CHAPTER FOUR
Memorial Day, 11:20 a.m.
Connie Willis was a very big fish in a very little pond, and she really liked it that way.
Connie liked the little pond of Oakdale, Louisiana. If Connie lived in a big city, like New Orleans or Baton Rouge, she would have competition from other attractive thirty-somethings; she ranked herself a high eight on the one-to-ten hotness scale, but she couldn’t endure any environment which could potentially include nines or tens. So, a small town suited her just fine. Here in Oakdale, she was the queen. Compared to the plain janes, country girls, and doughy, mannish women that made up the bulk of the female population of Oakdale, Connie was Grace Kelly. Even compared to the few former beauty queens married to what passed for prominent men in town, Connie was a stunner.
She knew this about herself, of course, and she used her attractiveness as a tool -- or sometimes, as a weapon.
Connie was sitting at a table by herself at the far end of the V.F.W. building. The pancake breakfast had ended at 11, and Connie had wasted no time in finally serving up breakfast for herself. As soon as the last customer was out the front door, she had piled up a tall stack of pancakes, which she had then covered with strawberries and whipped topping out of an aerosol can.
Connie “helped” at the Memorial Day pancake breakfast every year, which simply meant she moved quickly about the quonset hut, flitting from table to table, making small talk and acting genuinely interested in what people had to say. She charmed children, commiserated with widows, flirted with old men, and tried to make the wives think she was just “one of the girls.”
She didn’t cook pancakes; the veterans did that. She didn’t clean up after people once they were finished eating; local high school volunteers did that. No, Connie did what she was best at: she socialized. She mingled. She schmoozed. Connie Willis was the floor show.
The pancakes Connie was currently wolfing down were, in her mind, a well-deserved high-calorie reward for the work she had just put in. By helping out at the pancake breakfast, Connie was actually fulfilling the public relations component of her job as Associate Warden. The more “normal stuff” the townspeople could see her doing, the better they would like her. And the more they liked her, the better they would like the prison. Connie’s goal was for everyone in Oakdale to love, love, love the prison.
Although the prison was the number one industry in Oakdale -- in point of fact, the only industry in Oakdale -- it was not a well-liked institution. It had always been viewed by most residents as a necessary evil. Connie wanted to change that perception. She wanted people to see the Federal Correctional Institution -- Oakdale FCI -- as the heart of the town. Volunteering at the Memorial Day pancake breakfast was one of the things she did to try to put a good face -- a human face -- a pretty face -- on Oakdale FCI.
Connie’s pink smartphone came to life with a personalized ringtone -- Stevie Wonder’s “Jungle Fever,” her own private little joke on Warden Ponder. She pressed the talk button and said, “Hey there, stud. You thinkin’ bout me?”
Flustered, Ponder stammered, “Connie, this isn’t --”
“‘Cause I’m sure thinkin’ bout you, sugar,“ Connie teased. “I got a big stack of pancakes in front of me, covered with whipped cream and strawberries. You remember what we did with whipped cream and strawberries at the Comfort Inn in Alexandria?”
“Christ, can anybody hear you?” Ponder asked.
Connie giggled and said, “Now, don’t worry, baby. The pancake breakfast is over. The place is cleared out. Just got a few of the old boys cleanin’ up, and they keep a respectful distance from me. They just admire me from afar.” She speared a particularly plump strawberry with her fork, gave it a lick, winked at an old-timer who was stacking plates in the sink, and spoke with a sultry whisper into the phone, “For some reason, they love to watch me eat. Why do think that is, baby?”
Frustrated, Ponder said, “Connie, this isn’t the time --”
Connie moved from giggling to a full-on laugh, her lilting, little-girl laugh, and the old men all looked up from their work to smile at her. They loved her laugh. In fact, they loved everything about her. The old veterans of Oakdale didn’t often have occasion to see women of Connie’s caliber in the flesh, so the morning has been filled with secret delights for them — whiffs of her exotic perfume, her flirtatious glances as she passed near them, brief but meaningful touches from her… and, of course, her laugh. “Why so serious, baby?” Connie asked, still in her teasing mode. “Somebody piss in your bran flakes this morning?”
Ponder ignored her laughter and her teasing and said, “There’s been an escape, Connie. We’ve got one escaped convict, and one dead inmate.”
Connie let her fork drop to the plate. “Escaped?” she said in a suddenly tentative voice. “Dead? You’re sure, Darius?”
“Never been more sure of anything, Connie,” he said, feeling in control again now that he finally had her attention. “Now get your ass in gear and report to the prison. Make sure you’ve got your keys and your I.D. badge, and make doubly sure you know all the current codes. We’re in full lock-down now.”
“I’m on my way, baby,” she says into the phone, her voice a bit shaky. “I mean, Warden. I’m on my way, Warden Ponder.”
“Thank you, A.W.,” he said, relieved she had finally taken on a serious, professional tone. “See you in ten. Sooner if you can.” And that was the end of the phone conversation.
Associate Warden Connie Willis took a moment to compose herself. She then stood, smoothed her appealingly short skirt, dropped her girly smartphone into her purse, snapped the purse shut, and walked toward the exit. “Sorry boys,” she said loudly, putting a smile in her voice, “Duty calls. I gotta go snap some whips and crack some heads.”
“You’re enough to make me wanna get arrested, Miss Connie,” said an old fat man in a wheelchair. “I’d love bein’ in the jailhouse if you was my jailer.”
She turned to the fat man as she walked past him and said, “Just make sure you break a federal law, Jimbo. You go breakin’ a state law, and you’re liable to wind up in Angola. That wouldn’t be no fun, now, would it?” Collective groans ensued as everyone in the building agreed quite vocally that Angola wouldn’t be any fun.
Connie waved to the veterans as she pushed the glass-paneled door open and walked through the doorway. As soon as the door slammed shut behind her, the men all rushed to the door as quickly as possible (which, for most of them, wasn’t very quickly at all) so they could watch her walk to her car.
“What was that Bob Seger song, about Jane Fonda?” asked Jimbo, staring after the blonde beauty on her way to a gun-metal gray Land Rover. “‘Oh, they do respect her, but… they love to watch her strut.’”
“I sure respect her butt,” said another veteran. Jimbo chuckled at the intentional mondegreen, then all the men laughed as they watched Connie Willis drive away. Once she and her Land Rover were out of everyone’s range of vision, the veterans returned to their clean up work.
Jimbo wheeled his way over to the table where Connie had been sitting. He gathered up her plate and silverware, and took it back toward the kitchen area. Then, once he was certain no one else was looking, Jimbo scarfed down what was left of Connie’s breakfast, imagining that he was able to taste her sweet lips in every bite.
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