There are two letters, actually, Mum tells me. Or two things. She’s out of her depth somewhat, and she knows it.
Ashamed of myself—just acting up, really, and putting on a show, playing the giddy goat—I’m getting bolshy. In my mind I’m going Jesus, let me have them then!
The first ‘letter’ is on standard issue lined A4, with the blue ink scoured deeply into the weft; but the second has been typed. It’s full of typographical errors. But as Dott has not been allowed into the Education block, I am wondering how he’s had access to a computer and a printer.
The last line of the fourth paragraph of the handwritten letter—after a lot of waffle, breeze and guff about a moonlit night, a clinch on a beach, the scent of his aftershave and the bristles on his chin—reads as follows: Please go to a search engine and enter ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Hair Shirt’.
I printed the results out for you, Willy, says Mum, busting proud. That’s as far as I read. Promise.
I see what Dott has done: he’s covered his arse. That’s what the cunt has done: he’s covered his rapist arse. He has assumed (correctly) that no one will want to read more than a few paragraphs of pseudo-erotic bullshit, and he’s started his message proper from that point on. The instruction to seek out Prometheus and Hair Shirt—it’s not directed at me. It’s Mum’s. It’s Mumsy’s property.
Thanks. Have you any news to bring me, Ma?
I’m jealous to be sharing these facts. Plus, I don’t want her involved. I can’t help but believe that knowledge—sniffing its rim—is a dangerous ting.
Not really.
Allow it.
The second piece of writing is a printout—or a copy-type of a printout: as I say, full of typos and that. The instruction, it seems to me, to consult websites was for Mum’s benefit and not mine. She confirms this theory.
I typed directly from the screen, she says. And I knew I was part of your game, Willy. Rightly or wrongly. I knew.
There’s no game.
I didn’t read any further, I swear, she tells me. I knew the first bit was disguise. I’m not stupid.
She’s not. I stuff the pages into my tracky bottoms. Confined as I have been down block, I am keen to receive a second opinion about what I have done to Julie. For the moment I want to forget the letters and I want to know how the outside world is viewing my behaviour.
Do you blame me? I ask Mum, knowing that with a mother’s innate fifth-gear drive towards intuition, she will understand what I’m getting at.
I don’t approve, Willy, she says, after a pause.
That not what man ask.
Talk properly.
That’s not what I said, I try again.
Mum disagrees with my verdict. She invested your money, William; that’s hardly worth a slap.
She invest it with another man as my motherfucking banker!
Don’t use that language in front of your mother. I deplore violence.
Envy drives my next question. What’s he like? I ask.
Who’s, Bailey? No, the Pope, I think. Yes, Bailey, I say to Mumsy.
I’ve never met him. Why do you ask?
Nothing.
What a grave disgrace I must truly be, I have seconds to consider. In for what I did, and not for what they comprehend nothing about whatever.
That was always your father’s answer as well, she adds, all uppity.
No further comment is necessary, I feel. I don’t even ask after my sisters as I can’t see the point. As grim as it is, I want to get back to my cell. I know that Mum must have sat for nearly four hours on a train to get here, up in the hills, and then the taxi from the tumbleweed station, but I don’t want to speak to anyone anymore. Apart from Ronald Dott. Allow it the cunt wins.
I remember my manners. Thank you, Mumsy, I say.
There’s nothing more to add, really, is there? Except this.
Ten.
Billy.
Forgive the four paras of gobshite. Necessary work. Boring but you know how it goes. I’m sure you’ve guessed the reason yet. Now listen. Prometheus was a cunning, deceitful piece of work. No awe for the gods, ridiculed Zeus, although he was favored by him for assisting him in his fight against his father Cronus. The Ancient Greek means ‘forethought’. Got that? Thinking about it before the act, until. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, P is credited with the creation of man ‘in godlike image’ from clay. Some say Zeus. But it was P who hit Z on the head with a rock.As a result, from Z’s head popped the Goddess Athena. Some say. Others say Zeus demanded a sacrifice from Man to the Gods—to show willing and that. P would’ve earned your scribble of approval, Billy. Slashed an ox and counted it out into two piles. One with meat and most of the fat; the other, the bones covered with fat. Choose, Zeus, choose! Zeus knew that if he claimed to be duped he’d have an excuse to vent his anger on mortal man. He chose the bones. Denied men the secret of fire. Prometheus felt sorry and took fire from the hearth of the gods. Taught us to cook. And this really pissed Z off. P is taken to Mount Caucasus, where an eagle pecks at his liver. Forever, Billy. Imagine that. What’s the nearest you’ve got? Fuck incarceration. Imagine a million years of bee stings. That was P’s sentence. We’ve got off lightly. Or you have, anyway. Even the Greeks back then understood that the liver is one of the few bits of the body that can regenerate itself spontaneously. That’s creative cruelty, that is. That’s World War Two cruelty. It’s what I need but I can’t find, Billy Alfreth. By the time I’m freed, there will be nothing more left than cockroaches, army ants and wasps—which sounds impossible, right? You need an ecosystem, right? I’m not sure. Prometheus got 30,000 years, the poor bastard. My sentence isn’t so far away from that, I fear. Same as that poor bastard.
I experience a shiver of remorse, knowing that Mum might have read this too, despite her claim to the contrary.
And then I read:
Save me, Billy.
I am sitting in my cell in the Segregation Unit, wondering how or why I should save a man who has mutilated fourteen women. I clean my windowsills with my fingertips. There has to be more to life than this, ho ho. So he’s suffering? Join the club, Dott, I want to holler. He goes on to inform me of what I already know about a Hair Shirt: ‘An adornment worn at various times in the history of the Christian faith, for the purposes of the mortification of the flesh rough cloth, generally woven from goats’ hair, worn close to the skin, itchy a breeding-ground for lice, which would have increased the discomfort worn by ascetics, saints, monks, and lay persons.’
What’s he getting at? A self-realised sensation of victimhood?
The next bit is what gets me to the gut.
I was there, Billy. It was me. No one else. I used to think kindness was the way, but I was wrong. I was travelling the wrong way with kindness. I’d be closer to the end if I’d slit your throat. The water was useless. Some people make their way through time; some people make their way through people. It’s my only shot. I’m sorry I’ve hurt who I’ve hurt. So sorry. But I really wish I’d smashed you up a bit when I had the chance. You have no idea how much kindness has hindered me so far.