The Glass Canoe Read Online Free Page A

nine months once for something. Did it at Long Bay.
    â€˜I’m never goin’ there again. Sooner put a bullet in me head. You have to say Sir to the screws every time you talk, have to get a pass to go three feet, and you’re locked up from four in the afternoon till seven or eight in the morning. Nothing to see, and here I am locked up with an idiot. How would you like that?’
    I’d never been in jail, only police stations, and I didn’t even like that.
    Maybe, when they stop telling him he was so good and everyone gets tired of putting up with him going off his brain every week and sympathy runs out, he’ll pull himself up. That’s what I used to tell myself.
    A few of them went to Parramatta nicely pissed one Saturday night looking for trouble. They found it. During a little scrap up a dusty lane someone hit one of Danny’s mates with an iron bar. Dropped him cold as a maggot. Danny walked up the lane, hands on hips.
    â€˜Which one a you cunts hit my mate?’
    In the dark someone kneed him in the crutch and Danny went down like a bag of shit.
    When he got up later, they went further up the lane and ran into another mob of guys that shouldn’t have been out on the street. Only kids and dressed like pox doctors’ clerks. Danny and his mate couldn’t help laughing until one came from nowhere, ripped a paling off the fence and cracked them both. They ran.
    Straight into the arms of two large coppers standing there with their paddy waggon drawn up and doors wide open.
    One said, ‘You got any money, you lot?’
    â€˜I have,’ Danny said.
    â€˜Drop five dollars on the ground and turn round.’
    He dropped the five and turned round. The copper gave him a good kick up the arse and said, ‘Piss off.’
    They accepted this advice.
    Another time they were picked up at the lake. Someone complained about the noise. They’d drunk most of the cans by that time, luckily.
    There were eight in the cell. A kid called Vernon they let off straight away.
    â€˜Your old man isn’t going to like this,’ one of the Jacks said.
    Another kid gave his name as Gazzard.
    â€˜Any relation to the sergeant?’
    â€˜He’s my uncle.’
    Out he went.
    â€˜I’m with him,’ Danny said.
    But the Jacks replied, ‘Shut your mouth.’
    It was better up the Cross. King’s, not Southern. If they caught you drunk in the street they’d put you in the waggon, take you to the old high-ceilinged cells at Darlinghurst, give you a board two inches off the ground to sleep on and leave you alone till nine o’clock.On the way out you pay a dollar and that’s it. Not a bruise. Not a hard word. Gentlemen.
    Danny went off regularly, and was getting worse. He’d start singing, he might jump up on a table to perform and beat time, might even jump the bar and serve himself. But he started to get aggressive. He’d karate chop a full table of glasses of beer. Or suddenly demand a lift home and start swinging if he thought you were putting him off.
    Once I came out to find him on his belly on the roof of my car, pretending to swim. Pushed the roof in. I called him a dickhead, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing when he’s real full.
    He had flashes of the old good humour. He lobbed at the Oriental for a Chinese feed one weeknight and ate like a king. When it was time to ante up with the brass for the meal he found he had seventy cents. His pocket had jingled so he hadn’t bothered to check. He sat there pretending to work on the remains of the sweet and sour.
    I know, he thought. I’ll run. I can see him sitting there, and the sudden grin.
    He ran, and was in full flight when he caught the shine on the plate glass door. It was after hours and they locked the door against incomers, and a little old Chinese lady let you out. When you paid.
    Desperately he turned and sat down next to someone. They’d sprung him by this