Dead I Well May Be (23 page)

What have you done apart from fuck us up in Mexico with your bollocks? Fergal says, at breaking point.

Now you listen, boy, Scotchy says with menace.

No, you listen.

Let me fucking tell you one or two things.

They start pushing one another. I close my eyes to escape it. I put my hands over my ears.

You fucking can’t tell me anything, Scotchy, you have to know something first.

You wee fuck, I was fucking fucks like fucking you before you were born.

Aye, Scotchy, so you say, and you can …

I drift out. I can’t hear anymore. It’s morning and the show’ll come on soon. I lean back and look at the rivers and the towns and the canals. There’s a railway I haven’t noticed before. It connects two of the larger provincial cities on the left continent. Even with its water shortage and irrigation problems it still seems the most technologically advanced of the two kingdoms. There’s a new invasion plan that will break the war wide open. The war minister looks at his minutes and notes that this scheme is coming along nicely; that railway line will help. A feint to the south and then a rapid movement of troops to the north and across the Great Ravine. The window continent’s forces will still be stuck down in the south. They won’t be able to deploy fast enough. They’ll be outflanked. The whole northern side of the window continent will be captured before they can do anything about it. Unless they can retreat, draw the army back to the funnel cobwebs, aye, into the Pripet Marshes, into Siberia. Draw them in, bleed them. I smile. The show’s starting. The shadows of the bars are progressing from right to left. I stare at the ceiling. Hmmmm. I-stare-at-the-ceiling. At the ceiling. At the bloody ceiling, and then I have it.

Eu-fucking-reka, I whisper to myself.

It had taken a week, but finally we had made a hole big enough for a man to fit through in the ceiling. We had worked with our bare hands and the manacles on our wrists. (Fergal had refused to let us use his delicate pick. After all, he had to lock us up with it every day when our guards came and he didn’t want to damage the thing.) We’d scraped the underlayer of concrete almost the whole way through to the bitumen roof covering.

The prison roof was made of reinforced concrete that had been prepoured into long slabs, craned up, and placed on thick ledges that ran the length of the cell block. The roof was basically a series of simple bridges. The walls were supporting structures, so the whole thing was pretty rigid. It was a cheap job and I wouldn’t like to be underneath it if an earthquake hit, but it was good for our purposes.

The concrete was about six inches thick, but the years of weathering had not been kind to its components. It crumbled easily, and the only thing you had to watch was tearing too big a hole in case a chunk of it caved in or the ceiling collapsed on top of you.

As additional protection against rain, over the flat reinforced concrete roof, a layer of tar had been laid down, a sort of bitumenlike substance, that allowed water to run off. That had obviously been years ago and it had warped, torn, and buckled since then. Over the bigger holes they had placed aluminum siding. Still, it was no obstacle at all.

We’d all been builders at some point and knew what we were doing. The cell-block roof was flat, and we checked from the exercise yard that we could get onto it without being seen. At night it would be very dark, and from our observations it seemed that the searchlights only scanned every once in a while. Fergal had done most of the scraping, working on my shoulders and then Scotchy’s, but we’d all done our bit. Like I say, the concrete was flaky, pathetic stuff and we’d have got through sooner had we not been careful about not puncturing the bitumen, and that stuff we could rip with our hands the night we decided to go. No point doing it too soon.

We’d made the smallest possible hole in the cell corner and we’d used the
Great Escape
tactic of concrete down our trousers to get rid of the evidence in the yard. Our only problem would be if they decided to do an inspection on the flat roof. Someone walking along might notice, or worse, might fall through it.

If you were in the cell itself and you looked straight up, you might see it or you might not, depending on the light and shade. But none of the guards ever did that anyway.

Our moods had changed. Fergal upbeat. Me, a second wind. Scotchy recalled to life. When we weren’t scraping the ceiling, Scotchy had Fergal up on my shoulders checking ambient temperature, the phases of the moon, the regularity of the searchlights, the weather, the
terrain beyond the wire, and, seemingly satisfied, he said that we were ready to go in the next few days.

The plan was simple: I’d hoist Fergal up, he’d break through the tar and get on the roof. I’d hoist Scotchy up onto my shoulders and then Scotchy would pull himself up to his waist and I’d grab hold of his ankles and then both of them would pull me up. Once on the roof, we’d drop down onto the grass on the other side of the cell block and make a break for the wire. If there really were dogs (and Fergal in many, many observations hadn’t seen one), we’d just have to kill them, and then we’d climb over the wire and make for the forest. Scotchy would head us north to the sea, using (he claimed) the Pole Star, and then we’d steal a boat for the U.S.

Objectively, the plan seemed a bit dodgy, but none of us was or could be in the objective universe quite at the moment.

I think it’ll work, Scotchy, I said one day, but if we don’t go soon, I’m a little concerned that the guards will discover the hole. I mean, a heavy rain could mess with that film and crack it.

It’ll be ok, Bruce. Dark of the moon we go, couple of days, Scotchy reassured me.

Two things we haven’t totally thought through, Fergal said.

I smiled at him.

What?

Well, one is food when we get out, and the second is the whole dog thing again, Fergal said.

I looked at him.

We live off the land for food, and really, Fergal, you’ve got to stop worrying about the dogs. It’s something we’ll just have to deal with if it happens, I said, doing my absolute best to sound reassuring.

No probs, Fergie boy, Scotchy said.

And Fergal: sure, they’d be Chihuahuas. You know, those wee small ones with yon ears, I said. No probs for the likes of us.

Oh aye, those wee, wee ones, Fergal said, taking what I suggested seriously. It clearly comforted him, so I didn’t press it.

I gave Scotchy a look that he didn’t see.

Your man Jimmy Deacon had one of them dogs, used to carry it round in his sea jacket, Scotchy said, getting all ruminative with us.

God, Jimmy Deacon, I haven’t heard of that name for a while, Fergal said.

I hadn’t heard it at all, but I was saying nothing since we seemed to be well off the subject of attack dogs now.

Aye, you remember him, Bruce, don’t ya? He was the boy with the one arm that saved yon boy from drowning.

That was Scotchy McMaw, Scotchy, who you don’t know before you pretend you do, I said.

I do know him, Scotchy said.

Fergal was speaking, but I was tuning out. It was good to hear the boys talk about home. Talking about anything. I snoozed and I smelled chimneys and peat fires and there were chips in the chippie and hot whiskeys in the pub and the
craic
was good.…

Later the same night, and Fergal was looking at us skeptically. He had just climbed down off my shoulders, counting the seconds for the scanning searchlights again. There really was no time period as it turned out. The guards just shone the light haphazardly wherever they liked, but it was rare that they would come back to the same place quickly after they’d swept it.

Soon, Scotchy said. In forty-eight hours no more moon, and we’re out of here.

Fergal shook his head. Fergal, even with his optimism, sometimes had a bit of a knack for seeing the black cloud.

What is it, Fergal? I asked him.

He said nothing for a while, but then sure enough it came to pass:

Ach, this fucking plan’s full of fucking holes, he said, clearly the culmination of a mounting concern that had grown within him.

Hopefully one big hole, anyway, Scotchy said, giving me a wink.

I laughed, but Fergal wasn’t to be diverted.

Well, look, if it’s so fucking simple, why haven’t they tried it? Fergal asked, jerking his thumb towards the other cells.

’Cause they’re remand prisoners; they’re awaiting trial, be stupid to escape, Scotchy said.

I was now a bit peeved. This was typical Scotchy.

How do you know that, Scotchy? How could you possibly know a thing like that? I asked.

They are, he insisted.

Aye, Scotchy. How can you fucking know anything? What if there still is dogs, wee or not, between the wall and the fence? What if the fence is electrified? Fergal asked.

Electrified. We’re in bloody Mexico, Scotchy snorted.

So what if we are? It could be mined. They have mines, don’t they, Fergal insisted.

Come on, Fergal, be realistic, Scotchy said, soothingly.

We all wanted to believe. But we were terrified. Why hadn’t the other prisoners made escapes? What did they know? Maybe they didn’t have the gumption. Shit, maybe they had made escapes, maybe there’d been lots of escapes. How would we know?

I think it’s because they don’t have a lock picker as good as Fergal, I said.

’Course they do, must have, this is the criminal element of Mexico. I betcha they make us look like bairns. No, they know something we don’t, Fergal said, gloomily.

Well, we can’t ask them, we don’t have the lingo. And none of them will have anything to do with us, I said.

Aye, and they killed Andy, are you forgetting that? Scotchy said.

Shouldn’t we try, at least, have one chat, they’re not all killers, just get the lie of the land, Fergal said.

I shook my head.

That oul boy who wanted to talk to me before. One chat. Look, in one minute we could clear everything up. Are there dogs? Is the fence electric? Two quick questions.

Everyone will know we’re doing an escape, you buck eejit, I said.

Aye, you’ll give the plan away. I forbid it, Scotchy said.

You forbid it? Fergal asked.

Aye, I do.

And who the fuck are you to be giving orders now? Fergal said.

They both stood and stared at one another, each waiting for the first move. I thought for a moment that Scotchy was going to take a swing. I got up and put myself between them.

Sit down the pair of youse, acting like weans, I said.

We all sat down warily.

Fergal, I know it seems silly. I mean, intelligence is important and
all, but Scotchy’s right, we can’t trust those bastards, can’t ask them anything, I said.

Aye, you just remember Andy, remember, Scotchy said.

Fergal said nothing. I patted him on the shoulder. Scotchy continued:

Look, it’s simple, they just don’t have the initiative. Look at us and look at them. You’re a star, Fergal, they don’t have people like you.

Fergal cracked a smile, but we could tell he was uneasy. I wasn’t sure how much of it was genuine concern about the effectiveness of our plan or just plain old-fashioned cold feet. Fergal was no chicken, at least no more than the rest of us, but none of us had been in a situation like this before. Me and Scotchy, though, had both been in the clink, him in Belfast and me in a wee barracks on Saint Helena. But we’d neither of us even bothered with thoughts about escape. Scotchy had been in short term and I was being dishonorably discharged in a matter of weeks. I don’t know what it was like for him, but for me it had been a holiday. Fergal, though, was a different kettle: he was a craftsman and a thief and he’d never done time. He’d come to America, and I suppose he’d ended up in the wrong crew working for Darkey and Mr. Duffy. He should really have been pulling scams somewhere or been part of a soft-glove outfit. I mean, he’d handled his gun ok in that shoot-out at Dermot’s, but mainly that was because of the hours Darkey made us all spend on the range. He wasn’t a heavy, he wasn’t cut out for this.

I looked at Scotchy and he looked at me. I wondered if we were both thinking the same thing. We had to calm him down. Andy’s death had been terrible for him. We needed to be easy on him. And after all, we owed him everything.

Look it’s going to be ok, ya big wean, I said, and patted him on the back.

Aye, it is, Scotchy agreed, smiling too. Sure, isn’t it all for you that we can do anything? Like I say, you are a star, Fergal, and when we get back I’m going to see to it that you get a fucking medal.

Fergal smiled at us.

Boys, look, I know it’s going to be ok, he said after a time.

We chatted a while and cleared the air. Scotchy said that tomorrow night or at the latest the next night would be the night, depending
upon the weather. If there was no lightning storm, we’d go. We agreed and talked some more. Fergal locked us back in the ring bolts and the guard came with rice and water. We ate and drank, and they came for our bowls. I pissed in the bucket and solid shat for the second time since coming to Mexico and wiped my arse with straw. We spent the evening talking, something we rarely did. Scotchy spun us some tales about his childhood, and I told them a made-up story about the girl who used to baby-sit for me.