Prisoners of the Williwaw

by Ed Griffin

  "I - " She was upset and prison had taught him well how to deal with upset people - shut down his emotions. He stood still in the living room.

  "I tried, Frank, I really tried," she complained, "to fix this place up and you know what?"

  "What?"

  "There's a leak in the roof in the bathroom." She pointed to a bucket just inside the bathroom door.

  Frank looked at the ceiling. "I see it. I'll go out and take a look at the roof."

  "The whole place is mildewed. Did you get something to seal the windows?"

  "They didn't have anything."

  Again tears of frustration - and anger. "How do you expect me to live here?"

  Frank tried to hug her, but she moved away from him. "So, where were you?"

  "I had to get Joe Britt…"

  "And this and that and this and that. Frank…." She started to cry.

  He touched her shoulder, then put his arms around her and held her.

  "You're wet," she said.

  "Yeah, but I'm getting used to it."

  He hugged her. He loosened his grip on his emotions. Time disappeared. It was sixteen years ago and he was holding her. He was a different man then. His heart was wild and his mind was on making a quick buck and sailing to the South Seas. He had to start over now. He had to learn how to cherish her.

  He rubbed her back gently. He felt her breasts press into him. "What should I do?" he whispered

  She looked up into his eyes. "Don't you know?"

  "I'm asking."

  "Frank, you're - you're . . . "

  He pulled her tight. He could feel himself getting excited, but, but… that probably wasn't what she wanted. She wanted the house made livable. "I'll go repair the roof," he said and pulled away from her.

  "Fuck!" she said and stamped the floor. He opened his mouth in surprise, not at her using that word, which she seldom did, but at his own failure to read her mood. Maybe she wanted sex as much as he did.

  "Judy, I…"

  She turned away. "You think too much, Frank."

  He went out of the apartment into the hallway and found a stairway that led to the roof. When he pushed on the door, it fell outward and the wind caught it, ripped it off its hinges and sent it sailing over the edge of the roof. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck," he said to the wind as he stepped out onto the gently sloping roof. There went his emotions again. He talked himself back to calm.

  The cold wind drilled into him and his wet, right foot made him shiver. He felt terrible for being so insensitive to Judy. He was just like the wind that sucked the heat and warmth and love out of everything.

  He located the roof over his apartment and the bathroom vent. A section of tar and gravel and paper had blown away. Water flowed down the roof and followed the vent into his apartment. Since he had no roofing material, he tried to think of what else he could use, finally settling on melting down some old candles he had seen in the basement. When the job was complete, he stood on the roof and watched the water divert around the vent and continue toward the gutter.

  Now that's a good job, he complimented himself. Why don't I repair roofs? It's easier than governing this island. Easier than being a husband again.

  A fierce wind blew at him from the direction of Mt. Moffett. Low clouds had covered the mountain all day, but now he saw it's lower half. A dark cloud hid the top from his view. He imagined fierce Williwaw lurking behind the stark, rocky slopes, then suddenly appearing and blowing disaster on the tiny community. Just like on the medallion.

  Frank put his hand up like a crossing guard. "We've made it for two days, Williwaw," he said. Yes, there was satisfaction in that. Despite the difficulties, despite the deaths, they were here on Adak and the bars were gone. We made it Rudy, he prayed. Now what am I going to do about Judy?

  The wind continued to blow. He turned away from the mountain to ease the sting on his face. Below him, down the hill, he could see some of the buildings of Downtown Adak. There was a beautiful woman in one of those buildings. Forget the run-down exteriors, forget the drab skies, forget the tree-less, shrub-less, stark world, there was a woman with style down there. But - but - the woman's husband, Boss Gilmore, was responsible for six men not being in those buildings tonight.

  What did he have to do to succeed? He had to stay the course. He had to set things up so that the ways of prison, the ways of Gilmore, would die.

  He shivered with the cold, checked his repair job and found it to be holding. He went outside the building, found the door in the street, carried it up and nailed it in place. Then he returned to his apartment. As he took off his parka, she called to him from the bedroom, "Is that you, Frank?"

  "Yes. I fixed the roof."

  "Good. Thank you." She sounded pleased.

  As he hung up his parka he realized that again his mind had reverted to his struggle to govern the island. While he was out on the roof, he should have figured out what Judy needed. How little I've changed, he thought. Sixteen years ago his mind was on how to make a quick 20 gs to buy a boat - and - on Angela, still on Angela, even though he'd been married for four years. Now his mind was on governing this island– and on Latisha.

  He sat down and pulled off his wet sock and wrung the water out. The sock smelled and his feet smelled. Judy came out of the bedroom in her heavy quilted robe, but at the bottom he saw the fringes of a lace nightgown. And the smell - wasn't it Chanel she wore? Those early, turned on years. Sex sometimes twice a day. She wore that perfume to prison once and it drove him crazy.

  He stood up and hugged her and then stroked her hair the way she used to like.

  Or was that Angela whose hair he stroked? He couldn't remember.

  She looked up at him. Her eyes were wide and glistening with love. He kissed her deeply, feeling her body, pulling it next to his, wanting her.

  "Oh, Frank," she murmured and then she playfully broke away. "Come on, I've got some dinner for you. Then after dinner - just like the old days."

  "Let's skip the dinner."

  She laughed. He took her hand and led her to the bedroom. Slowly, playfully she undid his shirt and his belt buckle. He untied her robe belt and helped her out of it.

  What did she like again? Yes, holding her breasts, kissing her breasts, stroking her slim stomach. He had to please her. That's what everything was about, pleasing her. She had come here to be with him, she had put curtains up, she wore perfume for him. It was up to him to meet her needs.

  His needs? They weren't important. He was an inmate.

  They lay on the bed, gently petting each other. Frank relaxed and let sex take over. He was transported. For sixteen years he had thought about this act. Books he read portrayed it as the summit of human happiness, as a symbol for the unity of two human beings, as the essence of love. The lack of physical intimacy with a woman had left a hole in his heart, a hole no rationalizing could fill.

  "I love you," he said. He was in a crystalline room in the world of knowledge, at the summit of literary excellence, at the moment of theorem proof, at the highest point of human love.

  They touched, they petted, he entered her, they both reached climax, then, after a few moments, they separated and lay on their backs looking at the ceiling.

  Frank wondered what he had just done. Did he relieve a sixteen-year itch? Did he tell this woman that, at the deepest level, their souls were united? Did he really make love? What about this burning need inside him to talk? How great it would be if he could tell her about the men dying and about the council and about Gilmore.

  She slept lightly. He closed his eyes and Latisha came into his mind. She was sitting next to him as she had in the cafeteria that very morning. Then she lay next to him in bed and they were talking, deep talk, the kind of talk he used to have with Rudy.

  He opened his eyes and winced, ashamed of himself.

  She was awake, too. "Are you hungry?" she asked.

  He smiled. "Yes."

  While they ate he started to tell her about the council meeting, but he only got
as far as Nelson the Plumber's request for new water and sewer lines. She told him in graphic detail about her experience in the outhouse and then about the experience of another woman who had the outhouse blow over on her while she was in it.

  She talked about her plans for the apartment and he nodded at the appropriate times, but his mind was back on the outhouses. He'd prepare a special report to the government, stressing the health issues and explaining how people had to go outside in terrible weather. The government shouldn't have let them come here with the situation as it was.

  As they drank their coffee, Frank reached across the table and put his hand on hers. "I'm really sorry I've been away so much. It's just until - "

  She put her other hand on top of his. "I know."

  He sipped his coffee. Finally things were going well. She understood. "Starting tomorrow," he said, "we're going to be together a lot more."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The factory starts tomorrow. We'll be together all day."

  She pulled both hands away from him. "Frank Villa, you don't expect me to work in the factory, do you?"

  Surely she understood. "Everyone has to work. It's the only way we can earn money for food. I spent $24.50 on what I bought today."

  "$24.50 for that little bit?"

  "Well, the prices… they're inflated."

  "I'll shop next time. I'm a homemaker. Reverend Ellsworth says that's a good occupation. He said the world would be a better place if more women were homemakers. I'm not working in any factory."

  Chapter 17

  Gilmore had never seen fog like this. He stood in his office in the newly-named Sea Otter Lounge and gazed out his big picture window. He could see nothing, not even the trash can that sat not more than five feet from the window. The fog was a solid gray wall, as gray as any prison barrier.

  If the Feds thought he was going to spend the prime of his life here, well…

  He glanced around his office. Fog like this made him nervous. It provided cover for the knife-wielding assassin. Maybe that was the idea of the Feds - put them in a foggy climate where they would slink around and kill each other off.

  He looked at his watch. 7:35 AM. The factory had opened thirty-five minutes ago. He could imagine the whining of some of the cons. "Gee, Boss, I just couldn't find the factory in all that fog."

  No, it wasn't gonna happen that way. He'd instructed Larson to be brutal about cons working in the factory. If they didn't show up, he was to get them, pull them out of bed and do things that would guarantee they remembered on Tuesday morning.

  Did Latisha go to the factory? She told him yesterday she was going to, even though he told her it looked bad if a boss' wife worked. "It's like the leader can't even provide for his own woman."

  She went on about being her own person, but she totally ignored the point about what her working did to his role as leader.

  Gilmore put on a parka and went outside. This was no airy, fairy misty fog. This fog was physical. He felt like he was breathing water. Moisture formed on his face and dropped off like sweat. At least the wind had died down.

  In Detroit, when he was a boy, he and his gang pried open the gate on a city tunnel that went under a road and under an apartment complex. A creek that smelled of sewer ran through the tunnel and sometimes the tunnel filled with fog. The gang initiated new members in that tunnel, but even wandering around in the fog to scare others, gave him nightmares.

  This fog was similar. It even smelled the same.

  One of his men stumbled toward him. "Boss, you gotta see this. A kayak."

  "Where?"

  "By the docks. Sweeper Cove."

  "A kayak?"

  "I ain't shittin' you, Boss. Some crazy old Aleut in it."

  A kayak had made it through the supposedly impenetrable wall of the Coast Guard. If a kayak could slip through the Coast Guard on the way in, it could slip by on the way out.

  "Go get Larson at the factory, but don't let Villa know what's going on."

  The man left and Gilmore headed for the docks. He had to walk slowly, feeling his way, step by step. At the docks he searched for twenty minutes before he came across the old Aleut, sitting on a rock, calmly eating a dried salmon. The man looked short, kayak size, with a face wrinkled by ocean salt and wind. He smelled of fish. His kayak rested nearby on the rocky beach.

  Gilmore smiled to himself as he approached the man. The Coast Guard wasn't so tough after all.

  "What're you doing here, old man?"

  "What are you doing here? I thought Williwaw had driven you off."

  Gilmore laughed. "Williwaw drives people off?"

  The old man shook his head. "That's why I'm here. Williwaw killed my father in this bay twenty-eight years ago. I come back to honor his memory every year."

  "Did you - ah - notice any ships out there?" Gilmore pointed to the water.

  "Who are you?" the old man asked. "Are you the Navy?"

  "No, no. Were there big ships out there?"

  "How did you people do it?"

  "Do what? Resist the wind?"

  "No. How did you black people survive the white man? There are many of you. I am Aleut. There are few of us. We faced the Russians and then the Americans. My people say, "We were many; now we are few."

  Was this old man dodging? "Did the Coast Guard give you permission to land?"

  "Nobody gives Williwaw permission. He rules this island."

  Someone called out through the fog.

  "Over here, Larson," Gilmore called back. Should he just have Larson grab the kayak?

  The big man came through the fog, looked at the kayak and the old man, then turned to Gilmore and gestured with his hand slicing across his throat.

  Gilmore let out an exasperated breath. That was Larson's answer to everything.. "Let's see what happens when he leaves," Gilmore said in a low voice. "This old fart keeps sidestepping my questions." Gilmore turned back to the old man. "Did the ships stop you?"

  "Williwaw stops everyone. He drove the Russians off, the Japanese and then finally you Americans. But your American Navy was the hardest."

  Gilmore shook his head and turned to Larson. "Can't get an answer out of him."

  Larson grabbed the old man by the collar of his parka and picked him up right off his rock. "Answer the boss, you Eskimo fuck."

  The old man jerked his knee up suddenly and got Larson in the balls. Larson dropped the old man and howled in pain. The Aleut had balls, Gilmore thought, and he knew how to disable other people's balls.

  The old man turned to Gilmore. "Who are you people?"

  "We're - political prisoners," Gilmore answered.

  A voice called out from over his shoulder. "What's going on here?" It was Frank Villa. Just like prison, Gilmore thought. One person knows something, everyone knows it.

  Villa walked up to the old man and shook his hand like he was a visiting dignitary. "We are honored by your visit. I'm just surprised you got through."

  "Yes." The old man explained his visit again and then took an army canteen from his kayak and told Villa he was going to get some fresh water from the stream in the south. "Then I will stand in silence to the memory of my father."

  Larson, still hurting from the Aleut's blow, mumbled to Gilmore, "When that fuck comes back, I'm going to kill him and take his kayak."

  "No, you're not. If that old fart can sneak though this fog, so can we. I want to see what happens when he leaves."

  "Fuck. That's a good kayak. You're letting it go."

  Villa stood close by. Had he heard this exchange? Larson was getting out of hand. In prison Gilmore would have sent his muscle to teach him a lesson in a hidden corner of the machine shop. The problem here: Larson was the muscle.

  Gilmore spoke in a deadly, quiet tone. "Larson, you do what I say. After that business with my wife, you're right on the edge of disaster. Now out of here. And remember what I said about Latisha."

  Larson stepped back and spat on the ground at Gilmore's feet. "The way I hear it at
the factory this morning," he said in a voice loud enough for Villa to hear, "she's a free woman. She ain't livin' with you."

  Gilmore felt the sweat break out on his forehead. Larson should be smoked, finished, a shank through his heart. Gilmore abandoned his icy stare and let anger take over. He grabbed Larson and pulled him toward himself. "It's none of your goddamn business what goes on between us. She's my woman. Hands off. Now get the fuck out of here."

  Larson spat again and left. For Villa to have heard all that…. Villa would think he couldn't control his gang. When the next bunch of inmates came, he'd find a better muscle or a team of muscle. Larson would not live long then.

  The Aleut had disappeared into the fog to get water. Gilmore folded his arms and waited. He could feel Frank Villa behind him, higher up on the shore. Finally the old man returned, stood for a moment of silence and then put his kayak in the water. Villa walked toward him. "We're federal prisoners and the Coast Guard has warned us not to escape. They might mistake you."

  "These islands belong to us."

  Gilmore noted that the man answered Villa the same impossible way he answered him.

  "Well, I hope you come back next year to honor your father," Villa said.

  "You won't be here next year," the old man replied.

  "Why not?"

  "Williwaw. He will kill you."

  Villa looked shocked and for a moment Gilmore himself felt a ghostly presence, but he reassured himself it was just the fog.

  The old man got into his kayak and pushed off, disappearing almost right away. Ten seconds later Gilmore heard a large ship start its engine. Seconds later another ship started. The fog played tricks on his ears; he couldn't tell how close the ships were. Then a voice called out on a loud speaker. "There are over one hundred rifles aimed at you and three cannons. Put your hands over your head. You are going to be brought on board." A splash, like a raft hitting the water. Then a pause, then an order to fire. Cannon shots, rifle shots. Gilmore pictured the kayak, splinters in seconds.

  If that is what happened to an old Aleut in a kayak, what would happen to a serious prison break?