Prisoners of the Williwaw (3 page)

"Rudy, you're telling me to become a monk, a god-damn monk from the Middle Ages!"

"Well yes, I'm saying that you need a lot of discipline, a lot of toughness.
 
It takes one hell of a man to get into the world of ideas and stay there.
 
Most cons want to spend their time here concentrating on the latest doings of the guards.
 
Oh, and throw your TV out.
 
TV keeps cons drugged."

"But how can you even be a good scholar locked up like this?
 
The professor at the university, he can go to the library whenever he wants.
 
We're in cages."

"Frank, you've got to forget the fucking bars.
 
Like the black man taught us long ago, you're only a slave as long as you think you're a slave.
 
The bars are an inconvenience, I'll admit that.
 
You can't get enough of the right kind of exercise, and you can't get to the library as often as you might want, but believe me, enter this new world and the bars will melt away!"

Rudy followed his own advice - and that convinced Frank more than anything.
 
Frank watched him.
 
Hour after hour he would pore over a history of China written in Chinese.
When he finished for the day, he would sit back and smile.
 
Frank could see the joy of discovery on his face.
 
He looked full, as a man does when he eats a good meal.

Frank started and Rudy showed him the tricks, how to read after lights out, what kind of bribe the librarian needed to get the right books.

Slowly Frank entered the world of ideas.
 
The bars began to fade.
 
Frank plunged into geography and history and the social sciences.
  
He studied the history of communism and it made him wonder about the Russians, and then he wondered why so much of history - as he knew it - had happened in the Northern Hemisphere.
 
As a result he studied geography and discovered how many of the world's religions came from desert regions.
 
Next he studied deserts and understood the power of water for the future.

On and on it went, question after question.
 
Knowledge was a crystal, a million crystals all connected.
 
It was a house with a million doors.

Frank was amazed.
He lived in a new world.
 
Rudy was right, the bars seldom stood in his way and this new life of study, this monk's life, - well damn it - it was exciting, just like Rudy said it would be.

But it demanded discipline, iron discipline.
 
When guys sent messages on the water pipes, Frank learned to ignore them.
 
He couldn't let himself get into the endless world of who was the toughest con and what was going to happen to whom in the yard.

As for the guards, he learned to ignore them and, harder still, he had to learn not to hate them.
Once a new guard was sent to their block to conduct a shakedown.
  
The previous guard had laughed at Frank and Rudy, but left them alone.
 
Somehow this new guard felt threatened by all this learning.
While Frank and Rudy stood in front of their cell, the new guard discovered their notes.
 
Frank had been doing a survey of prisons throughout history;
Rudy had been translating a Chinese novel into English.

The guard laughed.
"Fucking college students we got here in this cell!
 
Ha!"
And he ripped up their notes.

Frank seethed with anger, ready to chuck it all and turn to guard hating.

"No, no, Frank!
 
Discipline!
Stand strong!
 
Melt the bars!
 
Start over!
You can only be humbled if you let yourself be humbled!"

Frank stayed in the world of ideas and a new concept came to life in his head, an island prison, a place for a convict and his family, a place where a man could have a real job and a real say in things, a place of freedom and democracy.
Freedom heals, democracy cures
.
 
He printed the words and hung them on his wall.
 
The prison chaplain and Rudy helped him develop the ideas.

And now Rudy was probably dead.

He heard someone begin a slow, rhythmic beating on the wall.
 
He hoped it was not a head beating on the wall.

Another man screamed.
 
Rumor
had it that one of the men in the hole covered himself with feces every day.
 
Someone started singing mock opera at the top of his lungs, perhaps to mask the sound of the screams
 
"Toreador - a, don't spit on the floor - a, use the cuspidor - a, that's what it's for-a."

Frank put his head in his hands.
 
How was he going to survive this place?

Keep your sanity, Frank
. He felt a bug in his hair. Slap.
 
Best to play the word game.
 
Riot.
 
All R's about riot: regression, repression, refuse, reject, report, replace, renege, repress, restrict
.

No hope now for his island prison.
 
Hope - happiness, harmony, home, homo sapiens, hurry, hard.
 
Freedom - free, Frank, fresh,
french
fries, fried.
 
Fried?
Yes, they all might get fried, killed, on his island prison.
 
Convicts were convicts for a reason. Convicts: cage, care -

Someone was coming down the hall.
 
The slot in front of his cell opened.
 
"Inmate Villa?"
 
It was the warden.

Frank sat up.
"Yes?"

"I want to thank you for saving my life."

"You're welcome.
 
Rudy?"

"I'm sorry.
He's being buried tomorrow in the prison cemetery."

Frank winced.
A pang of grief shot through him.
His world was forever changed. How could he walk the line without Rudy?
 
"Listen Frank, you say yes to the man and you say yes to yourself. You walk the line."

"I - I need a
favor
," the warden said.

"What time is it?"

"Ten thirty-five."

"What day?"

"Thursday, the day after the riot."

"Why am I in the hole?"

The warden didn't answer.

"Why?"

"You know, Villa.
 
It's a riot response.
 
Lock everybody up."

"What's the
favor
?"

"The news media wants to interview a convict about the riot.
 
I thought you would be the most rational spokesman."

"Why don't you get Doc?
 
He's an MD."

"Come on, Villa.
 
You know Doc's mouth.
 
Say whatever you want to the media.
 
I'm going to argue that the key problem is that one underpaid doctor cannot care for a thousand men."

"Can we talk about this when I'm dressed and out of the hole?"

"Will you do it?"

Frank hesitated.
He was being used.
 
Calling the prison doctor a hack on TV would never fly. Saying the system didn't care would sound like the usual prisoner complaint. But the warden said he could say whatever he wanted. He could feel Rudy next to him, nudging him in the ribs.
Now, Frank, now
.

It's not my way, Rudy.
 
I work within the system.

Now, Frank, now.

Frank pushed his glasses on tighter.
 
"Okay, get me out of here."

The warden called the guard.
 
"Oh, I saved your novel for you, Island Prison or something."

"It's not a novel.
 
It's a proposal."

The warden began to laugh.
 
"Oh, come on, Villa."
 
Frank could hear the warden chuckling to himself as he went back down the hall.

Chapter 3

Stick with me now, Rudy,
Frank silently prayed as Congressman
Sulkowski
gaveled
the subcommittee into session.
 
This was his moment in the spotlight, his chance to present his plan for a better prison.

His mouth felt dry, his stomach quivered. Four years of proposal writing, six years of studying the justice system, a year since the warden gave him the chance to talk to the media after the riot.
 
Congressman
Sulkowski
put down the gavel.
 
"We have some ... guests today."
 
He nodded to Frank's table where Frank, Doc and Boss Gilmore sat in chains, surrounded by beefy sheriffs.
 
Frank had chosen Doc and the warden had appointed Boss Gilmore, though Frank didn't know why.
 
Boss Gilmore had contributed nothing to his idea.

"But first," the chairman continued, "we're going to hear from Congressman Murphy who has put forth this idea to establish an island prison."

After Frank's interview,
Utne
Reader
did a feature on his prison proposal. Then Congressman Murphy's office contacted the warden and a lawyer on the congressman's staff visited Frank.
 
Next the congressman himself came, accompanied by news cameras.
"Interesting proposal," Murphy said.
 
"It gets tough on crime by putting convicts on a god-forsaken island, yet it saves federal money."

Frank knew that Murphy
 
had entered the race for Senator from Ohio and desperately needed something to take the public's mind off
 
a land development scandal. But did
 
the congressman really intend to set up such a prison or was he just putting on a show for the media, with prisoners in chains at a congressional hearing?

He would soon find out.
 
He listened to all the sound bites in Murphy's talk: "Get tough on crime."
 
"Stop paying for these repeat criminals."
"It's work or starve."

When Murphy finished,
  
Sulkowski
called on Frank. "What statement did you want to make today?"

Frank looked up at the raised dais. There were only three representatives there,
Sulkowski
,
 
Murphy and Richter.
 
Sulkowski
and Richter looked bored, while Murphy conducted business with his staff.

Get to the heart of it,
Frank thought.
 
He struggled to his feet, his legs fettered, his hands locked to a belly chain.
 
His glasses slipped on his nose, but there was nothing he could do about them.
Bright TV lights swung onto him, reminding him of his prison mug shots. Behind him the spectators silenced their fidgeting and coughing.
 
They were listening.

"Give us an island," he began,
 
"give us our wives and families, give us a little freedom and we'll give you back rehabilitated men.
 
We'll cut the recidivism rate in half and in half again."

Chairman
Sulkowski
rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, then turned to an aide.

Frank tried to gesture with his manacled hands.
 
"Give us what it costs to maintain each of us for half a year in prison and we'll become self sufficient.
 
You pay no more."

Sulkowski
turned from the aide and glanced at the papers in front of him.
 
"I see you will have no guards on this island, just a satellite in orbit over you and the US Coast Guard around you?"

"Correct."
 
Out of the corner of
 
his eye Frank saw John Graham from the Bureau of Prisons make a note.
 
Graham and Dr. Philip Adamson, prison psychologist, sat at a table similar to theirs but without the guards. Also at the table was the professor of history he himself had asked to come.

"And you'll have convict police on this island?"

Frank's stomach sank.
 
Here it was.
Police with guns or without guns.
"Yes, sir."

But there was no other question..

The chairman glanced at his paper again.
 
"And your families... they've agreed to come?"

Before Frank could answer, Congressman Murphy shuffled a set of
 
papers to the chairman.
 
"Never mind, Mr. Villa.
 
Congressman Murphy tells me the information is
 
right here."
 
Sulkowski
flipped through the papers.
 
"Several wives have already agreed
 
to go with their husbands."

Frank felt sweat on his forehead.
 
His own wife, Judy, had not returned the form.
 
He'd written her, but no answer.

Congressman Richter took the papers from
Sulkowski
.
 
"You mean, these women have agreed to this?"

"Love conquers all,"
Sulkowski
said.

Congressional hands went over the microphones.
 
Heads bent toward each other with whispered comments and jokes.
Frank had heard it all before. "Three hundred convicts and three hundred welfare mamas.
 
Good riddance."

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."