Prisoner in the Kitchen

by William Bonham

  One convict sat at a desk in the storeroom. Bill looked under it and then into a closet. “Just me,” the convict said.

  “Six,” said Bill.

  As we left, he called after us.

  “You’ve got a shadow, Perdue!”

  I was following Bill way too closely to be mistaken for a brave man. I backed off.

  We counted so quickly that I was losing the ability to focus on each man. I’d seen fewer than ten convicts when we first walked in, but now convicts appeared here, there, and everywhere. A convict waiter in the officers’ mess; another outside, steam cleaning garbage cans; three more in the kitchen, and three in the bakery.

  We entered the dining hall. Rows of benches stretched to the back of the room, facing forward, with a tan Formica countertop in front of each bench. Three more convicts were cleaning up after short line. The rest of the room appeared empty, but we continued to the back, with Bill checking the floor between rows just in case some rascally young inmate had decided to hide and ruin the count. None had.

  We charged up a narrow aisle, forcing convicts to lean into their workstations, allowing us to pass. Finally, all the convicts had been counted, for a total of twenty-four.

  Bill called the count in to the cell house. In less than a minute, the cell house sergeant let us know the numbers had tallied. Bill told the convicts to get back to work.

  We stopped at a worktable near the ovens, where the two cooks lined pans with French fries and hamburger patties.

  “These are your cooks,” Bill announced. “That’s Mackey and that’s Reed.”

  Reed, the muscular cook, simply said hello, but Mackey, the man with the dagger tattoo, immediately peppered me with questions.

  “How you doing?” he asked, eyeing me up and down. “Where you from?”

  He sounded like a barker in front of one of the topless bars in San Francisco trying to lure tourists inside.

  “Seattle,” I said.

  “They don’t need to know where you’re from,” Bill snapped.

  Mackey acted as if he hadn’t heard. “Seattle, huh? I used to work in Seattle. I cooked at the Olympic Hotel.”

  That caught me off guard. The Olympic was Seattle’s oldest and finest hotel. If Mackey had really worked there, he had to be a good cook, probably far better than me.

  “You don’t need to watch Mackey and me,” Reed said. “We get the job done.”

  “Watch everybody,” Bill warned, and the two cooks laughed.

  In a few minutes it would be time for main line. Over in the cell house, guards were getting ready to release men from their cells and send them, single file, across the yard.

  “Is everything ready?” Bill asked.

  “Yeah,” Mackey replied.

  Jogging around the kitchen to take the count had energized Bill; he seemed in a better mood when we got back to the office. He had one great quality that made him perfect for working in a prison: No matter what happened, he quickly accepted it as part of prison work, and eventually it struck him as funny. He’d now rounded that corner and was amused by the morning’s events. He leaned back in his chair and once again lit his pipe.

  “I’ve been thinking about firing the morning man,” he announced, as though the morning man hadn’t just walked out. “You might be just the man to take his place.” He laughed, delighted with his own joke.

  I told him the morning shift would be fine with me, although after seeing the ex-marine stomp off I suspected I might be gone by the end of the week myself.

  But for now I was an employee, and an interesting thing had just happened: I’d been in the prison for ten minutes and I was already first in seniority, the only supervisor in maximum security that Bill had to supervise.

  As food service director for the maximum-security prison and Rothe Hall, the minimum-security prison a few miles down the road, Bill shouldn’t have been taking any shifts himself, but in actuality, he worked six and seven days a week, often pulling double shifts. He seemed on an endless quest to find three supervisors to fill a week’s worth of shifts in maximum security, a goal that would never be reached during my tenure. One man had just walked out, I was the second, and the third supervisor hadn’t been hired yet. I was starting to understand why I’d been given a job, and it wasn’t because of my stunning résumé or leadership abilities. The prison had an overall turnover rate of 50 percent a year—worse in the kitchen.

  If a man was breathing, he was hired.

  4

  MAIN LINE

  “MAIN LINE!”

  Bill Perdue was, for the most part, a soft-spoken man. When he shouted, it wasn’t in anger or to throw his weight around. He was merely communicating to the crew in the quickest way possible.

  “STUTZKE, ALDRICH, EARL—OUT ON THE LINE!”

  After all, God had given Bill lungs, and Bill was appreciative.

  Of course, if you were standing next to Bill—which I was, on my first day—it was startling when the shouting began. But although Bill was loud, you knew he wasn’t angry because his final sentence was always courteous and respectful.

  “THAT MEANS NOW, GENTLEMEN!”

  Having passed along all the information the crew needed, Bill headed out to the steam table to serve the meat. I followed.

  Mackey and Reed were already there, setting pans of meat and French fries in the steam table and putting the trays of lettuce, onions, and pickles on ice. Everything was ready—fresh hamburger buns, hot soup, cake for dessert—and it all looked good.

  Stutzke, Aldrich, and Earl arrived, each grabbing a spoon or ladle or tongs. They, too, were ready.

  It was eleven thirty in the morning, and hungry convicts were on their way.

  There were three guards assigned to the kitchen during meals. One was behind me, the unseen guard in the walled-off gun cage.

  The second guard, on most days, was Frank Peterson; he was at his post by the last row of benches in the dining hall. His job was to watch the convicts as they entered and picked up their silverware—one knife, fork, and spoon per man. His eyes never left their hands. You don’t want to give convicts a chance to palm extra silverware, given their ability to turn it into really sharp knives.

  The last guard was Max Russeck. Max was in his fifties, short, and stocky. He was the “yard man.” It was his job to walk the convicts across the yard and watch for trouble in the line, all the while keeping an eye on the entire dining room. He’d worked at the prison for a long time, liked his shift to go smoothly, and became cranky when it didn’t.

  Today the line was moving well, and Max relaxed.

  The only thing Bill expected me to do that day was observe, so I stood with my back to the gun cage, out of the way, about eight feet from the steam table. There was something very comforting about that gun cage, especially that first day; standing there felt cozy and safe.

  Men came through the line, taking a hamburger from Bill and French fries, vegetables, and dessert from Earl, Stutzke, and Aldrich. When their trays were full, they filed in to the rows of benches and started eating.

  A few times, a man would stop the line for a moment, either by talking to one of the convicts serving the meal or complaining about something to Bill.

  “MOVE ON!” yelled Bill, and the man would go.

  There were several complaints that first day, but the only one I recall came from an old man, short, gray, and bent. After taking his hamburger and fries, he moved down to the lettuce, pickles, and onions that waited for him on sheet pans resting on ice. He stopped there, halting the line. He looked back at Bill and asked why there weren’t any grilled onions.

  “Ah, for God’s sake,” said Bill, “this isn’t a goddamned restaurant! MOVE ON!”

  The old man moved on.

  It was puzzling to hear convicts complain about the food. This was good, basic food they were being served. And I don’t mean “good for a prison.”

  The bread and rolls, the cakes and pies and doughnuts, all produced by the convicts, were as good as
any in the stores.

  The prison dairy produced wonderful, rich milk and ice cream. We used government-surplus butter and cheese, but it wasn’t bad, just not of the quality you’d expect in a fine restaurant.

  The menu was heavy on beef—a parade of porcupine meatballs, macaroni and hamburger, meat loaf, stuffed cabbage, beef stew—but the meat came from cattle raised by the convicts themselves on a thirty-three-thousand-acre ranch owned by the prison. The beef was grass fed, a bit tough at times, but in general excellent, and fresh.

  The ranch also contained a hog farm, and the pork was delicious. I left the word “succulent” back there in Montana after my last pork roast, and haven’t felt a need for it since.

  Were there weaknesses? Yes. We had no poultry except for turkey at Thanksgiving. Fresh fruit and vegetables arrived rarely, though we did have fresh potatoes, carrots, celery, and onions. We had iceberg lettuce at times, and cabbage. A very occasional tomato would show up, as would a few crates of apples. But everything else arrived in cans. Our national obsession with “fresh” hadn’t started yet.

  Mackey, whether he’d worked at the Olympic Hotel or not, was a great cook, using bay leaves, rosemary, thyme, basil, and anything else he could find to flavor the food. And Reed, under the guidance of Mackey, could call himself a pretty good cook as well.

  No wonder Bill shouted “MOVE ON” after hearing a complaint; the convicts in Montana stood among the best-fed convicts in the world.

  Not having to serve “prison slop” was a great relief to me. I wasn’t a slop cook.

  After watching Bill for a few days, I felt easier about working at the prison, particularly because of its small size. I started working at a time when the prison had one of the lowest convict populations in state history; a one-room schoolhouse of a prison, maximum security held only 230 men to feed. We didn’t have enough convicts to fill the dining hall, and could have easily served several hundred more.

  There was nothing about the job I couldn’t do, but Bill’s yelling bothered me. It worked for Bill, partly because he was older than me, but mostly because he was so big. He towered over most of the convicts, and when he shouted, he shouted down at them—much more impressive than shouting up, which I would have had to do, with the attendant risk that my voice would merely hit their chests and fall to the ground.

  That left me with a problem: I knew I wasn’t going to be standing there yelling, but I wasn’t sure what my other choices were. Sometimes a little old-fashioned civility goes a long way—that’s what I was thinking.

  Of course, I hadn’t yet met Toler.

  5

  TOLER

  Near the end of my first week, Bill decided to put my feet to the fire. He thought I’d watched him long enough.

  “Get some men to work the line,” he said, just before the noon meal. “You can serve up main line today.”

  I didn’t want to serve main line. I thought it was too soon.

  “Sure,” I answered. “Who do I get?”

  Bill waved his hand toward the kitchen. “Anyone you want,” he said.

  I sucked some air into my lungs and left the safety of Bill’s shadow. So far, I hadn’t had to order a convict to do anything; it was strange to think they had to obey me—and worse to think they might not. I’d never held a position where I was in charge of more than one other man. And I’d never had to give an order to anyone much older than I was; most of the convicts had at least ten years on me.

  But I walked out into the kitchen anyway. We had Hungarian goulash on the menu that day, and I needed two men to help me serve, one for the peas and one for the chocolate pudding. I would serve the noodles and goulash myself.

  I decided to get Stutzke and Aldrich. Stutzke was at his station, peeling potatoes.

  “I need you on the line,” I said, instead of yelling. “It’s time for main line.”

  He held up a potato in one hand and a paring knife in the other.

  “I’m peeling potatoes!” he declared.

  “You can do it after main line,” I replied.

  As I walked away, Stutzke muttered loudly about the amount of potatoes he had to peel.

  I went over to Aldrich. “I need you out on the line,” I said.

  Aldrich said something indicating that he, too, had a very busy schedule.

  “You’ll have to do it after main line,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  I’d spent the first days watching how Bill Perdue gave orders. After telling a convict to do something, Bill turned his back and walked away, expecting it to be done. So, ignoring Stutzke and Aldrich, I turned and walked out to the dining hall.

  I had thought, and hoped, that Bill would be out on the line with me, lending moral support, but I saw no sign of him.

  Perhaps twenty seconds passed as I stood by myself, waiting to see if Stutzke or Aldrich would appear. If they decided not to obey me, I’d have to go to Bill Perdue and let him know I was a failure, that no one was ever going to follow my orders, and that it might be best if I retired my spatula and crawled away.

  Then, in no hurry, Stutzke arrived. A moment later, Aldrich showed up.

  It’s a hell of a feeling the first time you see convicts marching up the aisle to be served their lunch and realize that nothing separates you and their fists. No bars. No fence. No Bill Perdue. It had been different a few days before, with my back to the gun cage; the convicts hadn’t even noticed me. But we stood close now, and the men stared at me with contempt in their eyes. They sized me up, evidently unimpressed by what they saw. I didn’t know it then, but this was an initiation of sorts. On your first day working in a prison, at least in Montana, it was a game the convicts played, looking at you as if they were imagining how much fun it would be to slowly rip off a few of your body parts. The people who worked in the prison played, too; as the convicts tried to stare you down, the guards stood far enough away that a new man felt completely abandoned, just for the pleasure of seeing if he would walk out.

  It sounds mean, but later I would enjoy it myself. When new guards would be stationed next to me on the steam line, I found it very satisfying to see them break out in a sweat.

  Just as I took a pair of tongs and reached for the noodles to serve the first convict, Bill Perdue showed up, although he didn’t take a place beside me. He walked over to a row of windows to my right, at the side of the dining hall. There he stood, thirty feet away, calmly tamping down the tobacco in his pipe. I started serving.

  The first few convicts came through the line without incident. Then Toler appeared. I placed some noodles on his tray, followed by a ladleful of goulash.

  Toler looked down at his tray, then back to me.

  “What the fuck is this?” he demanded.

  We’d prepared a good meal that day; I’d already had some. The noodles were lightly buttered, sprinkled with salt and pepper. The goulash was filled with big chunks of beef and onions, seasoned with paprika, all of it in a rich gravy. No one could possibly complain.

  “It’s Hungarian goulash,” I said.

  My answer didn’t seem to help. Toler glanced down at his tray again.

  “Where are the fucking potatoes?”

  “There aren’t any potatoes in Hungarian goulash,” I explained. “It’s Hungarian. You serve it with noodles.”

  This, too, fell short of a satisfactory answer. Toler leaned toward me.

  “Do I look like a fucking Hungarian?” he growled.

  If anyone else had uttered a sentence like that, I would have laughed. But Toler wasn’t happy, and when Toler wasn’t happy, he was scary. He didn’t stand particularly tall, maybe five foot ten, but he was massive, one of the devoted weight lifters at the prison. He looked especially scary because, in a time when it was rare, he shaved his head, allowing his hard face to stand out in mean relief. Now, as he glared at me, it seemed as if nothing would make him happier than to dive over the top of the steam table and choke the noodle cook to death.

  I tried to look impassive. Although I felt
vaguely comfortable with the kitchen crew, I still found convicts like Toler intimidating—their voices, their look, their size. Appearing unimpressed required hard work.

  Keeping the line moving also proved hard work, and Toler’s questions had ground it to a halt. So as much as I wanted to answer him, to tell him that he bore no resemblance to any Hungarian I knew of, I had no time. I had to set Toler on his way, but I wasn’t sure how.

  If Bill Perdue had been serving the line, instead of standing over by the windows, and Toler had said, “What the hell is this?” Bill would have shouted, “MOVE ON!” and Toler almost certainly would have moved on.

  I wasn’t about to yell at Toler. I tried subtlety.

  “Well,” I said, “that’s what we have today: noodles.” I took my tongs, picked up some more noodles, and looked at the next man in line. Although a pretty big clue for Toler to move on, it didn’t work. He stood his ground—he had something else on his mind.

  “More meat,” he demanded, pushing his tray forward.

  Meat.

  The convicts were meat-and-potato men, the defining meat-and-potato men. With no potatoes, half of Toler’s meal equation had been ripped away, raising the ante on the other half.

  I gave him the only answer I could.

  “If there’s any left over,” I offered, “you can come back for more.”

  Toler didn’t take it well. He stood still, his jaw clenched, a huge, annoyed carnivore.

  With the line stopped, repercussions were starting to be felt. The line of convicts stretched out behind Toler almost the length of the dining hall. Soon, they would pass out the door, which would concern Max Russeck. Max stood in the doorway at the back, up on his toes, looking in my direction. If I needed help, all I had to do was raise a hand and he would march up the aisle to the steam table. And if Toler didn’t move soon, Max would come anyway. I didn’t want that. Well, I did kind of want it: If Max had come up right then and chased Toler away, I might have jumped into his arms and kissed him. But being saved by a guard wouldn’t help my reputation. It was my job to keep the line moving, and I didn’t want to need to be rescued.