by Ed Griffin
Was she exaggerating? No, probably not; it must have been a fierce wind, but it was still just a wind. It was not a person or an evil spirit. Despite the warnings of the old Aleut, despite the figure on his medallion, he had to keep his head about him.
The important thing was to find the boys before the williwaws struck. Hopefully they were not out in the open.
Frank plodded forward, down the rugged trail, his face set into the wind. Rain mixed with snow lashed his face. His search area was Finger Bay.
As dawn appeared he reached the run-down cottages that still dotted the north shore of Finger Bay near the end of this long finger-like ocean fjord. Most of the dozen or so cottages reminded him of a book in the prison library: Vacation Spots of The 1950s. One had no roof, another had half a roof, all of them had wind damage. All needed paint. However, one cottage, at the very end of the line of cottages was an A-frame with the glass front still intact.
He checked the A-frame first. Nothing. Then the next cottage. When he pulled on the door, it came off its hinges. He fell backward to the ground, the door on top of him. He got up, stepped inside and sent a group of rats scurrying. No boys.
He looked in all the cottages without success until he came to the last one, which adjoined the ruins of a building that went right down to the water. He guessed it had been a cannery with attached cottage, but there was nothing left of the cannery except the foundation. The door to the cottage was open and every window was broken. No dust or spider webs or moss covered the broken glass. It was fresh. The boys - or Larson - had been here.
In the front room facing the water he found three empty beer cans and the wrapper from a package of Colby cheese, exactly what Mrs. Robinson reported missing from her refrigerator. It was the boys who had been here.
The beer cans smelled fresh, but where had the boys gone from here?
Frank gazed across the waters of Finger Bay. Three or four miles in the distance, a mountain, really a long ridge of mountain, rose out of the green tundra. Frank checked his map; it was called Razorback Ridge. Good name for that, he thought. It appeared to be the biggest mountain around, not as big as the mountains north of Downtown, but big enough to have its top dusted with snow.
Frank picked up one of the empty beer cans and tried to put himself in the mind of a twelve-year old. Would they try it? When he was twelve he remembered climbing a high bluff with his friends and jumping into a spring-fed lake at the bottom.
He had to at least see if they went that way.
He worked his way around the tip of Finger Bay, looking for footprints. On the trail to Razorback he found fresh indentations of the boys' shoes on the marshy ground. Everyone left a trail on Adak's tundra.
The storm wind played tricks on him, buffeting his back, then his front, shifting directions as it swirled in the bay and bounced off Razorback Ridge. He struggled over the hills, past the creek from Susie Lake, past Thumb Bay. He reached Razorback at nine.
The wind blew fiercely from the southwest. As Frank started up the mountain, it felt as if the wind would press him into the rock and make a fossil out of him. Every step, every motion was a fight. Bits of tundra, flakes of stone and dirt tore at his face.
He hadn't slept all night and the longer he climbed, the more it seemed he was climbing this steep ridge, not to search for missing boys, but to face this demon wind, Williwaw.
The trail disappeared on hard rock at several points and he had to guess which way the boys went. But he knew their basic direction was up.
He grabbed for a rock, but the rock came loose in his hand and he slid down thirty feet. When he stopped sliding, he felt something warm on his leg. He pulled up his pant leg to discover a deep gash.
Frank sat on a ledge and cleaned the cut with his handkerchief and snow. Maybe I should wait out this storm, he thought. But the boys, can they survive it?
He started back up. "Jesse! Marty! Jack!" He hoped the wind would carry his words to the boys.
He passed the point where he'd fallen, then inched his way up a slippery incline to a high ledge. Here he hid behind a rock for a minute to rest. His leg hurt.
When he reached the top, he was gasping for breath. He was wet and cold like he'd never been in his life. Light snow covered the ground. He lay down just below the ridge on the east side, out of the wind. He looked down to his right - one slip and he would crash from ledge to ledge into the angry seas over a thousand feet below.
How fragile life was and how hard!
He thought of the one last cigarette he allowed himself in the evening in his cell, at least since Rudy had died. The cell was warm and the studies for the day were over. If it had been a typical day, he had opened a new door in the house of knowledge.
In prison there was no Razorback Ridge and no boys to find. There was no community to defend and no complicated personal relationships to work out.
Maybe Gilmore was right. Maybe the job of the leader was to provide food and sex and drink and the devil take the rest.
Suddenly there was a strange quiet. The wind calmed drastically. Frank stuck his head above the ridge and looked toward the south. He could see no reason why the wind had died. He knew there was another mountain like Razorback in the southeast, but he could only make out its rough outline.
He called again, "Jack! Jesse! Marty!" Suddenly a fierce wind blew across the ridge, carrying with it pieces of tundra grass, dirt and small stones, all of which were travelling at great speed. He ducked just in time. At the same instant he heard a loud crash and he looked down at the cottages far below him at the end of Finger Bay. The wind had ripped the roof off one of the cottages he had checked earlier. The roof had smashed into the side of the next cottage.
This was a williwaw, the damming up of wind and then the sudden release.
"God!" Frank exclaimed. What force. Williwaw blew with power. Williwaw took charge. Williwaw ruled. This is what he had to do on Adak He, Frank, was no longer in prison. He was a free man. Why didn't he act like that? Rudy, Rudy, you tried to tell me. Melt the bars inside myself.
Yes, and that was the secret to his feelings for Latisha - he had to take charge.
He stood up and called the boys' names again. He heard someone fifty yards in front of him, right near the ridge, there, hiding in the shelter of a big rock. Still alive! Thank God!
"Boys!" he shouted and the three of them got up and started to cross the ridge toward him. Suddenly the wind quieted and it seemed the air was being sucked from the ridge. "Get down!" Frank shouted. He reached his hand out as if to push them down. "Get down!" he screamed, but the wind blew his words away.
The boys tried to advance across the ridge. Marty, the oldest and heaviest of the boys, took a few steps forward and fell flat on the ridge, hugging it. His younger brother, Jesse, the slightest of the three, teetered for a moment on the ridge and then was knocked off, sliding down to a ledge about twenty feet beneath the ridge. Frank watched the wind drive the third boy, Jack Heinz, over the edge. Jack slid down to a clump of tundra grass just above a cliff.
"Marty, Jesse," Frank yelled, "stay where you are. Keep low. I'm going after Jack."
He couldn't be sure they had heard him.
Frank crawled across the ridge, his hands freezing as he grasped the snowy ground. Never in his life had he experienced anything like this wind. It was as if he was crawling through a wind tunnel, only the wind came at him from the side. When he reached the spot where Jack had fallen, he rolled over the edge and slid rapidly down the snow-slicked ground. He reached the clump of grass and saw Jack, at the base of it, hanging onto the grass, his feet dangling over a hundred-foot drop.
Frank almost went over the cliff himself, but just in time he dug his heels into the snow and dirt. He could feel the warm blood on his legs again. "I'm coming, Jack," he called. He crawled over to the boy. "Grab onto me."
Frank pulled himself and Jack to the top of the clump of grass. He opened his pocket knife and jammed it into the ground to give himself more hold o
n the slippery earth. Slowly he made his way to near the top, where Jesse Robinson waited on the ledge. Frank was relieved to see that the older brother, Marty, still hugged the ridge, as he had told him to.
On this side of the hill they were protected from the wind. As he dragged himself toward Jesse's ledge, the boy stood up. "I'm going up to the top with my brother," he called out to Frank.
"No. Stay there."
"Fuck you," the boy called. Frank could hear the fear in the boy's voice. The boy probably figured he'd be safe if he were with his older brother on the ridge.
"Just wait a second till I get there," Frank called.
He hurried as fast as he could with Jack Heinz hanging onto him. As he got nearer to Jesse, the boy scampered up to the ridge, near his older brother who still hugged the ground. But young Jesse was defiant. He stood on the ridge boldly and looked down at Frank. "Fuck. It's calm up here." And then suddenly he was blown right off the ridge. He slid down past Frank, who grabbed for him, past the clump of tundra grass and toward the hundred-foot cliff.
As he watched the young boy go past him, Frank's face contorted and he cried, Jesse! Jesse!" as if his words could stop him. But the boy fell off the cliff.
* * *
Frank scrambled down to a ledge where he could see Jesse's misshapen body, blood oozing out of the boy's head. Rather than recover the body now, it was more important to get the other two back to their parents and tell Mrs. Robinson the sad news.
Frank crawled back down off Razorback Ridge, going first, making sure the two boys did not slide past him. When he reached the bottom, he took the trail for Downtown. Marty walked beside him and sobbed quietly, the reality, no doubt, reaching him that his brother was dead. Jack Heinz clutched Frank's hand as if he wanted Frank to protect him from something so absolute as his friend's death.
They walked on the trail around the end of Finger Bay, the tall tundra grasses on either side of them bent by the wind. The wind howled through the grasses and sounded like a funeral dirge for the innocent boy.
No one spoke. Frank looked inside himself. This new, horrible, tragic death on Razorback Ridge had changed him. No more. No more. He had let so many people die, because of his lack of decision, but no more. A new power, a new force grew inside him. He, like Williwaw, was in charge of Adak.
He looked up to the rolling clouds. "Ain't that right, Rudy?"
"What?" Jack Heinz looked up at him.
"Nothing, nothing," Frank said. He pictured Rudy in his mind, walking along with them, fighting the wind.
Do it, Frank, do it, Rudy said in a mental voice. Get off the fuckin' dime.
Up ahead Frank saw the docks of Sweeper Cove and the Roberts Housing Area. He was almost back to Downtown. This tragic death had put an end to the passivity so encouraged by prison. He was a different man now. He was Frank Villa. He was no longer Frank Villa, Inmate #108392.
He remembered Sister Mary Andre in the third grade telling him that when he was baptized and confirmed, the spirit of God filled him. That's the way he felt now. The spirit of God - or was it the spirit of Williwaw? - had filled him on Razorback Ridge and changed him into a man who would not allow any more deaths to happen.
Suddenly Marty took his hand and asked in a timid voice, "Where's Jesse now?"
"With God."
"What's he doing?"
Frank thought of all the pious answers he'd heard in church, but decided to just tell the boy what came into his mind. "I think he's probably stealing beer and climbing a mountain."
Marty let go of his hand and walked on. The boy was silent. Had it been the right thing to say? He didn't know.
Frank found Jack Heinz's house first. Jack's mother, tears streaming down her face, clutched her son. Next Frank knocked on the Robinson's door. Mrs. Robinson answered the door almost immediately. She saw Marty. "Where's mah Jesse?" she cried as she hugged Marty. "Where's mah Jesse?"
Frank put his arms around the woman. "I'm sorry. The boys were on top of Razorback Ridge and the wind took your son. They were just being boys up there, exploring things. Your Jesse died doing what all boys do. I'm very sorry."
He held her for several moments. He couldn't imagine anything worse than a mother facing the death of her child.
"As soon as the weather clears, I'm going to send someone to get his body," he said. She thanked him and took Marty inside.
Frank stood out in the street, the wind whistling around him. Where could he go? His heart was full, he had to talk. Jesse, flying, actually flying, past him, sailing over the cliff; Williwaw, killing the boy and at the same time blowing spirit power into his own soul.
Was it evil that he felt this new strength, occasioned by the death of Jesse Robinson? He had to talk to someone. Rudy, Rudy, you there?
Go get some sleep, Frank. You've been up for a day and a half.
Doc? He would make jokes. Judy? She would lecture on why boys should not climb mountains. Latisha, that's who he wanted to talk to. Where would she be? First of all he had to remember what day of the week it was. He tried to click the date up on his watch, but couldn't. Rudy's advice was right. He needed sleep. He was acting like a drunk.
Yesterday - a lifetime ago - yesterday was primary election day, a Saturday. Today is Sunday. Latisha will be in her apartment on Bering Hill.
Frank walked up the hill. Rain started and whipped across his face as he went on. He knocked on her door, a small apartment across the hall from Joe and Maggie's and in the next building from his own apartment.
She came to the door, wearing the sweater with the swirling colors. "The boys?" she asked immediately.
"One of the Robinson boys - the williwaw got him."
"Oh, Frank. Come in." She pointed down to his pant leg. "Your leg is all bloody. Let me look at it."
She sat him down at her kitchen table and pulled the shreds of his pant leg away from the gash. "This is deep, Frank. I'm going to clean it up, but you better have Doc look at it." He watched her as she washed his leg. She looked tired, too.
"Did you get any sleep?"
"No. I went with Mrs. Robinson. We searched a lot of abandoned houses. I just got home a half hour ago."
She wrapped gauze around his leg. He had a sudden urge to reach down and pull her up and hug her and then, after they had hugged for a long, long time, he would tell her what was in his heart.
But such urges were to be repressed.
"For sure you have Doc look at this."
He stood up. "Yes, I will. Thank you for looking after me." He moved toward the door and put his hand on the knob. He turned back to her. She stood by her stove, the overhead kitchen light shining on her swirling color sweater. He wanted to stay with her and talk and talk. She looked tired, but something in her eyes invited him to stay.
He opened the door, hesitated, then shut it. "I learned something up there."
"What?"
He stood for a second, his hand still on the door. Then, without saying anything, he walked over to her by the stove and put his arms tight around her. A minute passed, then another. He pressed her close to himself.
"So what did you learn?" she asked.
He relaxed his hold. "The wind is powerful."
"Yes," she replied.
"I don't want you to leave this island."
She looked at him sadly. "I have to."
He gently stroked her hair with his right hand. Then he touched her face. "I'm not sure I ever told you. You're a very beautiful woman."
She smiled. Her eyes shone with the pleasure of his compliment. Suddenly he pulled her tight again and kissed her. The kiss was deep, it was intense. But he did not press his lips hard on hers. Somehow he felt he had communicated his whole experience on Razorback, everything he wanted to tell her, his feelings, his admiration for Williwaw, his pain at watching the boy sail over the cliff, everything. Or had she somehow reached inside him and pulled this information from him? He wasn't sure.
Minutes passed. His lips lingered on hers. "You're diffe
rent," she said finally.
"You helped me. It's that business of taking charge. In prison they want you to do what they tell you, to go along with their programs. They kept us as children. I'm glad you pointed that out to me."
"You're welcome." She smiled at him and touched her lips to his. "I'm going to make us a cup of tea. Sit down."
He watched her as she filled the kettle, turned on the stove, took cheese from the refrigerator and cut it up in little slices. Nothing would be so wonderful as to spend the rest of his life watching her motions.
"This taking charge - I can remember one time in prison a Presbyterian group put on a program, I think it was called 'Overcoming Violence' or something. Even though it was a required course, the guys really liked it. It taught you how to deal with all kinds of negative emotions, not just anger. Anyway, I was telling a guard about the program and he said he'd like to take a program like that. I asked to see the warden to persuade him to let guards attend. The warden couldn't get over the fact that I was not there to bitch about something. He said he'd check around and eventually the Presbyterians put on a special program for the guards."
"Yes," she said gently. "You were not acting like an inmate there."
"Right. No us against them."
She took some crackers from a box and spread them on a dish with the cheese. The kettle whistled and she poured the hot water into a little teapot. She sat across from him. The tea steeped. They looked at each other in silence.
He took a sip of tea and said, "When I was in grade school, I think it was the third grade, I was not one of the tough guys. I wore glasses and kids made fun of me. One day the kids spread the rumor that I said I could beat Tommy Corcoran in a fight. Corcoran was the weakest member of the tough guys' gang. I never said I could beat him, but the word was all over the third grade. Corcoran came up to me at lunch and pushed his finger into my chest. "I'll see you after school, Villa," he said, some of his buddies looking on. In fact I think it was the buddies who promoted the fight. Tommy probably needed a victory. Anyway I thought about leaving school early, but I didn't. I showed up at the corner after school. All the kids gathered around and urged the two of us to fight. I took my glasses off and started to trade punches with Corcoran. I'm not sure I could even see him. Neither of us got so much as a bloody nose and a teacher came along and broke up the fight. But the amazing thing - from that day on, I was no longer "Four Eyes," or "Pancho Villa." I was "Villa." The tough guys never asked me to join their group, but they tolerated me from then on."