Chapter X: Big Willie's Biggest Regret

Big Willie Odom had done a lot of bad things in his life. Despite what he told the judge, the jury, the parole board and his probation officer, he never truly regretted anything he did. The only things that he had the slightest regret for were the situations that landed him in prison, and even then, he only regretted that he hadn’t been smart enough to elude the police. When it came to the things that he was never caught for, Willie washed his hands of everything.

Willie grew up on the mean streets of Hempstead, New York, a rough Long Island neighborhood surrounded on all sides by affluence, decadence and expressways. While the Islanders were busy winning Stanley Cups in neighboring Uniondale, Willie was breaking into cars in the Nassau Coliseum parking lot, stealing the ones he could sell and looting the ones that he couldn’t.

He was in juvie before he was in high school, which he never finished because he got sent up to the majors, doing three in Ossining for stealing cars. Willie was a tough customer. At 6’5” and 300 lbs, he was not easily intimidated, and his toughness got him through those three years in prison. There were inmates twice his age that thought Willie would simply succumb to his elders, but the oversized youngster punched, kicked and downright dominated his way to respect. By the time he was released for good behavior—a citation given to him because nobody dared to come forward and accuse him of perpetrating a few savageries—he was the cellblock’s unquestioned leader at the ripe age of 20 years old.

But on the outside, Willie found things a lot tougher. There were few jobs to be found, and the only real talent that Willie could put on his resume was his aptitude for breaking into, hotwiring and stealing cars. He could steal Air Force One if he really tried. But being a 6’5” black man driving in any vehicle, let alone a tiny sports car, made him an easy target for racial profiling. After only being out of the pen for six months, he was incarcerated again in Attica, and did 10 more years. Unlike his All-Star performance in Ossining, he found that in Attica, he may have been one of the biggest inmates, but he was certainly not the toughest.

His muscles were no match for the cunning shank attacks perpetrated by shiftless gang minions. His size only made him a bigger target. Willie was stabbed four times while he was at Attica, the last of which left him in the infirmary for six months. He spent the final three years of his time in Attica looking over his shoulder everywhere he went. He trusted no one, had no friends and lived in a state of constant fear.

Transitioning from Attica to Morgenthau was remarkably smooth for Willie. For all he knew, some of the addicts who lived in the woods were the same gangbangers who had stabbed him while he was in prison. He had elected to live a life of seclusion at Morgenthau and chose not to get to know any of his fellow residents. Instead of joining the majority of the population in the Main Residence Hall, he had broken into the Fieldhouse and was living on a wrestling mat underneath the foldout bleachers. He had come to Morgenthau during the somewhat blissful period where Nolan wasn’t stingy about his residents paying the rent, before The Watcher started his campaign of pain and extortion.

One night, Willie got lost in the dark and realized that he was surrounded by the shadowy figures that lived in the woods. He had no idea what they wanted from him, but he immediately felt like he was back in the washroom at Attica, about to be ambushed by the gangs that he refused to join. The 37-year old giant ex-convict closed his eyes in fear as he felt the addicts descend upon him, but suddenly their demonic whispers were drowned out by a loud voice.

“Get away from him you fucking mongrels!” shouted The Professor, taking one of his late night smoking strolls. With that, Willie opened his eyes and saw the last streaking shadows of the addicts rush back into the woods as The Professor lit a match and appeared in front of him. Willie had seen this old man before, but always took him for another snooty white man who saw him as nothing more than another negro criminal.

The Professor walked up to Willie and took a long drag from his pipe and blew out a long, white plume. “Take my advice, son,” said The Professor, “Stay off these streets at night. Those creatures are god damn lunatics.” With that, the old man stumbled off into the darkness, unafraid of the addicts or any other monster, ghost or demon that inhabited the woods.

Willie spent that night and the next few days thinking about what had happened to him. In the past, Willie was a rock. His physical power was unquestionable and his mental fortitude was as guarded and solid as Fort Knox. Now, he was nothing more than a big baby who froze and shivered in the face of the unknown; more terrified than the 70 year old, feeble, crusty Professor who had every reason to be scared, yet feared nothing.

Slowly, Willie began to assert himself like he had before his time in Attica. He revered The Professor for the way the old man had handled the addicts. Like many of us, he kept trying to find ways to impress and please the old man. Willie began taking on various tasks at the campus, minor things like carrying the maniac druggies out of the foyer of the Main Residence Hall when they had escaped their frightening homes in the bowels. He helped Alistair with his many crazy projects, and he started making some extra cash by stealing cars and parking them in tow-away zones, getting a small cut from a man named Eddy who he had met on the inside in Ossining. When he could, he would run errands for The Professor, picking up various items and delivering messages to his lone contact in the outside world.

But more than any other service that Willie performed for the college, his most appreciated undertaking was his undertaking. Although the thought of burying the dead bodies of the expired druggies and maniacs made a lot of residents queasy, Willie never objected to accepting the role of gravedigger, and was always the first to volunteer for the job. The job never really got personal until Kendra was murdered in the spring after the great fieldhouse fire, and half a year before The Professor took his own life after that long and rainy autumn.

It had always made Willie jealous that a smart and pretty black woman like Kendra—who came to Morgenthau six months after Willie—had fallen the way she had for the aging, white Professor, even if she was about 10 years older than Willie. Willie had never finished high school and spent his college years in prison. Other than their skin tone, Willie and Kendra had little in common. Yet, he was still fascinated by her, and always went out of his way to smile and say hello whenever she passed him on the thoroughfares. To make matters worse, Willie had nothing but the fondest admiration for The Professor, especially in the aftermath of his run-in with the shadowy figures in the woods. Since then, Willie had been able to keep his emotions in check, always keeping his head in the game, and never allowing outside influences to distract him from his focus. He was a new man now, who did not allow things like jealousy to cloud his mind and weaken his resolve. But he was only a man.

Kendra’s presence had thrown the entire community into a loop. Things were never quite the same as they were before she came to Morgenthau six months after Willie; nor were they quite the same after she left this world. Kendra brought out something in everybody’s life. Most of the men just found her attractive, and went out of their way to please her, much like we did for The Professor. However, the subtle ass kissing with The Professor was more or less the reflection of our father/teacher respect for him. With Kendra, the men were always trying to get her to smile or laugh in the hope that if she left The Professor she might shack up with them next.

There was no better example of this than Willie. Over the course of two years that Kendra spent with us, Willie’s loyalties slowly began to shift from The Professor to his live-in companion. He started coming up with excuses when The Professor asked him to go into the Tri-Towns to fetch an item for him. Of course, if Kendra asked him the same question, he would drop everything and fetch whatever item she requested like a hyperactive dog chasing a Frisbee or a tennis ball.

Things changed around the time that The Watcher’s reign of terror began to grip the campus in fear. Anyone who claimed to not be intimidated by the brute was a liar, even someone as big and tough as Willie. The Watcher reminded Willie of the hired muscles at Attica; mindless sentinels sent out by weaker men to do their dirty work. The Watcher was as fearless as he was merciless. He was under strict orders, and he followed them to a T.

Kendra was not afraid of The Watcher, for she knew that he was only a minion of Nolan, the real monster at Morgenthau. For a long time, The Professor had been secretly paying the rent for he and Kendra, knowing that she was bound to say or do something that would land both of them in a great deal of trouble. Kendra could be slapped around a few times, but one savage blow to The Professor could kill the old man, and at that time, he was certainly not ready to die.

It was only a matter of time before Kendra found out about it and when she did, she was furious at The Professor. By then, Willie was no longer living in the Fieldhouse (Alistair had burned it down earlier that spring) and he had taken a residence in the slimy dorms, a floor below The Professor. As he listened to Kendra’s voice scolding The Professor through the paper-thin walls, a wide, shit-eating grin stretched across his scruffy, bearded face. Maybe this was the final straw, he fantasized to himself, maybe this time she’ll leave him for good.

A cold front blew into Morgenthau that evening, dumping a solid two inches of rain on the campus. The stormy weather reflected the suddenly stormy relationship between The Professor and his companion, who had bolted out of the building to chase Nolan and voice her fury about the illegal rents he was charging. The Professor—who still had a lingering hip injury from when I hit him with my mom’s car back in the Tri-Towns—came lumbering down the stairs asking if anyone had seen Kendra. Willie emerged from his room and told The Professor that she was looking for Nolan. The Professor shook his head with disgust, thought about things for a second, then looked up at Willie and asked him to come with him to find Kendra.

By this point, Willie’s lovesick head had been completely conquered by his lust for Kendra. He had fallen under the impression that he was so close to finally having her all to himself. He was certain that he was one of her favorite residents, and he could satisfy her needs better than the crusty, old, Professor. Going out there into the rain would not only be a pain in the ass, but it would only keep the old man and Kendra together. He couldn’t let that happen. Not after this long.

Willie complained about the weather and said that he didn’t want to go outside on such a dreary night. The Professor—who had gotten so used to Willie serving both he and Kendra so faithfully—turned a disgusted eye towards the tall black man standing in the doorway of his room. The Professor had seen a remarkable transformation in Willie, who was once so terrified of the addicts in the woods and was now as unshakeable as he was in Ossining. All of a sudden, he was too scared to get wet? He suspected this might have something to do with Willie’s feelings for Kendra, but time was wasting, and she was getting further and further away.

“If you’re not going to help me, you’re not going to help me,” said The Professor gruffly as he walked for the stairs, adding, “Not like I’ve ever helped you out, you ungrateful bastard...”

By morning, our world had changed forever. By morning, Kendra was dead, The Professor was half-dead, and Willie was safe and sound in his room, but feeling utterly helpless, as if he’d been shanked once again. Somebody had murdered Kendra, and Willie knew that if had he only gone out to help her, she would still be alive. He would have sacrificed himself for her; he could have held her attacker at bay long enough for her and The Professor to escape. He could probably have killed the attackers with all his pent-up sexual frustration and his love for Kendra. He could have done something, but he had selfishly done nothing.

When we brought The Professor back up to his room, the old man was barely conscious, but he had enough strength to open his eyes as the residents carried him past Willie’s room; enough strength to stare at Willie with a damning, hateful glare. He never forgave Willie. Willie never forgave himself. Although he was 6’5” and 300 lbs., that night, he cried himself to sleep.