Prisoners of the Williwaw (6 page)

Chapter 7

Frank put his parka on and started to open the door to the runway. He wanted to wait outside for Judy's plane.
 
The wind yanked the door from his hand, blew it open and then sent it hurtling back at him, nicking his elbow.
 
He walked out into the rain, rubbing his elbow.
 
How can I get control of these convicts,
he thought,
when I can't even control a door?

The biting, shifting wind fit the day.
 
"When do we eat, Villa?"
 
"No indoor crappers?
 
You gotta be kidding."
 
"Heat don't work in my apartment, Villa.
 
I got rights,
ya
know."
 
"I
ain't
standing by no generator.
 
Get somebody else."

There was just one more group to settle, the ones inside, waiting with him for this plane.
As each family landed the Feds released the convict, let him greet his family and then Frank assigned them housing and gave them their federal hand-out of two hundred dollars.

He heard engines in the distance and saw her plane coming through the clouds, buffeted by the wind.
 
One bounce, two and then a terrifying, sideways skid.
 
Oh God, don't let it crash. No, no…. Thank God.

Judy, who didn't like anything out of the ordinary, would be in tears by now.

Why had she come?

The door from the air terminal cracked open and the wind whipped it all the way open.
Doc hung on with two hands.
 
"Frank," he yelled over the wind, "help me.
Guy down."

"The plane.
Judy's on it."

"Fuck that.
Help me."

Frank followed Doc to the road outside the air terminal, where a convict lay along the edge.
"Looks like drugs," Doc said.
"Fucking Gilmore selling bad shit already."

Frank helped Doc pick the man up.
 
He recognized him from the Anchorage airport.
 
"
Gonna
be lots of wide open spaces on this Adak Island," he had said to him.
 
"Just like Montana."

The two struggled to get the man to Doc's clinic, the wind driving rain into their faces.
The man, though barely conscious, shivered.
 
As they approached the clinic, he collapsed between them and they carried him the rest of the way into the clinic.

"I gotta get back, Doc," Frank said.
 
"Keep me posted."

Frank ran back to the air terminal.
 
His mind whirled with confusion.
 
Twenty-four, thirty-six hours ago, he had gone to his tutoring job, stood in his cell for noon count, and then suddenly the prison door slammed on sixteen years of routine and he was chained to a guard on a flight to Anchorage. The first flight this morning to Adak, the handcuffs off
 
- and terror of terrors, he, Frank Villa, #108392, an unresisting, docile prisoner, was the man in charge.

Judy was going to be pissed if she got off the plane and he wasn't there to greet her. He let the wind, thankfully at his back, push him forward.
  
"I'm going to be there for you, Judy," he had promised her.

And inside the terminal, no doubt, a line of cons would be waiting for their housing assignments.
Nothing was worse than a line of convicts with nothing to do.

Rifle fire came from the hill in the west.
 
Frank shook his head and started to jog.. Drugs and guns and his men battling with Gilmore's men over buildings - the garage, the officers' club, the power plant, the communications center and the airport.
 
And all this in the middle of
 
a screeching wind and rain storm.

He had to get control.

He opened the door to the terminal.
 
Judy stood by his table. Seven years since he'd seen her and she was still the tight, short sexy woman he remembered.
 
She didn't look very happy. "Yeah, sure, Frank, I give up my nice house, I come half way to Russia, and are you here to greet me?
 
No."

Frank bowed his head.
 
"I'm sorry, Judy.
 
A guy…"

"And the lights went out twice and these inmates . . ."

Hug her.
Hold her, a voice inside him said.
Tell her it's going to be all right.

He put his arm on her elbow, then on her back, his body stiff and distant.
 
He hadn't hugged her - or any woman - since before his crime.

"
Yo
, Villa, let's move the line,
whatta
ya
say?"
 
The men waiting for housing grew impatient.
 
"Kissy, kissy, with the wife later."

Frank squeezed her.
 
"I just have to finish with these guys.
 
Not more than an hour."

She pulled away from him.
 
"Frank, do you know how long I've been traveling?
 
I want to go to our apartment right now."

"It's not going to take long."

"Well, just drive me there and come back."

"We don't have any cars."

"No cars?
Did you expect me to walk in this weather?"

Frank did not respond.

"How were you going to get my luggage there?"

"Carry it."

Judy gave an exasperated sound.

"I'll hurry," Frank said.
 
"Only a few minutes, Judy."

She sighed.
"I'll help you."

"You don't have to help, Judy.
 
Just relax.
I'll be done soon."

"You'll be done sooner if I help you."

"I don't want you to have to work."

The man waiting at Frank's desk said, "Would you two hurry up?"

It was like their visits in prison - they talked past each other.
 
But now there was no time to work on their relationship - men were waiting.

"Maybe you could note what house or apartment each man has."

"Okay."
She pulled a plastic chair up to the table, took a tissue from her purse and wiped the chair off.
 
"Damp," she murmured.
 
Then she used another tissue on the tabletop in front of her.
 
"Everything is wet here, Frank."

He nodded. In prison things were colorless, they were old, they were dirty, but at least they were dry.

Frank concentrated on each man as he came forward in the line.
 
Every man was a potential ally or a potential enemy and he needed every man he could get.
 
This was the way to get control, pay attention to each man.

Frank glanced up and noticed that Gilmore himself stood near the end of the line.

One after another the convicts and their families approached the table, Gilmore getting nearer each time.
 
Frank's head spun.
 
Yesterday the guards and the warden told him what to do.
 
Now he was on his own, free to do what he wanted - and free to make mistakes. Should a family be assigned to a house or to an apartment?
 
Should he put his own people in one area or mix them in with Gilmore's people? The decision was his.
 
No warden would affirm or deny his decision.

He noticed the same disorientation in the men, unable to decide whether to live in unit 202 or 203 in the Marine barracks, even though both units were the same.

The symbols of authority, the federal troops, were already backing out toward the door for the ride home on the plane Judy had come on.
 
What he needed, what they all needed was stability, discipline, a firm government in control.
 
He pushed his glasses back on his nose.
 
He was the government.

His knees hurt in the dampness and the scar on his neck throbbed.
 
He'd gotten the scar on Angela's boat a long time ago, when the boon swung out of control.

The door from the runway burst open and a man named Wilson slammed in along with a violent blast of rain. He carried a dead eagle.
 
Frank had seen the man on the teleconference set up by the Bureau of Prisons.
 
Wilson, an intense looking, thin, black man won election to the prison council because he said he was for the environment.

"All right, Villa," he said as he spread the eagle's wings and threw the dead bird on Frank's table.
 
"What the hell do you plan to do about this?"

"What happened?"

"Can't you see?" he said, holding up the eagle's chest, revealing a bullet hole. "I want a gun.
 
Next man who shoots an eagle, I shoot him."

"No guns.
Now get this out of here.
 
We'll have a council meeting tomorrow morning to take action."

"Fuck.
More talk."
 
Wilson picked up the eagle, spread its wings and held it high.
"Look at this," he said to the line of convicts.
 
"Isn't this a crime?"

"Nice shot," someone said.

"Assholes," Wilson exclaimed and left the building.

Rudy, Rudy
what have you left me with?

Frank processed more people in line, Gilmore moving up each time.
 
Frank glanced at Judy as one man left and another approached.
Her smooth face, her shining hair, the smooth, sexy, tiny hands.
 
He reached under the table for her, but then
 
remembered that touching a woman could end a man in the hole.
 
Wait, he reminded himself, I'm not in prison.

The line moved forward.
 
Here was
Carvinere
whose bossy wife was going to be in charge of the factory, then a beautiful little Asian-American girl and her mother and father, and then Red Miller, a heavy equipment operator, who was going to look after Adak's battered roads.

Red was smoking a roll-your-own and kept blowing smoke in his face.
 
Frank had sworn to quit from the moment he left prison, but his taste buds longed for a smoke.
 
And it would settle his nerves.

"Shit," he muttered to himself as Red left.
 
Again the door burst open.
 
It was Doc.
Frank knew right away by Doc's face that the man from Montana had died.

Doc stood right by Frank's table and said in a voice everyone in the line could hear, "Get out your tally sheet, Frank.
 
One down, 299 to go.
 
This guy got some of Boss Gilmore's bad shit and bought the farm in my clinic.
 
I saw a con walking around with a shot eagle.
I say spare the eagles and shoot Gilmore."

"Just a goddamn minute."
 
Gilmore stepped out of the line and came to the front.
 
"I've been right here, waiting in this eternal line.
 
Watch who you accuse, Doctor."

"Are you selling drugs?"

"No."

"Bullshit."

Gilmore turned and walked back into line.

Doc turned to Frank.
 
"Shoot that motherfucker, Frank."

Judy stood up.
"Frank, is this the doctor?
Such language."

"Who are you?
Oh, Frank, sorry.
 
Your wife?"

"Judy, this is Doc Raymond."

"I'm sorry, ma'am.
 
Listen, Frank, I'm going to check around.
 
Be back in a few."

As Doc left, rifle fire sounded in the distance. Judy flinched.
 
Frank put his hand on her arm
 
"It's all right."

But it wasn't all right, Frank knew. One day on this island and there were more guns than a Mafia picnic. The prison grapevine had been correct.
 
Gilmore had arranged for Inuit fishermen to drop a shipment of guns and goodies in a remote lagoon.

He closed his eyes for a second.
  
God, he was tired.
 
Rudy, Rudy, help me.

"Hey, Villa, don't go to sleep."
 
The man in front of him was Stokes, another council member.

"Listen, Villa, I want a place high up. Tsunamis, you know."

"Tsunamis?"

"Big waves, caused by earthquakes. You know, don't you, there's an active volcano twenty-six miles to the east.
 
It's called Great
Sitkin
."

"I know."
 
But he really didn't. One more problem to deal with.

"So it could blow at any time.
 
Flying rocks and thick clouds of ash.
 
I need a strong building and something protected from the wind.
 
Damn williwaw thing is for real."

"The Marine Barracks lasted when the Navy was here."

"That rifle fire.
 
You've got to make it safe for us. What are you going to do?"