We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night

by Joel Thomas Hynes

  Standin here lookin at them gulls circling, scavenging rich mainlanders’ garbage bins, and you wanna fucken shoot em all. Remind you of home in a different way, before they told us we couldnt catch a fucken fish no more. When there was money on the go, good work on the go, and people seemed settled and content. Not what came after, after even the gulls fucked off—fucken misery. Whole other level to the booze. Like the whole town shifted overnight. And then there’s nothing to do, no way to scrounge up a dollar. Johnny, since he was nine years old, never short a pocketful of change, always with twenty or thirty dollars tucked away somewhere. Knew his way around a skiff better than he did his own bedroom. Take a fish and bleed it out, gut it, fillet it, cut the tongue, ears, sound, sculps, cheeks, napes, whatever bit someone was lookin for. Want them fillets skinned and boned? Not a fucken problem. And then nothing. Nothing to do, no way to make a bit of money, all this stuff that youre good at, fast at, and it’s no fucken good to you. So what do you do? You starts kicking up shit, robbing stuff, scamming. Crawlin in through windows lookin for booze, lookin for anything small enough not to be missed that can sell for a quick dollar.

  Scavenging.

  Like them bastard gulls.

  How else?

  Kingston Pen, there you have it. The Big House. Oldest, meanest, dirtiest slammer in the country. No fucken thank you. National Historic Site says the sign on the front wall. That’s how old the place is. A National Historic Site. And they complains about HMP back home. And look at the likes of the ones youd be banged up with too, that bigshot army fella who went around wearing women’s drawers while he was rubbing shoulders with the Queen, what’s his face, and Bernardo, another fucken wackjob, then that twisted old kiddy killer from out west who went around screwing and slaughtering youngsters, fucken Olson, crazy old Clifford. He was fucken burnt. Heard he was in KP too. And them’re only the famous ones. The rest of the pop is made up of the hardest, most vicious, rabid motherfuckers in the country. Hell’s Angels. Real skinheads. And my old man amongst em. My old man in there now these years for something he never even fucken done. And still holding his own, no doubt. Chin up. I mean, not likely that he’s running the show or nothing, but I’d say he’s bloody well holding his own.

  Here Johnny finds himself shifting around, tippy-toeing outside what looks to be the main gates, lookin for the buzzer or call box or some sorta sign directing visitors where to go. Nothing. Concrete. Razor wire. Half expected to see armed guards strutting their stuff. No. All cameras these days. Johnny about to start shouting and slapping at the big iron gate when he suddenly remembers the backpack full of weed slung over his shoulder. That’s one sure way of gettin in Johnny. Them boys back on the bridge, they’d get some kick outta this. Fucken dunce.

  Johnny stashes the backpack behind some bins outside the entrance to a prison museum directly across the road. Imagine that, a fucken prison museum. Next he’s inside, in the squat churchy lobby that stinks of some sort of cleaner, ready to rip the living shit out of a battered phone book dangling from a pay phone when some nerdy pimply-faced student type sidles up and asks if there’s something he can help with, something he can do. I turns and looks at him and he nearly goes arse over tits tryna put a bit of distance between us. He reaches out for the wall to steady himself. Forgot about me snarled up face.

  Yeah, I’m lookin for the number for the main desk across the road there, the Pen.

  Excuse me?

  But I dont bother repeating meself. I lets my request hang in the air for a few seconds until it penetrates his thick skull. Finally he goes:

  You mean the prison?

  Yeah. What’s it under?

  I . . . I dont know . . . I guess it’s . . .

  You works right across the street in a prison museum and you dont know how to get in touch with the crowd across the way? Christ man.

  We . . . we’re not affiliated . . . we’re . . . but it’s probably under government, in the blue pages, here, let me look.

  No time flat Johnny’s little student helper got the number wrote down on back of a museum brochure and even got Johnny hooked up with a quarter to make the call. None too shabby. Johnny dials the number and drops the quarter in the slot and stands there listening to the options until he’s offered one about regular visiting hours and visitor information, number seven. He lets it ring and ring and ring and ring and ring until some crackly far-away voice says hello. Not Kingston Penitentiary or Hello, front desk or Visitor Information or nothing like that, just this gruff Hello. Like you could picture the guy splayed off on a couch watchin cartoons hoping the phone is gonna stop ringing.

  Yeah, hello.

  . . .

  Well, is this, is this Visitor Information?

  It is.

  Crackling, thin, faraway voice like I was making a phone call to another century or something. Right across the jeezly road.

  When are regular visitors’ hours?

  Not for another two hours.

  Okay. So . . .

  So?

  So, well, I’d like to arrange a visit. With a prisoner.

  Name?

  Me? Ahhh, Joh—ahhh Gallant, Gavin. People calls me . . .

  Is that your first or last name?

  Gallant is my last name and . . .

  Inmate’s name?

  . . .

  Inmate’s name?

  Puddester. Steve, or Steven.

  Nature of your relationship with the inmate?

  He’s me . . . he’s my biological father, I guess.

  You guess?

  Well he is, you know, but I never . . .

  Have you ever visited a federal penal institution in the past?

  No . . .

  Have you been sentenced to serve time in a federal correctional facility?

  No . . .

  Is the inmate expecting a visit from you at this time?

  No, he’s . . .

  Hold the line please.

  Johnny left scratching his nuts in the museum lobby while the line goes dead. Gavin’s licence. Spose if it worked with the fuzz back there a ways, who you knows now was fucken itching to haul me in, well there’s as much of a chance of slipping past the pencil-pushers at the visitors’ desk. Just as much of a chance. Christ, half nervous here. Coming all this way and hardly a thought to what I might wanna talk to him about. Let alone that, but why in the hell I wants to see him even? Like you cant shake the notion that you owes it to him or something Johnny. But why would you? Warrants and bags of weed and stolen ID and lookin like you do. Stuck out like a sore thumb in the bright midday mainland sunshine. Squeaky-clean streets, all this grass and trees and shit. Goggle-eyed old fuckers in their little eco-friendly cars slowing down gawking at you, wondering what in the name of Christ youre doing out walking along the road? A real live hitchhiker? What sort of abomination? No, it aint quite the grungy, fuck-it-all, rock and roll biker town they makes it out to be, is it? Young nerdy crater-face lurking in the hallway beyond the lobby, giving everything a sizing up, memorizing Johnny’s getup. Most excitement he’s had all fucken year—fella come in to make a phone call! What’s the word for all this Johnny? Con-spic-u-ous. And not only that, but you knows the stories, how fellas gets tracked down. How fast the word travels when it wants to. Fella gets jumped in Springhill and even the fucken skinners at HMP knows about it before the guards in Springhill do. Small little world. You knows goddamn well someone’s gonna find out you were here and no question it’ll get back to Shiner’s crowd. Assuming Shiner gives a sweet fuck. But you knows he do. Gotta save face. And what would you do if someone busted into your swanky skin pad, someone you knew and knocked around with, and demolished the place and then ran off with a wad of your cash? Dont say you wouldnt hold no grudge Johnny my son. So why bother showing your face here, of all places? Think Stevie the Scar is gonna . . . what? Approve of something? Give you some sort of nod? That you’ll get some kinda clearance out there? Father and son, at long, long last. Why? Just. Fuck. I do. I gotta see. Wha
t, are you supposed to go your whole life and not see? Pass through the same town and not try? Maybe this is one of them moments that everybody talks about. One of them points in a person’s life when things gets turned around, or things start unravelling a different way or whatever. One of them things you gotta do so nothing is ever the same after. Or maybe nothing comes of it. Who knows if even he’ll want to see me? Some feller he never heard of named Gallant who’s claiming to be his son for Christ sakes. Who knows? Maybe this is where I’m supposed to be right about now. Who the fuck knows what’s waiting out there, between here now and the other side of the country? How likely that I’ll be passing this way again? Unless it’s in handcuffs and I’m thirty thousand feet in the air. So who gives a shit? So what if I goes down anyhow? Johnny Keough. So what if they storms him at the gates and tackles him and slaps the cuffs on him? Not all that foreign now is it? So fucken what? What else do I know? Fuck it.

  Yes hello, Mr Gallant?

  This is not the same voice atall, this voice is all solemn and careful, in control, present, very present. Not the same line either, clear as day, the line now, no buzzing or humming or nothing. This might be not good Johnny.

  Yes?

  Yes Mr Gallant, it appears Mr Puddester is no longer with us . . .

  Dead? Holy shit man . . .

  No, no, he’s been transferred. Quite some time ago in fact.

  Transferred? Why? He was . . .

  Well I dont have that information before me, and it would be confidential regardless. Is there anything . . .

  Well . . . where was he transferred to?

  I’m not at liberty to disclose . . .

  Come on man . . . I’m just lookin to meet him. I never met him. I’m after comin a long . . . a long ways . . . You cant tell me where he’s at, where to look for him?

  Long pause on the other end and the line goes all muffled for a bit, distant underwater murmurs, and then he’s back on, the big dramatic submissive sigh, milking the moment, hey Johnny? Cause you gotta believe some of em are halfways human, at least on the administrative end.

  Mr Puddester was transferred to the Frontenac Institution about five years ago.

  What? Okay, well where . . . can you . . .

  It’s a minimum-security facility. Get on Bath Road. Not far.

  Minimum? That cant be . . . Bloody hell. Okay, well . . .

  Thank you for your call Mr Gallant, good luck.

  12

  Pickin through a second-hand clothes store, a Sally Ann on Bath Road, and Johnny finds a practically brand-new pair of army boots, perfect fit. Little gems, like Madonna called em. Walk into one of them dreary old thrift shops on Kenmount Road back home with Madonna and she’d walk out lookin like a fucken superstar. Johnny’s never been one for clothes and shit. But he knows a good pair of boots when he sees one. Aint worn army boots since he was thirteen. Make ya feel like stompin the shit out of something. Might as well go in for the pants too, considering the state of the ones he got on. Hauling on a heavy pair of washed-out army-green cargo pants and registers a pang of guilt or nostalgia or the rumbles of an old anger as he stuffs Pius’s suit pants into a garbage bin. Pius, God love the old bug-eyed fucker, on the news that time when all the TV cameras came to the Legion for some coalition thing, askin the fishermen what can be done to keep the bottom from falling out of it all. Pius in the very suit, roaring about how Newfoundlanders are supposed to be a gentle people, and how maybe it’s time we showed em a different side of ourselves, cause sure as there’s shit in a cat no one’s gonna do the fighting for us. The crowd in the old Legion cheering Pius on. Young Johnny lookin back and forth between the proud and passionate fisherman on the TV and the red-faced, drunken, far from gentle lummox sat on the couch across from him and Johnny thinks I hopes it all goes under, I hope we all starves. Phone ringing off the hook that evening, all hands from up and down the Shore praising Pius to the high heavens for tellin it like it is. Johnny too young to grasp the politics, bewildered somewhat by all the recent chest-thumping around town. Everywhere you turned it was like something was gonna happen, like someone was gonna take action. Johnny just about old enough to know that no one ever would. Watchin Pius that evening while he grumbled into the phone, something about how the lot of em should storm the Confederation Building, hearing in his voice that no one ever would. And in that moment, listening to Pius’s liquored bravado on the phone with his mates, in that very moment, all Johnny’s boyhood fears of Pius’s loose moods and looser fists, and despite the fact that he wouldnt be old enough to really swing his own fists for a while yet, all those fears fall to the wayside. Pius, a couple of weeks later, walloping Johnny across the backs of the legs with a busted work boot, and Johnny standing and taking it, not a flinch, not a peep, watchin it all from somewhere up above, observing the onslaught from up in the farthest corner of the room. Pius, God love his woolly socks, wheezing and panting, waiting for Johnny to start in with his telltale snivelling and pleading. Johnny after being caught down on the wharf with a load of grub, Pepsi and chips and canned sausages, robbed out of the cabin of the Ledwells’ longliner. Pius finally slackening off with the boot long enough to catch his breath, askin Johnny if he’s ever gonna do it again. Johnny crumpled on the porch floor, the backs of his knees and thighs throbbing numb and swollen, lookin straight into Pius’s bloodshot eyes and sayin Yeah, more than likely.

  Three stinking blistered hours on the road tryna beat in them army boots until Johnny’s finally outside the main gates to the Frontenac Jail in the rancid muggy mainland evening. Minimum security. You dont even wanna think about what that means, the why. Like why would some hardass bastard like Steve Puddester, in for a life jolt, get transferred to some country club on the edge of town? It dont make no sense and you dont wanna think about it Johnny. Cause it certainly aint the kind of benefits you gets from leaning on a guard. Some heavy-duty paperwork tangled up in all that, a transfer. And if he sold someone down the river, which is fucken impossible, well he’d go into PC or get sent off to a super-max like Renous. Cause once they tags you a dangerous offender there’s not much chance of gettin out from under it. Ever.

  Johnny thumbs the buzzer at the front gates. The voice on the other end cackles back that visiting hours are over for the day. Come back ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Who is it youre wanting to visit? Steve Puddester. Nature of relationship? I’m his son.

  Sun going down and Johnny so dead tired on his feet, sitting on a stump next to a burnt-out Ford tucked into the woods behind the prison. Could walk back into town and snatch up a hotel room or something, but the money is gettin low. And the town makes him half paranoid anyhow. Nine fucken prisons in this town, and other than gettin a gawk at Stevie in the morning, well Johnny wants fuck all to do with a mainland jail. Half afraid to hit the road again for fear of that copper spotting him too. And he got that strange look, from the old gal at the second-hand place, she looked too close. How some people sees you but they really dont, and then there’s the ones who fucken sees right through you. Well that old girl was somewhere in between, and Johnny couldnt tell if she was simply eyeing him for the stranger that he was or tryna figure whether or not he already had them pants on when he walked in. Musta took her ten minutes to ring the boots in. Kept mucking up the register. Distracted wasnt she Johnny? Tryna sort out whether she recognized the pants. She was on to something, that’s for sure. Like she could smell Johnny’s past. And sure how hard is it to go back through the security cameras and check and see? Flip back through and there’s Johnny walking in in the grey suit pants and walking out with the army pants on. And then call the cops with his description, right? And then what, he walks the road lookin for a place to stay? And for fuck sakes Johnny the pants were something like seven measly dollars. And why the pants when the boots woulda been way fucken easier. Christ man. Why take the risk, here and now? Are ya stunned? You still got three hundred bucks in the wad for Christ sakes. But I dont know, I dont know. I was after opening the urn. Standin
in some parking lot after I left that museum, and whatever came over me I whipped out the urn and took the top off. And I realized it was hangin over me all the while, the thought of lookin inside it, of touching what Madonna’s been reduced to. And it’s not like youd think it’d be either. You think of stove ashes or cigarette ashes, all smooth and even, dusty and silky. But that’s not what Madonna is like. She’s grittier, lumpy. Little bits, pebbles of bone. It’s more like gravel than ash. Johnny let about an ounce sift through his fingers and then a slight gust of wind took some out of his palm so he put the cover back on cause he was pretty sure Madonna had no desire to hang around these parts any more than he did. And then he’s in that shop, that second-hand shop, and it’s like she’s there with him or something, and he wants to show off or he’s not thinkin on his own, or like she’s goading him on, the grey-brown dust of her under his fingernails keeping a lookout while Johnny comes out of the change room and stuffs Pius’s pants into the garbage. All the shoplifting they did. Going into the mall or Sobey’s or Shoppers with duffle bags and coming home with em chock full, dumping them out on the bed and sorting through stuff neither one of them could hardly remember stealing. Madonna with whole honey-baked hams, pre-roasted chickens, hundreds of dollars’ worth of cologne and perfume, razors and makeup, jackets, jeans, books, videos, CDs. One time she even had a fucken DVD player from Canadian Tire. How in the hell she even got it in the bag was beyond Johnny. But then to walk around the shop lookin so casual, and walkin out without trippin the alarm? The fucken queen, she was. Sell off what we didnt want or need. One week she tucked away almost fifteen hundred bucks. Jesus. Until that time she got busted in Cash Converters, of all places, the pawn shop. Some gal’s engagement ring. Madonna leaning over the glass askin to see this one and that one, trying a couple on, then changing her mind and walking on in through the store, picking through the DVDs when she gets the tap on her shoulder from a uniformed RNC officer. Turns out the ring was the most expensive item in the entire shop. Go fucken figure that it caught Madonna’s eye. But she talked her way out of it somehow. She had the ring in her pocket. And gave it up right away and made like she’d forgot all about it being there. And here where she technically wasnt after leaving the shop, well she wasnt technically shoplifting then was she? The cop was young see, didnt know enough to wait for her to leave the premises. Madonna all embarrassed, then pouring on the outrage. Standin there so bold-faced, making the clerk feel like shit for calling the cops, making the cop feel lower than shit for trying to arrest her. Still barred from the store though, the two of us. Madonna was some pissed. But that was it for her and the five-finger discount all the same. She always said she’d go until she got caught, and near the end there, like I said with the DVD players and stuff, it’s like she was wanting to get caught. It’s what you hears about serial killers and them sorts, how they gets clumsy cause they wants to get caught. Like she couldnt handle the stress of it no more. Cause it is stressful, ripping shit off. I mean, it’s prolly not as stressful as serial killing, mind, but it wears you down all the same. Anyhow, that was it for the shoplifting spree.