I never had any warning when a man on my crew disappeared. Overnight, a man might be put in segregation or the hole, or sent to Rothe Hall. I only knew where they had gone after seeing the daily inmate movement sheet. Each morning, the movement sheet came out, listing where every convict had gone during the previous twenty-four hours. First, it would tell you the total number of convicts in maximum security, say, 210. Then the total number out at Rothe Hall, 120. The rest of it went like this:
INMATE
FROM
TO
Joe Brown
Rothe Hall
Paroled to Butte
John Brown
Laundry
Kitchen
Bob Brown
Kitchen
Segregation
The movement sheet served as the prison equivalent of the social page in the morning newspaper, a source of surprise and gossip, and the first thing both staff and convicts looked at in the morning. There I saw Hallum’s name, and that he’d gone to Rothe Hall.
It wasn’t a surprise, but it left me short a cook. I didn’t have to worry about finding a new cook; that fell to Bill Perdue, and Bill was a miracle worker when it came to grabbing up convicts to work in the kitchen. He had a strange, encyclopedic knowledge of which convicts had kitchen experience lurking somewhere in their past.
“Don’t worry about it,” he’d say, “there’s a man over in the laundry who cooked in the merchant marine.”—and off he’d go. If the man in the laundry didn’t want the job, he’d go talk to a convict who’d cooked at a café in Miles City. He always tried to get a volunteer, but if nobody wanted the job, he’d have someone assigned. By the end of that day, Bill had found a new cook. Hallum was gone, and that’s the way the prison worked. I didn’t think about him again until I saw his name on the movement sheet the next day. It said:
INMATE
FROM
TO
Donald Hallum
Rothe Hall
Warden’s House
Donald Hallum. Warden’s House? I had no idea what that meant.
The warden lived in a big red house on Main Street, right across from the prison. The house remained a mystery to me because the warden remained a mystery to me; after three months working at the prison, I’d never seen him. Not once. I supposed the warden had a family, too, and I supposed they lived in the warden’s house with the warden, but I could only guess. I passed the house several times a day and had never seen anyone enter or leave. Now the ghost warden had Don Hallum.
The next morning, at 4B’s, I asked Bill and Charlie about Hallum’s transfer.
“Oh, the warden’s cook got paroled, so he got Hallum,” Bill said. Bill puffed on his pipe. Charlie drank his coffee. Apparently, neither found this odd.
“You mean,” I asked, “that Hallum lives with the warden?”
“No, no, no,” Bill said.
“For Christ’s sake!” Charlie exclaimed.
“He lives at Rothe Hall,” Bill explained, “and he’s driven down to the warden’s house. He cooks, and at the end of the day he goes back.”
“Why does the warden get a cook?” I asked. Bill and Charlie shrugged.
“Because,” Charlie said, “he’s the warden.”
Bill nodded. “The warden always gets a cook,” he explained.
“Always has,” Charlie added.
I was dumbfounded. I’ve since learned that it was common practice in prisons nationwide to assign convicts to the warden. Some states mailed off convicts to the governor, too. Jimmy Carter had a convict assigned to him when he was governor of Georgia.
“Are you telling me,” I began, “that I lost a cook so the warden can have someone make him dinner?”
Yes, they said, exactly. The warden had first dibs on the cooks. Hallum also did the warden’s shopping. And if he was smart, he cleaned up around the house, too. I couldn’t believe it. It sounded like out-and-out slavery to me.
“But that’s wrong!” I said. I may or may not have brought my fist down on the table at this point—I don’t recall—but I know there was at least one exclamation point in my voice.
Bill and Charlie laughed.
“He’s the warden, Bill,” Charlie said. “That’s one of his benefits.”
Well, I thought, that’s one hell of a benefit. Along with your job, you get a human being. Quite a perk.
I didn’t think he had the right to take a convict cook away from food service. I thought feeding 330 men was more important than feeding the warden.
The longer I thought about it, the more irritated I got. That night I sat at the kitchen table and started laying plans to bring down the warden. I drafted letters to the state legislature and the governor. I would contact reporters and raise a big stink, exposing the slave system at the prison. The people had a right to know, damn it, and I would tell them. Woodward, Bernstein, Bonham. Two men working to bring down a president; one man bringing down a warden. Hallum would be the last cook stolen from food service for the benefit of the warden.
Anne thought I was nuts, and didn’t think anyone else would care, either.
I was just about to rouse the citizens when I ran into Don Hallum on Main Street. He was walking toward the warden’s house with a bag of groceries under his arm. We stopped and talked. I asked him how he was doing, even though I could see he was relaxed and happy.
“Pretty good,” he said. “I’m not free, but this is as close as I’m going to get for a while.”
Yes, from Hallum’s perspective, working for the warden was a good thing. But I couldn’t expect him to see the big picture. It was too bad, because when I was done with my campaign against the warden, Hallum would be back working in the Rothe Hall kitchen. I asked him what he thought of the warden. Hallum thought he was a pretty decent guy, and that working for him had given him the biggest break he’d had in a long time.
“When I go in front of the parole board,” he said, “I’ll be able to use the warden as a character reference and a work reference.”
That would be a high-cotton recommendation all right. If Hallum did a good job for the warden, he’d be as close to a sure bet for parole as a convict could get. Hallum went on to say he might get out of prison in a matter of months. If so, he planned to go back to college.
Full of hopes and plans, he ruined my fantasy. Even if I could bring down the warden, which I couldn’t, I’d bring down Hallum at the same time.
Hallum had to get back to the warden’s house. Before we parted, though, he had a question for me.
“Who’s doing the cooking in there now?”
I couldn’t help it—I winced. “Bob Rader and Bob Two Eagles,” I said.
Hallum also couldn’t help it; he winced, too. “You’re kidding.”
“No,” I said, “I’m not.”
A slight smile from Hallum. “That must be fun,” he said.
“Oh, yeah,” I said sarcastically, “lots of fun.”
Hallum knew what I was up against, and he felt sorry for me. We said good-bye, and he headed for the red house that held all his hopes for the future. I turned toward home, thinking about Rader and Two Eagles. I considered anything that had put the two Bobs in the kitchen with me a bad thing. But Don Hallum was a decent man who’d made a mistake; anything that helped him leave the prison could only be a good thing.
Even if it meant the warden’s wife didn’t have to cook.
17
THE TWO BOBS
The problem with the two Bobs was that they hated each other.
The first to arrive in the kitchen was Big Bob. He was sort of a jack-of-all-crimes, having entered prison at various times for burglary, bad checks, and stealing cars. Nothing violent. Once, he’d had time tacked on to his sentence for escaping; he’d tunneled through the wall of one of Montana’s local jails. Big Bob stood six foot three, weighing in at over 230 pounds; in order to escape, he must have dug a mighty hole.
For a few days, Big Bob acted as my only cook, and he howled and compl
ained at the vicious amount of work required of him. Big Bob was, no contest, the most emotional and easily read convict in the prison; everything he thought registered immediately on his face. When he was sad or depressed, his entire body sagged. Happy? Well, no one in the world had a heartier laugh; he slapped his legs and guffawed till he could barely stand. When he didn’t understand something, or was confused, Bob looked like he had the IQ of a goat.
He was right, though—we needed another cook, and after a few days, Bill found one: Lunatic Bob. Lunatic Bob was every bit as tall as Big Bob, but weighed a good sixty pounds less.
I didn’t start thinking of him as “Lunatic” Bob until Big Bob said something that let me know the kitchen wasn’t going to be running smoothly for a while.
“I’m not working with that fucking lunatic,” said Big Bob.
There appeared to be some truth in the epithet. Lunatic Bob was a car thief, but at times had forced the owners out of their cars and into the street with the aid of a large knife. He’d never physically harmed anyone, but he’d terrorized them, and the reports suggested that he enjoyed that part the most.
But in a prison where several convicts had “L-O-V-E” and “H-A-T-E” tattooed across their knuckles, Lunatic Bob had “L-O-V-E” tattooed across both sets. And while many convicts had the name of a girl immortalized on their arms, Lunatic Bob had listed three. He may have been a knife-wielding sadist, but his tattoos told a different story; at heart, Lunatic Bob was a romantic.
The reason the Bobs hated each other is unknown to me; it had to do with something that had happened on the street, outside the walls, years before when they were both free.
Now, in the kitchen together, they argued.
Big Bob was loud: “I said I ain’t making the fucking Jell-O! You make the fucking Jell-O!”
Since he was naturally soft-spoken, at times parts of Lunatic Bob’s sentences went missing: “Kiss my . . . you do . . . Jell-O . . .”
The arguments were asinine, but sometimes I was afraid they were going to end up in a fistfight. Not an hour went by that I didn’t have to tell them to shut up; I often ended up dividing the workload between them myself. Finally, I asked Bill to transfer at least one Bob out of the kitchen.
Bill said no.
“They’ll work it out,” Bill Perdue, the philosopher, mused.
I didn’t think so.
It all came to a head one morning. At the worktable in front of the office, Big Bob chopped onions with a French knife. Twelve feet away, by a garbage can, Lunatic Bob cut out the bad parts of a few potatoes. He used a paring knife.
“Oh, believe me,” Big Bob shouted, “you will shut the fuck up.”
Lunatic Bob mumbled in response.
I saw both of them through the office window. The argument had reached the point at which they no longer attempted to hide it from me.
Big Bob had stopped chopping his onions and now waved his French knife in the general direction of Lunatic Bob. Lunatic Bob must have said something that suggested, unkindly, that no one—not even Big Bob—could shut him up, because Big Bob became angrier and louder.
“Bullshit!” he shouted. “There’s ten guys in this fucking kitchen can make you shut up!”
Behind them, all around the kitchen, the other convicts had stopped working to watch the two Bobs.
Lunatic Bob threw his potato on the concrete floor and pointed the hand holding the paring knife at Big Bob. Both of them took a step forward. It looked like I was about to have a knife fight in the kitchen, right in front of me.
The officers’ mess was empty.
Instead of calling someone, I jumped out of my chair, ran into the kitchen, and, in a moment of unsurpassed stupidity, stepped directly between the two Bobs. I raised my arms up, one flat palm facing Big Bob, the other facing Lunatic Bob, each a few feet away on either side of me.
“All right, you guys,” I yelled, “knock it off !”
As the last word left my mouth, I realized what a dangerous, idiotic thing I’d done. All three of us froze for an instant, shocked by my actions. I turned and hurried back to the office. I shut the door. What in the name of God had I been thinking? I glanced at the two Bobs; they stared at me, brows furrowed, their arms and knives hanging loose at their sides.
After orientation, I’d mocked the rule, “If You See an Inmate With A Rifle, Don’t Confront Him; Report It To The Lieutenant On Duty.” That seemed too obvious to mention; who would make such a stupid mistake? But here, substituting a knife for the rifle, I’d reacted without thinking, violating that simple direction.
Both Bobs turned back to their workstations, Lunatic Bob picking up his potato and Big Bob again chopping onions.
I opened a drawer in the desk and pulled out a form; I would put them both on report. They needed to be separated, calmed down, and segregation was a nice place to reflect. I sat there, debating what I could write without making myself sound like a fool, or if I should write up a report at all.
Too often, a guard wrote a convict up and hauled him off to segregation or the hole; it was the immediate solution to an immediate problem. But guards didn’t have a crew to run, and afterward could walk away unconcerned with the mess left in their wake—a supervisor who found himself suddenly short one, two, or three men. In this case, having two cooks gone and less than an hour until the noon meal meant I would have to both cook the meal and watch the entire kitchen and dining hall at the same time.
Through the window I watched the two Bobs talk. Big Bob used his French knife to gesture in my direction, at times shaking his head. Over by the garbage can, Lunatic Bob listened, occasionally taking a peek at me. Neither looked angry. Only a few minutes had passed when both came to the office door.
“What’s wrong with you?” Big Bob began. “You don’t step between two guys with knives; that’s the dumbest fucking thing I ever saw!”
There was no point in denying it. “Believe me,” I said, “I know.”
My admission didn’t stop Big Bob. “Did you think you were being brave or some fucking thing?”
“No,” I said, “it was stupid.”
“You’re fucking right it was stupid,” Big Bob continued. He wagged his finger at me, lecturing me like a father scolding a child: “You think if I have to cut somebody I won’t go through you?”
No, I didn’t think that.
“I’d just cut you first, that’s all . . . For Christ’s sake.” Big Bob pointed at Lunatic Bob. “Him, too. You think this fucking nut case won’t cut you?”
Lunatic Bob didn’t look offended at all.
“You know what happens to me if I cut him?” Big Bob demanded, nodding his head toward Lunatic Bob. “I’m screwed. I cut you and I’m royally fucked.”
He was right. Knifing a supervisor, even incidentally, would lead to a massive black mark on his convict report card.
“Don’t worry,” I assured him, “I won’t be stepping between you again.” If the two Bobs wanted to kill each other, they could do it while I stayed in the office, making a phone call, or ran out the back of the dining hall screaming for help. Big Bob noticed the form on my desk.
“Oh, man,” he said, “you’re going to write us up? You’re the one ought to be written up!”
“You guys need to cool off,” I said.
Big Bob screwed up his face in disgust. “We are cooled off. Nothing happened!” he exclaimed. “You cool?” he asked Lunatic Bob.
Lunatic Bob nodded.
“He’s cool,” said Big Bob. “So am I. What are you going to write us up for? Two convicts yelled?”
“You’re going to end up killing each other,” I said, “and I don’t want it happening here.”
At that point, I was sick of them, and I didn’t particularly care if they killed each other, but I didn’t want it to happen in front of me.
“Did I stick you anywhere?” he barked at Lunatic Bob. “You gonna kill me?”
“No,” Lunatic Bob answered.
“You think I’
m gonna kill you?” Big Bob asked.
“No,” Lunatic Bob replied.
“There you go,” Big Bob concluded, looking back at me. “No one’s getting killed.”
I opened the drawer and slid the form back into place.
“Fucking A,” Big Bob said.
The Bobs left, Big Bob in fine fettle, and went back to work.
Later that day, I headed for the officers’ mess, on my way outside to pat the men down for their afternoon yard time. Usually the crew was already there waiting for me, but today they were on the other side of the kitchen, over by the pot washer’s sink in front of the bakery. They gathered around the two Bobs, listening as Big Bob held court. The fact that the Bobs were together at all was astounding. Lunatic Bob had his arms crossed, nodding his head yes, seemingly in agreement with whatever it was that Big Bob was saying.
The crew was laughing.
There was no doubt that Big Bob played the starring role; all eyes were on him. I couldn’t hear what he said, but all of a sudden he straightened up, took a step forward, and stopped. He raised both arms up, one flat palm facing to his left and one flat palm facing right. I could almost read his lips: “All right, you guys, knock it off !”
Everyone laughed, even Lunatic Bob.
What a happy crew I had.
With the story done, they came to be patted down, the two Bobs waiting in line together, still laughing. They were friends now, bonded by their shared moment with me and their narrow escape from a write-up. I think both of them, especially Big Bob, believed their powers of persuasion were so great that I would never write them up.
They were wrong.
18
O, CHRISTMAS TREE
It was the middle of December and I was trying to walk through two feet of snow. I pulled my left foot up and out, shoved it forward, and let it sink. I did the same with my right foot. Both legs were lost now, buried in snow that rose over my boots and up my legs, ending a few inches below my knees. Snow clung to my jeans, and my body heat had melted it. My knees felt like two frozen, aching knobs.
Prisoner in the Kitchen Page 9