Henry Went Last Night

Alex was wrenched from sleep by the sound of grinding metal and stretching cables as a cell close by was unlocked. Someone dead. He climbed quickly from his small steel bed and listened. There were muffled voices, a distant drum built to a closer rattle. He knew it was the trolley coming along the landing, the death trolley.

He told himself that Henry wasn't dead. That he'd just over-dosed on his saved up gas, or fainted, or cut his wrists or face again. Scarred and cut himself. Alex hoped that it was that, not death. Conversations grew in the morning quiet, he dragged on his jeans and socks.

Warder Rex Stuart appeared at Alex's grill, his eyes and face downcast. Alex walked closer to the bars.
"Henry went last night,' Rex told him in a whisper.
"Hung?"
"Yes," said Rex and moved away.

It was all real now, not kept away by defending thought. Henry was dead, the smiling young Maori was gone. Alex walked the few short feet to the back of his cell to distance himself from the activity in Henry's cell next door - the cutting down of the body. He heard Henry being laid out on the trolley in a rattle of noise, then the trolley wheeling away.

"Jesus, that's all I need," came Adrian's voice from the southern end of the landing as the body was rolled past his cell.
"It's the friggen sugar," yelled Monty, closer on the northern side.
Alex knew that Monty was talking to him. "Can't blame anyone," he said softly, sitting on the bed now with his back against the cold block wall.

"He's gone Alex," called Adrian.
"You were always frigging hassling him Alex," accused Monty. "Never give any bastard a break."
"Turn it up," said Alex.
"He's gone Alex," came Adrian's voice again.
"Always picking on him," claimed Monty.
"Listen mate," Alex told him. "The guy was psychotic and on heavy drugs, could be anything. No use blaming each other."

"He's gone Alex," called Adrian. He just needed to tell Alex and then things would be all right.
"Yea, right Adrian," Alex called. They all fell silent then.

A little later breakfast came, rolled on wheels. It seemed unreal to Alex that breakfast came. Henry was dead, just cut down and breakfast came. He usually ate his breakfast in a rush then went back to sleep. This morning he ate no breakfast and did not sleep. The morning light was grey. Unlock came and Alex's steel door was cranked open.

"I won't be long mister, I'm having a shave!" he called, stepping from the cell and calling along the narrow landing from where the warder waved an acknowledgement from the landing grill.

Out to the east, through concrete-barred windows, there was a view of grass. Further over a fortified sentry tower held the ground between two perimeter fences, a road ran the outer fence line. On the far side of the road there was the prison boiler house burning coal, here and there about there were solitary trees and more grass rolling up to distant hills, crops and belts of trees, farmer's houses and part of an orchard seen in the distance. But there was no mark on the landscape that drew the mind, nothing comforting or reassuring. Not a familiar clock tower, stone building or grassy knoll, not a running stream or a close by mountain. No memory.

Cows crazed in the nearby paddocks. Closer, there were noisy ducks on the prison grass, sparrows and seagulls, wild cats slunk in - all searching for food. Closer still men locked in. Alex threw his toast out an open window, spinning the bread in a discus flight to be fallen upon and squabbled over by the waiting birds and cats. The time was 75 minutes after the death trolley rolled by.

"Tell him to let me out!" shouted Monty, all aggressive again. Alex mumbled a reply before walking back to his cell and Monty pushed the emergency button.
"Give it a break," called Alex. "I'm just having a shave." Alex finished his shave. He wanted to shave, it just seemed right that day. He walked to the landing, stopped at Henry's cell. Hanging from the ventilation grill on the back wall was a rope fashioned from jeans, twisted and knotted with one leg cut off. It was important for Alex to look in the cell. He had not been able to bring himself to look at the body - so he looked in the cell. Timidly at first, he slowly raised his head again. He saw the body then, a handsome young man distorted and grey hanging on the wall.

It was an exorcism for the tall lean man to move silently and slowly about the landing. To face the day and the shock - he needed to stretch into it bit by bit. He walked to Monty's cell.
"No use getting all carried away," said Alex, stopping to look through Monty's grill.
Monty was moving in agitation about the cell as though also trying to shift the death away, shake it off. He was wearing jeans and a tee shirt, his arms thick with muscle. Below his dark hair, Monty's eyes were flashing coals on a long thin face.
Half turning toward Alex, Monty said, "You were always picking on him."
"No I wasn't," said Alex gently. "There is no use carrying on like that."
"That bloke over in A Block, you helped him all the time."
Alex couldn't think for the moment who it was that Monty was talking about. There had been so many floating toward death in that place, so many dead.

"All that shit about sugar," said Monty, raising an earlier argument between Alex and Henry. "You know he only had weeks to go and you argue with him about sugar."
"Don't blame me," warned Alex.
Monty looked at him straight. "I'm not blaming you," he said. "I really liked the bloke."
"I know, we all did."
"I'm just telling you, I like the bloke. I met his father up the visiting room."
"I know that," said Alex, reasonable now.
Monty seemed to want to guarantee the point. "I liked the bloke he said again."
The recitation finally upset Alex.  "I don't give a stuff," he hissed.
"I'm just telling you," said Monty angrily.
Alex wrapped his hands around the grill to Monty's cell, the closest he good get, his knuckles paled whiter. "I don't give a stuff," he said. "Come out to the workshop and we will talk about it."
Seeing Alex properly upset seemed to calm Monty. Henry was dead and Alex was angry.

With that, Alex said he would see him when he came out. He walked along the landing to the security grill.
"Morning Adrian," he said, passing Adrian's cell. "We'll be right."
"Gidday Alex, I'm staying in today," he said quietly.
When he reached the southern end Alex stopped at the Bulgarians cell. He stopped to look in to see how he was, what he would be making of this kiwi breakfast. "Morning Sid."
The short muscular man raised a hand to his cropped hair. "You going to the workshops?" he asked.
"Yea."
"I'm coming too, we'll do a workout."
They always did workouts together but Alex had forgotten that morning. "Okay," he agreed, though he didn't much have the stomach for it. He moved on. A warder opened the landing grill and Alex stepped through. There were 4 warders and one lightly rubbed him down for weapons. Alex walked to the western side of the cell block through a small sally port into the little workshop and a few minutes to himself to think about the death.

One side of the workshop was a grill set on concrete blocks. There were posters around the walls and steel table bolted to the floor. On the western side a partition of concrete block housed a toilet and divided the maximum-security workshop narrowly in two. In the northern half was a television locked to a frame on the wall, in the other corner a radio built into the block.

Soon the Bulgarian army deserter arrived, his face expressionless.
"You know about Henry?" asked Alex.
"Yes," he said abruptly.

They worked out hard in competition against some errant thought. Chin-ups with a 30lb bag of sand tied around their waists, dips between cane weaving tables, push up with sandbags on their backs with feet up on a chair, sweating and straining. They took off their shirts to reveal muscle glistening in sweat before doing sit ups and curls with the sandbags. They finished with sparring, perhaps longing for the taste of blood in the mouth from a let-through punch. Then the workout was done and over with.

Monty came to the workshop. Quiet now, bringing the strength that had helped him survive years in Paremoremo. News came over the radio about the death in D Block.
"They're onto it quick," said Monty.

During the day visitors at the grill to talk to the men, social workers, priests, senior staff all sharing in the loss in some way or other. The news had spread around the prison. Men with families thought of their kin, those without families may have wished for one. But in the workshop Alex had to fix a restraint in his mind to prevent himself from seeing Henry walk by one last time with his cheeky, knowing smile. Alex needed to resist the thought that Henry was being cut up. Not just buried but drawn and dissected in autopsy. There would be no funeral for them to attend. Even Henry's cell would no longer be his, the few small belongings gathered up and sent home to his father in the South Island with the cut up body surrendered back by his keepers.

Others around the prison would be despising Henry for his weakness on a ship they all sailed, perhaps laugh about it. Some would think of it by comparison that they were at least better off than Henry. Some might even be fascinated and buoyed by the news, think they could perhaps do the same and escape the dry rotting death. Others could be frightened but all would be circumspect, reminded how close death was to the concrete pit which ducks flocked around to feed and where men lived with no real memory.

Late in afternoon, after the return to the cell block for lunch and the opportunity to go to the workshops again, a voice rose, rich resonant and soulful - echoing into every corner of D Block and the earth below where it was rumoured battles had been fought and men killed. A voice that somehow lifted the chill beset from the morning. A Tohunga sang a calming prayer in Henry's cell, that his spirit might lift away and not add to the misery of the haunted men held there.

Back out on the cell landing just before final lock down came Monty was out picking up the dinner plates. He stopped to talk to Alex.
"I should have given him his tea last night," he said. "Woken him up when I was out picking up the plates. I threw some socks at him. It could have been that," he suggested.
Alex shook his head sadly because the day had been long and dispiriting. "No mate, you can't look at it like that."
"Bill too," continued Monty. "He was joking with him last night, it could have been that."
"No mate, it's no one's fault," said Alex, but he didn't know. "It's just this place, guys like Henry shouldn't be here, maybe none of us should. It can get to you, but it's much worse for blokes like him. They should be in a hospital somewhere, or sent home to their old people. You don't put a mixed-up kid in a place like this.
Monty sighed, deciding that perhaps it wasn't the chocolates he won off Henry at poker the previous afternoon.