The Last Time We Spoke (21 page)

Trays of lamb chops spat and hissed behind the hot yellow glass; spirals of steam twisted towards a giant range hood, as if caught in a powerful rip; and mammoth stainless-steel pans of sliced pumpkin rested on a bench waiting their turn under the grill.

Ben stood peeling the last of a mound of potatoes, his paring knife removing a thick layer of yellow flesh with each peel. His hand had been out of plaster for months now, but he was still clumsy with the fine work, his last two fingers clawing permanently into his palm. The surgeons had recommended daily physiotherapy. Like that was going to happen in prison!

‘Prisoner Toroa.’ Lawrence, an ex-SAS guard, put his head round the door of the galley kitchen.

Ben’s nickname in prison was Bull, while the guards called him either by his number or surname. It was really only Haslop who’d ever used his first name. Sometimes Ben almost forgot that he was Ben.

He laid down the knife. ‘Hey, Skunk, can you put the spuds into the oven in five, if I’m not back?’

As far as Ben was concerned, kitchen duty was alright. It could get noisy and explosively hot when they were working full ball to get a meal out. But he liked the perks that came with the job; kitchen hands
were treated differently. The screws trusted them more. They had to, considering the guys were working with knives and boiling water every day. Anyway, you didn’t need to be able to access the kitchen if you were after a weapon; most were fashioned from the unlikeliest of things – pegs, paperclips, toilet flushers. Inmates were a resourceful bunch. A toothbrush filed to a point could inflict as much damage as any knife if rammed under the ribs with enough force.

The kitchen guys wielded a different sort of weapon. Food. With little to break the monotony of every twenty-four-hour day, what was on the menu and the size of a prisoner’s portion were serious matters.
Kai
was a currency for trade and stand overs, coming in a close second to contraband.

Lawrence handed Ben a long white envelope. ‘Your transfer.’

‘Transfer?’

‘Ngawha, Friday.’

Ben was bewildered. ‘What? How come? Suddenly, after how many fucking years?’

‘Maybe they moving you closer to your
whānau
or something?’

‘Whānau?
Yeah, right!’ Ben laughed. What family did he have? Even Lily hadn’t visited in months. She must have finally realised he was beyond salvation.

Lawrence shrugged. ‘I’m only the messenger, mate. Anyway, you should be stoked. It’s a holiday camp up there. Cushier than the real world, I can tell you.’

‘Not interested,’ Ben said, turning away and heading back into the kitchen. ‘I’ll see out my bid here. This is my crib.’

‘Gimme a break, Toroa,’ the guard said, exasperated. ‘Report to your unit manager at nine, Friday morning, cell packed, ready to go.’

Ben stopped in the doorway. Coldplay’s song ‘Paradise’, was blasting through the clouds of steam. It had been nearly seven years. They couldn’t just move him. His heart started running in
his chest, running away from the news. He knew the facility north of Whangarei was a cushy number, but his mates were at Pare and they were his
whānau
. There was no one else. He knew Pare, knew the rules. He understood the guys, who not to mess with …

Sure, he sometimes complained, but it was a safe sort of complaining, with no expectation of change. Routine regulated his life, each day practically predictable. Now, without warning, they wanted to mess up everything.

Something else was also bothering Ben as he stood there in the doorway chewing on his new fate, but he quashed the thought before it could breathe any oxygen.

He stepped back into the stifling kitchen. ‘I thought I told you to fuckin’ put the potatoes on,’ he barked at Skunk.

‘What’s with you?’ the big guy replied. ‘It’s only five minutes now.’

Ben’s eyes scanned the bench and stopped at the butcher’s block. The pumpkin knife lay there, glinting under the 100 watt bulbs, its grey handle thick and greasy.

Ben moved towards the bench, towards his ticket to a longer stay, towards his handle on a different outcome.

‘You okay, bro?’ his mate’s voice echoed through the fog in his mind. ‘Something happen out there?’

Skunk was a big fellow, a solid crate of flesh with a gentle teddy bear face and ears that stuck out at right angles. He’d worked for the council driving a garbage truck, before landing himself in prison. He was in for manslaughter, killing his cousin in a drunken brawl. It wasn’t hard to see how Skunk could have killed the bloke; he didn’t seem to appreciate his own strength. With a casual swipe of his hand he could easily drop someone.

It tore Skunk apart being away from his five kids and all, but he’d ‘found God’ since being inside. He loved working in the kitchen and planned to get a job as a chef when he got out.

Skunk was your model prisoner – repentant, motivated, always towing the line. The guy had even been granted special permission to use the workshop out of hours so he could build his youngest kid a go-kart. And it wasn’t just any old go-kart; it was a sight to behold, with suspension, proper steering, and a jazzy purple paint job. Skunk really wanted to be a good dad. From what Ben could tell, he already was one.

But Ben couldn’t be getting sentimental about his homie. Skunk wasn’t his problem. When it came down to it, it was every man for himself.

He shook his head, trying to reshuffle his thoughts, but the tunnel in his mind kept closing in, until just one thought ruled.

Skunk turned to check on the chops.

Ben picked up the knife, his pinkie and ring finger curling around the handle with deformed ease, the other fingers quickly following.

He moved towards the big man who was peering into the oven.

They’d think twice about shipping Ben up north if he picked up another sentence.

As Ben lifted the knife, Skunk spun round in a rap manoeuvre, his lumbering body bending in time to the music. He stopped, confusion streaked across his face. ‘Jeez, man?’

Then something happened; the eyes in front of Ben were no longer Skunk’s but his mother’s, wide with fear as Ryan laid into her.

Switch.

They were the farm kid’s surprised stare when he spotted them crouching in the shadows.

Switch.

Now the Reid woman’s.

Ben squeezed his eyes shut as if someone had put them out with a red-hot poker. Then he dropped the knife and ran from the kitchen, out into the quadrangle, where he spewed all over his feet.

He hovered over the mess – strings of saliva hanging from his mouth, water dripping from his nose, his whole body shaking. Then he slid down the wall and dropped his head onto his knees.

After a time he felt a hand on his shoulder – a strong, warm hand sucking up some of his pain. It was Skunk.

Skunk didn’t say anything, but Ben knew the big guy understood. It felt as if Skunk
was
the Lord he was always droning on about.

As the van pulled away from Paremoremo, Ben felt as empty as the vehicle in which he was travelling.

He was tired. If only he could sleep for a hundred years. Even the drugs had started to pall, flattening his mind into a collage of nothing.

He thought he’d learnt not to cling onto stuff. With no control over anything, it was best to skim across the surface of your lag, and form no attachments to people or place. So why was he so eaten up over the move?

Prison was a riddle. Everything seemed so certain – your sentence, your timetable, your space – yet everything was also completely uncertain – your placement, friendships, your privileges, and safety, your very next day. The endless constant always threatened to change. A bombshell around the next corner? Hide and Seek.

Strangely, Ben wasn’t that scared of what lay ahead. Not like when he’d moved from remand to Paremoremo as a newbie. He wasn’t so worried about starting at the bottom of the pack again, obliged to forge fresh connections, find new protection, set new precedents. He was sort of indifferent to all of that. It would happen. He’d most likely survive. But there was this other thing tugging at him and churning his innards. He’d lost something, and by travelling farther away from where he’d lost it, he had even less chance of ever getting it back.

In Whangarei they stopped for fuel. One of the guards bought him a doughnut. It was greasy and delicious, the yellow icing alone a novelty. Colour, after the monochrome existence that was Pare. Then they were on the road again.

For a time, Ben crouched beside the back window, watching the landscape slip by. Despite his legs going into cramp, he wouldn’t give up his position. From it, he could see green. Life green. Bursting bright green. Calm green. Frog and frond and grass green. Peace green. He’d forgotten the whole damn colour.

‘Transfer from Pare,’ someone called out.

They’d stopped. Ben pressed his face up against the grill. Surely they weren’t there. They were in the middle of the countryside, green grass rolling away in every direction.

The van door opened.

‘Morning, Ben.’ A tall screw with an accent, not Kiwi, stretched out a hand. His grip was strong and surprising.

Ben … Ben … Ben. The name. It ripped through him.

A breeze. The air smelt different. Tasted different. It blew him into a memory.
He is small. Someone, Debs maybe, is teaching him to fly a kite on Bastion Point. The picture is hazy but at the same time sharp. Sweet wind. Green grass dipping into a basin of blue sea and sky. Triangular colours soaring. A yellow tail trailing fun and possibility.

Processing at the Northern Regions Correction Facility was routine, with all the usual – strip-search, kit, medical. The difference was that the guards kept addressing him by his first name.

He was given lunch in the kit room because he’d missed out – a polony roll with no gristle, and a carton of cold, full-cream milk. Then he was led to his cell.

They had to walk some way from the main admin block along a gravel path that curved through park-like grounds. A haunch of laggers was weeding the lawn.

‘Why you fuckin’ pulling them out?’ Ben asked as he passed. Any green was good.

His cell was in a pod: a closed circle of booths around a concrete yard. In the centre of the yard was a small rectangle of lawn with a basketball hoop planted in the middle. The cells were all unlocked, the doors opening onto the communal area. Inmates hung around in clusters, listening to music, lazing in the sun, playing cards. A grey-haired guy was doing weights.

Ben’s cell looked clean and bright, but he didn’t linger long. Impatiently he removed his shoes and headed out into the yard to the small patch of kikuyu lawn. He stepped onto it and let out a slow sigh as the cool sponginess pushed up between his toes, making its way through his body to his head, where it unlocked years of grey. Years of no grass could kill a man.

‘Today we welcome a new brother to our family.’

A scrawny guy with brown hair gathered in a thin ponytail stood in front of his seated audience, tattoos inking all of his visible skin.

Ben looked around. Almost everyone in the room was brown and young, some still with the baby-faced freshness of first-timers, their expressions not yet tightened, their newness not yet decayed.

‘Ben arrived yesterday from Pare. He’s classified AB and is up the hill, but has been granted daytime leave to be with us in the
whare
till we have a vacant crib.’ The man nodded at Ben and smiled, showing off two rows of broken teeth. ‘We begin the day with a
karakia.
August, please.’

A lanky fellow stood up and bowed his head. Ben checked him out with a side-on glance. After the prayer, each of the guys came up to shake hands with him. One even tried to treat him to a
hongi
, but Ben pulled away; he wasn’t about to press noses with some random stranger. Then the meeting broke up and the guys headed
off to their work programmes, leaving Ben alone in the room with the main man.

A thin blue carpet covered the floor. A whiteboard with red scrawl rested on an easel at the front of the room. Big windows took in the grass outside. Cream prefab buildings broke up the view.

The scrawny fellow was as straight as a needle, his shoulders pulled right back to make a proud platform for his head. He oozed mana.

‘I’m Chalkie. I’m a lifer. I run this joint. While you are in this unit you answer to me, you understand. And the screws, of course.’

Ben raised an eyebrow.

‘You’ve come to a crossroads in your bid, mate. The prison service has decided to give you a chance, you lucky bastard. You’ve been selected to join this unit as part of a trial. Everyone high up is watching. The fate of other laggers will depend on you. Which path you choose.’

Ben looked at him.

‘So, which house you prefer to live in – a jailhouse or a marae?’

Ben frowned.

Chalkie scribbled something on the whiteboard with the red marker, drawing two squiggly lines. One joined up where it started; the other went off the board.

‘Two different routes, bro. One starts in a marae,’ he said pointing to the ground, ‘and ends out there in the real world. The other route starts in prison and ends in prison. A revolving door. You get my drift?’

Ben stared at the board to avoid the guy’s eyes, all-seeing eyes that left him feeling naked.

‘Your choice. Here we run things like on a marae. Same rules. Same customs. Same comforts. By now you’ll know the boob ain’t such a cool place to be.’

Ben shifted from one foot to the other. Why had he been put in
a youth unit? It was like going backwards. In a strange way it also felt kind of good. Like someone had lifted adulthood off his shoulders.

‘You can say “fuck society” or you can embrace it,’ the guy continued, his voice growing intense and loud. ‘You can go back there’ – he pointed across the green lawns to the pod – ‘and get stabbed, or maybe even get to see a mate hang himself with his bedding on his cell door handle. Perhaps someone’ll fuck you over in the shower. I’m guessing that after, what, six, seven years, you’ve seen it all. It ain’t a pretty place, is it?’