Читать книгу Wildcat Screaming - Mudrooroo - Страница 7

Now I’m an old lag, moved up into the world, become an adult and made it to the main yard. No more little juvenile. Mummy, I’m a man.

I think so at least. Yeah, I am. From Cluny Boy to Freeo Man, nothing can make or break me. Do it standing on my head, if only, if only it wasn’t so long. Ten years and after, help! The screaming continues and continues in my head. No way out. Never been in the army like Old Clarrie. Where to get the strength? Cluny, the shooting of that copper. The screws have been treating me a little different from last time. With respect! I ain’t no small-time crim. I shot a cop. I’m violent and vicious, and someone to be reckoned with. Yeah, I am. So I slouch along beside the proudly marching Clarrie. He’s back under the command of his old serge major and seems to be enjoying it; but he’s only got six months. Anyone can do that standing on their head. Oh God!

A jangling of keys as the screw orders us to halt. He unlocks the big wooden door leading in to the main division where I’ll most likely be. Surprise! He hands us over to a screw, who hands Clarrie over to another screw, while he marches me along the division. Same old place, flagstones and three tiers of cells and the stupid wire netting stretching across the bottom from lowermost landing, right to left, to bounce off hurting objects from above. And you know what, you know what? My first time in here, the place looks huge, cavernous, now just small and dowdy, like, like a little old lady, like that old Queen Victoria who reigned when the place was built. I don’t wanta spend all my time in this old-fashioned dump. It smells of the suffering men inflict on men. It smells like, like an Institution. Yeah, an institution, a House of Correction. Home, man!

March along this length of hovel and reach an end door. Halt. Again the jangling of keys. Wooden door opens. Across a little space I am confronted by a metal grille. I know what it unlocks on—the New Block. So that’s where I’m going to live for who knows how long. Make it an eternity, you dig?

The New Block was built during the Second World War for soldiers and backs onto the women’s section. Never been in there, the New Block, you ninny, and why am I going in there now? Questions? No answers in boob. Just commands. You get marched this way, you get put there. You get work, a tobacco ration and even a few bob a day which you can spend on what they call luxury items, such as a tin of condensed milk. They also call them privileges and they can be taken away from you, if you so much as ask a question from a screw. Well, I learnt all that before. No big deal, huh?

I wait while he opens the door; march through when he tells me to; wait until he opens the grille; march through when he orders me to. Wait until another screw takes over. Wait as the first screw locks the grille behind me. The second screw takes me to his office. Wait outside while he fumbles and lip-reads through the paperwork ...

The New Block is a cube, you know, square like the heads of soldiers and thus unlike the dreariness and weariness I have just been marched along. Army and time has evolved beyond the old Victoriana. Only two tiers and no wire netting stretched across the bottom landing. The colour scheme is not whitewash lime but creamy nice. Somehow, it makes the place seem airy. The scream inside becomes bearable. The walls don’t press so much. The doors aren’t that black corrugated iron-sheeted narrowness, but in keeping with the colour scheme are creamy and of flat-sheeted metal. Lots of metal in this concrete block. Metal beams and metal struts and even a whole metal wall ...

The screw looks up and sees me eyeing the place, and growls somehow friendly-like: ‘Home, sweet home. You’re in max so make the most of it.’

‘Yeah,’ I venture, ‘just show me the way out.’

‘Got a lip on you, have you ?’ he threatens. ‘We run a nice quiet block here. Just don’t step outa line. Had one bloke here, you’re more or less taking his place, thought he wanted to go home. He did. Went to the main division to see the doctor, and then into the main yard. Clambered up and ran for the wall. Well, we warders are a kindly lot, got orders to fire, but to keep the first shot low, don’t want to lose one of you cons. So he got his balls shot off. Kept on running somehow, and what could the poor guard do, but shoot a little higher. That was when he lost his head and we got a vacancy. So thank him. You could do a lot worse, you know.’

He goes quiet, leaving me quizzical. I glance at him looking down at his paperwork. Well, I don’t wanta lose my balls, so I ain’t trying for any wall just yet. Must be other ways out ...

I like planning a job right down to the essential and even unessential details. That’s how to do it. So ignore the walls. Better ways outa here, and I’ve had all the time in the world to find them. Reception, that’s the weak spot in the defences. The police van comes and don’t stop long. The crims are delivered and it takes off and out. The reception block also contains the laundry and the showers. So I wait my chance. Once a week we go there for showers and get lost in the steam and if the screw likes the male bods, his eyes latch on to the one with the longest or fattest dick, thus leaving it wide-open for me to make my move. Make sure I get a shower close to him. The water pisses down, the steam rises and the screw’s eyes are fastened on that long dick. Time hisses along with the water. Soon he’ll turn the showers off. No sound of the police van pulling in. So what, I’ve got ‘the key’, if not this week, the next, or the next, or, or, or ... oh God! The motor! Sneak up on that screw. Put him to bye-byes with a king hit. Down like a log. Quickly, so quick that I catch his erection going down, I strip off his uniform coat, pants and boots. Pull them on. They fit enough. Unlock the door with his keys. Duck out. Lock the door behind me. This is my treat. Don’t want any other con along for the ride. The van is there. Very much the screw, I walk over to it. The back door is open. You might call it an open invitation, but I don’t accept. I duck under as it’s a big old Black Maria and wedge myself between axle and body. Tight fit, but this wild cat is slim. Back door slams; the motor starts: the van rolls to and through the gates. Out! Moving down the street, turning towards Perth. Wait until an intersection. Unwedge my bod. Let it down on to the road. Up and on my feet. Wildcat’s made it. Bloke in the car behind eyeballs me. I brush off my uniform, give him a wave and Wildcat is off and running free ... but he ain’t.

The big screw in the office languidly gets to his feet and reaches for his keys. ‘Guess you’ll be on light duties till that arm of yours heals,’ he growls. ‘Put you on cleaning till then.’ He lumbers out and marches off as if he’s on a parade ground. He expects me to follow and I do. He goes to a cell across the way, opens the door and shows what is a large room compared to the cells in the older part. There is one catch. Someone’s sharing the peter. ‘This ain’t the Ritz,’ he growls, interpreting my look. ‘Space is at a premium now, and so you’re to share this cell with our librarian. One of your mob, a murderer, so you’ll be nice and cosy in here. Maybe you’ll take each other out and save the state your upkeep.’

I gawk at him. He gets annoyed, shoves me in, then locks the door with that old familiar sound of jangling keys and the clunk, clunk as the door is double locked. I stand there just feeling the scream building up inside again. Then the peephole in the door swings open and the screw eye appears to glare, to gloat, as he informs me: ‘This is where that bloke who decided to check out permanently lived. He crossed your cell-mate, created a ruckus, so take this as a friendly warning of what happens to little pricks who think it grows longer when they shoot a cop. Don’t get on the wrong side of Singh. Him and the Chief Warder were in the Indian Army together. The Chief a major, him a subedhar, or something like. that. He loved that Indian Army and his men. Same thing here ...’ and then his eye and voice are gone leaving me on my lonesome.

Stand there. The screaming in my mind goes on and on. At last, it lowers to a level I can stand. I go to stretch my arms out full length and my mouth shrieks in pain. Forgot about that bloody broken arm. Nursing it, I turn and survey my home. Big cell. Big enough to hold two bunks with space between for a small table, single, with a bolted stool in front of it on which of all things is a neat little cushion. Think about plonking my bod on it, but hesitate. Someone else’s territory? I remember what the screw said. Better be cautious. Examine the window instead. High and narrow, difficult to get up to peer out. In my last cell, I unscrewed the table, and so could lug it to the window, stand on it and stare out to the sea.

There in the distance over the roof tops, it lies glimmering in the moonlight, like the back of some fabulous huge serpent. It helps me to do my time. I fall in love with it, and when I get out, I make a beeline for the beach to say hello to that old serpent. Well, something like that, and there is this girl there. We get to talking and I get to look over her curves. She’s something out of Carter Brown. Al Wheeler eyes her, running his insolent eyes along her long slim legs, the flat stomach, the overabundant curves of her breasts. He puts a smirk on his face, and sooner or later he gets what he wants. But Wheeler is a Lieutenant of Police, and what am I, but some little brown-skin ex-con not even knowing how to be on the make ... Oh hell, can’t even see the sea from this cell. I end up watching my reflection in the polished floor. I turn my attention to the two lockers at the foot of the bunks and I notice a strange thing. One of them has a padlock on it. One of those things with a combination lock so that you can’t pick it easily. Well, that’s the theory; but usually they’re so badly made that you can snap them open with a jerk. I try, but this lock seems better made than others. I twirl the numbers trying for the right combination. No go. Then it hits me. A lock on a con’s locker. Who is this con? What did the screw say: a friend of the Chief Warder and ex-Indian Army? Christ, I don’t know. Best to let things roll. I eye the bunks. My God, one has sheets beneath the blankets. We don’t get sheets in boob. Is this, what did that screw say, the Ritz? Suppose that’s some kind of hotel. This little Nyoongah is only nineteen years old and never been out of West Aussie, so how could he know after fucking up his chances of making it to the east. The only Ritz he knows is a cafe on Wellington Street and there’s nothing posh about that greasy spoon. Well, I’ll just have to wait until the bloke comes. The other bunk with the folded blanket must be mine. I stretch out on it and pass the time crying to think of some girl I like. Denise was always a gas. Man, she had something going for me too.