Grassdogs

by Mark O'Flynn

  In standing still, time lurched forward. Was it so different on the outside? Work picked up again, they had deadlines to meet. In repetition years passed. Edgar dreamed of dissecting a head of wheat. He dreamed he was in a cave, and in the cave with him was Meacham wrapped in a flag and, in turn, everyone he had ever known. Or else he dreamed that in the cave a dog was waiting.

  Sometime after the winter or the summer, Indy appeared in the door of Edgar’s cell.

  ‘Howdy, dogman.’

  He had with him five others, including Otto, all smiling nastily. When the six had crowded in the cell, blocking his escape, Edgar knew the time had come too late to act. Still he leapt at them with something like a whine of defiance. No time for chitchat. He landed a few solid blows, felt someone’s lip burst, but there were too many of them. He held them at bay with his fists and feet and teeth, but too soon they subdued him, sitting on his arms and legs. Their blows were well timed. Indy turned the television on, and Edgar watched in horror as he peeled open a small carton of milk, valuable stuff in anyone’s language, and poured it through the vent in the top. The tubes and valves within crackled and spat sparks and popped. The screen went blank. The set fizzed for a while, stinking of burnt milk. Edgar strained in fury against the men holding him down, but they winded him with well-aimed punches to the midriff.

  He felt a rib crack. He gasped for air, immobile. They fossicked through his tubs, but Edgar had nothing worth taking. Then Indy took from his pocket an ordinary egg. A speckled chicken’s egg, hard-boiled as it turned out, because he cracked it on the wall and began to peel it, flicking bits of shell on the floor. When his egg was peeled he swapped positions with Otto, giving his whole weight to Edgar’s left leg. His muscles cramped with the impossible effort of struggling. Otto also peeled clean his own white, rubbery egg. Then he swapped with another man. Then another, and another. They all had hard-boiled eggs and didn’t mind where they threw the shell. Now and then one of them would punch him in the stomach just to keep him quiet. When the sixth egg was peeled they thumped Edgar helpless again and turned him over onto his knees, each limb leaden and numb under the full weight of a man. His pants were reefed down. Edgar strained, but he was weakened now. One of them, Edgar had lost sight of who was who, produced a short length of PVC pipe. He was thumped hard in both kidneys, then the pipe was inserted into his anus and twisted in. He felt the sawn edges of it cut his rectum and gave a muffled cry. Then the first egg was fed into the pipe. Then the second. Then the third. They were tamped down with something that he could not see. Then the remaining eggs were fed, via the orifice of the pipe, into Edgar’s sorry arse. Otto chuckled. Edgar could not struggle even if he had the strength. Then the pipe was roughly yanked out, wiped on his back, and the six of them filed out of the cell. Edgar slid to the floor and lay gasping in the shell grit. He did not even register whose room he was in, until he realised it was his own. Cell, he thought, it was a cell, never a room. This was where he stared at the walls. Where his tubs were. Sum total of all he was in the world. He saw the dust under the bunk. The smoke of smouldering milk still rose from the television. The act of breathing hurt his ribs. Edgar hoisted himself onto the toilet. He felt like a turtle as the bloody pulp of egg white and yolk fell from him, splashing into the water. He sat there for a long time. When the last had gone he felt a little better. They were only eggs after all, and he had yet to go outside and face them in the yard, but before he did he lay down on the bed and tried to go asleep, go asleep, go asleep.

  Later he swept up the eggshells. He emerged briefly to carry the TV out to the officers’ station and dumped it on the desk.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Milk. Fucked now.’

  ‘You wanna be more careful.’

  ‘I din’t do it.’

  ‘Who did?’

  Edgar said nothing.

  ‘Do you wanna press charges?’

  ‘I’m sayin’ nothing.’

  That’s what Meacham had said: speak and the stars start to work their dirt against you. He would be expected to take matters into his own hands, to get his own back when no one was looking, or else be seen to be letting them get away with it.

  So he said no more and went back to his cell where he stayed like a caveman, studying the grass he saw in the walls.

  The sweeper gave him his meals in there. His arse stopped bleeding. He pleaded sick-in-cell and stayed in bed for a week, fostering his delirium in the absence of cartoons. But he knew he could not stay in there forever. He was woken, as usual, by the approaching rattle of keys and when he finally ventured out he saw Yema standing in the wing beside the pool table. Was this another crazy vision? He could not tell. He examined the familiar hook-nose; the eyes darkened more than normal, but he grinned and slapped Edgar on the arm. It appeared he was real. Edgar was happy to see the little man and inspected the way his nose had healed. It had a few extra bumps, but never mind. Edgar happened to know that the cell next to his was vacant, so with a little wheedling they managed to persuade the wing officer to let Yema have it. They were neighbours. Whacko. Yema told him that on days of lockdown Edgar should empty all the water out of the toilet pan, and if he, Yema, did the same, they could communicate quite easily by talking down the toilet. Somehow this filled Edgar with an illicit, mischievous joy, although what they would talk about he did not know.

  Work quietened down again. The overseer turned them away. Again they had the days free. Yema was at his wits’ end with boredom. They couldn’t play tennis; neither of them knew the rules. Yema took him to the clinic where they made an appointment for Edgar to see the dentist. His name and MIN number were written down. They were told that the dentist would need to know Edgar’s hepatitis and HIV status, but Edgar did not know what these were. In general, he said, he was pretty fit. The judge had said so. The dentist was a busy man, it would probably take several months.

  ‘Six,’ Yema made an educated guess.

  They left the clinic and headed for the Education block. These buildings, for Edgar, were also like the familiar dream of strange new rooms in his own house. Simultaneously his horizons broadened and shrank to contain them. It was like the date of his release, burning among the stars. What, he wondered, was behind that fence over there? That, my friend, said Yema, was known as the boneyard, the protection area for dogs and child molesters, not a pretty place. It was but the turn of a key away.

  In later weeks Edgar returned to the Education block where not only was he taught the alphabet, but also the combination of letters that spelled his own name. He quickly recalled Ebgr Ham. He learned, over time, to write a short sentence that expressed an opinion on a personally relevant topic for which he received a certificate of encouragement. The sentence he wrote was: The quick brown fox liked. He couldn’t quite reach the end. This was placed on his file, along with his signature, although what the quick brown fox liked remained a mystery. He wrote a CV (with some assistance). It was a great revelation for him to think he had some skills in butchering and might be suited to work in an abattoir. Of the alphabet his favourite letter was S. He also discovered the leatherwork room, where inmates industriously hammered out patterns into sheets of leather. There were various designs of eagles, tigers, bears, dragons, snakes, and skulls. Or else the names of wives, girlfriends, children, motorbikes. Studs were being vigorously thumped, buckles affixed to belts in the tangy odour of glue. The leatherwork teacher asked did he want to join the class? Edgar said he just liked the smell. There were leather satchels, wallets, pouches, all manner of scraps and lacings. The teacher turned away from a bench holding a great wooden mallet. He was helping another inmate punch out the holes for a belt embellished with the design of a snake. There were pictures on the walls of breasty, airbrushed women draped over motorcycles. And suddenly there on the unsupervised desk in front of him was a pair of scissors.

  That afternoon again the inmates refused to return to their units. They continued playing tennis. They gathered on the compound, only
moving indoors when the squad assembled at the gates in their helmets and riot gear. Two big German shepherds also barked menacingly through the fence. Yema hated dogs. He would rather face ten screws with truncheons than one snarling dog. He moved towards the unit but Indy appeared from nowhere and grabbed him:

  ‘When the time comes, Leb, everyone will have to stay out here. Those who don’t will be remembered.’

  Yema understood the threat and hurried inside.

  Again they locked down the entire gaol and ramped it, cell by cell. They found a bucket full of shivs. When Edgar’s turn came he refused to come out so they could ramp unhindered. Four of them, with batons, persuaded him to his knees, then dragged him out like a sack of spuds. Edgar had hidden the scissors inside his mattress which they found in seconds. Consequently he was charged then hauled bodily off to Segregation, struggling all the while, where he spent the next four months.

  He looked forward to his meals. Ate with gusto, even the unripe pears. Depending who was on duty, some officers tried to start conversations with him. Sometimes they just opened his door a little and shoved his food in with a boot. Sometimes he answered them: ‘Woof.’

  Although he hated being manhandled Edgar liked Segro. With all those hours to stare at the walls the days blurred into one. Sometimes, behind the paint, he saw dogs cavorting in the long grass. If he happened to be asleep at the wrong time he could go for a week without seeing daylight. If he did not elect to pace the small yards, which were nothing more than cages, in his allotted hour, then bad luck.

  His appointment with the dentist came and went, so he was placed at the bottom of the list again. He received his sixth Christmas card from his sister, which one of the officers read for him. The clinic nurses, who visited regularly, asked if he wanted to be placed on the methadone program. Whafor? he asked through the bars on his door, I ain’t a junkie. That didn’t matter, it would help him sleep.

  I sleep fine.

  The nurses complained to the three-striper, who wrote it in the running sheets, that as they were speaking to Hamilton they could distinctly smell the odour of semen.

  ‘Well, ladies, I’m sad to have to tell you it keeps him quiet, so I’m not about to discourage him in that practice. He can jerk away.’

  The chaplain also called to see him with a bundle of Good News Bibles. Would Edgar like one? Sure. How was he feeling? Fine. No, he meant how was Edgar really feeling? Fine. He wasn’t feeling, you know, after all that had happened, under the circumstances, given the past, suicidal? Nup, he felt really fine. After all, your father—Alf wasn’t it?—had set the example when Ed was a youngster, hadn’t he. All bets were off, weren’t they? What’s good for the goose. The chaplain could smell the semen too.

  ‘Youse fuckers are all the same, how do yer reckon I should be feelin’?’

  The chaplain was pleased to hear that no thoughts of self-harm had crossed the prisoner’s mind, do not go gentle and all that.

  Edgar barked, ‘I’d rather kill some other fucker than kill meself, now once and fer all fuckorf.’

  This conversation was also reported; duly noted in the running sheet: Prisoner made overt threats against other inmates. I guess the chaplain made a note of it too, somewhere.

  Mostly though, the door remained shut.

  At the end of five months (an extra one for good measure, and because no cell was available), Edgar was let out into the main compound. He had forgotten the heat of sunlight on his back, the balm of grey rain. It was like a small measure of freedom, until he began to sense over those new days the heightened tension between crims and screws. Things were warming up. Yema was gone. His classification had been reduced, and as a B-classo he had been tipped to a ‘better’ gaol. That was good. Although he was pleased for Yema, Edgar felt a small nut of bitterness hardening in him. It was softened by the happy news that one of Indy’s friends had had his skull fractured after being hit by Hilal Ali with a two-litre bottle of frozen water. Ho hum.

  In his old unit, though in a new slot, Indy called out how good it was to see Ed again, and how Yema’s running shoes fitted him almost perfectly.

  Edgar knew he had to arm up.

  He remembered what Yema would have said: think on higher things. He tried to think on his lucky stars. It was hard, but the wall helped.

  The inmates from the main population were again refusing to return to their units. It was getting colder; morning fogs. They had a list of gripes which they presented to the Deputy Governor:

  They didn’t like being locked up so early in the afternoon. It was cruel and inhumane.

  They didn’t like being locked up at lunchtime. It was cruel and inhumane.

  They didn’t like the increasing frequency of shutdowns leaving them locked in for days on end. It was cruel.

  They didn’t like the food. It was inhumane.

  They didn’t like the scum in protection receiving privileges which reduced their access to inmate services such as Welfare and Education.

  They didn’t like the pitiful rate of pay they received for a hard day’s work. We demand a pay increase.

  They didn’t like the fact that they couldn’t play real tackle football, only touch.

  The Deputy Governor heard their grievances and, in the spirit of political debate, told them to get back to their cells or he would set the dogs on them.

  Eventually Edgar did get his teeth. A shiny new set of dentures that enabled him to gnaw through the toughest crusts. They made short work of green pears. His only disappointment was that the rest of him did not live up to the gleam of the new teeth. They also provided him with another means by which to measure time passing. That is, he could now allocate this or that incident to the years before the teeth, or the years after, so that when the riot came, as it inevitably had to, Edgar was able to locate and place it in his own personal chronology. Modest details were released to the media. The riot—or as the inmates called it, peaceful protest, to which the screws allegedly overreacted—took place over several days of the autumn after the new teeth. There was a single beech tree amongst the gums on the hill above the gaol and Edgar had watched its golden leaves drift off in the wind like coins. Autumn.

  Again, after a period of too many lock-ins, the inmates refused to return to their cells. There were agitators. Was it deliberate provocation? Instead they had gathered on the compound. Some continued to play tennis, despite the repeated demands of the PA system. This had been the pattern over summer, the time Edgar had been in Segro. He saw that Indy and his friends and many others had rugged up in all their clothes, so he too went and fetched his warm, worn jacket. Looked like it was going to be a long night.

  It was a pretty half-hearted affair as far as riots go. Most of them were there under sufferance. The screws in the units saw what was brewing and skedaddled before they were swept up in a potential hostage and overtime situation. With the screws out of the way the crims, knowing they would all have to pay the consequences anyway, had a ball. In the yards ten of them picked up the concrete benches and, at a run, hurled them at the steel doors accessing the units. There were cheers when the doors popped off their hinges and flew inward, skidding across the concrete floor.

  Inside, screwless, they attacked the officers’ stations. The legs were pulled off billiard tables and used to smash the unsmashable perspex windows. What were they doing with billiard tables? In one unit they used the table itself as a battering ram. Once inside the office proper they smashed everything there was to smash. The computers kicked apart, filing cabinets dashed, official documents flung into the air (‘Hey, look at this, it says Wilson raped his daughter!’). Edgar’s split grin stretched across his face at the wanton destruction. Great sport. Great sport.

  Later in the evening (evening outside was such a novelty), the riot squad arrived, all geared up, and proceeded to restore order with their batons and canisters of tear-gas. Clouds of it drifted in the air. They lashed out indiscriminately. Bones cracked. Bodies reeled across the compound, or lay u
nconscious on the cement. Edgar ran back and forth under the sodium lights along with everyone else. People helping the injured were smashed aside. Dogs savaged their heels. Great sport. Great sport. It was the lowest common denominator. The brutality methodical, just as it was when inmates took brutality on themselves. Edgar was eventually herded into a cell with eighteen others.

  ‘No room, chief.’

  ‘Get in,’ came the order, muffled through a gas mask, its demonic eye sockets looking at him like a mad owl. Edgar was almost certain it was Dungay glaring at him through the eyeholes. When they were crammed in, the next order came:

  ‘Kneel.’

  There was not enough room for nineteen men to kneel. The ones who were left standing, wedged upright, were knocked flat with batons. Edgar found someone’s bloody tooth on the floor. Tear-gas canisters were thrown into locked cells. There were cries of panic as people fought to breathe. Edgar’s throat rasped. His eyes burned. His skin crawled with chemicals.

  He was blind for four days, while the officers took back control of the gaol and assessed the damage. The inmates lost their billiard tables and their chairs. They lost the concrete benches outside so that there was nothing to sit on but the ground. No one was allowed to play tackle footy. No one got a pay increase. The frequency of lock-ins did not change. Because frozen bottles of water had been used as weapons all unit fridges were removed. Fresh food was consequently removed from the buy-up. Everyone, it must be said, got used to this pretty quickly. It all seemed a bit futile to Edgar, but Edgar had learned that futility was its own reward.

  His general memory of it, in the gradual warming of spring, after the new teeth, was one of immense pleasure.

  Another Christmas card, plus a rice cooker, arrived from Lynne, the sister. Great, now he had to learn how to cook rice. There had been a bit of a break in correspondence. Mr O’Neil helped him read it. She lived in Melbourne, according to the postmark. They were still working on his appeal, but it was very difficult. Her son was studying law at university and was doing a lot of reading. Money was a struggle. Her health was improving.