Prisoner in the Kitchen

by William Bonham

  “Yup,” said Bill, “he wanted me to see the pruno. Well, what was left of it, anyway.” Bill’s eyes widened a bit. “There must have been eighty, ninety gallons, sitting right there by Boyd’s desk.”

  Charlie’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Well, now,” he said, “that is one hell of a lot of pruno!”

  Yes—quite a bit more than there actually was, in fact.

  “That’s just the pruno that was left, Charlie,” said Bill. “There’s no way of knowing how much got drunk.”

  Let them have their fun; at least neither of them seemed disappointed. Bill looked at his watch. It was time to go to work, and we all stood up. Bill was laughing, offering up a high-pitched hoo-hoo-hoo.

  “I never heard of that much pruno being captured,” said Charlie, as we left the 4B’s. “By God, Bill, that might be the record.”

  “Might be,” Bill agreed.

  Charlie got in his car and took off down Main Street toward Rothe Hall. Bill and I headed down the sidewalk toward the prison. He was quiet now, and seemed thoughtful. We made it all the way to the gate without Bill saying anything, but I suspected he had something on his mind, a few serious remarks to make. Right before the guard buzzed us in, he glanced down at me.

  “That was some great fishing,” he repeated, pulling back the door. “Next time you’ll have to come along.”

  24

  RULES WERE MADE TO BE BROKEN

  No one whistled in the prison. It violated the rules. If a convict whistled, he could be put in the hole; if a man who worked at the prison whistled, he could be fired.

  Imagine this: a cell house with the acoustics of an empty gymnasium. The lights have just gone out. On a hot night, the convicts are settling down to sleep. But they can’t, because someone, somewhere, is whistling a happy tune.

  You don’t whistle in prison.

  The prison had lots of rules to follow, most rooted in common sense. For the first eight months I worked in Deer Lodge, I never broke a rule. Then, in April, I broke one for Smoky Boy.

  Although spring had arrived in Montana, it had skipped over the prison. Locked behind a twenty-four-foot wall, we couldn’t see the rolling hills and evergreen trees that rose from the valley and spread in all directions. We could only see the prison yard. And everything about the yard looked better in winter, with all of its rough edges buried in snow. When the snow melted, the brick, stone, dead grass, and cement made our shortcomings all the starker.

  But in April, the sky was blue and the afternoons were warm, so the men wanted to spend time outdoors. After six months of winter, trapped indoors, heading out only long enough to shuttle between buildings, they found the yard offered a welcome change. Some convicts jogged or lifted weights. Some walked in circles. And some just lounged on the steps in the sun.

  The kitchen crew missed a lot of yard time if they didn’t work fast. So after main line at noon, most of the men hustled, cleaning the pots and trays and floors. One by one, they’d finish their work and come to me. “Shake me down, I’m done.”

  I’d check their work, pat them down, and wave to the guard on Tower 4. He’d release the gate latch, letting them out to the yard.

  Smoky Boy never hurried to get out in the yard. It didn’t seem to interest him. The few times I saw him out there he stood with his hands in his pockets, sometimes talking to another convict, more often alone. He was more likely to be found near the kitchen, just outside the door. Some days I’d see him looking down at the ground along the wall, deep in thought, picking up a stone, then tossing it aside. The prison wall stood no more than twenty feet from the kitchen wall, and I wondered why, when his world was already so confined, he’d choose to remain here, in the narrow space between two walls.

  One day as I left work, I spotted Smoky Boy kneeling in the dirt by the wall, digging with a stainless-steel slotted spoon.

  “It might be easier to go over the wall, Smoky,” I joked.

  He looked up, but he didn’t crack a smile.

  “I’ve got some goddamn flowers around here somewhere,” he said. “More of them ought to be coming up by now.”

  Flowers? It seemed Smoky Boy—the man who had no hobbies, no interests, and no home or family worth mentioning—had a garden. I walked over to him.

  “So,” I said, “you’re a gardener.”

  He shrugged. “Half-assed,” he said.

  He pointed out a few shoots starting to poke up from the ground. They were no more than half an inch long, but he knew what kind of flowers they would turn into when they bloomed. We walked along the wall together, Smoky Boy noting a few other places where there should have been shoots, until we’d covered a twenty-foot stretch of the wall, all of it devoted to a garden he remembered in its entirety from the year before. I didn’t garden, but I enjoyed walking with him anyway, listening and asking questions. It was as close to a normal conversation as I’d ever had with Smoky Boy. When he had finished talking about his garden, he grew silent. I took the cue, wished him luck finding his missing flowers, and turned to leave.

  I had almost reached the gate when he called to me.

  “Hey, Bonham,” he yelled. He was already back on his knees with the spoon. “Next time you’re in town, would you pick me up some flower seeds?”

  I wanted to say yes. It seemed such a small thing to ask. At orientation, though, we’d learned never to bring anything to or from the outside for the convicts: Open the door a crack by bringing something in and the convicts had you. You would spend the rest of your working days sneaking in drugs and alcohol, the victim of blackmail.

  Not one convict, until Smoky Boy, had ever asked me to bring anything into the prison. I remained doubtful he would blackmail me; how would he do it? Would he take the seeds, shout “Now your soul is mine!” and then order me to bring in cocaine? That seemed like a stretch. He just wanted seeds for his garden. He could have gone over to the prison hobby shop and filled out a request form, but it would take a month for the paperwork to go through, and even more time to receive the seeds. Too long to wait; too short a spring.

  I didn’t ponder much longer. “Yeah,” I agreed. “I can do that.”

  I left the prison feeling good. Breaking a rule felt good. I wanted to prove that I could reason for myself.

  I walked down Main Street to the hardware store. I loved the hardware store in Deer Lodge. On a very small scale, it tried to be what Walmart and the other big chains are. It had everything, its stock crammed into a dozen narrow aisles. No signs hung above the aisles, and no one had the time to search the chaos of the store. The birthday card you needed might well be in the same aisle as the Crock-Pots and two-by-fours. The rubber bands and paper clips might sit beside sacks of manure. There was no use guessing which aisle you needed. If you wanted something, you had to ask the pinched old fart who ran the place.

  There he waited, behind the counter. I said hello, and the dark cloud that was his face became darker. I asked where I might find flower seeds. Thunderclouds now; the owner didn’t like customers and he didn’t like questions.

  “Back wall,” he growled.

  I walked to the back of the store and found the seeds on a big rack, near the plungers. I didn’t know what kind of flowers Smoky Boy wanted, so I stood there for quite a long time looking at the pictures on the envelopes. I noticed a picture of some real pretty red flowers; red would sure look good against that old gray wall. Blue flowers, too, and the deep purple ones. All the flowers I’d picked so far were dark—too moody. I chose some yellows and light pinks for balance. These would perk the place up. I had fun that day, picking out those flowers. All together, I must have bought ten packages, the prettiest damned flowers in the whole Burpee seed line. I took them up to the counter and paid the owner. Then, just to make him miserable, I told him to have a nice day.

  The next morning, I carried the seeds through security in a brown paper bag. As I went through the first gate, I grew nervous. What if they caught me? I really could be fired. And should be fired.


  I half expected someone to stop me, but no one even noticed my little brown bag. I picked up the crew and smuggled the seeds across the yard, right under the nose of the eagle-eyed officer on Tower 4. Once in the kitchen, I was safe.

  I saved the seeds until the end of the day. Smoky Boy hadn’t asked about them, and I hadn’t mentioned anything. I went out the kitchen door and found him exactly where I’d hoped he would be—kneeling in the dirt by the wall. I handed him the brown paper bag.

  “Here’s the seeds you wanted,” I said. He took the bag and, saying nothing, pulled out all the packets. One by one, he looked at the picture on the front of each envelope, then turned it over and read the back.

  His face was immobile, a mask, as he went through this bounty. True, I hadn’t expected an outpouring of gratitude from Smoky Boy, and giving blesses the giver anyway. It was enough for me to know that soon he would kneel again, taking his slotted spoon in hand, and dig a small hole in the earth. He would plant a seed. Then, in a few weeks, or however long it takes flowers to grow, there would be beauty in the Montana State Prison yard.

  When Smoky Boy had gone through all the packets he looked up at me, holding the last one in his hand. Something had changed. There seemed to be some kind of emotion moving across his face. He held up the seeds.

  “Bonham,” he sighed, “I’m doing a hundred and twenty years, and you bring me annuals?”

  25

  SKUNKS

  It didn’t matter anymore why White Grass had been sent to prison. He might have been anything from a thief to a murderer. I’m not sure he could have told me what his crime was; his mind was almost gone. The man he’d been when he entered the prison years before had long since disappeared. He lived in twilight now, beyond any kind of punishment for whatever it was he’d done.

  In his sixties, White Grass had the look of an old warrior. He had a broad, flat nose and high cheekbones; his skin was brown and his face deeply lined. He combed his long gray-and-black hair into a ponytail. He had no teeth. When he sat with his arms crossed, you might have thought he was a wise tribal elder. Only his eyes gave away the damaged man behind them: some days they were vacant, other days they held the innocence of a child.

  He emptied and cleaned the garbage cans at Rothe Hall. Because of his age and physical condition, this work stretched the limits of his physical abilities, but White Grass only seemed comfortable when working outside. Some days he’d lose track of time and forget to show up for work, and I would have to look for him. Usually he could be found behind the kitchen, between the building and the cyclone fence that ran all the way around Rothe Hall. He walked back and forth, talking to himself, or stood silently, staring at the hills.

  When I called to him, he came, walking with a strange, rolling gait possibly caused by arthritis in his hips.

  I’d tell him to return to work, and he would nod.

  “Sure, sure . . . the cans . . .”

  Because the garbage cans were heavy, I had to find another convict to help carry them out. With the hard labor finished, White Grass did a good job of the rest—washing and steaming the cans, picking up stray garbage, and bringing the cans back into the kitchen.

  Most of the convicts and guards were—for convicts and guards—gentle with him. Many watched over him. One day in winter, with the temperature in the low teens, Pop Mercer approached me.

  “White Grass is out back and he ain’t wearing a coat,” he said. “I told him to get his ass back in here, but the goddamn Indian just stands there.”

  I walked to the back door and looked out. There he was, standing coatless in the icy yard. “Hey, White Grass!” I called. “Get back in here and get your coat on!”

  He didn’t seem to hear, so I went out to him, shivering.

  “C’mon, White Grass,” I urged. “Get back inside. It’s cold out here. You’re going to freeze to death.”

  Finally he turned back toward the building, his frozen head nodding up and down. “Sure, sure,” he said. “It’s cold.”

  He went back into the kitchen.

  I’ve thought about White Grass often over the years. He usually comes to mind when I’m driving down a road in the country and the smell of a skunk rises up and fills the air.

  In late April or May, a pregnant skunk went into a crawl space underneath Rothe Hall and gave birth to her babies. I was assigned to Rothe for a few days right after the skunks were born.

  On the first day, I didn’t become aware of anything unusual until a couple of hours after the morning meal, when I went into the walk-in refrigerator. White Grass was there, bent over, pulling leaves from a head of lettuce.

  When I entered, he looked up at me with an expression I’d never seen on White Grass: It was happiness, real happiness, vibrant and alive. A lost part of him had bobbed to the surface.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  He showed me the lettuce. “It’s for the babies,” he said.

  “What babies?”

  “The babies,” he repeated. “C’mon! Look!”

  He brushed past me, hurrying down the hall to the outside door.

  Reed and Mackey were working over by the grills, and I asked them what babies White Grass was talking about.

  “We had some skunks born out back a couple of days ago,” Reed explained.

  Mackey laughed. “White Grass thinks he’s the daddy,” he said. “He wants everybody to go out and look at the goddamn things.”

  I had started down the hall to take a look when Reed called out to me.

  “Don’t get too close,” he advised. “She’s wild. She’s not spraying White Grass, but she might get scared.”

  I went to the door and peeked out. White Grass crouched twenty feet to my right, dropping bits of lettuce into a small recessed area along the wall. He was talking to the mother.

  “There you go . . . Mama’s hungry . . . sure she is . . .”

  I walked out the door a few feet, wanting to get a glimpse of the skunks, but then I chickened out.

  White Grass stayed outside most of that morning, sometimes coming into the kitchen for more cabbage or lettuce—far more than the mother could have eaten. He acted like the proud father, busy and excited.

  That afternoon, before I got off my shift, I made my rounds of the kitchen, which included checking the area out by the garbage cans. White Grass knelt there still, down on one knee, cooing to the mother. His delight was a lovely thing to see.

  When I left work, I stopped at the desk and spoke to Lieutenant Burns. I asked him if he knew about the skunks.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “We’ve got to get rid of the damned things.”

  I can’t fathom now how I missed the import of that sentence. When people in the country talk about “getting rid of the damned things,” they mean killing them. That night, someone at the prison poisoned the mother skunk and her babies.

  The next morning, White Grass found the bodies.

  Just before eleven o’clock, I pulled up in front of the cyclone fence at Rothe Hall. As soon as I opened the car door, I heard a wailing in the distance.

  “Aa-ii-ee-ee!”

  The sound echoed, as if rolling down from the hills.

  I walked up to the gate, and the tower guard buzzed me through. As I closed it behind me, the sound rose again.

  “Aa-ii-ee-ee!”

  “Who’s making that noise?” I called to the guard.

  “White Grass,” he shouted. “He’s been doing that all morning.”

  I didn’t need to ask why—it hit me hard.

  If only I’d been smarter the day before. If I’d been thinking, I would have told Burns that the death of the skunks would kill White Grass. Burns was a hard man, but he wasn’t cruel. We could have lied to White Grass. It would have been easy—White Grass was so childlike. We could have removed the bodies and told him the mother skunk had taken her babies deep into the woods; he would have believed it.

  “Aa-ii-ee-ee!”

  Poor White Grass.<
br />
  I ran into Rothe Hall, past the empty sergeant’s desk, and hurried through the dining hall into the kitchen. Mackey was cooking, but Reed and Pop Mercer stood at the end of the hallway, staring.

  I stepped outside. Charlie and the morning desk sergeant stood watching White Grass, about twenty feet away. He remained still, his back arched and his face tilted up toward the sun. His long gray hair fell loosely behind him, and his arms opened toward the sky.

  “AA-II-EE-EE!”

  This close, his cry sounded of pure tragedy. Tears ran down his cheeks as he shook his head back and forth. He brought his hands to his face and dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, crushing the tears. He drew in a long breath and let it out. Then another breath, even longer—but this time, as the air rushed out of his lungs, it carried a long, deep moan. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and a prickly sensation ran down my back. White Grass dropped his arms to his side, and his head fell to his chest. He stood there, limp and motionless.

  Slowly, he raised his arms until they stretched straight out from his body, like wings. He started to move. It looked like he was trying to hop. But he couldn’t. Every time a foot hit the ground, his face jerked in pain. He grew still again, his arms up, his back arched, and his face to the sky.

  It was awful. And it was hypnotic.

  “AA-II-EE-EE!’

  Charlie spoke to me then, a slight tremor in his voice. “You go back in there and watch the kitchen,” he instructed. “We’re staying out here in case that old Indian decides to kill himself or some damn thing.”

  White Grass needed help, and I knew it had to come from someone smarter than me or Charlie or the desk sergeant. I asked Charlie if he’d called anyone.

  “Hegsted’s coming,” said Charlie. “Now go on, you get back in the kitchen.”

  Hegsted was the prison chaplain, a small, older man with a few wonderfully snowy hairs crossing a balding pink scalp, and a circlet of neatly combed white hair that surrounded the rest of his head. I never had any doubt that he was a man of genuine faith, called to a hard ministry. But he was a pest. I’d had to throw him out of the kitchen several times for trying to start a prayer group between short line and main line on Sunday mornings. If I turned my back on him, he’d sneak into the office with a convict and start a counseling session, and I’d have to chuck him out again.