“Knock it off!” one shouted. “Get him out of here! That’s enough of this shit!”
I don’t know who yelled, but two of the guards spun Guard around and marched him out the door. He thrashed around, trying to get away, but the other guards were stronger, and they finally got him outside. Big, bad Guard looked like a convict being dragged off to the hole. I found it very satisfying.
The men holding me had turned me around and pushed me back into the kitchen. As I walked toward the bakery, a few convicts laughed and applauded. It didn’t give me any pleasure; I hadn’t gotten mad for their benefit.
I stood in the bakery, looking down at the cake. Someone had to see it. If all I did was complain to Bill Perdue or Lieutenant Covey, then Guard would trot out his pruno story. The guards in the officers’ mess would only remember that I’d gone off my nut and started yelling. The degree of my anger would seem inexplicable. I picked up the sheet pan and stalked out. As I passed through the officers’ mess I held the pan down and showed the guards.
“This is what that asshole does to cake,” I said.
It’s not a good idea to put the words “asshole” and “cake” in the same sentence, not if you want to be taken seriously as a human being, and the guards must have laughed when I left.
I went through the gate and headed across the yard. It was nearly fall again, a warm and beautiful day, but in only a matter of weeks the yard would feel the first brush of snow. I hurried along in the sunshine, the cake held high. I intended to drop this sheet pan on the desk of associate warden Gary Boyd. I’d fix Guard’s wagon, all right. Once Boyd took a gander at the destruction of this chocolate cake, there would be hell to pay. Maybe Guard would get his ass fired.
No, he wouldn’t.
The truth is, no one cared what convicts ate. No one cared what it tasted like and no one cared what it looked like, so why not toss raw meat over the wall and let them kill each other over it?
Because that wasn’t my job.
I was a cook, and cooks treat food with respect. It’s as simple as that. I did the best I could with the ingredients I had, and I made it look as appetizing as I could, no matter where I worked or who I served.
Boyd’s office door was open. He was inside, doing some paperwork. I knocked and leaned in.
“Excuse me, Mr. Boyd,” I said. “Have you got a minute?”
He looked up at me, his face expressionless. Boyd never visibly reacted to anything, and he might have been a statue but for something in his eyes that suggested an ever-present headache in progress.
“Come in,” he said. He probably didn’t want me to come in; I doubt if he ever wanted anyone to come in, because all anyone ever had for him was a problem. Well, too bad—that was his job.
My intention had been to slam the sheet pan down, but I had too much respect for Boyd to do that. He wouldn’t have tolerated it anyway.
I showed him the cake and told him my story. I didn’t keep it short, either; I recall at one point saying something to the effect that one of the greatest weapons in a cook’s arsenal was the presentation of the food. God bless Boyd—he didn’t laugh at me. He listened, giving away nothing of what he thought. When I was done, he asked me to step outside for a moment while he called over to the guards I’d left in the officers’ mess.
I stood in the hallway, waiting. A few minutes later, Guard showed up. He didn’t look at me or say anything, he just knocked on Boyd’s door.
Boyd told both of us to come in. Guard, completely predictable, immediately started telling Boyd about his search for pruno. Boyd stopped him.
“I don’t need to hear any of that,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what happened. I don’t want it to happen again.”
Then Boyd turned into a prison Solomon, talking to Guard first.
“From now on, if you want to search for pruno, let Mr. Bonham know that’s what you’re doing. If you want a piece of cake, let Mr. Bonham get it for you.”
Done with Guard, he turned to me. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d done anything wrong, and I was surprised that, if anything, Boyd spoke more harshly to me than he had to Guard.
“Mr. Bonham,” he said, “don’t ever start any argument in front of the inmates again. If you have a complaint, talk to one of the lieutenants or a captain, or come to me.” His eyes bored into me; headache or not, he wanted me to know I’d made a huge mistake. “And don’t ever,” Boyd instructed, “walk out of the kitchen again without someone to take your place.”
Whomever Boyd had spoken to in the officers’ mess had given him the complete picture. He was right, of course. I’d done something stupid. I’d completely abandoned the only real reason I was there in the first place: to keep an eye on the convicts. I felt my face turn red.
Boyd dismissed us. I picked up my sheet pan and we left, Guard walking out ahead of me. I closed the door behind us. We’d gone about fifteen feet when he turned. He pointed a finger at me and spoke in an angry whisper, his sweet, cake-frosting breath blowing in my face.
“I hope someday one of these fucking inmates has you at the back of a walk-in with a knife to your fucking throat,” he said. “And I hope they call me to save your fucking ass.”
He walked away.
I was exhilarated. I’d released a lot of anger and tension that had been building up all summer. This was a new me, fearless and ready to fight. The high lasted for several days.
It took me a long time to realize that the destroyed cake was only part of my anger that day—that it stemmed from almost a year of pent-up frustration at the prison. I was angry that Steven Greene had hung himself, angry about dead skunks and guards who wrecked cakes. Most of all, I was angry at myself for breaking rules, and deeply ashamed that I’d allowed Hannigan to beat Weldon.
But at that time I didn’t realize all of this.
Two or three days after the cake incident, I woke one morning for work and went into the bathroom to shower. As I lathered my hair, I had the strangest sensation that my hands were shaking. I held them in front of me and stared; I couldn’t see any movement, but I could feel it inside: a tremor. The feeling ran up my arms to my elbows. My jaw, too, seemed to tremble.
I didn’t wonder if I was having a heart attack or drinking too much coffee. I knew what it was; I was having some kind of breakdown.
I went to the 4B’s that morning and had coffee with Bill and Charlie. If I hadn’t been too proud, I would have told them about the tremor. Bill probably would have told me to take a few days off. Charlie, based on his own experience, might actually have been able to help me. But I knew it was over; I was done at the prison.
The tremor came and went all day. By that night, I was ready to tell Anne. After dinner, I told her it was time for me to give my notice, and for us to move on.
“Maybe it is,” she said, eyeing me closely.
She didn’t ask why. I don’t think she cared, anyway; she knew something was wrong and she wanted to get me away from the prison and out of Deer Lodge.
I gave two weeks’ notice to Bill the next day. He didn’t ask why, either, but it wasn’t in his nature to ask. Maybe he saw it coming. Maybe he was surprised I’d lasted a year.
I can’t believe that I even gave notice. On my first day, an ex-marine had walked out. But I couldn’t. Despite Charlie’s example—simply admitting he’d had a breakdown, which I admired—I didn’t want anyone to know it was happening to me. At that point, my priority was that no one, not one single person at that goddamned prison, ever be able to say I left because I was scared or had been driven out.
There was no way in hell I was going to give anyone that satisfaction.
34
AND IN THE END
It was my last hour at the prison. I watched the clock, ready to go. I walked around the kitchen, looking at everyone, the way you do when you know you’re never coming back. Stutzke sat on a bag of potatoes, waiting to be patted down for yard time, while Aldrich finished up at his station. Reed and Mackey sta
rted to prepare the evening meal. Mahoney and Earl stayed in the bakery, and Bear swept up out back. Smoky Boy had become the kitchen runner. Only the paroled Walker was missing from my original crew.
I almost said good-bye to Stutzke, but no one except Bill and Charlie knew I was leaving. You don’t get good-bye parties when you work at a prison.
It was almost one o’clock. In a few minutes I would be leaving for the last time, but before I left, I had to talk to big, homely Earl. That morning’s movement sheet showed that Kitty had been taken out of maximum security and sent to the hospital in Deer Lodge; in the middle of the night his appendix had ruptured.
I went into the bakery and asked Earl how he was holding up. How anyone as ugly as Earl could look vulnerable, I don’t know, but he did.
“I’m doing okay,” he said.
“Have you heard anything about Kitty?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Max called for me—I didn’t even ask him to—and I guess he’s going to be okay.”
Earl stared down at the worktable he’d just cleaned. Then a flood of words came.
“Man, Kitty was hurting last night. I didn’t know what was wrong. I called for the guards, but no one came. Shit, I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know what to do. I must have shouted for half an hour.”
I didn’t believe he’d shouted for half an hour, but it must have seemed like it to Earl.
It was nearing one, and I wanted to say good-bye to Bill. I told Earl I hoped Kitty would be back soon and started out of the bakery.
“Hey, Bonham,” said Earl. He cleared his throat and seemed embarrassed. “Thanks for asking.”
“Sure, Earl.”
It was a nice ending, knowing I’d been right about Earl and Kitty. Theirs was a rare prison love story.
I found Bill and thanked him one more time.
“Well, I guess I won’t be seeing you for a while,” he said. “If you ever come through Deer Lodge, give me a call.”
Bill stood and left with me; it was time to pat down the convicts. We parted just outside the door to the officers’ mess as he started searching the crew. It would be close to thirty years before I would see him again.
I crossed the yard for the last time, went through the gates, and left the prison. I’d parked right in front, and I got in my car and headed out of Deer Lodge, almost a year from the day I’d applied for the job. I left in the same lovely fall weather I’d arrived in.
Anne had already departed for Missoula; she’d found a place for us to live and a job at the hospital. Cooking jobs would be scarce, but jobs are always scarce in Montana. I didn’t want to worry about it yet, and when I arrived at our new place, I did nothing for close to a week. Sometime during that week, my hands stopped trembling; they never trembled again.
I still woke up early, and I’d glance at the clock; Bill and Charlie were at the 4B’s, having coffee. During the day I’d look at the time and think, “It’s fifteen minutes till main line,” or “Short line just ended.” That habit lasted for months.
You can leave a prison, but it never quite leaves you.
The memory of Reed followed me everywhere I went. The man at the bank—was he a child molester? What about the guy at the gas station? If I saw a man in the park with a sad-faced little girl, I’d wonder if she was going to be raped that night. Probably not. But I wondered.
Many, many years later, after I had my own child, a son, I’d recovered enough trust in my own judgment that I was willing to leave him with relatives or very close friends. But it was hard. When he was older, old enough to go to sleep-away camp, I drew the line: No, he wasn’t going, and there would be no discussion. Sending him off to some camp counselor I’d never met was unthinkable.
I got used to being teased about my overprotectiveness, and I never explained. How do you tell someone that your son can’t stay overnight because you can’t be certain you wouldn’t be handing him over to a pedophile?
Reed still lives in me, and I’m sick of him.
There were things I missed: the intensity of the prison, the mad laughter and sudden anger, the strange stories and the wonderful rhythm of Bill and Charlie’s friendship. I missed the need to be constantly aware, the sense of being alive at every moment.
And I still miss the pork.
Missoula seemed bland and colorless after the prison, the people ordinary.
I read the paper each morning, deliberately ignoring the want ads. One day I decided it was time and opened the classifieds section. I read through the ads with little interest or energy; it didn’t matter, there was nothing there for me. Nothing exciting, nothing that paid well. Still, I knew I had to do something, and after coffee I drove over to the state employment office on Higgins Avenue. There were a lot of people looking for work, so I took a number and waited my turn to talk to an employment counselor.
I found a chair, one of those nasty plastic chairs, and for a while I just sat. The time crawled by and I thought about leaving, going home to take a nap. Then I noticed a bulletin board on one wall with a hand-printed sign that said “New Job Listings.” I walked over to take a look.
The information for each job was typed on a three-by-five card, pinned to the board in no particular order. Some of the jobs required skills I didn’t have—ads for plumbers, electricians, and such. Some required no skill at all, just a strong back for digging ditches or pushing wheelbarrows full of bricks. A few required at least some college. I scoured the board until one card caught my attention. I read it closely—there was an opening for a cook at the state prison, in Deer Lodge, with good benefits and pay.
I went back to my seat.
Maybe some other young man had seen this card already, and, reading it, heard the far-off call of adventure. Maybe some part of him wanted the thrill of working with genuine bad guys, and perhaps he wondered where Deer Lodge was.
I didn’t wonder. Deer Lodge, Montana, was right where I wanted it to be, eighty-six miles away, fading into the past.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In order to enter the Huffington Post memoir contest I faced a dilemma: the maximum length of the entry was limited to 50,000 words. My manuscript was 108,000 words and I had something over a month to cut more than half my book. I had no ability to do that without help.
I could not have entered the contest, let alone won, without the mind, the heart, and the editing skill of Heidi Swillinger.
Nor could I have won without someone having the strange, brilliant idea of a memoir contest for older, unpublished writers, a contest sponsored by not only The Huffington Post, but AARP and Simon & Schuster as well.
I thank Arianna Huffington, Rita Wilson, and Shelley Emling of The Huffington Post.
I thank Jodi Lipson and Myrna Blyth of AARP.
And I thank Jonathan Karp, Trish Todd, and Kaitlin Olsen of Simon & Schuster. A special nod to my editor, Kaitlin, for the deep reading and thoughtful editing of this book. And for treating me like a grown-up writer.
I also need to thank my agent, Ronald Goldfarb; Jane Anne Staw, my navigator and guide; and Gregory Glover and Narda Zacchinno.
So much is written about the terrible people who work in prison that I also want to acknowledge a few of the fine men who worked at Montana State Prison in 1973/74: Bill Pankratz, Chuck Dawson, Gary Weer, Bill Coates, and Max Rossum. Patterson, Reichle, Collins, and Linder.
Finally, a deep bow to my wife, Louise, and my son, Christopher, for their many years of patience.
Thank you all.
—William Bonham
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born and raised in Seattle, William Bonham spent the first fifteen years of his working life as a professional cook. One of those years was as a cook, on staff, at Montana State Prison. At the age of thirty-one, while working in a restaurant in San Francisco, he almost literally stumbled into doing voice-overs for radio and TV commercials. The pay was much better than cooking and the hours kinder, and he packed away his knives. Now semiretired and still in San Francisco, h
e lives with his wife, Louise, and has one son, Christopher.
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Copyright © 2016 by William Bonham
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First Simon & Schuster ebook edition February 2016
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ISBN 978-1-5011-3951-2 (eBook)
Prisoner in the Kitchen Page 18