by Sam Millar
I couldn’t see JCB – I didn’t even know what he looked like, despite the fact that we had been next-door neighbours for years in the Block.
“Go ahead, JCB.”
“Okay …” He cleared his throat, drank a gulp of water, began. “There’s a black cowboy called White, and a white cowboy called Black …” He was laughing now, all paradox and irony.
A warm breeze played on my face, bringing with it forlorn memories of promises not quite kept. I could smell the sweaty attar of rotten apples and it made me think of school days and untouched, naked lunches housed secretly in desks. In the distance, a lawn mower droned across the expanse of grey brick and rusted wire. I could picture it slicing, shooting green needles skyward. Suddenly, it went quiet, leaving a steel period of nothing buzzing in my head. Not even this are we allowed, I thought, angrily. No outside sounds of normality. That, too, has become a luxury, a privilege.
“… and the stagecoach is carrying all this gold from Mister Silver’s mine …”
I was grateful for JCB’s interruption. His Derry voice had a pleasant, sonorous sound, and I found myself engrossed, drifting to the Old Wild West.
While JCB spoke, I failed to detect the soft kiss of shoe leather outside my cell …
“Anyway,” continued JCB, “the gun-slinger has only one arm. His name is Jack Handy …” He was laughing at his own wit.
… failed to detect the slick movement of a key being inserted in the lock …
“Nancy Campbell, the can-can dancer, loves Mister Silver. Can-can. Campbell. Get it, Sam?” He was giggling.
… didn’t feel the prickle of preying eyes on the back of my neck…
“The saloon owner is pissed because his girl – say ‘gal’, ’cause Cowboy’s fussy about authenticity – his gal, Nancy, has her azure eyes …”
Kabam!
I’ve experienced, like most people, various levels of pain, but I had never before experienced the degree of pain generated by a devastating left-hook to the kidneys, applied with such force that Ali or Foreman would have been proud. Ape Face had focused all two hundred and fifty pounds of his prodigious matter into that punch, lifting me from the ground a good two or three inches.
JCB, oblivious to what was happening next door, continued on with his book. “Ya all dig deep in tham thar pockats.” He was now Bad Luck McCrae, the unluckiest robber this side o’ the Mississippi. “No fancy moves, or ya all be dead …”
“Think youse are all hard men, don’t ye?” Ape Face hissed into my ear. “Not too hard now.” He squeezed his knee against my windpipe, as I lay doubled-up on the ground, my skinny, naked frame about to be smashed.
“The other partner, Fargo, owns the only well for miles …” continued JCB, halting for me to capture his pun. When I failed to respond, he said: “Fargo … wells. Get it? Wells Fargo …”
“See how easy it is?” said Ape Face. “Snap yer wee neck without a peep. Easy, isn’t it?”
There was little point in trying to answer. Anyway, his knee crushing my throat made that futile, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself by talking like a ventriloquist’s dummy. On my periphery, Desperate Dan, the biggest screw in the world, stood, eerily silent, a grey shadow blending seamlessly into the sepia swirls and whirls of shit that adhered to the walls. His head touched the ceiling, such was his size. He was the antithesis of Ape Face: stoic and taciturn.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, JCB had morphed into the persona of Bad Luck McCrae: “Sheriff, if ya think fer one minute yar takin’ me back to that hole ya call a jail, then yar as stupid as a two-tailed dog …”
Satiated, Ape Face came to the end of his workout, his enormous chest heaving at the effort. He left the cell without another word. Only the smell of sweat and fear remained.
“The two cowboys, Black and White, git on thar harses – say it just like that, Sam: git on thar harses – and ride into a blazing sunset of red,” finished JCB. A pregnant pause followed, waiting for my opinion to fill it. What he got, instead, was a visit from Ape Face and Desperate Dan.
Kabam! Kabam! Kabam! went JCB’s head against the wall, and for one terrible moment I thought he would come right through, saying: Looks like Ape Face didn’t like the ending!
Whack! Whack! Whack! It went on and on, a brutal madness. And may God forgive me, I was just glad it was no longer me.
About an hour later, my cellmate returned from Mass. Pacing the floor angrily, he began, “You’ll never believe what I heard about that cheating girlfriend of mine. Remember I told ye she went to Spain with her sisters?”
No, I didn’t remember. Nor did I want to. I could barely breathe with pain, and my kidneys were on fire. My nose felt squashed. Ribs smashed. I wanted to cry.
“Well, apparently she didn’t go with her sisters at all! No. I just heard that …”
He rambled on for twenty minutes, cursing his girl – or ex-girl – then took a nap, snoring like a pig. It wasn’t until later in the day he commented: “Are ye okay? Ye look a bit sick. Hey! Whaddya think about that girl of mine? Unfuckinbelievable!”
My sentiments exactly, I thought, as Cowboy shouted out the window, “Sam? JCB? All set for tonight, mates?”
Later that night, there was little sympathy for either JCB or myself when we told them of our ordeal at the hands of Ape Face and Desperate Dan. Stop whining. Dry yer eyes. My rendering of JCB’s book was a total disaster. Most of the men fell asleep. Even JCB moaned at my terrible puns, which had replaced his. Though, to be honest, he told me later that most of his moans came from the beating.
“It wasn’t that bad,” my cellmate said, seeing my despondency. “Could’ve been worse.”
The book? The beating? His girlfriend’s infidelity? I didn’t ask him to elaborate. Instead, I watched the night’s sky suddenly light up with slivers of electricity. Lightning scintillated the dark, giving the cell a silver hue. Rain started to invade the glass-less window.
“Look at that fuckin’ sky, will ye! It’s on fire!” my cellmate exclaimed, joining me at the window.
We squeezed our faces tight against the concrete bars, preventing most of the cell becoming waterlogged and allowing ourselves a de facto wash, which, technically, was cheating.
The sky’s canopy suddenly became raw, angry, unforgiving. It was the colour of chopped liver and purple ink set on fire, creating a circus; a carnival full of strange and beautiful creatures in gorgeous images of God’s own manic zoo. Raindrops, the size of frogspawn, trickled down our receptive faces as the glare of lightning transformed us into oblique, grinning phantoms of the opera. My cellmate’s greasy hair stuck to his forehead like a crown of hairy thorns. Beads of rain stained his face instead of blood.
Ach, God, You are true and wonderful, and thank You for this wet and beautiful night and washing some of this muck from our poor faces. But You don’t mind, do You, if I don’t fall to my knees in adoration?
As the pain in my kidneys shredded my insides, I asked God to allow the lightning to hit me, split me, engulf me with fire. I was wet enough. Good conductivity. Even my feet stood in small, vice-like puddles of stagnant water.
Go on. Do Your magic on me, God. Take me away from this madness. Hit me with one good bolt. Kill me where I stand.
But He didn’t. Instead, He let the rain mingle on my face and allowed me to remain a man among men. It was only then that I realised how sadistic He really was. He didn’t send you to Hell; simply granted you memory so that you could torture yourself, over and over again, for always.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Hospital, Tobacco And Vietnam
APRIL 1979
Man grows wise against his will.
Aeschylus
I am just going outside and may be some time.
Lawrence Oates, polar explorer. Last words in Scott’s Last Expedition
The beating from Ape Face actually ended up being perversely beneficial. After weeks of urinating burgundy-coloured blood out the door of the cell, the so-called doctors finall
y relented, sending me out to the military wing of Musgrave Park Hospital. I was quickly isolated in a room without a view, in case I should contaminate some other unfortunate being within the hospital.
The room was terrible: fresh linen, delicious food, lovely-looking nurses, TV, and all the books and newspapers I could consume. I doubted if my Blanket metabolism could withstand such an assault on the senses, but I decided to try and endure it for dear auld Mother Ireland.
There was little conversation between the nurses and myself, as they all came from loyalist areas and weren’t too shy in letting me know by their paradoxical silence. Still, I have to say, they treated me very well, considering the circumstances.
After the operation on my kidneys, I was introduced to Morpheus, the god of sleep. He came every night in the tube of a needle, carried by a fifteen-stone woman who could easily have beaten the best Russian wrestler. Each night she came, tossing me over like a rag doll, plunging the needle into my thigh, ignoring the raw stitches that snaked from my stomach to the top of my spine, lined like a map of Chile.
“This’ll make ye feel better,” she said, grinning, ignoring my teeth-clenched moans. “Be thankful it’s morphine.” She did a wicked wink, and tossed me again. I waited for the Half-Nelson, but it failed to materialise. “Good night,” she said, not meaning a word of it, and flicked off the light, leaving me to stare at “Vietnam: A Television History”.
My head was swirling. I could hear the gunships overhead and Tricky Dicky’s static voice talking about not being a crook and no surrender – or was it Big Ian’s? – somewhere from the Fields of Fire. As the pain eased, I floated to the ceiling in a haze of purple and blue, laughing.
Even in sleep I moved fraught with twitching nerves. In my mind I chased echoes forged in childhood; echoes of safe, familiar voices, smells and laughter. Now the same thoughts brought me back, draining me, lonesome beyond redemption.
My recuperation was shortened by the tremendous skills of the doctors in the hospital who, despite my protestations at the pain I was in, decided four days and not four weeks were warranted. Being a Blanket Man had nothing to do with my aborted stay, and Tricky Dicky still claimed innocence as I staggered from the room, in agony, handcuffed and flanked by four big peelers.
I returned to the Block at the pace of a reluctant snail, crouched over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. My stitches were like a corset covering my body, and my knuckles almost trailed the ground as I walked back up the wing. A voice shouted, “Sam’s back,” then a couple more joined in. Anyone else would have been asked for news, but the men knew better than to ask me. They still hadn’t forgiven me for lying about Christmas ’76.
“I suppose you don’t have any snout with ye?” came the solemn voice of Teapot, going through the motions, knowing it would be impossible for me to get anything from the high-security hospital. He repeated the question, and when I still hadn’t answered a third time, he left the door, mumbling, “Bastard. What a fuckin’ wanker.”
Even through my pain, I had to grin at Teapot’s remarks. No, it wasn’t good to be back; it was harder now that I had tasted what we had all been missing these last few years. But tonight would be different. Teapot would mumble an apology to me, as he and the rest of the lads would smoke their brains out, all thanks to a fifteen-stone woman whose bark turned out to be a lot worse than her bite; who had given me so much tobacco to take back with me – smuggled up my arse – that when I farted it smelled like Gallagher’s cigarette factory.
I would relive the last few days I had had in the beautiful hospital surroundings over and over again in my head, sustaining myself with the unquenchable belief that at the end of all this madness, we could all go home again. Alas, the great American author Thomas Wolfe had been right on the money with his classic, You Can’t Go Home Again. Little did I know that none of us could ever, realistically, go home again. We had been smelted in a furnace. We had changed, utterly and forever. We would never be the same again. All our heads would be fucked up, for ever and ever.
The screws could – and did – smash bone and tear our flesh. Our existence was minimalist in the extreme. We were zero, and naked as womb departure. But what they could never do was colonise our thoughts. They could never comprehend what made us tick, for the simple reason that we were beyond what had come before, and were never to be matched ever again. We were the Spartans. Fuck, we were better than the Spartans. We were the Blanket Men.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Never Kick a Man when he’s Down? Name Me a Better Time!
DECEMBER 1979
La Revolution is like a great love affair. In the beginning, she is a goddess. A holy cause. La Revolution is not a goddess but a whore. She was never pure, never saintly, never perfect.
Jesus Raza (Jack Palance), The Professionals
The revolution? When the shooting stops, and the dead are buried, and the politicians take over, it all adds up to one thing: a lost cause.
Bill Dolworth (Burt Lancaster), The Professionals
The British Government and screws had upped the ante with the forced washing, wing shifts, mirror searches and beatings. They believed their methods were paying dividends, and who could argue? Men were leaving the protest at an uncomfortable rate, most of them practically beaten to a bloody pulp. We were always on the defensive, which meant victory was unattainable. New rules of engagement would have to be implemented to prevent the protest becoming an inescapable quagmire.
The morning shift of screws entered the Block, unusually quiet this particular morning. Instead of thunderous raps from their batons – their usual method of waking us – they merely opened the spy-flaps, looked in and then left, mumbling. They were in an extremely sombre mood. We all realised that something had happened, but what?
It wasn’t until Charlie, the orderly, tapped my cell door gently with his broom, that we found out.
“Did ye hear the news?” he whispered. An asinine question, really, considering he was our main – only – source of news.
“No, Charlie. What was it?”
“The IRA shot a screw last night, in his car,” he whispered, talking as if his life depended on it. If the screws caught him he’d be in trouble.
“Is the bastard dead?” I asked.
“He better be. They’re burying him tomorrow.” He moved away quickly. Of all days to be seen talking to us, this wasn’t it.
The news of the dead screw spread instantaneously. Everyone seemed to have heard it at the same time, whispering their opinion down at the pipes. But not all the opinions were the same.
“We’re in for it now. Bet yer balls on it.”
“Dry yer eyes, will ye! Best thing that ever happened. Now they’ll think twice about beatin’ the crap out of us durin’ the wing shifts.”
“It plays into their hands. Now they’ll make martyrs out of the screws. ‘These poor men only doing their jobs,’ it’ll say. I can write the NIO press release better than the fuckin’ NIO, for fuck sake!”
As far as I was concerned, though, shooting the screws couldn’t come soon enough. My only wish was that our wing wouldn’t be the next to be moved. But we were due a move in the next day or two, and there was little point trying to escape the inevitable: this wing-shift would be a nightmare.
When the screws eventually returned to give out breakfast, they were whistling. The grins on their faces could have cut glass. A propaganda pantomime was in progress – for heaven’s sake, whatever you do, don’t let the Blanket Men see your emotions. Go about yer duty as normal. Pretence. Wear it like a mask.
As a mark of respect for their fallen comrade, the screws downed tools, announcing a three-day no-work period. No mail. No visits. No food parcels. No TV. No radio. Terrible. How would we survive this ordeal? We’d go mad without all of these. Unfortunately for the screws, we weren’t getting any of these anyway. They had already taken everything, leaving their bargaining tools a big fat zero.
“How on earth can we punish these bastards w
hen we’ve nothing left to punish them with?” was the apparent remark from the governor, who devised the notorious mirror search as a way to break us.
As for ourselves, we got lucky – at least for three days. The screws refused to steam-hose any cells or conduct wing-shifts as part of their protest – everyone now, it seemed, was protesting. And so we simply luxuriated in it all, like kids on a picnic. No beatings for three whole days … three days … three days …
We never stopped talking. We were on a high.
“Did I ever tell you that my da was a film star, Sam?” Joe said, out of the blue.
“Catch yourself on! Even I’m taking a reddner for you with that one, Joe.”
“I’m serious! Do ye want to hear it or not?”
“Do I have a choice?” I asked.
“No. Put the hairy blanket on your shoulders and get to the window.”
“You’re crazy, standing at the window on a night like this. It’s ball-freezing,” said my cellmate, who lay on his skinny, urine-soaked mattress in the foetal position, shivering with the cold.
He was right. It was the coldest night ever recorded. White puffs of frosted air escaped from my mouth each time I spoke, and the wind hurt my face, slicing it like a razor, making me wince. Outside, light as fluid as water seamed its way down the watchtower’s façade, illuminating it in an effulgent cascade of ocular rhinestones.
“Go ahead, Joe,” I said, braving it.
“Did ye ever see that film, The Vikings, with Kirk Douglas?”
“And Tony Curtis!” shouted Cowboy from his mattress, eavesdropping as usual.
“That’s the one, Cowboy! My da and brother Hugo were in Wales doin’ a bit of steel-erecting. Along comes this American, askin’ if anyone wants to earn a few extra quid. Naturally enough, everyone jumps at the chance for a few quid, coupled with the chance of bein’ in a movie with Kirk Douglas.”
