Jake's Long Shadow (11 page)

FOR WEEKS THAT became months, Charlie couldn’t get Jake out of his mind. That face-to-face meeting out at Tarawera, Jake’s hand going partway out in greeting till he recognised Charlie, who wasn’t returning the gesture. Yet Jake didn’t blink.

Not one flicker of truth confronted him unexpectedly, since he’d know Beth would have spilled her heart out to Charlie. Not guilt, nor resentment of Charlie, not the slightest embarrassment. He could have been just another big Maori out doing his hunter thing, with possibly a smile about to blossom, as they do when a man is in his element, at one with nature, mates and dogs against wild pig, or about to tell a lie as to whether he had a hunting permit. Or maybe just say something friendly or crack a funny.

At first, he’d not told Beth of running into Jake, not until he could settle himself down inside at what, by his standards, was a shameful descent into emotional reaction, especially the anger, desire to do violence against the man. To hell with that, leave it to my never-ending list of clients, to
the ignorant parents whose ill-bred children become my department’s charge. Charlie Bennett was never going to behave like that, not even the emotional part.

So he told Beth of running into Jake and his two friends hunting on Charlie’s tribal land, and she smiled and said how funny. Imagine if you’d let rip at them. Might have had a tribal war on your hands, Mr Bennett. Plus the personal stuff.

No chance, he gave his own smile, loaded with meaning directed at Jake’s image in his head. (Must say he’s a fine-looking specimen.) I hope, though, you’re not saying I wouldn’t have stood a chance? (Now why am I talking like that?)

No, of course not. Though I’m surprised — very — to hear you talk like that. Did he get under your skin, honey? Did he say something? Give you a Jake the Muss look? They could reduce anyone, those stares of his could.

No, he didn’t and if he had I’d not be reduced, not by him or anyone else. It’s my reaction bothering me.

Oh? Beth was puzzled. What reaction is this?

Of wanting to hurt him. I even had a thought of grabbing his rifle and putting a bullet right between his eyes. And that would be clever, wouldn’t it? Charlie Bennett, head of Child Youth and Family Service, Two Lakes Division, much-respected citizen of this thriving city —

Thriving of crime, too, don’t forget. We got enough Maoris breaking the law without adding your name to it. Anyway it was a case of the man meeting the boy.
My
man meeting that boy. Let’s agree on that before you start reading it and me all wrong. Let’s start again, shall we? In that smiling, tolerant way of hers. One more reason why the relationship had worked.

So Charlie told her afresh of the encounter, and asked more questions about Jake, the childhood that made him what he was, since he dealt with young Jake types, hundreds over the years. I know you told me he grew up like too many Maoris kids, in a house that loved booze more than its children. Hardly a revelation. You’re just not allowed to state the truth in these politically correct times. Being told he was a descendant of slaves, his family shunned by the wider community, why wouldn’t he grow up with an extra chip on his shoulder? Charlie quoted an old Maori proverb taught by his grandmother:
Kotahi te taha mahimahi, kotahi te taha paraoa
.

Meaning: One side is of lowly birth, one side is of aristocratic descent.

Belying this modern-day belief that Maoris had no class system, when
they did. And being tribal, with no notion of themselves as a race, let alone a nation, the snobbery extended to tribes looking down on each other. Like all humans, Charlie added with meaning. Since it’s rammed down our throats that Maori culture and Maori ways are egalitarian and so by implication they’re somehow morally superior.

Beth, there is another old proverb:
He pai aha to te tutua
? Which means: What good is it if one is a slave?

Now, if I were Jake’s advocate, I would have to say categorically that his anger against the world was perfectly understandable. (I even dreamed about Jake; he’s in the centuries ago past, atop a rocky pinnacle, being the bluffs at Tarawera, and hurling slaves to their deaths. But they kept coming until he could hurl no more and then it was his turn. A tattooed warrior slave hefted Jake up and threw him into eternity.)

My gran was the sweetest, kindest person I ever knew and yet when she spoke a certain proverb her face changed; she became ugly and I was confused at why. She’d say these words with an imperious sneer:
Kaua te ware e tu ki te marae
, meaning: let none of no rank or importance stand on a marae. My grandmother, Beth, was a snob. Yet she instilled in 94 me that I must be humble at all times and never let power or flattery swell my head.

There is another saying:
He toa taumate taua
, a warrior dies in battle. That means the warrior who allows himself to be captured and made a slave is at the opposite end of respect. It will be his cooked flesh the enemy will feast on.

Then Beth informed him rather awkwardly, I ran into Jake yesterday.

Silence.

He’s a changed man. We had quite a chat.

Charlie was shocked, as much at his reaction as he was at not being told until today. For he felt jealous, even angry, though covered it well, until he gave it away with a cough. I’m glad to hear he’s changed. That gives hope for everyone. Again at abruptly deciding he had work to do.

And he left the room in a state he’d never known in the past decade of living with this woman he more than loved, he adored. Inside he seethed with the unfamiliar emotion of jealousy. (Or was it intuition?) That made it twice Jake had got to him, perhaps got the better of him even if
unknowingly
.

IN PRISON THE quality of cunning becomes like a millionaire’s status on the outside. It just feels like you’re rich, ’cos all the fullas look up to you the more cunning you show, measuring it by what you get away with, by the quantity of drugs you manage to smuggle yourself, or get smuggled in. ’Cos drugs and smokes are the currency of your tiny economy of basic barter, bribe, borrow, beg, pay as protection. And, as on the outside, the more currency you have the more it puts the dollar noughts on the end of your name to say how successful or failed you are. Cash is present, too, but only in the hands of the few who are seen as right up there with the Money Gods. Cash that circulates in the prison and goes out again as prisoners get released.

Cunning is to do with violence as well, of course it is. This iz jail, man, not a effin’ charm school. Overt violence is the prevailing culture ’cos the fullas aren’t good at restraint, they think all forms of patience sucks and that all moments of life are to do with instant gratification, be it sex or anger or a specific hunger or revenge to be satisfied.

Cunning is your woman using her (our, you guess) baby at visits sticking lumps of hash in his nappy and you getting it out when you’re givin’ it a bullshit cuddle, and sticking it up your own arse, right up the passage, man. Cunning is in hash lumps under sticking plasters stuck to baby, in bubba’s hair, beneath that fancy tied ribbon, inside her dummy, her li’l booties, taped under the little fulla’s li’l armpits, thaz what cunning iz. The reward that got you talking like thiz, words coming out lazy, dreamy, from the world of Drugland.

Cunning is in how you take revenge, the devious means you use, the ploys, the traps you set, the credible lies you tell, the circuitous methods you employ. Unlike the full-frontal attack, it comes like a bolt of lightning from heaven, its cleverness and diabolical cunning apparent immediately and shocks even you rotten souls.

Since time is not a living notion, as in taking from this point to that, as in like a plant — or a person — growing from a seed to a li’l plant to a big one to a bigger one and changing, of course changing, then time stands still. Time is not organic, it’s fixed, like your mind state, your behavioural pattern, your fixed assumptions and views on everything. You’re an inorganic organism.

Whatever, it don’t change the repeating fact of coming back here, several times, with a longer sentence and a smaller mind; a few grey hairs starting to show. That’s what time iz inside jail: young men fixed of thinking going greyer and greyer. You use time to think about matters, personal things, most of all YOU.

You think about YOU in big capitals ’cos that’s how it feels, as if this whole world is about YOU, ME, I. Of what has been done to YOU. How YOU, I, feel. It’s about YOUR hurt, no one else’s, not one single other person’s hurt, their feelings. Which makes it easy to use time to think about, and carry out, acts of revenge; time to stew over insults, bad deeds done against you — ME. You stew away in the bubbling pot of
yourself
, thinking about nothing but revenge against another whose self means nothing but
something
(one) for you to crush, inflict grievous pain upon. For what he did to YOU (ME! Ya hear me, man? ME!).

A fulla like Apeman had to be careful with his cunning ’cos he was so cunning he’d planned over six years inside for this, to be so unnoticed the powers read it as reformed enough, or a growing-up process started, as miracles like that did happen and somewhat too frequently by the impossible standards in here, of going against the culture, so to get his transfer request
approved. To the garden city of Christchurch, not that the prison there had gardens.

But it did have a free citizen, name of Abe Heke.

Apeman put on the act and kept it up, claiming he wanted the move so to be closer to the (bullshit) mother of his child (a li’l bitch in the photos Keekee sends with her letters, when she ain’t mine, it’s just part of the plan, a reflection of my cunning), especially the child, ’cos she’s what I live for, that’s what I tell the assessment people here. That I decided to be a better person for my daughter’s sake. When, hahahaha, I don’t have no bitch daughter and if I did I’d not be interested in her, why would I be? My bitch ole lady was someone’s daughter and she never grew up to take an interest in her daughters and this son, the hell she did. I just want to get moved to Christchurch.

Careful with his cunning ’cos he’s like the rest of ’em, he wakes every day wanting to murder someone, anyone, though Apeman has a name, he sees a face, as clear as if Abe Heke stood in front of him, as clear as if Abe’d been put into his cell not knowing who he was celled up with.

Apeman could see Abe’s (handsome) effin’ face. He wanted to murder Abe Heke and he wanted to murder a few others in here as well, the usual reasons, a punk’s attitude, a lover who was sharing her (his) arse around, givin’ blow jobs all ovah th’ place, and there was always some cee who gave you a look ’cos he wanted your rep, so they were on your murder list. ’Cept if you wanted Abe you had to find another way to get the others without anyone knowing, except your very closest gang brothers sworn to secrecy.

Being careful in your cunning, though, was another cunning in itself, maybe it was the billionaire league of cunning. ’Cos J Paul Getty aka Apeman Black manages to get stories going amongst his mindless bros about the dudes he wants to hurt, revenge against, including those whose only crime is a look that lingers too long, maybe only three or four seconds in it (and your life is changed, buddy, I swear it is). And the boys take care of it and believe the hurts to have been done against them, when it’s only Apeman manipulating these li’l manboys’ emotions, gettin’ inside their stupid messed-up heads with lies about the enemy — as in the plural. (If thou art not my friend then thou art mine enemy.)

So Apeman’s file stayed unblemished, and being who he was, the enforcer of the Black Hawks, Two Lakes division, he didn’t have to prove himself any more, and anyway the Hawks ruled this wing, there was no
opposition, just wankers who made mistakes. Prison was full of them. They were in here because they
were
a mistake, the whole joint populated by mistakes of nature, or by bad luck of parents they were born to and dragged up by, the hellholes they got raised in.

But the leopard still had spots, the ape still had his wild nature; he had tearing teeth and claws like razor blades and no mind to speak of that would decide him against any act of nature.

So to sate this desire for blood, for pure need to do violence, Ape would go to one of the Hawk’s cells where a victim would be waiting and he’d grab a bunch of the dude’s belly skin and try and twist it right off. Or he’d bum him dry with a broom handle end; do all manner of unimaginable things, would Apeman of the prison jungle.

Best would be, playing his own mother. Oh, now that beat everything.

He’d put a mop end on his head. Have the victim held down on the bed, someone clamping his mouth, and he’d light a cigarette; he’d suck in a few drags, blow out ever so casually until his mind did the shift (back into the past) then his mother’s voice’d start up, in half-falsetto:
I’m not happy with you,
Lovey. You’ve been a bad girl, haven’t you?

The past was a river he swam down. The swirls of swift current would carry him, sweep him back to other days. His head would shake from side to slow side, eyes squeeze like hers into narrow slits, breath would come fast through the nostrils, and voice change to a husky falsetto.

Lovey, do you hear me? Do you hear your mother? I’m not very happy with you.

Then this deranged, utterly psychotic soul would put the hot end of the cigarette on an arm, or somewhere on a leg, and the smell it sent off of burning flesh brought thought of how a man’s ancestors used to smell roasting human (slave) flesh cooking in the hangi, the fat dripping onto the hot stones, his past returning to him in those wafts of singed meat, to the senses of that boy being swept down the waters back to the past. So the (boy) warrior’s mouth would salivate, and the mouth trying to get out a scream of pain was denied by strong hands purple-black with tattoo marks of modern warriorhood, doing Apeman’s commands, seeing Ape become his Momma doing her thing. And that was all right, anything a gang brother did was just fine, no matter what it was, how foul, disgusting, cruel, sick the deed.

You were family (YA GOT THAT?! WE’RE FAM-I-LY! AIN’T NOTHIN’ AN’ NO ONE COMES BETWEEN US — YA HEAR!?!) like
no other family could possibly know. You were made up of broken hearts, pieces of hearts patched (got that? patched, hahaha!) together to form a new heart that still pumped blood but with poison added, infected, scar tissue where all the tears and wounds had done crude nature’s job of trying to heal over.

And the victim would never say anything, being in fear of threats not on his life, but on the living body. They’d cripple him, put him in a wheelchair. Shove a piece of metal from the prison workshop into his spine, cut the connection between limbs and brain. A wheelchair, you got that, cuzzie?

Pluck out his effin’ eyes, but even then they wouldn’t be finished. Not if they wanted a total blanket silence on Apeman’s bizarre cruel doings. We’d slice the mothereffer’s tongue off, ram pencils in his ears to bust his eardrums, so he’d suffer without means not just to scream, bubba, but to walk, see, hear and tell. That’s what we’d do, fulla. And know we’d do it — bud.

So Apeman got to satisfy his busted-up heart, while in the filing cabinet, it continued to read most favourably about one christened Montgomery, who used to be a Rimene before he changed his name by deed poll to Black, to show more allegiance to the flag, the mighty (angry) cause of being born and made what he was.

And because the other gang, the enemy rival Brown Fists, had a crazy rule that forbade mention of any word that had black in it or meant black — as in dark, as in ebony, as in coffee without milk, shit darker than brown, night (they’d never even say evening) and its two-word versions like last night, this evening, so it got ridiculous — Apeman’s changed name was always a temptation, a slip of the tongue to say.

His sentence was, on his estimations, about half over. He owed Tania only six more years and then he was back in credit with freedom and she was still in her grave, HAHAHAHA! You’re dead, ya bitch! And I’m still alive.

And
you’re
dead next, Abe Heke. Watch (this space) me.