Prisoner in the Kitchen

by William Bonham

  I returned to the kitchen, frustrated that Hegsted was the best the prison had to offer. I didn’t know what White Grass needed, exactly—a tribal ritual, a psychiatrist, a sedative—but I was certain he didn’t need an old Protestant minister.

  Only Reed and Mackey remained in the kitchen; the rest of the crew had gone. At Rothe Hall, if a man’s work was done, he could go back to his bunk. The convicts usually hung around anyway, having coffee and talking. Today, they wanted to get as far away as they could from White Grass’s anguish.

  Every few minutes, another cry sounded.

  After one particularly strangled moan, Mackey said, “That old man’s gone for good.”

  I thought so, too.

  It might have been twenty minutes before Hegsted arrived. He was dressed in his worn black suit, solemn and subdued. He spoke to Charlie and the sergeant first, then walked to within a few feet of White Grass. I was afraid he was going to launch into a sermon, or force White Grass to his knees to pray. He didn’t.

  “I’m so sorry, White Grass,” he said. The words were so simple and heartfelt, and his voice filled with such genuine sorrow and compassion, that I felt tears come to my own eyes.

  White Grass cried out again.

  Hegsted whispered to him, then remained where he was, a gentle presence a few feet away.

  White Grass covered his face with his palms, and his head moved, so slowly, back and forth.

  Then Hegsted took a few steps forward and placed a hand on White Grass’s back.

  I watched until Charlie told me to go in and feed the line the noon meal.

  All the convicts who worked the ranch—in the dairy, in the slaughterhouse, and out on horseback with the cattle—had been brought back to Rothe Hall on a bus for their lunch, and they first heard the cries as I had. They came through the line, all of them wanting to know what was going on and how White Grass was doing. I told them the little I knew.

  As I served the meal, the time between cries grew longer, and then—about forty minutes after Hegsted arrived—they stopped.

  When I finished serving, I hurried outside again.

  White Grass and Reverend Hegsted stood over the mother skunk’s den, silent. The sad old Indian and the white-haired Protestant minister held hands, looking down at the bodies.

  It was a beautiful day, that day. You wait a long time for spring in Montana, for the snow to be gone, for the air to be warm and fresh and filled with the smell of evergreens; you wait for the wildflowers to bloom and to see white-tail deer in the distance, walking across the foothills, stopping to eat new grass with their young. Then you wait for a breeze to come along and make the hour whole and clean and perfect. Here in this landscape where White Grass spent so much of his life, looking through a cyclone fence at hills he would never walk, it was that kind of day.

  Gradually, some of the kitchen crew—Mackey, Reed, and Pop—came and peeked out the door. Charlie, the sergeant, and I stood there, useless; we’d witnessed the storm, and now, its passing.

  “I wish to hell I knew what that goddamn minister said to him,” said Charlie.

  I did, too.

  Hegsted spent the day at Rothe Hall comforting White Grass. Late in the afternoon they came inside and sat at a table in the dining hall. A few convicts on the kitchen crew paid their respects, patting White Grass on the shoulder and saying how sorry they were about the skunks. White Grass didn’t look up.

  Reed and Mackey warmed up a bowl of soup and brought it over; White Grass didn’t touch it. But he sipped at the cup of water that Pop brought over.

  At times, White Grass started to weep again, and Hegsted said something softly to him, or simply put a hand on his shoulder. Somehow, over the hours, he led White Grass to still waters.

  The terrible day had ended.

  I rarely saw Hegsted, but not long after this incident, I ran into him inside the main prison. My shift was over, and I had climbed the stairs to the administration building. As I stood at the barred door, waiting to be buzzed through, Hegsted was buzzed into the holding area in front of me. Only one barred gate stood between us.

  “Hello, Reverend,” I said.

  He looked at me and nodded. “Good afternoon.”

  His eyes moved on to some indiscriminate place in the distance. I wondered if he thought badly of me, as the man who’d twice stopped him from praying in the kitchen.

  I wanted to say something to him about the morning and afternoon he’d stayed at the side of White Grass, but I didn’t know what to say. I tried to form the words in my mind—something appropriate, something worthy—but I failed. It shouldn’t have been hard. All I had to do was simply say that I was grateful he’d been there that day. But I didn’t.

  The gate buzzed, and the moment, like many regretted moments, passed. I pulled the gate open and held it, allowing Hegsted to exit.

  It was just past one o’clock in the afternoon, and most of the convicts were either back at work or locked in their cells, but there was a scattering of men outside, the kitchen crew and a few others—more than enough men for Hegsted to reach out to. He walked down the stairs, the prison chaplain, representing God to the very best of his ability.

  26

  A YOUNG MAN’S FANCY

  In late spring, a new young convict arrived on fish row. Until his arrest, he had driven getaway cars for a living, racing away from convenience stores and gas stations after his crime partner had robbed them. From the moment he arrived, everyone called him “Kitty.”

  Kitty was clearly—and happily—homosexual, the only openly gay convict in the prison. He wasn’t a limp-wristed caricature, but he was very feminine. His every move was graceful, unhurried, and uncontrived. His soft voice maintained a Southern lilt.

  Good-looking and slight of build, he attracted attention—I noticed him the first day he came through short line. When I served him, he said “thank you.” I’d never heard anyone in the prison utter the phrase before; it was like hearing a clarinet in the drum and bugle corps. I stared at him, thinking that he was joking, but he didn’t seem to be. I watched as he moved down the line, thanking Mahoney and then Aldrich.

  When his tray was full, he sauntered down the aisle toward his row.

  Aldrich and Mahoney, who’d been caught off guard just as I had, laughed.

  “Oh, man,” Aldrich began, “did you see that?”

  Mahoney shook his head.

  Despite Kitty’s almost feminine grace, they weren’t laughing at him because he was gay; plenty of homosexuality exists in prison. They laughed because Kitty was so over the top. The courtesy played a part, along with the way he dipped his head when he thanked people and the way he strolled to his seat. But the real attention-grabber was a fashion statement Kitty made. In this great brown sea of khaki, Kitty had added a red, white, and blue calico neckerchief. He had knotted it at the neck and pulled it to the left so that it hung, just so, over his collarbone.

  In 1974, in Montana, no one had seen the like.

  Mahoney and Aldrich immediately spread the word to the crew: Some kind of queer thank-you freak was on fish row. Their powers of description must have been great, because at the next meal I didn’t have to ask anyone to serve the line. Every convict in the kitchen grabbed a ladle, tongs, or spoon and hurried out to get a front-row view.

  Earl, the baker, arrived after every item of food had already been manned by another convict. Along with a few others, he stood with his back to the gun cage, stuck in the cheap seats.

  When short line arrived, Kitty sauntered up, neckerchief in place. His thank-yous were in full force, and the crew was delighted.

  First Kitty thanked me, then Aldrich.

  “You are very welcome,” said Aldrich, dipping his head with mock courtesy.

  Walker served him next.

  “Thank you,” Kitty said.

  “You are very, very welcome,” Walker replied, with close to a formal bow.

  If I didn’t know that being new in prison was terrifying, I would have
sworn Kitty seemed amused by all the mockery and laughter.

  Not everyone laughed, though. Earl had the look on his face of a high school boy gazing down at the cheerleaders from way up in the bleachers.

  I’d never paid much attention to Earl. He did his job in the bakery and never gave me trouble, fading into the background of my days. In his early thirties and solidly built, if he wasn’t the toughest man in prison, he was pretty damned close. And if he wasn’t the homeliest man in prison—and by God, the prison had more than its share of homely men—Earl deserved an honorable mention. The image of his unshaven face remains clear in my mind. He boasted a huge nose, bent from being broken in too many fights, and eyes set too close. One thick, dusty brown eyebrow stretched over both eyes. A small mouth, thin lips, and a few old scars on his forehead and chin rounded out his visage.

  And Earl was smitten.

  The next day, he came into the kitchen shaved. He wore a fresh white uniform and had tucked in his shirt. He’d trimmed his long hair and combed it straight back. The new hairstyle had the unfortunate side effect of revealing his massive ears but—all in all—he looked about as dapper as he ever would. He went straight to the bakery and started working.

  Doughnuts were on the menu for dessert at lunch, and Earl was there, ready. When Kitty reached the pan of doughnuts, Earl took a warm one from the sheet pan he was carrying.

  “Here, take one of these,” he insisted, thrusting it at Kitty. “It’s still hot.”

  Kitty accepted the offering. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s very nice of you.”

  And he smiled.

  “Oh, sure, sure,” said Earl. “Anytime.”

  Earl showed up on the line at every meal for the next two weeks, usually with a treat, but if not, still with a few words. He courted Kitty with all of his powers, and I watched, surprised by the charm this crude man had summoned.

  Soon after Kitty left fish row, he and Earl requested a cell together, which was granted.

  This repelled some of the guards. One old sergeant, who had been at the prison for decades, called Earl a “predator,” claiming that he provided Kitty protection from other convicts in exchange for sexual favors.

  “They get these punk kids in their cell, then start trading ’em out.”

  Was that Earl’s plan? Having sex with Kitty as some kind of trade-off ?

  “Hell,” another guard added, “maybe the kid likes it. At least he’s already a queer.”

  I can’t claim that I possessed any liberal attitude or much sophistication about homosexuality at the age of twenty-three. But I wasn’t naïve, either. I’d worked in restaurants in four major cities, and you can’t do that without knowing a number of gay men. None had ever chased me around a kitchen trying to convert me, and their private lives never struck me as any of my business.

  The guards made me wonder, though. Had I romanticized Earl’s “courting” Kitty?

  I don’t think so.

  Even after they began sharing a cell, Earl came out to say hello to Kitty during main line, sometimes bringing something fresh from the bakery. Many times he’d lean over to Kitty and whisper something, and Kitty would laugh.

  By the middle of the summer, Kitty had taken charge of Earl’s prison life. Part of that duty required telling Earl he had to confront me about my lackluster supervising.

  “Has Earl talked to you yet?” Kitty asked one day. I said no. He shook his head, irritated. He asked the same question the next day. “Has Earl talked to you yet?” Again, I said no. This time he leaned over and whispered, “I need to speak with you!”

  He waited over by the wall until I was done serving main line, then he laid out his complaints.

  “Those other bakers back there aren’t doing their jobs,” he said. “Earl is doing the baking for this entire prison and he is exhausted.” Kitty’s indignant expression revealed that he was completely serious. “Now, Earl doesn’t want to sound like a sniveler, so he won’t talk to you, and you know he can’t make them work. And I believe it’s your job to tell them!”

  Earl was going home at night and playing the tired husband.

  “I’ll talk to them,” I promised.

  After main line, I went to the bakery, not to talk to the lazy bakers, but to corner Earl.

  “I just talked to Kitty,” I informed him. “He says you’re working too hard and it’s my fault.”

  Earl looked sheepish. I went on.

  “He says at the end of the day, you’re just beat because you’re doing all the work in the bakery.”

  Embarrassed, Earl couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Maybe you could tell Kitty I took care of the problem,” I continued.

  Earl hung his head; he stared at the floor. He nodded yes.

  Kitty had no need to chastise me again.

  “Thank you so much for taking action,” he said the next day. “I very much appreciate it!”

  Later in the summer, they started having little arguments. I know because I heard one. Rather, I heard half of it—Kitty’s half.

  “I’ll talk to you back in the cell house!” he barked. His voice was sharp, irritated.

  I looked down the line and saw Earl leaning over the Jell-O, muttering to Kitty. “Well, look at you, Earl. Look at you. I work in the laundry, Mr.Earl! The laundry!” Kitty answered.

  Working in the laundry gave Kitty access to the cleanest and newest uniforms. Earl should have looked better than anyone, but he didn’t. He’d let himself go. Badly. He wore tattered pants and an unbuttoned, stained white shirt. He hadn’t shaved in days. Still, he didn’t like Kitty’s tone. He growled. Kitty dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

  “Oh, you do that, Earl . . . you do that. You’re a big, tough man and you’re scaring me to death!”

  Kitty walked away. He certainly didn’t appear intimidated in any way.

  The next day Earl came to work shaved and in a clean uniform. He never again reached the peak of handsomeness he’d climbed to on that first day, but from then on he kept his hair combed and his face shaved, and tried, as best he could, to look nice for Kitty.

  27

  MARTINEZ

  If Aldrich wanted to smoke, he had to roll his own cigarettes. He didn’t have the money to buy “tailor-made” ones in their nice cellophane packages.

  The convicts in Montana earned between twenty-five and fifty cents a day at their appointed jobs, and cigarettes cost thirty cents a pack. But most of the convicts had the physical skills it took to roll a nice, tight cigarette. Aldrich didn’t. His eye-hand coordination was poor, and his cigarettes looked like enormous peas in paper pods; there was never enough tobacco on either end. When he lit the cigarette there would first be a small explosion of flame, and burning bits of excess paper would float down to join the tobacco that had spilled during the rolling process. When the firestorm ended, Aldrich could only get four or five good drags off the lump of tobacco in the middle before he had to put his cigarette out. Then he would roll another one.

  He could have made it easier on himself if he’d used the little machine that rolled perfect cigarettes. The little machine was provided by the state of Montana, along with free tobacco and free papers. You opened it like a book, put a cigarette paper in the designated spot, and placed tobacco along the length of the paper. Then you closed the book, the mechanism inside rolled and compressed the tobacco, and when you opened it again you had a fine, substantial cigarette. All you had to do was take it out, lick the edge of the paper, and seal it, and you were all set to smoke. But the convicts didn’t consider the little machine a very manly piece of equipment, so only the most pathetic used it.

  Aldrich fought hard to avoid being pathetic; he held his convict head just high enough that it wouldn’t be lopped off. He stayed in his corner for the most part, washing the dishes from the officers’ mess. His only sign of rebellion showed up sometimes when I gave him an order; often, he responded with, “I’ll get around to it if I can.” I always left, ignoring him, b
ecause he never failed to do what I asked, and usually did it quickly. Still, Aldrich knew he was close to the bottom of the inmate pile, and somewhere in his heart he must have had aspirations, some wish that he could appear tougher and harder and more convictlike. His secret dream became clear after a young convict named Martinez got off fish row and was assigned to the kitchen.

  Martinez was in his late teens, close in age and size to Aldrich. He had black, wavy hair and an olive complexion; if it hadn’t been for his last name I might have taken him for a delinquent French or Italian boy. He became the kitchen relief man, and I assigned him anywhere I needed him. Some days, when Stutzke fell behind in his potato-and-onion duty, I sent Martinez over to help him; he could help while sitting down, form-fitting himself to whatever wall, floor, or sack of potatoes he could find, forever setting new standards for sloth.

  It was there, by Stutzke, that Aldrich came to know Martinez. Perhaps his admiration for Martinez mixed with more than a little jealousy of his cigarette-rolling abilities, because Martinez could roll with the best. Unlike Aldrich, who often had to pause in his cigarette building to wipe the sweat off his forehead, Martinez was unhurried beauty. He held the paper in his left hand and gave the pouch a little shake so that the tobacco floated down like snow. As Martinez rolled, he could carry on a conversation, too, or, if he chose, he could look away for a moment, both feats that would forever elude Aldrich. After rolling, Martinez gave the paper a quick lick and pressed the edges together, and—behold!—a cigarette that might have been a Camel rested between his fingers, waiting to be lit and enjoyed as it burned slowly and evenly down to the very end.

  This was more than enough to start Aldrich on the road to hero worship, but soon he had something else to respect—Martinez had mastered the fine art of disappearing from his workstation. And taking Aldrich with him.