Marching Powder

by Rusty Young

  The major paused for a moment, considering what to do.

  ‘This prisoner is sick,’ he announced, standing up to his full height. ‘Call for a doctor.’

  ‘I already have, major,’ said the sergeant, cowering.

  ‘Well, then, what are all these prisoners doing in here? Get them out of my sight.’ When the sergeant had his back turned, the major pointed to Chino and Chapako and said, ‘You and you, fix this other problem here.’ He meant the door.

  Samir had got away with it. Luckily, that major was one of the men he stole cars for. The next time, however, Samir wasn’t so lucky.

  42

  TORMENTA

  Samir was sick all morning, but by the afternoon he was well enough to make it out into the exercise yard. As before, we were sitting together on the benches against the wall, although this time feeling tired and hungover rather than happy. The sunlight was as bright as it had been the previous day, but the air had turned cold and dark storm clouds were beginning to form on the horizon. The first thing on Samir’s mind was organising another party.

  ‘Thomas, we need more cocaine,’ he stated loudly, not even using code. I shook my head and told him that I was too sick. They could get someone else to do it. ‘But you have to,’ he insisted. ‘We’re having a celebration.’

  ‘I can’t get any.’

  ‘You’re a liar, Thomas. And I know there’s some left. Anyway, you’ve got no choice,’ he said over his shoulder as he walked back into the cell block. ‘You have to join me.’

  ‘Why is that?’ I called after him.

  ‘Because it’s my farewell party.’

  As the guards were locking us back in our cells, there was a distant rumbling of thunder from the direction of the mountains and I heard the first drops of rain falling on the metal roof. I lay down on my bed, relieved that I could get some more sleep. Immediately, I noticed there was something hard underneath the mattress. I lifted it up to reveal ten cans of beer. Samir!

  I ran to the door and looked through the flap, hoping that one of the others might still be out of his cell and could help me get rid of them. The corridor was empty. Everyone had been locked up.

  ‘Samir!’ I called. I heard laughter. ‘You bastard.’

  The others were at their doors too, wondering what was going on. They had discovered similar presents hidden in their cells. The loud hissing of a beer can being opened and shaken everywhere could be heard.

  ‘Cheers, my friends,’ laughed Samir, spraying beer out into the corridor. ‘Let’s celebrate. It’s my last night in prison.’ He clinked his can against the metal door.

  There was more thunder, this time very loud and very close. The type of thunder that cracks all around you and then comes up through the floor and shakes the whole building. The storm had begun in earnest. It was the perfect night for an escape.

  After the next thunderclap, it began raining properly. La Paz was built in a valley with its main road running over the top of a river. For most of the year, the river was dry. However, when there was a tormenta – a big storm – it could last for days and water in the streets sometimes built up to flood levels, washing away everything in its path, including people and cars. It seemed that this was going to be one of those storms. The flashes of lightning outside were so bright that they lit up the corridor inside our cell block. Water began pouring in streams from the roof, filling the exercise yard and sending a small trickle into the building.

  And as the rain poured down, we began to party again. We had to party. We couldn’t call the guards claiming that we all desperately needed to use the toilet. Besides, it would have been impossible for even one of us to hide ten full beer cans under his clothing. Our only hope of not getting caught was to empty the cans, crush them and pray that we could get them past the guards again in the morning. We couldn’t tip the beer into our urine buckets because they would smell of beer. So, there was no other choice: we had to drink the evidence.

  None of us were in the same room, except for the Velascos. We had a series of individual parties going on, with each person standing at his door, drinking on his own, and yelling into the darkness in order to be heard above the howling wind and the sound of the rain pounding on the metal roof. It was a crazy night from the very beginning, but it got crazier with the storm. And Samir got crazier with it.

  Samir was like a caged animal, strong and proud and full of energy. He didn’t really understand things. He didn’t know why he was locked up or what he had to do to get out of it, or even where he would go if he did. But he wouldn’t sit still and wait for them to open the cage – he wanted to get away from the thunder. Every time it cracked around us, he went into long periods of silence, pacing up and down. These were followed by fits of screaming, when he kicked and punched at the door.

  As the night wore on, Samir became louder and louder. It wasn’t long before he was drunk and yelling abuse through his window. And as he became noisier, the rest of us quietened down, worried that the guards would hear something. They hadn’t come for their midnight patrol yet.

  ‘Thomas, I need cocaine!’ Samir screamed. I pretended not to hear him, but he knew I was listening. ‘Throw it to me or I’m coming to get it!’

  The major should have made Samir change cells that morning. His cell door had already been bent back once, so it was even easier for him to get out the second time. In a few seconds flat, he was at my door, pounding on it.

  ‘I haven’t got any,’ I told him. ‘Go back to your cell. They’ll kill you.’ The guards were due any minute. If they found Samir out of his cell, we would all be busted for sure. I knew that Chapako, who was in the cell closest to the guard post, was listening out for them, but there was no way that he would hear them coming with the wind howling so loudly through the cell block.

  ‘Come on, brother,’ Samir pleaded. ‘Look, I brought you some more beers. We’ll swap. Just a little bit.’

  ‘I don’t want any more beer,’ I said, grabbing hold of my window flap in case he tried to force them on me. I didn’t give him any cocaine either, because it would have made him worse. Samir didn’t give up. There was absolutely nothing I could do to make him go back to his cell. He was drunk and would have stayed there all night, arguing with me, so eventually, I closed the door flap and lay back down on my bed, hoping that if I ignored him, he would go away.

  He didn’t, though. He stood at my door yelling at me to give him the cocaine. It was hard to know whether to stay quiet or try to reason with him, because the longer I didn’t answer him, the more violent he became. He began smashing my door with his fists, again and again, chanting like a child at the top of his voice, ‘Cocaína, cocaína. Yo quiero cocaína.’

  Then suddenly, his tantrum stopped. I sat up in bed and listened intently. All I could hear was the sound of the storm raging outside. There was also a leak somewhere in my roof that was dripping water onto the floor. I hoped that Samir had gone away, but I doubted it. He was up to something.

  I went to my door to have a look. The corridor was empty, but I knew Samir – he didn’t give up like that. Suddenly, I heard a scraping sound and looked down. Samir’s fingers were poking under the door, trying to get a grip around it.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You’re my brother, Thomas. You’re coming with me,’ he declared, his voice straining as he tried to bend the door back.

  ‘No. It’s too dangerous.’ I struggled to slide his fingers off, but they were locked on. ‘Quick, Samir,’ I hissed. ‘The guards are coming.’ But it didn’t work.

  ‘I don’t care about the guards!’ he yelled back. ‘We’re leaving.’

  Finally, I managed to unhook his fingers, but then they reappeared further along the door. I prised them off again and then blocked the gap with my feet. That didn’t stop him, however, because I could only cover part of it.

  We struggled like that for a few minutes; me pushing his fingers off, then him sneaking them under again. It would have been comical, if it
wasn’t so serious, two grown men on either side of a locked door, finger wrestling through the gap underneath. But the guards could come at any moment, and when they found Samir trying to rip my door open, not only would they find the beers, but we would also both be busted for trying to escape.

  ‘Aaargh!’ Samir cried out, as I trod down on his fingers and kept my weight on them.

  ‘Do you promise to stop?’ I hissed through the flap.

  ‘Get off me. Aaargh!’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘OK, OK, I promise.’ But as soon as I released him, Samir flew into a rage again, and started kicking my door, over and over. The metal reinforcements held strong, but the sound reverberated down the corridor. The guards must have been able to hear it, even above the noise of the storm. He kicked harder and harder until the door was dented and the whole frame shook, sprinkling concrete dust over me and onto the floor.

  ‘¡Samir, basta! I’ll give you the coke. You can have it all.’ He stopped kicking. ‘Here, take these,’ I said, holding the empty cans wrapped in a plain T-shirt up to the flap. ‘Get rid of them and I’ll give you the stuff.’

  ‘Give it to me first!’ he shouted, banging his fist against the metal again. More chunks of concrete fell on my head. I thought I heard a door opening and closing out in the exercise yard, but I kept my nerve.

  ‘No. Throw these out first. Then I’ll give you all the stuff,’ I said, squeezing the bundle through the flap. Samir took it and then put his hand through for the coke. I gave him the whole lot.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?’ he asked, changing back to his normal tone of voice.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘English coward,’ he muttered, then turned and walked down the cell block, banging at each door and trying to persuade its occupant to escape with him. The others pretended to be asleep.

  ‘You’re all cowards!’ he yelled at the top of his lungs, before heading off to escape.

  Even though the storm was in full force, I could hear Samir throwing things around in the kitchen again. He was smashing bottles and singing something at the top of his voice in Portuguese that sounded like a national anthem. Then I heard him jumping about on the bathroom roof. There was nothing more that I could do. I cleaned up the mess around my door, drank some water and chewed my last piece of gum. Then I lay in bed, wondering when the guards were going to come and what they would do when they found Samir trying to climb the wall.

  I kept listening, but I didn’t hear anything more after that – only the rain pelting down against the metal roof and the doors rattling as the wind sent blasts of cold air along the corridor. I figured that Samir had given up and crawled back into his cell. But he hadn’t. He was still out there, trying to escape. The only thing that saved him from getting caught straight away was the weather. It was so cold and wet that night, that the guards decided not to leave their station for their regular patrol. The exercise yard they had to cross was ankle-deep in water. They didn’t come to check on us until morning, but when they did come, we knew about it.

  I was awoken by a heavy blow to the chest. The storm had almost completely died out, but I hadn’t even heard them come in.

  ‘Get up!’

  A guard struck me again with a wooden baton. I put my arms up instinctively to protect my face and the stick cracked loudly across my forearms.

  ‘Get up. Against the wall! Now!’

  I did exactly as I was told as fast as I could. There were two guards, and one of them sounded familiar, but I hadn’t had time to look at their faces.

  ‘Face the wall!’

  I clasped my hands behind my head and pressed my forehead against the bricks. That way, if they struck me from behind, my nose wouldn’t break.

  ‘Now, don’t move.’

  I heard one of the guards leave, while the other one began sifting through my possessions, turning my clothes inside out and then throwing them across the room. It was obvious that they had discovered that the seventh cell had been broken into. In the corridor, I could hear the other inmates being searched and then herded out of their cells and into the exercise yard.

  ‘Out. Get out! Outside! Now!’

  The guard in my cell stopped his search and stood to attention when a man wearing heavy boots came to the door. ‘Nothing on this one, major,’ he reported.

  ‘Are you sure?’ The voice belonged to a different major from the previous day, the one they called the ‘Devil Major’. He was the cruellest of the officers at San Pedro. He had cold green eyes and he never smiled. Whenever he walked past, prisoners became nervous, even if they weren’t doing anything wrong.

  ‘Nothing. I searched everything twice.’

  The Devil Major stepped slowly into the room. I could feel him right behind me and hear his breathing. I braced myself for another blow, but it didn’t come.

  ‘Inglés, tell me what happened here last night.’

  ‘I don’t know, major. I promise.’

  ‘Who was involved in the escape?’

  ‘I was asleep, major.’

  He asked a few more questions. Each time, I kept my answers short and polite, not wanting to give him any excuse to hit me.

  ‘Turn around, inglés,’ he ordered. Then, to the guard, ‘Smell his breath.’

  The guard stepped right up to my face and commanded, ‘Breathe out.’ He shook his head. ‘Nothing, major.’ He sounded disappointed. When he stepped back, I finally saw who it was. I knew that his voice was familiar. It was Pizza Boy.

  I was ordered to stay standing against the wall and they locked the door behind me when they left. Once the others were accounted for in the courtyard line-up, they were returned to their cells. No one was fed or let out for two days. Nothing more happened to me, except that they took away my television. The others were beaten for drinking, Samir to within an inch of his life for trying to escape as well.

  The first thing the guards had noticed in the morning were piles of sand and rock in the bathroom area. Initially, they probably thought the damage was caused by the storm, but when they saw that Samir’s door was bent open, they raised the alarm, thinking there had been a breakout. That was when the guards raced in and started beating us.

  But Samir hadn’t escaped. This time he had fashioned the planks of wood from his bed into a ladder, but still couldn’t make it over the wall, not even placing his ladder on the bathroom roof. Instead, he began burrowing through the wall, using only a knife and spoon he had stolen from the human rights lunch. There were two walls. Somehow, he had made a small hole through the first wall, only to find that the gap between them was filled with sand, which started pouring out all over him and all over the roof. The hole got bigger and the sand didn’t stop flowing out. With all the weight piling up, the roof collapsed, crashing into the bathroom below and sending sand and debris flying everywhere. Samir made it back to his cell, where the guards found him in the morning, unconscious, with sand all through his hair and clothes.

  Since he was already in trouble for attempting to escape, Samir tried to take all the blame for the stolen contraband, saying that it was his birthday and he had convinced the others they had permission to celebrate with him. The major didn’t believe his story, but he punished him as if he did.

  Throughout the day, the police took it in shifts to beat Samir. Between turns, they let him rest, but then another group would come in and start. The first few times, Samir fought back, kicking and punching at anyone who came near him. I heard several cries from the police as he lashed out, all the time abusing and threatening them.

  ‘You bastards! I’ll call human rights.’

  The police laughed and kicked him harder. ‘They’ve already come.’

  Reinforcements arrived. Between them, they managed to pin him down properly and handcuff one of his hands to a water pipe that ran through the cell.

  ‘¡Hijos de putas! I’m going to write a letter to parliament telling them everything about the cars!’

  With only
one free hand, he was an easy target for the group of police. However, even with severe concussion, he didn’t give up. He still had the use of his legs and scored a few more kicks on them until the Devil Major returned with a plank of wood and smashed Samir’s teeth in. After that, the only screams came from Samir.

  Samir was tough and had a lot of determination, but the major was tough and had a plank of wood. He was going to teach him a lesson. Over a period of hours, they wore him down. Eventually, they broke him. And then, once he was broken, they kept going. His howls spread out into the punishment complex, piercing through the walls of La Grulla into the main prison sections. I blocked my ears, but I still heard his cries of agony. I have never heard such wrenching, blood-curdling screams in all my life. Slowly, very slowly, they were killing him. It was unbearable.

  ‘Enough! Please. No more!’ We pleaded, but they kept hitting him, each time until Samir was unconscious. Then they would revive him by spraying a fire extinguisher in his face. Eventually, he stopped screaming and began sobbing.

  ‘You want to cry, then?’ screamed the major.

  He threw a canister of tear gas into Samir’s room, closed the door and left. The canister was designed for use against street rioters. Indoors, the gas dispersed very slowly. When it reached my cell, I could hardly breathe. My lungs felt like they were on fire. I had to rinse my eyes and keep them closed for more than ten minutes to stop them from exploding. It must have been much worse for Samir. After the tear gas, we heard nothing more from him.

  ‘Samir! Talk to us! Are you alive? Just make a noise.’ We took it in turns to call out to him for more than half an hour, trying to get a response. Finally, we heard him moaning.

  ‘Samir! Are you OK?’ I yelled through my hatch. He didn’t answer, so I called again. Eventually, he managed a proper reply: ‘Thomas, they didn’t find the coke. We’ve still got the coke!’