Reply #11: Chapter Two--Into the Garden of the Olives [View All]

[Tommy_Carcetti]

Chapter Two—Into the Garden of the Olives



Stevie Switling took a fearless attitude with him to the lockup. With his right cheek emblazoned with a large tattoo of the letters “L” and “S”, Stevie vowed to be a dedicated soldier of the Lakeshore Stranglaz during his eighteen month stay at Neal Peart Provincial Institution in desolate Northern Ontario. At one point, Stevie was heard threatening another inmate and screaming, “I’ll throw my hands around your neck, and then I’ll wrap them around! And it will be months before your body’s actually found!”

Unfortunately, Neal Peart served as something of a microcosm of Canada’s burgeoning gang wars. While the Lakeshore Stranglaz had its share of representatives in the general population, so too did the Stranglaz’s major rival, the Narwhals. The Narwhals long controlled much of Canada’s Arctic areas, but only recently began to make inroads in the Toronto metropolitan area, which had been in the exclusive control of the Stranglaz for over a decade. Imprisoned at Neal Peart at the same time as Stevie was Walt Star, a longtime captain of the Narwhals.

Star knew his target. Killing an upper level Stragla like Stevie would ensure Star would remain in the high ranks of the Narwhals once he got out. One afternoon as inmates were leaving the mess hall after a quite subpar dinner of cornflake crusted chicken, Star was able to bribe a guard so that he would be standing directly behind Stevie in the line back to the prison dorm.

Just as the line began to move, Star pulled out a shiv that he had fashioned from an old chicken bone and plunged it into Stevie’s back. As Stevie yelped in pain, Star shouted, “Narwhals! Fuck yeah!”

Stevie fell to the ground, gasping for air. The last thing Stevie saw in his 36 years of wasted life was Walt Star standing over him with a bloody shiv. “Ain’t no hooves on this bitch,” a wild-eyed Star said with a chuckle just before the guards pulled him away from the fracas.

* * * *

“Where the hell’s my breadsticks?” the irate customer shouted at Gary.

“Sir, I’m sorry—,” Gary began to apologize.

“You’re sorry my ass!” the customer shouted back. “You see my parents here? They came from out of town. They said they wanted to go to the best Italian place in all of Toronto, and I took them here. And I didn’t take them here so they could sit around for an hour waiting to get five measly breadsticks.”

Gary took a deep breath and attempted to calm himself. “Your breadsticks will be out in a moment,” he told the customer, and he walked away, rolling his eyes. The kids buy my shit, Gary thought, That’s how I get cash. That was the only sobering thought that got Gary through the day. Gary would see the many wonderful meals that he served on a daily basis and he could only wish against hope that he too could enjoy them one day—the Grilled Shrimp Caprese, the Braised Beef & Tortellini, the Lasagna Classico, and of course, the famous Tour of Italy.

Unfortunately, Gary’s meager waiter’s pay meant he would be left on the outside looking in. Instead, Gary was forced to eat little else but mundane cold cut sandwiches that he packed at home. Gary’s big one splurge in his cuisine? Mayonnaise. He put mayonnaise on everything. That’s how he ate.

As Gary reached for a basket of piping hot breadsticks, Asher Skinner—Gary’s manager, but half his age—pulled him aside. “Gary, we just got a phone call,” Asher said. Gary’s heart immediately dropped in his chest. His mind began to replay that same scene from when he was three, his father—that fuckin’ guy—turn his head around and snapping at him, all the time while he defaced his mother’s honor. Gary didn’t yet know what the news was, but he did know it would not be good news.

“It’s about your brother.”