THE DRYING ROOM stank of damp bedding and clothing constantly drying, in big industrial tumblers. A misnomer for a large, high-ceilinged room that hardly ever knew dryness. The stench assailed any nostrils not used to the rank smell prison inmates left on their clothing and bedding. If smells could have emotional quality, then this was what broken hearts gave off chemically. Bad hearts added another smell.
Sheets in different states were stacked on smooth wooden benches as far as the eye could see, some yet to be washed. Others washed and waiting to go into the dryers, yet others dried and yet to be folded. Lastly, another pile was folded and ready to go back for another week of soiling, of sperm staining, bleeding from a fight wound, from sores that refused to heal, sweat that broke out from tortured dreaming.
Inmates could get lost in here amongst the laundry. They got to know every sightline for the screw who walked in cruise-and-lazily-watch mode, on a set circuit; being screws who weren’t imaginative, and clever, and manipulative like cons. Or so the self-deluding cons believed. When really the screw’s were more intelligent, not rocket scientists, no, but you didn’t need much to have more brains than a loser con, or so the prison officers spoke and laughed of between themselves. Like, who gets to go home at night?
Behind all those piles of single story-telling sheets, a man could do some heinous things to another inmate before the victim’s noise brought the attention of the guards. This is where real good scraps took place, encounters between men who wanted nothing more than to beat another. Not fists. Anything. As long as you won. What an irony, losers prepared to die if necessary to be a winner.
One of Apeman’s lackey suck-ups, a skinny white guy who sewed padding into his prison shirts and jackets to make his shoulders look broader than pathetic, came in with Abe Heke, carrying a big plastic bin of dirty sheets between them. The lackey had waited till Abe went by and asked him if he could help out or he, the lackey — call him Pitiful — was in trouble.
Abe, though wary, could see no reason not to believe the guy, and anyway he told himself to be ready to drop his handle and fight if he saw anything that looked like Apeman coming his way.
Pitiful joked to Abe, a sex joke, then complimented that he didn’t look like the normal inmate, how come he was in here? Was it a traffic offence, you kill someone driving drunk or something? We get a few of those. Poor bastards, in here they get eaten alive. Though a bloke like you, I doubt many’d eat you alive, eh, mate?
Abe could see Pitiful was a nobody, but then again what he said touched a spot in Abe, the part about him not looking like he fitted here.
He said to the guy, I don’t belong here either. Not my scene. I lost it when these guys, four to our two, wanted to beat us up. Lost my pal the second they appeared, he didn’t wanna know. I’m waiting for my appeal to be heard.
Pitiful said, Is that right? You might be not long from being released. Now that’d be cool.
More than cool, pal. I don’t think I can do my two years here.
Two years? That’s not so long. I’m doing a five. First lag was a three. Had a eighteen month for driving whilst disqualified, then this five. For three burgs. Burglary, Pitiful enlightened when Abe frowned. Five years ain’t nothing, once you adjust to it.
You think you’ve got a chance to win the appeal?
My lawyer says ninety per cent chance we’ll win.
We? Since when is a lawyer doing the time with you? Ninety per cent? That’s effin’ good odds, mate. I’d say it’s more or less a guarantee. Here, turn left thissa way.
Thissa way, down this machine-polished linoleum floor, between thick concrete walls there’s a strip of light from a high run of windows casting horizontal stripes of gold on the wall opposite. Sunshine, eh mate? Makes you want to smile, don’t it? Smiling as he said this and kicked for the drying room door to be opened. Thissa way — what’s your name any rate?
Abe Heke. Yours?
Pitiful grinned self-consciously, and in his weak manner. Well, he said, I’m known as Pitiful.
Pitiful? Man, I can’t call you that.
Everyone else does. I don’t mind. I’ll get mine one day, don’t you worry about that.
And they went thataway into the bowels of hell. Where the devil awaited, going by the name of Apeman.
They didn’t notice the door open again, to let in a tall and powerfully built Maori guy. Though others saw him and knew he was one of the new intake from Auckland. But look at him twice and you saw he had that softened look, of a man who’d experienced a conversion to God, or Jesus, whichever, Father or His Son. Happens quite often, more than you’d think, hardened dudes converting to Christianity. More often than not it’s the hardest ones, the scrappers not the evil bastards. So not as if you can suddenly lord — hahaha, like Lord — it over them. Indeed, you treat a convert born-again quite differently to other inmates, because you know he can be trusted and he’s not a potential physical danger to you like virtually all others.
So he moved past eyes that tried not to miss a thing, and they missed him. At least, they didn’t see him for what he was.