Remember Ronald Ryan (14 page)

When I lived in Cranbourne near the railway line

In that shack furnished with stolen property and thieved towels from the Cranbourne Public Baths

I showed up one night after leaving you for dead

And I had a pinched big furniture track filled with pinched walnut tea tables and heaters

And you said, ‘It's a bit late for a delivery isn't it love?' and you laughed

Even though I lobbed at four in the morning

And I said, ‘It's the only time the truck is available my lamb!' And we both laughed.

I guess I imitated Micawber

I guess I was hopeless

I guess it's time to die but I don't want to!

What can they stop me seeing once they execute me for something I didn't do?

Who can they stop me from loving or from joking with after they do it?

I feel so giddy like I'm in freefall or something like that

Why don't you just not do it?

‘And send me home to my sisters and daughters and my missus if she'll still have me?'

She came in to see me like Mum did on her Pat Malone

She told me like a grim story she'd remarried

But he croaked it sitting up having a cup of tea only last month the poor thing he is!

Here are my black gym shoes lined up together to sail through the trapdoor

Here are my shaking legs

Here is my dick doing wee on my own pants sort of thing

They tighten the rope so hard I can hardly concentrate

One of the journalists has cause to rapidly vomit on seeing me go through

Now my face is black and Father is administering Last Rites

He is saying the Mass or at least I think it's the Mass or something impressively gloomy

My heart is racing like a rocket even though my neck is broken

It beats for nearly twenty minutes as they just leave me hung

The way they bury me is to chuck me in a lime pit to disintegrate my name of Ryan

I have slugs as fellow escapees now

And worms as confiders

They like to confide in a man like me

A no-hoper like I was

It's all incredibly peaceful in jail now

The prisoners have ceased weeping and know I am home in Balranald in New South

I am home at last like a whirlpool is home at last in its safe home—the mighty Murray River!

There is nothing more they can do to me except forget me forever

They won the State election after all that fuss

Then abandoned the death penalty forever too

I'm sitting up nice and straight in Balranald again in the merest finger of sun

And my mother is of course and naturally enough singing to me

I keep waiting for my reprieve

Three reprieves in point of fact

Three sheets of truth telling a lie

That I never shot you George Hodson

Not once and certainly never twice nor thrice

The jury swore they believed the witnesses in Sydney Road

The witnesses swore and you ought not to swear in a Christian society

The particular rifle I pinched off that sleepy guard

Didn't make smoke from its breach

It didn't simply because it didn't

Yet the witnesses testified I went into a kangaroo shooter position

And shot you but I didn't dear old friend of the eternal punishment

The eternal refreshment that is my daughters

The eternal laughter that is my family

The eternal whimsy that is the sunny park and the sunny attitude of relaxed trees

You with whom I used to play chess

George Hodson with whom I shared many a joke

And bold were the jokes and casual the repartee

You walked up to me and said, ‘Give it away Ryan you haven't got a chance!'

And there we were together me and Peter Walker

Smack dab in the middle of bubbling-hot Sydney Road—tested

And that Greek guy in his Mr Whippy van nearly ran us over deliberately

Trying to make a big man of himself

Even Mr Whippy wants to be a folk hero

Even Mr Whippy gets up in the stand

To testify

Whether it shall be almond or strawberry ice-cream is the sticking point

I knelt dear friend but I did not fire at you

I didn't understand just how to fire it at you

I just knelt and saw you tumble into the hot steel rail tram barrier

I saw you spin and seem of course to faint next to put-out travellers to Town

We always called Melbourne Town when we were kids

Two officers shot you George from their high towers

And they committed suicide because they knew they did it together

So that's the information

Enough for a play

Or an epilogue

Or a psalm or a piece of pathos or theatre

Which it is and which it was

That a no-hoper like me got hanged for doing nothing

Doing nothing but knocking off junk in a warehouse but I was armed

That is why George I got seventeen years of smashing bluestone into fragments

Like the portions of my life

That are the record of my wife's births of our three little kids

She had her babies in the scrub

With her and me on one end of the bushman's saw

She was strong as well as pretty George

Now they are weighing me for the execution

And one of them said I've put on weight since my trial

It's the porridge that whacks it on

Now they are summoning my hanging fellow

Who I hear gets time and a half

Because he's in the Public Servants Union and fully paid-up!

Now it is now and not before

The judgement second is upon my neck and secret spirit and shy soul from the countryside

I never killed George Hodson

I never did and yet they do it to spite my family and despite my innocence!

Just a white t-shirt and Bob's your uncle

Just gymnasium pants and nothing in my pocket

Not a cheap transistor I thieved from our community or anybody in transit

My soul's in transit by the way

They hang it as they do the rest of Ryan

They hang my family as they do me to spite my innocence and my athleticism

My mysticism and my sacred word I never shot anybody not once

I swear by George's own family I didn't do it!

But nobody listens and nobody ever cares about scum like me

I can hear the rodents and the rats scurry down there below the scaffold

Looking like a whole lot of murder trial juries by the by

My hanging is actually being sponsored by a rope company in Footscray

Kinnears Ropes are worldwide

Famous for their intensity of purpose and colossal willpower

My ghost might join the Footscray Bowling Club when I'm dead

And enjoy a family night with the jury that did me in at the Supreme Court

Where I was handcuffed to you

You my audience

And my redeemer

And you Peter Walker who escaped with me

On the 19th of December 1965 in an incalculable way

Got over the impossible wall in an impossible way

Using bits of rope and wire all chained together to do it

Standing there in our prison-issue clobber with printed black arrows on it

And me saying to crazy motorists, ‘Give us a go! Give us a go!'

As if they're going to give us a lift to dreamy Saint Kilda Beach or Luna Park somehow!

We are standing there pointing rifles at them saying, ‘Give us a go!' ‘Give us a go!'

The looks on their faces was worth recording I tell you that for nothing!

The Salvation Army man Hewitt came at me real forceful-like!

In the manner of all Salvos!

He accidentally got clocked by my carbine not that I meant it or anything like that

Then the
Herald
newspaper crucified me for a thing I didn't do

And the
Herald
artists made my face the devil's own one

For the repugnance and repulsion of the simple reader of their simple paper

My fate was sealed with that wicked face on the front page of the
Herald
newspaper!

Anything to sell a paper!

Just like I who never did anything but pinch a lady's watch at the races

Last evening past in the Condemned Cell

Listen to me you who care

Last evening past in the Condemned Cell I saw George Hodson's immortal ghost just once

Just once I saw it and believe me once was more than enough

He said he realised I didn't do it

He said he forgave me even or especially because I didn't do it

He said he loved me as a screw can love a prisoner

Like a brother I never had

Like a friend I wished I had now

Like now dear friend at five minutes to

Five earthly minutes till I go through to hell or Balranald

One or the beautiful other

The bush or Bass Strait all hosed away to Bass Strait like a sob

But Father Brosnan waits for me down there under the scaffold so impatiently

Like he wants to put on a bet

Go to Caulfield on a sure bet

I just said to him

Because I just saw him before a second ago it really was

I said as I shook hands with the Roman Catholic priest of D Division

And every other frightful Division of Terror and terrible things I said

‘Always remember you were ordained for me!'

And he seemed to imagine I quoted it but I made it up to big-note myself

Now they are singing the everlasting word out in Champ Street

The trade unionists are even singing and they hate singing

Unless it's ‘Solidarity Forever' or something gloomy like that

The Teachers Union are linking arms and singing just for me

And it's over a hundred in the shade of Champ Street

Last night in the Condemned Cell I had a visitor I tell you!

An old lantern-jawed Salvation Army woman with a copy of the Bible

She used to get a few shillings from drunken waterside workers in pubs

And dig her collection box hard into their ribs and hurt them by the bar

And say to them with pots of watered down beer in their paws

‘You've had enough of that poison I think. Whack a shillin' in my box for the needy!'

It always worked because collective guilt always does in the end

My daughters are out there in suburbia with their sobbing boyfriends

My three sisters resemble the Three Sisters at The Blue Mountains

Carved out of sympathy

Carved out of longing

Carved out of outrage

Carved out of our collective innocence

They just listen to the idiotic tick of disappearing time

Time nicking off

Time getting away with murder

The old lantern-jawed woman from the Salvation Army doesn't know how to crumble

She leant me her Catholic Bible with its golden-leaved pages of misery

And I didn't have it in me to tell her how I'd been sodomised each day at Rupertswood

In their seminary by their bishops who raped me every day and called it charity

One day they will be executed instead of a fool like me

Such as Ryan who was a pub dudder

Who flogged faulty pop-up top-up electric toasters to fellow Catholics who'd fallen

What I should give to be pardoned by the third reprieve

The third reprieve coming through the big iron-hearted door

Shall it be liberty or shall it be my busted neck in the official Government telegram?

Soon they shall flit it through the keyhole

If it says life then they shall stay the hanging and my pulse shall be returned to my chest

My pulse which has been legally returned to its rightful owner!

Imagine that!

Having your life handed to you on a plate of fresh favour!

The Government finds it in their heart to favour Ronald Ryan!

And out into oxygenated hope go I!

With my body unbroken and my kids back with Daddy!

And I'd like to place a sprig of forgiveness on George's new-dug grave!

By God that is the very first thing on my list!

And place fresh flowers not stolen on the guards' new-dug graves!

I would remember them who died for me

Even their bullet shells from the towers were swept well out of sight

But I saw them all glitter on the baking hot twisted tram rails

And I heard all their bangs literally

Now it is certainly a minute to go and they lead me up and down

Which in death is the same thing of course

I have been saying my prayers

I have been a good boy

I have been patiently waiting for the telegram to flit in the iron door

I have even hallucinated on the flit of it and the life it contains

But it came leaving nothing but the power of despair

Like the everlasting seal of disapproval

Because the Cabinet didn't like me much

And realised I could win the 1967 Victorian State election for them

With my marginal swinging seat

It's quite funny now but I'm unafraid of life or politics

Are they the same thing—in my case certainly!

The twelve journalists are all drunken watching down there below by gum!

They think it's going to be terribly exciting or even fun or dramatic

But it's business as usual for D Division where I die now and don't come back not once

The hangman tugs my rope roughly and my tinnitus kicks in something shocking

They drop a linen hood over my face that's had a Dad and Dave

The mumbo jumbo of the Catholic bullshit and I am faithfully despatched to memory

And Father Brosnan listens faithfully to my pounding-away heart beating like mad

Over two hundred strokes a minute he says later to his brother a bookie

‘You should have had a bet on it!' says his bookie brother and they laugh and do a bottle

It beat so powerfully of its own volition for twenty minutes as I hung there all black in the dial