Jake's Long Shadow (8 page)

So why the same feeling now, sitting in a taxi, a different man, six years older, in a good job, with my Pakeha flatmate snoozing beside me, on our way home to a decent flat? Why is my stomach knotting? Maybe our flat’s burnt down. Maybe we’re going to get laid off our good jobs.

The feeling just wouldn’t go.

(I gave evidence against Apeman. He went down for life. Screamed his
ugly tattooed head off in the court how the Black Hawk family would get me. My old man blew me away by turning up in the public gallery with these huge Maori guys. He kept trying to catch my eye, but at the time I thought go to hell, you’re the main reason all this shit has happened. If you’d been even half a decent old man then Nig wouldn’t’ve joined the Brown Fists gang, Grace wouldn’t’ve killed herself, Mum would still be your wife.

But when Jake turned up for the three days I gave evidence and that smart-arse lawyer acting for the bad guy put me through the hoops, I did start taking this strange comfort from my old man; his presence, and his big tough mates giving the evils back at the Hawk contingent. He looked different somehow. I even shook his hand after the jury came back with the guilty verdict. But had nothing to say to him. Still don’t. You’re over,
Daddy
, who never was one.)

Taxi had dropped them off, Ryan near asleep on his feet as Abe searched for the front-door key in one of his jeans pockets, found it, about to go down the short stretch of footpath to the flat when car headlights, on full, beamed up on them. A car stopped.

Ryan said, What the hell? They cops? We haven’t done anything.

Abe thinking he wouldn’t mind if they were cops, but they weren’t. All four doors opened at once. God’s wretched foursome.

One of them said: Remember us? Didn’t wait for an answer. You were eyeballing us and we weren’t doing anything, to Ryan he said this. In an aggrieved tone.

They always were aggrieved, this type. At someone, everyone,
something
, everything. In case they missed one. This was Friday and Saturday night venting in any city, any town in the western world. Maybe all young males were like this? They’d vent with their fists, maybe carrying knives. In America they’d have guns. And so would we. Look, they were all wearing heavy head-kicker boots. Skinheads. Little cock punks. Boys being the cursed things they sometimes were. Boys in men’s bodies.

Ryan, defences down from having fallen asleep in the taxi, still stumbling back from dreamland drunkland, shook his head and said, Abe, I think we’re outnumbered here.

And Abe sighed, and that nervous feeling said, See? Told you so. And inside he fought the process of being Jake Heke’s son. He really struggled with it. As a rage started clearing his mind of all thoughts, all thinking process. Replaced it with another state. (Quite another state.)

APEMAN — JAILED LEADER of the Two Lakes Black Hawks gang — in one of his seething periods, thinking: effin' cee society, thinks it scored a victory over a gang leader, his gang family, with the life sentence it gave him. Oh yeah? Well, you know what, society? You need more'n that to break Apeman, you (white) — white — society effin' cee pieces a shit. The first thing you got wrong was thinking you took away a man's enjoyment of women — when you didn't, fools. Hahahaha! I don't miss bitches, none of 'em. Get plenty of nice white ass in here, don't bother us, don't hardly even think of women. Don't give two shits 'bout 'em. Hate the bitches. Hate 'em.

My old lady was the first bitch I remember hatin' when I was only so high. Beating us with the jug cord, leather belts, wooden spoons, whatever weapon was at hand. And she tipped boiling water over my baby brother to punish him, said he couldn't talk so he wouldn't be telling no tales to the hospital he had to go to (Maka grew up one side of his face tight with scald
scars and his mind scarred by having parents like ours. Got killed in a bar brawl, stabbed. Two of my older brothers took utu on the dude, took both his eyes out.) Old lady coached us kids to tell the welfare people who came round to say it was a accident, the evil bitch. Evil like all women.

The worst (oh, I can hardly stay sane in just thinking about it) was when she'd burn sister Lovey's arms and legs with a cigarette, in places poor Lovey's clothes would cover so you couldn't see. Her own daughter (and us, her brothers and sisters who loved her) she did this to. For years she did this, as if Lovey'd done sumpthing terrible and unforgivable to our mother. And me, over the years, starting to think Lovey must've deserved this torture, or why would she get it and why would she suffer in near silence? Only way I could handle it or I'd've flipped, my mind woulda broke apart.

It's burned like my mother's brand in my brain, her doing that to my sister, her own child. How could you do that to your own kid? Even we, the gangies, who've got no rules, no conduct code, no morals, only hatred, only loyalty and a funny kinda love for each other, even we wouldn't do that. Not even to a Brown Fist's kid. Not a li'l kid, man.

What she did to Lovey is like it happened yesterday, and if I get to thinking too much about it I have t' make someone pay. And seein' as I'm in the slammer, it'll have t' be some white (innocent) lag, or my own Maori brown'll do, I'm no racist, hahaha. Bust anyone's head. Do the hurt bizniz on anyone.

Bitch was no mother, she was a monster in a dress with long (dirty) hair and big juju lips, breath always stank of beer. Who'd effin' kiss her mouth? Our old man must've, unless he just stuck it in 'er, bangbangbang, another one up the spout, up the duff. Shit, how'd he get 'imself to do it with 'er? Fat frog, walked around puffing, looked like a dark, warty frog.

As for you,
Father
, you couldn't talk. You were just as bad. Hit us like you would a full-grown man, punched us kids right in the face.

Any rate, guess it didn't turn out so bad, this life imprisonment, like, notwithstanding. I still ended up a winner, being a leader of a buncha tough hombres with broken hearts and twisted minds and permanent anger like mine. I am still big boss of those hard-arsed bastards.

On the TV after September 11th last year the boys (and our boy
girl-friends
) were cheerin' the Yanks sticking those smart bombs into that fulla Bin Laden's cave hideouts, effin' long beard wanker, fix him for organising those two humungous buildings in America to have planes fulla passengers
run smack into them. When the buildings collapsed we was stuck like glue to our rec-room plastic seats, couldn't believe even our hardened ole eyes watchin' those buildings come down. All the bad things we'd done were nothing in comparison to this deed. This was like everything bad of man come together in one terrible act, even to us (even to us).

For those minutes became several hours and we became human beings. We ceased being self-obsessed gang members, we realised we weren't as
far-gone
of mind and morals as these terrorists. Instead, for some hours, we were members of the human race, crying (inside) for our fellows. For all those people inside the buildings, in the planes hurtling to their deaths flown by mad men, men gone mad on some friggin' loopy idea about Allah and Islam and America and — well, kind of like us: blaming society. Mad, gone crazy on our thinking, our anger. For a few very troubling days I saw this of us, of myself, that we were terrorists, too.

Your own situation, that's really the only thing't counts. The reason I'm doing a life sentence, 'cos of her, Tania. ('Cos of you, Tania bitch. How dare you stick your face up to mine and not expect me to blow yours away. You can't do that to a man, it's worse'n not right it's — it's like breaking some law of God's, that's how I feel, how we all feel, men; aks any of the Hawk boys. Ya jus' can't do that to a self-respectin' man. Insult his mana. We're the ones who have to go out and fight the lions and tigers, whilst you bitches are safe in the cave — in the cave, hahahaha! Long as it ain't with Bin Laden, ya might get blown up by a smart bomb! — with the kidz. You can't expect to show disrespect to the ones who protect you.)

Doing a life sentence you have to be patient. Life in jail is bad but not as bad as it sounds. You do minimum ten years, more if you're a gangie and more if you refuse to con-
form
to what they want you to be, it's anutha two to five years on top. So ya got time to learn patience. Time to remember who wronged you. Even when patience ain't been one a your qualifications, you bein' a Action Man, and always in need of someone's head to smash 'cos it's how ya are.

You need to get yourself a girlfriend, which being in here is, preferably, a nice white boy. Yo. With a big pronger you can hold onto while you're givin' it to 'im up the rear. One of those white boys doin' life for murderin' his religious freak mother, or one with a head problem from one of those good family backgrounds, whose genes just ain't up to the ole family standard, from a family in decline, from the top to the bottom, private school
ponce to a mass murderer, to a brown gangie's slut, they're always good for some arse bizniz. Or a fraudster 'cos they're scared of real criminals 'cos we're here for bein' more than angry, we're here 'cos ain't no place else to put us, we're wild animals, man. We have violence for breakfast, lunch, tea and supper. Goes right on into our dreams (nightmares) at night. These white fraud boys are softer'n butter, only have to give him the tattooed face look and he's sayin' take me to your cell, honey. Wanna do it in the shower? (Don't care where it's done, babe. In the effin' toilet bowl, who cares.)

Jail is a big sponge soakin' up sort of all types, but same types. Losers the same, we know that. Gang members from the ghetto, ex-cop murdered his wife, hoity-toity lawyer stole his client's funds, we're all the same. Flawed. How we get to come together, do the sexual merging so easy: 'cos we're the same.

When your fraudster accountant lover-boy gets released there's the thievin' greedy white lawyer to take his place. You turn them into your ho and it calms the beast in you, talks to the Ape in a man without words 'cos it's release of the fury so he c'n think straighter. And I tell you what, look in the eyes of these educated white thieves and you're seeing the same type as the gang member: something big's missing.

We run this place so it might as well be our HQ, just without the beer and hard liquor and unnecessary bitches, but all the drugs we want, they're too afraid we'll riot, wreck the joint if they take away our drugs, our happy weed. You do your bizniz with your girlfriend during recreation times, in your cell or his, preferably his if there's a bitta mess around (he might have the runs, hahaha!), leaves a smell a shit, which ain't cool if you've had a smoke 'cos the smell sends messages to your head and you get paranoid at thinkin' thoughts you don't want, tells you that you and shit are one and the same thing.

Got to have patience, to wait out the years, let them
flow
by, not do your time hard like some dudes do, that ain't how to do it. You let them flow and one becomes three becomes — what'm I up to now for killin' that
smart-arse
li'l bitch? Six years.

Why, six years has just flown, another six, maybe eight max to go, won't take long. (I won, Tarns bitch. I'll get out one day. You try and shift half a ton a dirt sittin' on your pretty li'l shot, rotting head.) The world keeps turning, time flies. Apeman still lives. Apeman still thinks. He remembers. (I saw you, too, Jake the Muss Heke, the cheek to turn up in court acting the
daddy there to support his son, when everyone knows men like you ain't fathers, you're arseholes. You came into the court to try and look tough, turned up with that Douglas family, effin' family of dumb pig hunters — grunt-grunt-grunt — too scared to face us on your own, Mista Muss who sucks. You'll effin' keep.)

Memories stay clear, and in here even more clear. 'Cos they don't just mean something. They mean everything.

In jail it all freezes, does life, everything halts. The clock stops the day you step inside. Guys come in here age eighteen, do a big life sentence, fifteen-to-sixteen years, come out to a changed world and still the same eighteen-year-old kid who went in. Whatever memories, experiences,
relationships
(grievances and hatreds) you had on the outside, you bring into here like a carefully recorded ledger book. Of names with either debit or credit or zero balance beside each.

Ya need the patience to stay outta trouble — which ain't hard, not when the entire floor of this wing is full of your gang only, non-gangies floor above and floor below scared of us, they're our subjects in our gangdom. Who's there t' fight? Only victims for our choosing to punish, have a bitta violent fun with, get rid of some wildness on. Just have t' stay outta confrontations with the screws no matter what the provo, no matter how he eyeballs you or gets sarky or has it in for you. (Patience, Ape.)

Ya have to stay patient 'cos, eventually, it goes down on your file you are safe to be moved. Not to freedom, no. But in a way it could turn out similar, yeah: to be free of the burden of revenge waited years and years, oh yeah. Just by getting a transfer to another jail.

You're patient so you get to balance the ledger book.

But say your debtor has moved towns, and on top of that your influence to have him whacked is gone. Say he's moved to the South Island and say your informants say he was seen in a certain city and they know where he lives, where he works. But that's as far the informants'll go 'cos you got no influence left, they're just doin' you a favour, indulging you like a elderly man prob'ly gonna die or at least go to pieces in there. (Jail, the old lags know, past a certain number of years, claims everyone. No exceptions. Well, we'll have to do some claiming of our own before that happens, won't we, Apeman.)

Say you request a transfer to a jail in that town, Christchurch, to get closer to instructing some madman to do you the favour and hurt this Abe
Heke shit? How do you do that? Well, you get a woman writing in regular, talking about your kid, sends photos of it and tells you she's going to teach it Maori culture and the Maori language. Why?

'Cos this goes down with the do-gooders, the psychologists and
counsellors
and most of all the parade of Maori prison visitors and consultants in on your imprisonment act, claiming you wouldn't be here if you'd had Maori culture, learnt the Maori language. (Don't make us laugh, you fools. We don't care 'bout no culture or speaking Maori shit, we're for our Black Hawk family first and foremost and only each other. And we know you're on the gravy train of help-a-Maori-in-prison, when it's really help the Maori send the stupid govmint another invoice for services rendered. Think we're that eff stupid we aren't awake to your game? And we're too far apart, too
separated
, from your world, from everyone's world; we're what became of the broken-hearted — got hard. Lost in our anger and hurt, that's what became of us.)

You tell your lies and sell your conspiracies to the ones who count, and each time it's another page in your file. Another page in your book, soon another chapter completed of your revenge story.

Say you get your move request approved to transfer down there, Christchurch, in the South Island, where the great murderer Maori chief Te Rauparaha near wiped out every brown face he saw back in the 1800s sometime. He culled out the Maoris down there, so they don't have many Black Hawks or Brown Fists 'cos ain't hardly no Maoris left in the south. The young white wanna-bes will suck up to you, fall over 'emselves to get in your good books. They're not used to big tough Maoris with full facial tattoo. (How I love lookin' at my face tats in the mirror. I just stare and stare and get this feeling I'm watching a page turn back in history.) Ain't no power plays down there between Maori gangs who up here, in the North Island, rule the jails and criminal life on the outside. Why, in the South, they'd idolise you, the legend you made of yourself. They'd shiver at hearin' your name: APEMAN. Man, even
I
get a li'l bit shivery hearing my own name, the one I took for myself.

And when you get little suck-arse followers like that, who'll do anything to impress you, what would be the first thing you'd ask 'em to do?

Balance the ledger, right?