Goatie 13

Flanked by the warden, I followed the governor out of his office. ‘Whit happened tae that crow that got into the dining hall?’

We edged through C-wing and high-walled corridors. With reinforcements from other jails, staff on high alert and wearing riot gear. I was face to face when the passage narrowed. They had to step aside. Often the outline of bodybuilders in uniform. Standing face to face with arms that twitched with the desire to hit out at me and hurl me from the roof as a placatory offering. They wanted to protect one of their own. The closed circle of hitting out in revenge, before they were hurt. The presence of the governor was my passport to safety, but he was moving that quickly, I was sweating and out of breath. So was the elderly warden. It was like chasing a rabbit’s tail.  

‘No, I don’t remember that,’ said the governor.

‘It might have been a raven.’ I couldn’t remember the difference between a crow and a raven. ‘Corvine,’ I stammered. Not sure if it was the right word. ‘A big black bird. Yev got tae remember it.’

I almost stumbled into another guard as we slowed at the opening of another gate. Another checkpoint. Gate opening and clanging shut.  He shoved me backwards with his shield with unnecessary force.

‘Maybe it wiz a pigeon,’ said the older warden. ‘They’re a fuckin plague. Flying rats. They get in everywhere.’

I ignored him, talked over his remarks. ‘It wiznae a fuckin pigeon. It was wiz a fuckin crow. Yeh must huv had a report about it?’

‘No,’ the governor looked at me as if was trying to shove a Jehovah’s Witness leaflet into his hand. ‘Maybe it was a pigeon.’

The older warden smirked.

‘Pigeon fuck all. There wiz almost a fucking riot.’

Sometimes you say the wrong thing at  the wrong time. I was quick to retract. ‘Maybe it wiz a pigeon.’

We moved from the more modern edifices, slightly to the left, to the old courtyards and brick and stone walls in which cold winter winds always seemed to whistle through a brownish hue. A buzz coming from where the guards had settled out of the range of the slates and bricks and chattered to each other.  Up about a slate grey roof and a tower. Two officers stepped out in front of us. ‘Where are you going?’ a young man with a cut on his head asked, before noticing the governor. Eying me and deciding I was of no concern.

‘Has there been any more communication?’ the governor asked him. ‘Have they made any other demands?’

‘Nothing,’ replied the officer, rubbing his scalp.

‘You should get that seen to,’ the governor advised him.

‘I already have, Sir.’ It was a convenient lie.

‘What about Brodie?’

He raised his head and I followed his gaze. ‘He’s still up there, Sir.’  

A grey slate exploded shrapnel at our feet, but we were out on range. The debris of past attempts creating a bumpy path onto the walkways. It came for somewhere higher on the roof, an unsighted line.

Sitting on the edge of the roof like medieval gargoyles, with their legs dangling over the cast-iron guttering, was Tonka and Harry the Hatchet. Sitting between them, and handcuffed to each prisoner’s wrist, was a uniformed guard. Even from that distance, I could see Brodie was terrified.  

‘It’s me,’ I shouted, pulling away from the warden and stepping out into the butterscotch light of the quadrant.  

Tonka and Harry must have raided the pharmacy. They seemed unaffected by the cold and cackled with laughter, humming some kind of tune, ‘it’s the end of the world as we know it, but I feel finnnnne.’

If I was a Boy Scout, I’d have had a speech prepared. I’d know how to make a fire from sticks and use a blanket to send smoke signals I’d brought them a can of sausage and beans for dinner. Dib, dib, dab them and invited them down. There was no cure for the Boy Scouts in us all standing tall with our Swiss Army knives ready for everything life could throw.  I’d never have been allowed to join. I guessed that was the way it should have been, with the added ritual of negotiation.  

The guard with the wounded head shoulder charged me and dragged me backwards to where the governor stood.

The terror in Brodie’s voice echoed around the quadrangle, ‘Help me!’ He’d some traction fighting Harry the Hatchet, trying to pull his wrist upwards and away, but he was also attached to Tonka.

Fighting gravity as they stepped off the roof, chanting, ‘Goat man—we believe in the coming apocalypse’.

Legs and thighs and limbs clattering down. An explosive thwart and ugly arsenal of bloody body parts, and mix and max of uniforms. The governor was in my face yelling, ‘You made them jump, you fucking fucker!’

He slapped me. The older warden had to drag him away. It was the first and only time I’d heard the governor swearing.