Prisoners of the Williwaw (2 page)

"A death for a death," Larson said, his squinty, mean eyes focusing on the warden, his bull neck and shoulders dwarfing the smaller man.

Doc Raymond stood up.
 
"Rudy's dead."
 
He grabbed the prison doctor by his sweater.
 
"You asshole motherfucker.
 
You let a human being die right in front of you."

"Kill '
em
all," someone shouted from the back of the mob outside the cell.

"We can talk this out," the warden said to Larson.

"Talk?
What's to talk about?
 
I already got three life sentences.
 
What's a few more?"

On the tier Frank heard the sounds of a full riot, chairs and tables being thrown over the railing, porcelain fixtures being pried from the wall.
 
He smelled the smoke of a mattress fire.

Behind Larson a path cleared. Boss Gilmore slid in next to Larson and said in a low voice, but one that Frank could hear, "Let the prison doctor go.
 
We need him."

Frank knew, as everyone on the tier did, that the prison doctor was Boss Gilmore's drug connection.
  
Fourteen years in prison and Frank had never seen a smoother operator than Gilmore.
The man even knew how to make prison blues look like an executive suit.

Larson snarled and shoved the doctor out of the cell.
 
Then he grabbed the warden by the throat.
 
Frank pushed his way out of the corner and summoned everything from his years as a con, everything Rudy had taught him about control and about the power of human presence.

"Out, Larson," he said in a calm voice, pushing his way between Larson and the warden who was already red in the face.
 
"Rudy's dead.
 
We're going to
honor
his spirit."

Larson's dull face stared right into Frank's.
 
His hands were still tight around the warden's throat.
  
Frank put his hand out flat on Larson's chest and pushed.
 
His voice got lower, more deadly.
 
"Out.
 
I said out."

Larson didn't move.
 
Frank's neck was now right next to the big man's arm.
 
Frank felt Larson's arm shake as he throttled the warden and he felt the warden thrashing behind him.
 
For a second Frank shut his eyes.
 
Rudy was still there with him somehow. "Larson," he said in a voice he himself did not recognize, a voice of restrained power, "Get out."

Larson stared at Frank for a few seconds as if it were taking a long time for messages to reach his brain.
 
He slammed the warden to the floor, muttered "Fuck!" and left the cell.

It was then that the riot squad hit the cell block, putting everyone including Frank in the hole.

The warden lifted himself off the floor.
 
As he struggled up, his hand came to rest on the first page of Frank's print out,
A New Society: An Island Prison
.

Chapter 2

Frank opened his eyes.
 
Beneath him a hard cement platform.
 
Above him a low wattage recessed light.
 
He shivered.
He had no clothes on.
 
Where was he?

An hour ago?
A day ago?
 
A week ago?
 
The riot squad invaded his cell swinging clubs. Why?

Piss.
 
He smelled piss - and shit.
 
He turned his head to the center of the room.
 
Yes, the disgusting hole in the floor.
 
Squat to crap, miss often.
 
The idea was to keep
 
some con, driven insane by solitary, from drowning himself in a toilet bowl.

This was the hole. Solitary. Why was he here?

His head hurt.
He rubbed his hand gently across a large bump.
 
There was a riot and the warden… Rudy.
 
Was Rudy dead?

Frank sat up.
Doc said he was dead. He himself had felt no pulse. Rudy - dead. It felt like everything inside his chest was being sucked out, the talk of fourteen years, the shared pain, the daily schedule of making tea, it was all gone.
 
Emptiness filled him.
 
For the first time in his years of imprisonment, he cried.

He lay back.
Words came to him, Rudy's words.
Here's what you do if you ever end up in the hole, Frank.
 
You don't worry about your body; you worry about your mind. Keep your mind busy.

Years ago, when he first came to this prison, he spent fifteen days in the hole for fighting.
Back then he had trouble keeping his sanity.

He looked around the room now.
 
To his left, on the gray painted cement wall, clusters of scratches marked the days of solitary.
 
Where was the marking instrument in this empty cell?
 
Yes, there on the floor, a little piece of cement.

On the back wall, where the barred window should have been, damp, gray cement filled the space.
Inmate artists had decorated the space. The usual. Big breasts.
 
Gang symbols. "Pig Thomas sucks dick." "Top Dog was here."
 
But in the middle of all this, a beautiful sketch of a woman's face and below it, words. "Bonnie, I love you."
 
"Bonnie, I can't live without you."
 
"Bonnie, my life."

Frank closed his eyes.
 
Judy, his Judy, his wife.
 
But, as always, Judy faded and Angela flooded into his mind.
 
Angela
, the angel tattooed on his right shoulder.
 
He lied to Judy about the angel, telling her his mother wanted him to have a guardian angel on his shoulder. Angela was the woman he met when he went back to school at age twenty-three so he could get his high school diploma and apply for university.
 
She was from the North Side, the far North Side where only rich people lived.
 
One day in the library she walked up to where he sat and closed the book he was studying.
  
"Come on," she said, pulling him up.
 
"You're going sailing with me."

A summer of love followed.
  
Angela's parents were in Europe.
 
She and Frank sailed Lake Michigan, living on Angela's parent's yacht.
  
In quiet anchorages she sunned herself and he read the books her father had on board.
War and Peace, A Hundred Years of Solitude, The Old Man and the Sea.

One sunny day as they lay on deck, she reached over and closed his book.
 
"Let's go," she said.

"Where?"

"I want to sail around the world."

"What?"

"We go through the Lakes, through the Seaway to the ocean."

"When?"

"Now."

"But school …"

She kissed him.
"We sail, we read, we study, we make love.
 
Come on."

In his life this was the first woman who had ever really loved him. Here was love.
 
"Let's do it," Frank said.

They sailed into port and Angela went home to pack.
 
Three days later a man in a three piece suit came on board.
 
"I'm Angela's father.
 
We came home a week ago.
 
Angela has decided to take a trip to Europe.
 
She left yesterday."

"Did she -?"

"Leave you a note?
 
No, she said you were a real gentleman and that's why I expect no trouble from you leaving this boat.
  
I have an envelope here with some cash in it to help you find a place to stay."

Frank stared at the man.
 
His eyes narrowed, his teeth clenched.
 
A cold, hard feeling filled his heart.
 
The man treated him like lower class scum.
 
He could forgive that, but Angela…
 
She had made no attempt to counter her parents' wishes.
  
Her father's power and money controlled her life.

Love was an illusion.

He went back to his old crowd on the south side and a year later he went into a deserted bar one Saturday afternoon after eight hours of cutting grass for a landscaper.
A short woman, barely five foot tall, sat by herself, watching the Milwaukee Brewers. She wore a purple turtleneck that revealed her perfectly shaped breasts.

Frank struck up a conversation with her.
 
Her name was Judy.
 
He relaxed.
He had a few beers. He laughed. Love was impossible, but there was always good times and sex.
 
She took him to her place. They made love.
 
The next week he showed her around the University of Wisconsin. She said she liked a man who was on the way up. They made love again.
She wasn't Einstein, she wasn't Joan of Arc, but she was a lot of fun.
 
She made him feel in control, in charge.
 
He was the leader.
 
It was a nice feeling.

Judy was soon pregnant.
 
They married and then there was Frank Jr.

Frank opened his eyes and stared again at the woman on the wall of the cell.
 
She did not look anything like Angela or Judy.
 
"Bonnie." Frank read the name out loud to hear the sound of his own voice.
 
"Bonnie, how did you treat the man who carved your face?"

Frank sat up.
His back hurt from the cold cement.
How long had he been here?
 
The guards always took away a man's watch and they allowed no calendars in the hole.
 
He stood up.
He didn't like being naked.
 
He stepped over to the picture of the woman and traced her face on the wall.
 
He had no luck with women.
 
Angela had left him and five years ago Judy stopped coming to see him when Frank Jr. reached his teens and said he didn't want to visit his father anymore.

He traced the woman's hair.
 
In prison falling in love with any woman, guard or teacher or outsider, was crazy.
It could go nowhere.
 
Frank rubbed his hand over the painting as if to make it go away.
 
The only answer to women was to build a very high wall in your heart.

Someone in another cell screamed. Then the rattle of the meal cart.
 
He heard Doc.
 
"Thanks, asshole, for the cold hot cakes.
 
And look - french-fries.
 
What a balanced meal."

Somebody pushed a plastic tray through the slot in Frank's door.
 
Cold hot cakes, congealed butter, french-fries and a plastic cup of water.
 
His stomach turned, but then growled.
 
He sat on the raised platform and ate.
 
Then he put the plastic tray on the floor and watched three cockroaches attack it.

His taste buds called for a smoke after eating, but there was nothing he could do about it.
He lay on his back cradling the bump on his head with his hand.
 
Was Rudy dead?
 
He closed his eyes and remembered the picture of the sun casting bar shadows across him.
Rudy had dreamed of one day seeing the sunrise again. From their cell they only caught a glimpse of the noon sun and then only in winter because the sun was low in the sky.
 
Rudy talked about sunrise all the time. "I'd go fishing early in the morning, Frank, and I'd see the sun come up.
 
When you see the sunrise, you know there's hope for the world."

Rudy.
 
Rudy.
Where is the hope now?
 
My idea, my dream - you were going to help me.

Prison riots destroyed everything.
 
The public screamed, "Control those animals."
 
Wardens and guards went back to
procedure
with a vengeance.
 
No privileges, long lockdowns. He'd never get a hearing now.

Rudy, what should I do?

Rudy. At first Rudy was his teacher, then his friend.
 
A person he could share his soul with.
 
He was a crazy ironworker, a lover of ideas, a hard-drinking tavern brawler, a foreign language scholar and - a killer.
 
Then a reformed killer.
 
He was the first person Frank met in prison when they shoved him into Rudy's already-crowded cell.

Frank remembered how strange he felt in those first days in prison, sentenced to life for killing a cop.
  
Gone was the world beyond the old high walls of the prison.
 
Life - or was it death? - lay inside the walls.
 
How can this be happening to me? he wondered just as he had when the judge said "life in prison."

A sense of unreality.
 
It was the same feeling he had when an off duty cop walked out of the manager's office of the bank he was robbing.
 
The cop had been applying for a loan.
 
Frank's
partner and the cop started shooting.
The partner had reassured Frank there would be no guns. Frank saw the cop fall and knew his own life would be a nightmare from then on.

It was Rudy who taught Frank the secret of how to do time. "First of all, Frank," he'd said, "forget about the law, forget about the lawyers.
 
They're not going to help you."

"What do you mean, Rudy?
 
My lawyer's working up a plea on prejudice, I should've got a change of venue."

"Come on Frank, you're in for killing a cop.
 
You think that because of some lawyer's smart trick, they're going to let you walk out of here?
 
Forget it, man.
 
Forget the lawyers; they're gigolos living off families like yours and mine, rich men robbing from the poor all over again.
 
Hell with them!
 
The con who spends his time with the lawyers is like the union guy who spends his life in the factory making sure the boss don't screw him.
 
Never in all those years does he say, "Hey, I make cranes," or "I make
roto
-tillers."
Never!
 
He's busy fighting about time off and pay and health benefits and safety regulations.
 
Finally one day he retires and he goes home and his missus says, "What did you do with your life?" and he says "Nothing" and drops dead.

"That's what a con who studies the law is like.
 
He spends his life in prison trying to figure out how to get out of prison.
 
He writes briefs, looks up laws and demands new books for the prison law library.
 
Hell with that, Frank!
 
Maybe one guy, maybe two, out of thousands have gotten out of prison earlier because they became jail-house lawyers."

"I'm a lifer.
I got to fight them," Frank countered.

"Look at history - I don't know - you figure it out.
 
Cons get smart about the law - and the government puts the death penalty back in.
 
That's what happened in the 70's and 80's.

"And who wants to be a lawyer anyway?
 
They talk up their asses about a lot of stuff nobody else knows anything about and they think you're stupid because you don't know anything about Habeas Corpus.
Lawyers
ain't
got no soul, either.
 
Name me one, except the unwashed kids out of law school, who ever stuck his own neck out for a con."

"Hell, Rudy, it gives you something to do in here."

"What do you want, something to fill the hours or do you want to live, I mean really live?"

"How can you really live in prison?"

Rudy paused for dramatic effect.
 
"You walk through the bars - don't laugh at me now - listen.
 
You walk right through the bars and you enter the world of ideas.
 
You begin to live a new life.
  
You read, you read literature, you read philosophy, you read religion, you read the great novels, you read all about prisons.
 
The real revolution is there in the world of ideas."