Goatie 12

The governor was smoking when I was pushed into his office. He didn’t try and hide it, like he did with civilians. He might have tried to blow smoke up my ass, claiming civil liberties and right to choose, but I was a prisoner, below the bottom rung of the establishment. Our opinions weren’t canvassed.

I jumped before he pushed, ‘Geez a draw,’ I said.

He maintained eye contact while stubbing it out in the metal bin at his feet. It was almost a full fag.

‘That’s about two quid’s worth yev wasted.’

But he wasn’t taking me up on that either.

He sighed. ‘Sit down.’  

No more power plays with the seat already in front of his desk. If he hadn’t been so small, I’d have used a line that the crisis had cut him down. His eyes were like brown piss stains. And I doubted he’d any more sleep than me. He’d tormented, tortured, harassed and humiliated prisoners like me in the upward motion of his career trajectory. I was sure he’d also done some good things, but his career had now flat lined. Bureaucrats above him would happily feed him into the mincer. I almost felt sorry for him. But he was still king of the asylum. My back hurt and I held onto my wrist. I waited to see who he’d blame. ‘Yeh asked tae se me?’

‘Did I?’

He looked over my shoulder and I glanced at his bookcase. A run of Lee Child novels. Gang bangers and busting out. The faith and ideology of the lone wolf getting the job done in a world corrupted by elites peddling lies to the masses that sucked  it up. Our warden never travelled outside of middle-class security and salaried existence, but I pondered if that’s how he saw himself.

‘Aye,’ I reminded him. My job of sitting quietly and suffering had become his job.

‘The prisoners on the roof have asked to speak to you. They’ve got a young warden up there, Gordon Brody. He’s not long married. Got a kid. They’re threating to fling him off the roof.’ He leaned across the table. ‘You know I can’t let that happen.’

He was going all Lee Child/Jack Rancher on me. Hurricane, floods or frosts, the natural order would be re-established whether I liked it or not.

‘No,’ I told him what he wanted to hear. ‘Yeh cannae.’

‘You’ll speak to them, then?’

‘Speak to who?’

‘For God sake!’ He jerked open his desk door and pulled out a packet of twenty Embassy Regal and flung them on the desk. His hand scrambled about the drawer feeling for a lighter, his knuckles knocking against the wood, before tossing it too onto the table. He opened the packet and stuck a fag between his lips, reaching for the lighter, and lighting up. The first draw calmed him. He’d fought the good fight and lost. He nudged the packet towards me.

It chocked me, I hadn’t smoked in about ten years, but it seemed as good a time as any to pick up the habit. I lit up and stared at him through the tendrils of smoke, feeling a familiar buzz in my chest and throat. ‘I don’t know anybody much in here. I’m no a face. Who is it? And why ur they askin for me?’

He ducked his head and glanced at the files on his desk. ‘They’re asking for the Goat Man. Everybody in here knows about you. What planet you living on?’

‘Planet Solitary and Suicide Watch,’ I reminded him.  

‘Well, here’s what I want you to do…’

I took a quick drag on my fag before holding my hand up like a school boy and cutting him off. ‘Let me remind yeh. Yer no my boss. I’m on remand in here. An I’ve committed nae fuckin crimes other that being a bit of a tosspot.’ I stared back at him. ‘In other words, go fuck yersel.’

He used his elbows to sit straighter in his chair. He swept the packet of cigarettes and his lighter off the table and into the drawer. For a moment I thought he was going to pull the lit fag out of my gob. ‘It’s like that, is it?’

I held it tightly between index and ring finger while I took another drag. ‘Like whit? Whit huv you done for me?’

‘I’ll move you back to the main wing. I’ll reinstate all your privileges.’

I blew smoke in his direction. ‘Yeh mean yeh ll dae yer job and no huv people torturing me on the fly.’

‘I don’t know anything about that.’

‘That why cunts are on the roof. Cause yeh don’t know fuck aw. The world below yer feet doesnae really exist for yeh. Noo it does.’ I was no longer playing victim. ‘We’ve brought the high walls low.’

He stubbed out his fag in the bin. ‘Is that your final word?’

‘Aye, I don’t even know anythin about it.’

‘Fine.’ He pressed his lips together and was looking over my shoulder for the guard to appear.

‘Who is it on the roof, anyway?’ I asked.

‘Harry Ballantyne and Peter Tonkin.’

‘Fuck,’ I wheezed. ‘Yeh talk about the warden as if he’s the only wan wae a wife and kids. Harry’s got three daughters under five.’ I tried to think. ‘An Tonka…’ Doing the calculations weren’t easy. I gave up. ‘He’s got about ten wains tae ten different birds. Fuck knows whit ages they are. But if he jumps aff the roof, I don’t hink many of them will be dae that much greetin. Maist o them will be too busy daeing handstands.’

The warden reeled me in with my own logic. ‘But this guy Harry.’ He glanced down at the file on his desk. ‘He’s your pal and asked to speak to you. He wants your help, but you’ve refused him in his time of need.’

I wanted to tell him to ram it. It wasn’t Harry he was thinking about, but his own career. He was reaching as low as he could go to try and find a way out. He was both putting me in the police-line up and pulling the trigger. A typical characteristic of boss talk.

Face to face not only with the warden, but with my own values. Never let a mate down. ‘Whit does he want tae see me about?

The older warden blundered in at the wrong time. The govenor held out his hand to stop him. To give us more time.

The govenor was back behind the levers of control. ‘I don’t know. You’ll need to find that out for yourself. I need to give him a reply within the hour or they said Brodie will be off the roof. And another body will follow every two hours.’

I shifted in my seat and bit down on my lips and nodded.

A  thin smile on the warden’s lips.

‘Don’t make me the fall guy,’ I warned him.

He got the joke, but his face froze. The room was stifling, but he got up and put his jacket on. He’s sweat patches under the arms of his shirt. Straightened his blue tie as if we were attending a board meeting. Which in a way, we were, but a bit higher up and closer to God, the Devil, or the Goatman.