The Low Road by Chris Womersley Page A

there with his hands in his pockets until they are hurried along by the screws. In the end they pass together through the corral made by three wire fences and along a corridor beneath caged fluorescent lights.
    It’s later that day that Simon again warns Lee about Morris. The cell they share is small and sparse. The walls are unevenly textured with grey institutional paint layered across rough brickwork over many years, worn thin and grimy at shoulder height. The paint is easy to peel off and comes away like ancient toenails. Photos are arranged haphazardly across the walls. Some are of Simon’s family and others have been left behind by previous inhabitants. Just people, gazing out from the walls. A boy of about two standing beside a car with his mum, the pair of them squinting into the sunlight. Strangers, some of the photos probably been there for years, long before Lee’s time. Pages torn from porn magazines, signs and markings, a selection of crude limericks. There are sketches of naked women reduced to curves and fierce scratches of hair, just the parts that matter. In one corner is a washbasin and a dull steel toilet with no seat. There are no removable parts anywhere. A desk cluttered with empty cigarette packets and Simon’s notebooks.
    The hot air in the cell is laced with the smell of lighter fluid as Simon painstakingly fills his lighter. The fluid is forbidden, of course, but the screws turn a blind eye, as they do to so many things. Lying on his side on the lower bunk, Lee watches Simon’s cropped head bent to his task at the desk. He doesn’t know what Simon is inside for but imagines it to be something ingenious—fraud or safecracking. Simon is full of ideas and often leaps up in the middle of the night to scrawl notes down in his books. Simon jokes about the other prisoners and has an old man’s laugh, even though he is probably only forty.
    You seen that guy Carl? Simon asks without looking up. Out in the yard?
    Yeah. Course.
    Well. He’s one of Morris’s.
    Morris did him over?
    Simon makes a face and twitches one foot as he concentrates. He is always jiggling his foot or drumming his fingers, ever since he gave up drugs a month ago. Is, he says. Is doing him over. Most days. If you’ve got a couple of pals like Simmo and Greene to hold someone down, you can do pretty much anything to a bloke. People will always be as cruel as they’re allowed to be, and in here , well . . .
    Simon reassembles his lighter and thumbs the wheel to produce a long, wavering flame. He clinks it shut and blinks at Lee through grubby glasses. You could call it an initiation, I suppose. That might be a good word for it.
    But why him?
    Simon shrugs. No reason. Got to be someone. That’s how it works.
    Lee rolls onto his back and picks at the intestinal-coloured wadding poking through the rusting springs of Simon’s bunk above. Sweaty hair sticks to his forehead. When he thinks of Morris, all he can see are the hairs bristling from each of his nostrils, like there’s a mob of spiders living up there. He is trying, really trying, to hide the panic stalking his body. Instinctively he knows he must keep everything to himself. No light can escape. Be as secretive as an oyster. It’s a futile task. He coughs and pulls a handful of wadding away. It’s kind of hard to avoid people in here, he says.
    Simon lights a cigarette with trembling hands. Yes. Well, that’s the thing. The way I see it, you got three choices: stay so low that nobody ever knows who you are; be scary so nobody comes near you; or make yourself useful so people are happy to have you around.
    Which are you?
    Simon pauses. Well. I used to be useful, when I was getting dope for people and stuff. But now? Now I’m just scary.
    Lee laughs. With his notebooks and glasses, it’s impossible to imagine Simon scaring anyone. But Simon doesn’t laugh, just picks up a glass of water and drinks deeply