THE GATES OF Hell didn’t creak or groan at their steel weight being opened and closed yet again. The gates to Hell opened with a well-oiled whisper and closed behind with a heavy thud, of steel vibrating and a key turned with just the softest of rattles against others on an expertly handled key ring. Toted by one of your guards.
It wasn’t an experience but a sensation, a final step with a finite time to be served before you started stepping again. Life had suddenly and unspeakably stopped, right here. Worse, it was not belonging that killed some part of you in the instant of entering.
You were met by the sight of your fellow tenants, and it hit that you were officially one of them, nothing separated you, you wore the same prison-issue clothing, blue and grey, muted (but surely I don’t look like them facially?), controlled, corralled. Yet every face said these men were out of control. Their wiring was bad.
Some of these freaks were whispering as Abe came into the recreation area on the ground floor, some were eyeballing him, trying to let him know they were here first so show us what you’re made of, newcomer. Eyes ran all over him, trying to fit, slot him. Hell echoed in a cavernous three-tiered enclosure: voices, cell doors, steel grilles, footsteps, laughter, grunts. Inside, Abe Heke’s thoughts were screaming.
Tattoo marks spoke the same childish story. Emotional eff-ups. Worked arms and chests, bulging muscles, said brawn held sway here since no thinking mind could survive in this place. If you had a mind you’d not be in here.
No single face read a genuine interest, an intelligent curiosity in a fellow human being for his own sake. Just uniform, fixed sneers and snarls, and pain oozing out every facial expression. If only they knew it.
Abe sat down on a bench and stared up at the TV, seeing nothing, but feeling the eyes on him, their questions itching to get out so they might know his place in the pecking order. Just in case his natural place was high up the chain. Or in case he was lower than he looked. He was thinking, Go to hell, you scum. Gonna (got to) do this on my own, make no friends, keep to myself. I shouldn’t be here. (I was only defending myself. Jesus Christ, has a man no fundamental right to defend his bodily health, his right to dignity?) Burning with a sense of injustice and, yes, he had considered ending it all in the first few days of being in this nightmare. (But that would make me another Grace, and I couldn’t do that to Mum. Can’t even let her know I’m here.) Wondering how many of his fellows here felt obligation to a mother.
It wasn’t so much the physical conditions, a man could imagine worse. It was the quality of the company: inadequacy and banality stared from nearly every face. The absence of a moral code was palpable — if you had eyes for seeing it. The company you have bad dreams of being thrown amongst, like into a den of wild animals no less.
Every metallic sound was a reminder to Abe of his workplace; and the laughter could be his former workmates, and yet it couldn’t possibly be for this laughter had something desperate in it: ugliness, callousness, without even having to state it as such. (I want to be what I was four days ago.)
He could see and sense a discussion going on about him. The prison clothing made everyone look even more hideously the same, bereft humans in one glance. Possessed of what an absent moral code did to your physical appearance, a draining, a big blank space in the normal feedback you get in free life. Worse, they clearly had no inner reflective self, not as an individual, not as a collective. (They think they’re pretty damn cool.)
The discussion was between several inmates, ranging in age from twenty to mid-thirties, gathered round an older man, maybe forty, big as a house, bulging with the necessary muscle, deep grooves in his cheeks, chest tattooing up to his throat, all over the powerful arms, hair prematurely grey. Kingpin written all over him.
Eyes of a kingpin (remind me of my old man) in front of Abe and making him look up, demanding acknowledgement and it better be respect, if not more than that.
Despite the mood Abe was in, his instant assessment of the likely fighting qualities of the man said the kingpin would have some tricks and then some. But he wouldn’t win. He just wouldn’t. (Abe wasn’t Jake’s son for nothing.) But then Abe’s lawyer said he had an excellent chance of winning his appeal, free of these sewer scum, so he must keep his nose clean. Yet he was so angry inside he’d welcome a way to vent it. (No. I’m here because I lost control.)
So Abe nodded to the big guy, flicked a deferential smile, waited for the man’s judgement. Which took its time in coming and had all the guys in hearing and seeing distance fall quiet.
They leaned over the railings of the two landings, staring down on the new boy. The light here had a steel-grey quality to it, like new paint. Over another layer of old. Even the pathological chatter and discordant outbursts of laughter fell away and died in the deliberate silence of the kingpin’s making.
Finally, Abe was asked, in a deep sonorous voice, What’re you in for, bud?
As if he wasn’t already aware, this evident kingpin of this astounding joint whose lackeys would supply him with information on everyone and everything.
Abe smiled respect enough so there could be no misunderstanding. I lost it in a (it wasn’t a fight. A fight you go into voluntarily, this was self-defence) — I got into a fight.
A fight? What kinda fight?
Just a fight.
Ya don’t get sent down for just a fight, bud. Papers said it was four on one — you took on four? With a bit of nature’s help, so the paper said. Namely a fence paling. Not as good as an iron bar, hahaha. But then they don’t have fences made of iron bars, do they, except prisons — hahaha. Though the laughter was brought to an abrupt, unnatural halt. Four? Against just you?
If Abe was meant to take this as a compliment it went right over his head. Four of them, me and a mate.
Paper said your pal did nothing. What, he turn evidence against you?
(Evidence?) A reminder of what he himself had done to Apeman, which had helped put the gang leader away for life. (And here I am in a prison, too.)
No, he just didn’t fight back.
And you did? Kingpin made that a personal challenge to himself, his own fighting mana, in his tone, the you-try-me look.
They were head-kicker shits.
What, you mean skinheads who hate niggers head-kickers?
(Niggers?) Abe shifted weight from one foot to the other. (Who’re you calling a nigger?) His father’s genes stirring (again). Maybe they were skinheads, I don’t think that was the issue.
Issue? Whoo, issue he says. You mean you, Mr wild warrior Maori, didn’t take kindly to being mob-attacked? I mean, everyone knows what Maoris are like. Right?
Abe didn’t say anything. (I just want to do my time, not have a discussion on race.)
Stand up. Now.
Abe sighed and stood up.
Kingpin said, You’re a big unit. A man can take on four by himself, the hunk a wood notwithstanding. I could respect that. Couldn’t I, guys?
Yeah, a chorus seemed at the ready. You could respect that, Ambo. If you must, it said in the unspoken back echo.
Abe swallowed (his pride), made himself forget the nigger reference and told the kingpin, I think I know the rules, mate.
The man mountain smiled and said, Yeah. I am the rule. As in ruler. Ya hear?
Sure, Abe said. That prideful lift of jutting jaw reminding, bringing back an image of his father (Jake the Muss. What a handle. What an idiot he was, my old man. Like this idiot in prison issue, demanding I now step up and shake his heavily tattooed hand).
Flicking a sweeping glance at the faces around him, Abe saw their disappointment in him, knew they’d assessed his size as having something behind it. But he didn’t give a stuff of their opinion of him.
The man’s handshake was strong indeed, big hands belonging to powerful arms, a lot of iron pumped here in the gym, press-ups on the cell floor. And born strength. This is where he thought he’d got to, the mountain he believed he’d climbed.
Abe Heke, Abe said, wanting this ritual to be over so he could go back to his cell, hide the hurt threatening to expose him to these hyenas. Surreal it was, this place, these people, this sensation of being locked up, your right to make any decision gone, except to breathe, to hurt. To hurt. Or be hurt. In disbelief that he was waiting for permission from Ambo to take his leave to go to his cell. (My cell?) Like a school kid asking, Please may I go to the toilet, sir?
Permission was granted when Ambo nodded his balding head and ambled away like an appeased bear.
Abe headed quickly for his cell before his heaving stomach gave him away. (My cell? My cell?) Unable to accept what had happened to him.
Apeman, AKA Montgomery Black, meanwhile, had been given a date for his transfer from the maximum-security prison north of Auckland to medium-security in the pretty city of Christchurch, where a river twisted its way through. In five weeks’ time he’d travel, under escort, in a prison van with two others whose transfer applications had also been granted, be held overnight in a prison outside Wellington, special exemption made to keep the prisoner passengers in their vehicle for the three-hour Cook Strait crossing, then it was about six hours’ drive to Christchurch.
He’d just had an extraordinary bit of information, about the man whose face was burned deeper in his brain than the tattoos electric-needled into his face. Such a handsome face was Abe Heke’s, too, no denying that. Son of Jake and sharing residence. Fancy that. It comes to he who has (utu) patience.