairs. “Where the fuck are we going?” he asked, massaging his left arm.
Dace didn’t hesitate. “Let’s go,” he shouted, taking the old guard’s arm and ordering everybody else ahead. “Haul Saksun’s ass upstairs.” He matched his steps to Saksun’s and Murray’s, hoping the old guy wouldn’t drop dead of a heart attack on the stairs. “It’s okay, Gramps. We’ll just take it easy,” he said.
After they got everybody upstairs, Big Alf and Steve boarded up the pass at the top of the stairs with a heap of mattresses and some busted metal cots.
“Now what?” Steve asked. He looked a little green but still seemed to be raring to go.
“Easy,” Dace said. “Our mission is to keep the hostages safe. How hard can that be?” he quipped. “Loony Tunes is our main threat. Sooner or later he’s gonna want his hostages back. You saw him.”
Big Alf didn’t see a problem, but then he never did. “Aw, Sandy’s crazy. He shouldn’t even be here. He belongs in Penetang.”
“He might be crazy, but he knows how valuable his hostages are,” Dace said, then shrugged. “He’ll definitely try to get them again. He assaulted a guard to get the key. That’s worth at least five more years in jail. Those screws were the only leverage he had.”
“Well, they’re our babies now.”
“You gotta take care of babies, though. Deliver these guys safely and we’ll have something to bargain with. Get them killed and the whole prison population is done for. The army will come in and shoot half of us in the head, while the rest … There’s a lot of guys here with nothing to lose. You get a twenty-five year stretch, what’s a few more?”
“Jesus,” Steve said, “Not me! They were talking about paroling me in three months.”
“Yeah, kid,” Dace replied, scaling their makeshift barrier and staring down the narrow staircase. “Me, too.”
Loony Tunes might come up with a couple of buddies at any moment, murder on their minds. A dark part of Dace almost wished he could be with them. “The stairs are too narrow. He and his buddies’ll have to come up one at a time,” he said, grinning at Big Alf and Steve. “I can’t wait. One kick, that’s all it’ll take.”
Little by little, the hostages settled in and everybody, Dace included, lost track of time. They were babysitters, inglorious babysitters, that’s all. For a while the hostages even got a second wind, almost garrulous with relief that they were still alive.
“More food,” they shouted.
“More smokes.”
And “Jesus fuck, it’s getting hot in here. What are you trying to do, roast us to death?”
“Ha, ha. Roast pig,” Big Alf joked.
Periodically one of them even took it into his head to try and talk sense into his captors or plead his own case. Murray’s heart was palpitating, or Saksun wanted to go home …
“I’m getting to know more about these bastards than I want to know,” Steve complained. “It’s like they’re regular people or something. I don’t like it.”
“Let me in there,” Big Alf said, flexing a length of torn cloth between his two great hands. “I know what to do.”
By the third day, every cell in Dace’s body was screaming to shut down. He saw stars when he yawned, but when it was his turn he still couldn’t sleep. Plenty of time for sleep later, he reminded himself, tightening a black bandana around his forehead to keep his eyes open.
Try as he might to convince himself that his job was as important as Rick had claimed, his euphoria was fading fast. He couldn’t get past the notion that his inmate police force was a bit of a joke. “Police force” implied members had competed for positions and undergone rigorous training, or at least pulled strings. “Police force” also suggested members might be in uniform. Dace’s team looked like they were auditioning for Moby Dick.
“Wake the fuck up,” he hissed through clenched teeth. Big Alf’s eyes were rolling back into his head. Christ, the guy looked stupid. All he had to do was watch the West stairs, one of three steel-edged staircases leading from different cell blocks.
It had been a mistake to take on a man over forty, but Alf had practically begged for the job. He was used to playing second fiddle in the banks he’d robbed and he didn’t mind doing the same thing now. He liked life on the edge. And he was strong enough—when he was awake.
“I’m not asleep, I’m not asleep,” he repeated, his bristly grey head bobbing up and down. He flicked his eyes towards Dace, then frowned. “Jesus, I was just checking for blood on the fucking stairs,” he said.
“Okay, okay, man,” Dace agreed.
Simmering down a little, Alf nodded at the cells. “It’s awfully quiet in there,” he said. “Do you think they’re all right?”
“Look at them. They’re just sitting at that little table playing cards. Kind like a bunch of old Greek guys in the park.”
Alf smirked. “Probably all tuckered out.”
At first the hostages had argued with each other, but they were playing euchre now and whispering too quietly for their captors to hear. Murray, who would have retired long ago if his youngest child weren’t wasting time in the Music Department at Maitland University, occasionally stopped shuffling cards and yelled something like,
“What are you punks trying to accomplish? Rick Lowery and his goddamn Inmate Committee be damned! Do you really think Ottawa’s going to cave in to your demands? What are your demands, anyway? Better food? You already eat better than most of us, that’s why you keep coming back! C’mon, you jokers, you can’t trust your buddies, you can’t trust the authorities, you can’t trust John Q. Public! Hell, most of you can’t even trust your own mothers!”
The instant he mentioned their mothers, two or three of the sentries bellowed back, “Shut the fuck up!” and he did for a while.
Dace had a bird’s eye view of everything happening below, but only if he leaned over the railing. Unfortunately, heights made him dizzy, something he’d found out the hard way when some German Shepherds had chase
d him up a tree years before. Which is also how he found out that trouble hatches in the most unlikely places. He could think almost fondly of it now. He’d learned a lot at that boarding school.
As for here, it looked like things were going okay in the main cell block. He couldn’t help wondering what was going on in Segregation, though. He kept hearing awful sounds. And what about Outside? If only he could be in two or three places at once. He weighed the steel bar in his hand. At least he was armed. He tossed the bar several times into the air, catching it with one hand.
The worst was keeping an eye on Big Alf and Steve. The more tired he got, the more irritated he felt about having to bribe, cajole and practically arm-wrestle the lazy buggers just to do their jobs. Not that he blamed them. They hated screws, they weren’t supposed to be guarding them, and they were all going to pay for it if anyone found out. And they would. In Dace’s bleakest moments he suspected he was a patsy, a traitor, and that he was taking everybody else down with him. Everybody except Rick. Jeez, Rick had better get his ass back here soon.
Christ. What’s that? He checked Steve’s post again. Nah, it was nothing. Just his imagination. Nothing could get up those stairs. Just in case, they’d strung a thin wire across the bottom of the hostages’ door. He prayed anyway, appealing to his dead mother, the Virgin Mary, and his cousin Liza that the whole goddamn mess would soon be over. Because if the hostages died, he’d die too, though he figured he was as good as dead anyway. Like he was trapped in a kind of European village infiltrated by informants and Nazi sympathizers, where men could be bought for almost nothing and often were.
Given half a chance, he’d trade a hostage for a cup of java and a fresh ham sandwich, even if the stupid bastards were starting to grow on him just a little. To say he was getting fond of them would be stretching the point, but he did feel sorry for them. That’s all. Even feeling that much bothered him. Maybe that’s what happened when you looked after someone, unless you were a Gestapo guard. Or maybe he was just too goddamn tired to think straight.
For the first time in his life, Dace wondered what the guards thought when they applied to work in a federal penitentiary. Had they wanted to protect the public at large? Did it make them feel morally superior to somebody else? Did they think having that kind of job justified treating men like scum? Had they really expected to earn a paycheque and go home to their families at night as if nothing bad ever happened? That they’d never have to pay for their sins? Well, maybe. A part of Dace still expected to go home when they got locked down at night. What am I doing here? Where and when am I going?
Enough of this. He rapped his steel bar on the iron railing. Several people looked up from the Dome and waved. He had to wake up, quit feeling sorry for the screws, with the possible exception of young Saksun. Careful, he cautioned himself again. It was much easier to think in black and white, like everybody else here did. Avoid the greys. Avoid the exceptions. Then again, as long as nobody found out what he was thinking, that was okay. As long as nobody learned he had supplied guards with his own cigarettes and blankets, and even asked young Steve to break into the canteen for extra chocolate bars, cigarettes, toothpaste and toothbrushes. How the hell would that look if anyone found out?
He was sick and tired of listening to Saksun blubber. If Rick still wanted to release him, a show of faith, Dace was game. The kid never shut the fuck up. Worse, after a while he started to look a bit like Dace’s little sister, except Rosie was a helluva lot smarter and braver. Too brave, Dace reminded himself. She was always using her infant charm to wheedle out of trouble or wriggle out of Father Danby’s hairy hands in that fucking school.
Said she couldn’t remember any of that stuff now. Good for her. Not that he wanted to go down that memory lane.
He rapped the railing again, but nobody looked up this time. Probably because some stupid fuck was screaming bloody murder as they hauled him across the floor of the Dome. Saksun was almost making as much noise. He couldn’t do much about the guy in the Dome, but …
He’d promised Rick on his mother’s grave that nothing would happen to the screws. But he swore, if Rick didn’t get his ass up here soon, he was going to put the boots to Saksun. So what if Saksun was the little bastard who’d let Sandy get the key, the guy who had set the whole goddamn bingo in motion? Let him go, please. Anything to stop the noise.
His head throbbed from the noise and lack of sleep. He rubbed it hard with his free hand and tried to reason with himself. Why hadn’t he left the hostages in the duct? Because they were like a bunch of hens with a fox at the door. And maybe because Rick was his friend and he owed him—a fact which was getting harder and harder to remember the longer the riot went on.
Saksun was still crying. “Here, take this,” Dace said, blatantly bribing him with the last Milky Way. The kid sniffled about seeing his new bride again as he licked the chocolate paper clean. Dace came real close to kicking him then. The rest of the hostages chimed in, claiming they were starving. Dace ignored them. They’d all had more than their fair share of food sent in from Outside.
Dace was also hungry, or would have been if he’d taken stock of his physical state instead of letting a little voice, still in touch with his old self, yap. Give ‘em what they want. Let ‘em out, let ‘em out, let ‘em out. That’ll shut ‘em all up. Dace smiled to himself, savouring the idea. One by one, right over the railing, plummeting to the cement floor four stories below. He wouldn’t have to worry about them then. If they didn’t croak on impact, some psycho would bop them off.
Tempted as he was, he headed back out and tested the mesh railing with his weight, although he was careful not to lean too far. At just under six feet, he was taller than most of the other cons. He figured they were all the stunted offspring of smokers who had suckled their children on bottled Coke if they fed them at all.
Jesus, what was taking Rick so long? He leaned over the rail again but couldn’t make out anybody with a red bandanna like Rick’s. Too much going on. The foyer entrance to the Joint was usually empty at this time of day, except for a janitorial prisoner dispiritedly dragging a stringy grey mop over the floor. The area was alive with rioters today, milling around like visitors at a country fair, most of them doped or punch drunk on the contraband substances they’d stashed or looted over the past few days.
At a distance of forty feet, equipped with nearly perfect vision, Dace could almost make out some of his fellow prisoners, although their faces blurred. He relied more on the way people walked to identify them. A group of guys were acting like stagehands, setting up chairs around the huge radiator which dominated the foyer. Maybe they were arguing about the placement of the chairs, a dozen or more, but he didn’t think so. He straightened up. Something about this didn’t look good.
Jesus, he didn’t have time for this, he thought, kicking the rail. He had two choices: stay and take care of the hostages or check out what was happening downstairs.
It was almost time to phone Rick again anyway. In addition to everything else, he had agreed to call him every half hour to report on the hostages. That’s how they were keeping the negotiating team informed. Too bad the closest black box was down a flight of stairs and around a corner. There were only a couple of wall phones in the penitentiary and the authorities had cut all but one of the lines. Fortunately they hadn’t gotten to them before quick thinking Rick had notified a local radio station about what was going on. The radio announcer was young and radical and on their side, so he had spread the news. He had also reassured everyone that the hostages were fine, buying them a chunk of time, or they’d be dust by now.
Shit. He had to get his act together. He was starting to fall asleep on his feet. Everything was happening in slow motion. He didn’t feel real. This was worse than the Hole, for God’s sake. The next time he looked over the rail, only five minutes had passed, but the crowd had shifted, opening up centre space in the Dome.
“Holy Mother.” He whistled through his teeth, noting the stage was set for somethi
ng that looked eerily like Musical Chairs. He remembered that game from when they’d played it at School when it was somebody’s birthday. The winner had merited the dubious pleasure of a walk in the bush with Father Danby. But that was long ago. Here today stood a dozen stacking chairs, their metal legs hobbled together with multi-coloured scarves, awaiting occupation by lottery. Who were the winners? Could he be one? For protecting the most hated group in prison: the guards?
The most hated. Well, not quite. Diddlers were more despised than the guards. Child molesters, stool pigeons. Dace was hard pressed to think of a prisoner who wasn’t busting to bag one.
He remembered Liza writing about a short story called The Lottery and was momentarily ashamed about how happy he felt, imagining other victims in his place. But shame was a luxury at the best of times and one he could ill afford today, so he made eye contact with his sentries again.
One by one, each man’s eyes assured him all’s well. Well, almost each man. Alf, the stupid fuck, was snoring on the job. And Steve was just a kid. Seventeen. He’d had a rough time until Dace had taken him under his wing. One of the queens had wanted him, but Steve hadn’t wanted the queen. Well, such was life. Steve had jumped three grades in the prison classroom and won a Rookie of the Year award just before they’d canned the athletics program. If he hadn’t been raised in a string of foster homes, he would have made some mother proud. Dace caught his eye and winked.
Neither Steve, nor any of the other sentries could know what was happening below. They were too far from the action. Better not to say anything. They were too easily distracted as it was. He checked his Timex again. Christ, where had the time gone? He had to phone Rick.
Bam, bam, bam! The hostages were thumping their feet. “One, two, three, four, we want the fuck outta here,” they chanted.
“Sure, guys.” Steve snickered. “Nice rhyme.”
He was oblivious to the extra set of hands which suddenly appeared behind his head.
From the Chrysalis: a novel Page 16