I screamed, but spurts of hot blood were all that left my lips. It streaked down my cheeks and crept over my ear. I could see the circle of crimson grow around me. I heard him reload; the spent casing bounced around my left ear. I felt warm metal slip between my lips. He was standing over me now, his face accentuated by falling snow. There was a white haze creeping into my field of vision, making him glow like some askew angel.
He twisted the shotgun in my mouth back and forth nervously. He regained his composure and stiffened. “Consider yourself served.”
A loud thunderclap resonated down on the empty street. It was swallowed quickly by the blizzard.
Buddha Behind Bars by Daniel Hatadi
The room wasn’t what Banjo expected. He was thinking fancy rugs, a lot of red and orange, candles and incense, hippy shit. But the walls were bare except for a black-and-white poster of a staircase. It was just another cell.
Banjo shrugged, nodded to the other inmates, stood in the back corner. Laid out in a grid on the floor were about a dozen blue cushions. Nothing fancy; plain.
The door opened. A huge bald man walked in, wearing a gray track suit with a picture of a poodle on it. Every part of him was big, almost like he’d never stopped growing. He nodded, looked around the room, eyes twinkling. “We’ll wait a couple more minutes.” He busied himself by rearranging cushions.
The others filed in, took a cushion each, crossed their legs, and sat. Banjo stayed put.
“Okay,” the bald man said, “Remember the Stairway To Heaven?”
A couple of the inmates laughed. One piped up. “How’s that go, Sam?”
“You forgot? Don’t know about you.” Sam chuckled. “It’s easy. Just think of the song. Imagine all the people you ever knew are up in heaven, and there’s a stairway leading up to them, like the one on the poster. At the top, it’s all white light. Imagine taking a step at a time, one with each breath.” He clapped his hands and closed his eyes.
“All right, I’ll bite. Why won’t you take a cushion?”
Banjo took a moment to figure out who Sam was speaking to. “’Cause this is a load of shit.”
Sam laughed in a gentle way that washed over Banjo like rain. “Maybe. But what I told the boys last week was this: you can handle most situations in two ways-one bad, one good.”
Banjo said, “Pile it on.”
“Your legs might get sore, maybe your back too. There’s nothing stopping you sitting on a cushion and taking it easy.” Sam opened his eyes. “See? Two ways.”
Banjo noticed an empty spot in front of Sam. He picked up a cushion and took it over, sat down, stared at Sam for a few seconds, then nodded.
“That’ll do,” Sam said. “Now we’ll try another exercise, one we haven’t done before. To make it easier, get in whatever position you like.”
Everyone shifted. Banjo kept his legs crossed, matching Sam.
“Up till now, I’ve told you all exactly what to do. This time, I want you to get creative. Close your eyes and breathe slow. While you’re doing that, keep your mind on something else. That something else is up to you. A beach at sunset, a big old tree on top of a hill…” He looked around. “Just don’t make it tits and arse.”
They all laughed.
“The point is to remind you of a time when your life was at peace. Five minutes, no talking, just breathing. I’ll tell you when it’s over. Has everyone thought of something?”
There were a few grunts around the room.
“Okay, start.”
Everyone except Banjo closed their eyes. Some of them looked like they’d swallowed a lemon. Others were smiling.
“This is bullshit.” Banjo stood up, walked to the wall by the door.
Sam said, “It’s open.”
Banjo reached out and tried the door handle. It worked. He went out, let himself fall back against the wall.
Outside in the corridor, there were three inmates on cleaning duty. One of them was a burly Maori that everyone called Kong.
“Big man Banjo’s gone to see the sky pilot,” Kong said.
The inmates on cleaning laughed like a pack of wild animals.
One with a bandana tied too tight around his skull let his mop go. The mop fell against the wall of the bucket, sloshing the dirty water around. He stepped forward, laughing at Banjo.
Banjo stared until the inmate backed away, knocked into the mop, and tipped the bucket over, spilling dirty brown suds all over the floor. The water came up to Banjo’s feet. Kong wasn’t so lucky.
Kong glared at Banjo. “Now look what you done, robe fucker, you messed up my boots.”
Banjo had had enough.
He leapt at Kong with a speed that startled the others, who scurried back to the wall, staying out of the way of the fight.
Kong was taller than Banjo and built strong, but Banjo grabbed Kong’s dark, curly hair, letting all of his weight rest on it. The speed of the attack and the pain of having his hair ripped brought Kong to the floor.
It was on.
Banjo didn’t waste any time. He balled up his right fist and held Kong’s head down on the concrete with the other hand. Banjo’s fist came down hard. Once, twice, again. He pummeled Kong’s face, cheek, nose. The third strike drew blood, but by then, Kong had twisted his larger frame around, kicking Banjo in the back.
A dozen shoes came pounding down the corridor. The screws had their nightsticks raised, brought them down on the two fighters. Outnumbered and further bloodied, Kong and Banjo backed down.
On the way back to his cell, Banjo thought about the class. That thing about the stairway to heaven might have worked, might have given him some peace-if he knew what peace was. But Banjo couldn’t see himself setting even a foot on that stairway. No fucking way.
He was stuck in hell.
Banjo stared at the wall, his back to the bars. This whole place was already behind him. He would stay strong, keep it together. Kong was nothing, tough because of his size, not his will. He’d keep.
After a few days, Banjo started thinking about something that Sam had said. It ran around his brain, knocking against the sides of his skull, like rattling the bars.
A time in your life when everything was at peace.
At first, Banjo laughed at the idea. Of course he’d never had peace; his dad had brought him and his brothers up on his own. Mum left before he could remember her. Banjo’s older brothers all remembered something, even if it was little. The smell of her hair, her yelling in the morning, the green dress with Hawaiian flowers-these were only things he’d heard about, never remembered them for himself.
Banjo’s father had it hard, working in the mines, picking oranges, whatever it took. They moved around all the time, piled up in the back of Dad’s truck, bouncing on dirt roads, fighting with each other.
Sometimes they’d eat rice for a week, boiled from a huge ten-kilo bag. Dad would beat them up if they stole one of the other brothers’ bowls, but that was fair enough. You had to eat.
Banjo nodded to himself, started thinking about his brother Darren.
Dazza.
Poor bastard. A smackhead, died the same way all smackheads did. Overdose. They’d lay off the stuff for a while, then they thought one more hit couldn’t hurt, just for old times’ sake. But the tolerance wasn’t what it used to be. Didn’t take much.
Banjo clicked his fingers. It echoed off the walls.
One of the inmates here reminded him of his brother. Kev.
Kev wasn’t tough, couldn’t look after himself. Tall and lanky, with that spotty skin that smackheads get, that blank look in the eyes. Someone had to look after him. Banjo wanted to, but he knew that it couldn’t look that way. Kev would have to learn to survive on his own.
Maybe he could be taught.
Banjo held his head in his hands, crossed his legs, tried to relax.