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Authors: Linden MacIntyre

Punishment

BOOK: Punishment
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ALSO BY LINDEN MACINTYRE

The Long Stretch
Who Killed Ty Conn
(with Theresa Burke)
Causeway: A Passage from Innocence
The Bishop’s Man
Why Men Lie

PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA

Copyright © 2014 Linden MacIntyre

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2014 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company.
Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

Excerpts from the poem “And after we damned each other” by Anna Akhmatova, from
Three Russian Women Poets: Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetayeva, Bella Akhmadulina
, Mary Maddock, editor and translator (Crossing Press, 1983).

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

MacIntyre, Linden, author
Punishment / Linden MacIntyre.

ISBN 978-0-345-81390-9
eBook ISBN 978-0-345-81392-3

I. Title.

PS8575.I655P85 2014      C813’.54       C2014-905224-3

Cover images: (figure by truck) © David et Myrtille / Arcangel Images; (leaves) © Mattwatt /
Dreamstime.com

v3.1

IN MEMORY OF
Ernie Hayes
,
AKA TYRONE W. CONN
,
1967–1999

Contents

Rat
(rat)
n. interj., v
.
rat-ted, rat-ting 1
. Any of several long-tailed rodents of the family Muridae, of the genus
Rattus
and related genera, distinguished from the mouse by being larger. 2.
Slang
.
a
. a person who abandons his party or associates, esp. in a time of trouble.
b
. an informer.

Kingston Penitentiary, May 2000

I REMEMBER IT CLEARLY
, all the details except the date, which really doesn’t matter. Before the incident, it was just another day. I know it was mid-afternoon on a Saturday. I remember that because we had a barbecue on Sunday. We were in the bubble, eyes and ears of the institution. I try to avoid calling it “the joint.” I don’t mind “pen.” It is a prison, a place where people are confined, cons and pigs alike. Everybody in it, more or less incarcerated. The bubble is a prison inside a prison, but just for us, a place to hide if necessary.

From the bubble you should be able to see everything and everybody—when all the systems function properly, which they didn’t on that afternoon. You could imagine Upper G range empty if it wasn’t for the noise. No sign of inmates in the monitors, but you could hear them, the shouts, the cheers, the jeers.
The gladiator sounds. Now and then a figure hustled past the camera, face hidden.

“Jesus, Tommy, I just saw someone hang a blanket.” Smith was pointing urgently at nothing. “Guys in control can’t see out.”

“Who was it?”

“Couldn’t tell, he was running with the blanket up in front of his face.”

We all stared. A phone rang. Tommy Steele said, “Yeah, yeah … we’re lookin’ at it.” Hung up. “Tony, come with me.” Tommy the Keeper, unit super, senior officer that day.

We clattered up the iron staircase to Upper G, where we found Meredith and Wilson watching monitors that showed an empty range. Large window at the front of control now blocked by the blanket. One monitor showed sturdy tables bolted to the floor. A wall phone. Inoperable washer-dryer at the far end. No human form. But vivid sounds, substantiated by experience and fear, projecting images on the imagination, embedding permanent sensations. Deep trauma for tomorrow.

“Fuckin animals,” said Meredith, as if to himself.

“They’re in the blind spot,” Wilson said.

Now Tommy Steele was leaning toward an empty screen, all quiet, asking, “Whad’ya see, before the blankie?” Shrug. Coffee and a crossword puzzle on the console. “I was out taking a piss and when I came back …” Wilson shrugged again. Meredith displayed his empty hands. “It was quiet, then in a split second …”

“Where’s the other camera?” asked Steele. Wilson looked at Meredith.

“Been out for two days. We put in a report …”

“There you go,” said Steele. “Fuckin bean counters.”

Then a figure appeared, backing into the shot, now a horrified face turned, looking upward toward the one remaining camera, appealing. Then the camera was dead, blinded, an old eye darkened by a cataract. “What’s that?”

“Toilet paper,” Wilson laughed. “Cute! Can you believe it? Direct hit.” Soaked in a toilet bowl, wadded and hurled like a snowball from the upper gallery into a camera lens. Now everything gone from all monitors. “What happens when you let them have their own toilets,” said Wilson. Distracted chuckles. “If it was up to me they’d be pissin’ in their …”

“That was Pittman,” said Meredith.

“Ah, Pittman,” Tommy said. “Go Pittman.”

Sound escalates. “I remember Pittman once in Collins Bay …”

“Jesus Christ someone,” I said.

“Calm down,” Tommy, laying a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Just a normal Saturday on Upper G. What were you gonna say about Pittman in Collins Bay?” He was interrupted by a scream.

All four of us crowded toward the empty monitors. Toilet paper suddenly dropped off the lens leaving a smeared image, vague figures roiling in a group. Wilson, Meredith and I watching Tommy Steele, corrections manager, waiting for the cue.

“Somebody’s getting killed in there,” I said.

“Nah. Let them work it out.”

“We gotta go in.”

“Hey. You want to go in there, Tony?”

Then more screaming, a hard man screaming like a child.

“Aw fuck,” sighed Meredith, picking up the phone.

“Just another minute,” said Tommy, stopping him. “Give them another minute. Let them have their fun.”

The shouting died and in the silence, whimpering. Blurred figures on the monitor, shrinking back. A dark mass squirming on the floor.

Finally the banging, heavy boots and plastic shields, men in black, helmeted and visored shouting, hammering the shields. Loud-spoken, metallic urgent voices. “Clear the range … clear the range.” Inmates back in cells, shouting loud abuse. Whirring sound, then clank of cell doors locking shut. Pittman, face down on the floor, life pumping out of him, his blood, so like my vital blood, running free, a wasted viscous puddle spreading. Tommy, face bloodless white, staring not at Pittman, but at me, seeing through me, penetrating all my screens, into the depths of my fear and nausea.

“You there, Breau?”

“I’m here.”

“Solid?”

“Solid, Tom.”

“I didn’t hear you, Tony!”

“I said I’m solid.”

“Stay solid, man.”

“They lost Pittman,” said Meredith.

“Big loss.”

“He was a human being, Tommy.”

“We’re all human beings, Tony. Everybody has to go sometime. And Pittman was about to go to Joyceville. You know
what that means—he was slithering back toward the street.”

“That’s the system. They come, they go back out.”

“And if one of them doesn’t make it back out, what the fuck, one less problem for society … you gonna lose sleep over this, Tony?”

“Not likely.”

“Got any plans for tomorrow?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“You and Anna come by. We’ll have a barbecue. Sally found this new butcher …”

“Sounds good, Tommy.”

“Everybody take it easy. Book off a couple of days for stress. I’ll write it up. Everybody good?”

Everybody good.

Then Tommy called me back. Draped an arm across my shoulder. “We’ve known each other longer than I care to think, Tony. I didn’t want to get into this in front of the others. But I know you, Tony. I can read you like a book. And I always respected you, man. You got goodness and that ain’t easy after all the years in this racket. And I know—
hang on, hear me out
—goodness means marchin’ to your own drummer sometimes.
Just listen, Tony. Don’t say nothin’
.”

Now he was in front of me, hand raised, voice low and urgent, close to my face. “There’s an old saying, Tony. Hang together or hang separate. I’m just sayin’. We survive this place by sticking together, staying on the same page of the same hymn book. It’s a rough world we’re living in. I’m not suggesting anything here, Tony, but … 
wait …
you want to go it alone? Great. But there’ll be consequences. For all of us. Including you.”

“I’m listening.”

“But are you
hearing
, Tony?”

“I’m hearing.”

“Okay. Tomorrow then. Say after three. And there’ll be no talk a’ this tomorrow, okay? Tomorrow or ever.”

“I hear you, Tommy.”

one

And after we damned each other,

whitely passionate,

We still didn’t understand

how the earth can be small for two people,

how, strong as we are,

memory punishes us, is our disease.

ANNA AKHMATOVA

1
.
St. Ninian, September 2002

T
he scuffle at the courthouse made the metro papers and I should have known from past experience how the validation of a headline can unleash the hounds of vengeance in all their myopic savagery.
Angry Relatives of Dead Teen Confront Accused Killer
. There were obviously other factors driving what unfolded in the months that followed but as I look back I see that headline as a catalyst for passions that inflamed the public mind, causing reason to evaporate. But let me start at the beginning.

It was a balmy late summer day in 2002 and I’d gone to the county courthouse to pay my taxes. The business finished, I was walking to my car when the sheriff’s van arrived accompanied by two RCMP vehicles. They drove around behind the old brick building and I decided to follow. I suppose I’m like
an old soldier—at the sound of a parade I stop, I listen, I remember. I had a hunch that I already knew what this parade was all about.

BOOK: Punishment
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