Prisoners of the Williwaw

by Ed Griffin

  Richter took his hand off his microphone. "Hold on. This proposal says the inmates should be married. Let's change that to must be married. I'm for the family."

  Murphy shrugged, like it didn't matter.

  Frank wanted to wipe the sweat from his forehead, but couldn't. This was terrible. Not only were his own chances shrinking, but it was clear that Murphy didn't give a damn.

  The committee chairman released his hand from the microphone and asked, "Just what island did you have in mind?"

  "Kahoolawe. It's just south of Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. It's uninhabited and waterless. The Navy used to shell it for target practice."

  This time the committee didn't even bother to cover their mikes. "Can you imagine how that would play back home?" Murphy asked. "We give a Hawaiian island to convicts?"

  "No, give it to them," Richter said, "but don't tell the Navy."

  The chairman in a jovial tone asked Frank if he had any more to say. A speech quivered at the tip of his tongue, about how he was a human being and didn't deserve to be humiliated by this committee, about how he had been playing by the rules, about… He said nothing and nodded over to the next table, to the history professor, who had written a book on different types of prisons.

  "What these convicts are proposing is nothing new, gentlemen," the professor began. His deep voice rolled up from his rotund middle. "The British shipped criminals and their families all over the empire to establish colonies. Many of these convicts came to our own shores in the 1700's and the careful reader will note strange gaps in the genealogies of leading blue-blooded American families. After our war of independence the British needed a new place to ship their felons, so they began to send them to Australia. As an example, on May 13, 1787, Captain Arthur Philip sailed from Portsmouth, England, with 11 ships and a cargo of convicts bound for Australia. A little over six months later on January 26, 1788, 750 men and women landed at a little place that today is known as Sydney, Australia."

  At Frank's suggestion the professor skimmed over the fact that the criminals were mainly petty thieves and poor people, nor did he tell the committee what terrible colonists they turned out to be. If it hadn't been for Captain Philip, there probably wouldn't have been a Sydney, Australia.

  The professor paused and took another paper from the table. "Right now the Mexican Government has a prison similar to this proposal on an island off the coast of Mexico. It's called Islas Marias. Some sixteen hundred prisoners live with their families in single-family homes in little villages on the island. All the prisoners work and the goal of the government is to make the island 100 percent self-sufficient. Compared with traditional correctional institutions, the inmates are relatively free to act and go where they want."

  The professor paused dramatically and gazed at the committee. "The United States Government cannot continue to put more money into prisons than it does into education."

  The professor sat down. "Thank you, professor," the chairman said, "for the academic insights. The Bureau of Prisons is next."

  Academic. Despair gripped Frank. The history of Australia, the Mexican experience, those were his highlights. They were real, not academic. Desperately he needed to get up and walk around, wave his hands, go have a smoke. Anything but just sit there and take this defeat of his dream.

  And now the committee would hear from the Bureau of Prisons, those most opposed to his proposal. Their numbers and their power would be cut drastically if the idea succeeded.

  Frank watched Dr. Adamson take the mike from the professor. The man had a carefully trimmed mustache and an air of intellectual accomplishment about him. The system had chosen their spokesperson wisely.

  "I speak to you today, not only for the Bureau, but also for prison psychologists, for the association of prison guards and for the chaplains' association.

  "Gentlemen, you plan to release these killers on an island. They'll kill and steal and violate one another. Fine. Let them do that to each other, but not to innocent women and children, the families of convicts. What right does this committee have to send American citizens to an island with psychopathic killers?

  "Members of Congress, these are sick men. Sick. I am sure you understand that. These are men who kill and rape and steal, often just for the fun of it. These men have none of the psychological controls you and I have. What they need is a therapeutic environment, a place where professionals can help them, a place where they can reconsider their criminal impulses."

  Frank could see the final torpedo heading for his sinking ship. For the first time the committee listened intently.

  "If you let these men go, innocent people will die. If you let these men go, crime will be treated lightly. If you let these men go, years of important effort by prison psychologists will be in vain. If you let these men go..."

  Doc jumped up and tried to point at Adamson with his manacled hands, "if you let these men go, motherfuckers like Adamson will lose their jobs. They'll have to go out and work for a living."

  The committee laughed. Adamson's spell was broken. Frank pulled Doc back down into his chair. "Apologize," Frank whispered. Doc got back up and muttered an apology.

  Murphy spoke up. "It's important for Congress to explore these ideas, no matter how unusual they are. We have to…" He launched into a long speech, re-hashing what Adamson had said, his eye ever on the cameras.

  Frank wanted to put his hand on his forehead. Rudy, Rudy, I know. I know what's coming. Murphy is going to jump ship.

  Suddenly a page approached the congressman with a note. Murphy read the message, looked out in the audience to the person the young man indicated, scribbled something on the note and handed it back to the page - and all the time he was still talking.

  The young man carried the note back to the audience. Frank turned around to see a well-dressed businessman.

  Frank couldn't believe what he was hearing. Without losing a beat, Murphy was endorsing the island prison idea. "Prison budget out of control," "work or starve," "excellent proposal."

  The page handed Murphy another piece of paper. More scribbling in the middle of the speech and the note went back to the page. This time, however, the young man handed the message to one of the guards who handed it to Boss Gilmore. Why was Boss Gilmore getting a note from Congressman Murphy? What was going on? If Boss Gilmore was involved, it was sure to be shady.

  Frank nudged Doc and nodded toward Gilmore. Doc shrugged.

  Frank shifted his attention back on Congressman Murphy, "... and so, Mr. Chairman, I'm asking for a recess, while staff research another island. I think this idea deserves serious consideration."

  Frank watched the committee leave the room. All right, Rudy, what's going on? My idea, hammered out of history and sociology, is about to be melted down by charlatans.

  Chapter 4

  Frank wished he had his rough, straight, wooden prison chair. This massive chair with its padded leather inlays was a mockery. He was not a congressman, he was not an important business leader. In fact, right now, with the hearing over, he felt like a loser.

  This was a private meeting room, off the public room, a room for members of Congress to make deals. The upper part of the room, Frank thought, bespoke cleanliness and upright behavior, with its light green walls and its framed pictures of Washington and the Constitution. But at his level, at the table, the dark polished wood and the deep, dark chairs allowed all manner of deals to go forward.

  The three inmates waited for their transportation back to prison. Gilmore sat at one end of the table, using the phone, having persuaded his guard to dial collect for him. Frank thought he fit in perfectly with the table and chairs. Frank and Doc sat at the other end. Two guards blocked the door, but one had the door open a crack to look for the transport officer.

  Doc was spending his time giving a detailed commentary of what he could see through the cracked door. "Never in all my years of medical practice have I seen hooters like those, Frank. Oh - there goes one with two cats in her pants - look at
that ass wiggle."

  Since Rudy's death, Doc had become his best friend. Doc was in his early sixties, a lean hard man. He had one of the foulest mouths Frank had ever heard, but Frank knew he was all bluff. Frank had watched him care for inmates the prison doctor ignored. No complaint was too small for Doc to take seriously.

  "Oh, my God. The color. The beauty. The bodies. Frank, I'm getting a hard-on just looking. You should see this."

  Doc nudged him and he looked through the crack. Businessmen walking, going somewhere. Women in suits, walking with men, with other women, walking alone, but all walking, heading someplace. That was the difference with prison. These people had goals. Men in prison walked nowhere. They walked to fill their twenty years.

  "Jesus, Frank, how about a smile, a laugh? You don't fuckin' see this every day. Why so gloomy? You just won."

  Yes, he had, and that gave him satisfaction, but the changes the committee had made - they were disastrous. "Lots of problems, Doc."

  "Like?"

  "First, that Adak Island is going to be impossible. You heard them. A former hard-duty Naval station. Uninhabited. Ask yourself why it's uninhabited. Remember your geography. The Aleutians are between the Bering Sea and the Pacific, weather system meeting weather system. And I think it's on the Ring of Fire."

  "Which is?"

  "Volcanoes and earthquakes around the Pacific."

  "Fuck. If the Navy made it there, we can make it."

  "You heard them, Doc. Adak is in the Aleutians. In World War II the weather killed more people than the Japanese did."

  "So it rains and it's windy. So?"

  "Do you have any idea how much preparation we'll have to do?"

  "What's to do? A few months maybe. You choose some of your friends, they line up their women, you get Uncle Sugar to buy us some umbrellas. No big deal."

  Frank snorted in derision. "No. The Bureau decides who goes. We don't."

  "So? They were against the whole thing and we beat them. Fuckin' right."

  "I'm not sure we beat them. Now the Bureau can clean out all their weirdoes and dump them on Adak."

  "Come on, Frank. Take some of those assholes out of prison and they won't be so bad. Assholes still, but you let them know right from day one that you're the meanest motherfucker on the block."

  "That's not my way. And this businessman friend of Murphy's who's going to set up a factory for us - how much is he going to pay us? You heard the Congressman. 'It's work or starve.' The guy can pay us slave wages and we have to take it."

  Frank lowered his voice and nodded toward Gilmore. "And what's the connection to Gilmore? Gilmore knows Murphy. What's going on there?"

  Doc shrugged. "I don't know. Best thing is just kill Gilmore."

  "The fox is being invited into the chicken coop," Frank muttered.

  Frank shifted his whole body to look at Gilmore. He didn't look so in control now as he struggled to keep the phone under his chin. Even Gilmore couldn't get his hands unshackled.

  In some ways he had to admire Gilmore. The man was a smooth prison boss, and, although he dealt in drugs, he had brought a measure of peace to the prison. Gilmore, a black man, had ended long years of racial tension by setting up an organization that included whites as key players. Gilmore liked to tell everyone that the warden and the guards used racial tension to keep the focus off themselves. Frank suspected there was more to it. It was business - why sell to just the blacks, when you can sell to the whites as well?

  The door opened and a beautiful young woman from the Indian subcontinent stood in the doorway. She wore a pink and purple sari. A light fragrance of lavender floated into the room.

  Frank reveled in her beauty for a moment, then moved to push his glasses back on his nose, but his hands were shackled. Fifteen years in prison had taught him to set up a wall against women. "If you can't play the game," he told himself, "don't stare at the other team."

  The woman blushed when she saw the guards and the convicts. "Excuse me," she said in a clipped accent as she left.

  Doc nudged Frank. "You're drooling."

  Frank smiled.

  "Women." Doc shook his head. "Shit, man, beats prison. I hope they fix me up with someone like that." The committee had insisted that, despite the island's need for a doctor, Doc would have to be married. The Bureau of Prisons hinted that they could find a female convict who might be willing to join him.

  "I'm worried about my own situation," Frank said. "Damn them. I put the family thing forward as an ideal; they made it a requirement."

  "Yeah?"

  "My wife hasn't said yes."

  Doc nodded. "Problem."

  Gilmore called the guard over so he could dial another number for him.

  Doc pointed to Gilmore. "There's your answer. You learn to manipulate the system."

  "That's not my way."

  "Well, it better be. We're gonna go on this trip, Frank. You and me. Me because they need me, you because it's your idea. Prison isn't the real world. It's play school and play school is almost over. You're the leader, Frank."

  "I'm not sure I want to be the leader when they dump a bunch of psychopaths on us."

  Doc tried to move his manacled hands to touch Frank. "Frank, listen to me, the worst day on this hellhole of an island will be better than the best day in prison. We'll be free. Now talk about something practical - your wife. Has she given you any indication? How many times have you written her?"

  "Once."

  "And?"

  "No response."

  "So write again. Tell her you'll be the leader. Tell her you'll get kickbacks and you'll live good."

  "Fifteen years now - we've grown apart."

  "So, mend your fences. Listen, Frank, you're sounding like the usual, whiny, prison-wimp victim. Snap out of it. It's Adak or it's prison."

  Frank bent way over and used the edge of the table to push his glasses back onto his nose. "It's Adak."

  "Goddamn right."

  Chapter 5

  A year and five months later, in mid September, Latisha Gilmore boarded the plane for Adak. Finally, she thought. Even as she walked across the tarmac in the Anchorage airport, the press hounded her. "Are you Boss Gilmore's wife?" "Is he trying to supplant Villa?"

  A boss's wife - that's the last thing she wanted to be known as, especially among women who were going to be her neighbors. She nodded to the pilot who stood by the door of the cockpit. He wore a cowboy hat and jeans, an indication that this was not a typical commercial flight. He had the look about him that said this plane was a wild bull that had to be wrestled to Adak.

  She smiled and felt a slight tingle in her stomach. Scary, yes, but also exciting. Why, she wondered, was she so excited about going to this terrible place of wind and rain?

  The plane was divided, as the waiting room had been, Villa's people up front, her husband's people - a noisier crowd - in the back.

  She walked down the aisle, past the minister and his schoolteacher wife - the only staff for this venture - past the wives and children of some of the three hundred. With her tan suit, her guarded eyes and quiet manner, she hoped to appear as a black businesswoman. Anything but a boss' woman. At work she was often mistaken for a model. Her delicate features and glistening black hair led people to think she had just stepped out of the pages of Essence. "Girl," her mother used to tell her, "you've got the complexion us women of color envy, and a figure all women want."

  She took a seat in the middle of the two groups, trying to identify with neither of them. Next to her sat a pudgy white woman.

  The doors closed and the stairs were rolled away. Soon they were airborne. The smell of bodies filled the warm atmosphere of the plane, bodies that had left home a good twenty-four hours before this flight.

  As soon as the seat belt sign went off, somebody started hammering the back of her seat. She turned around to see a young boy slamming his food tray up and down. She looked at the lady next to him, a short woman with a very disgusted look on her face. "Don't look at me
, lady," she said. "He's not mine." She pointed across the aisle to a woman sleeping, oblivious to the rowdiness of her four children.

  The pudgy woman next to her turned and showed her an inexpensive wedding ring. "I'm gonna be with my husband, Joe. We just got married. Adak's gonna be our home."

  Latisha smiled. "Home?" What a wonderful word. That's what she was looking for, wasn't it?

  "Oh, yes, my Joe says we're gonna work in the factory and build a little cabin by a lake. I even brought some curtains. My name's Maggie - " she giggled slightly " - Britt. I'm not used to my new name yet. What's your name?"

  Here was one woman, at least, who didn't know she was Boss Gilmore's wife.

  The plane hit some turbulence and bounced. A child threw up. A beer bottle sailed up the middle aisle and bounced off the cabin door. "When you gonna learn how to fly, you asshole?" a woman called out.

  "Oh my," Maggie said.

  Latisha ignored the incident and introduced herself "My name's Latisha Gilmore." It felt good to say who she was without saying the word, boss.

  "What does your husband do? I - I mean what's his job?"

  What could she answer? Professional criminal? "He's in - entertainment."

  "That's nice," Maggie said. "People need to laugh. I'm just so excited."

  "Where are you from?" Latisha asked.

  "Chicago. That's where I met Joe. We worked in a factory together before he - " her voice dropped " - went to jail. Where are you from?"

  I'm from everywhere, Latisha thought. Everywhere the tornado of James T. Gilmore touches down. Detroit, New York. What did it matter? Home was an apartment with a bed, a refrigerator and a bathroom, a place to laugh and love and eat breakfast, a place for him to run his rackets, a place for her to be alone when he was arrested.

  "Detroit," Latisha said.

  "Joe and I will be on Adak for twelve years. It's going to be home." Maggie spoke as if that was wonderful news, like twelve years on a tropical island.