Forty Days at Kamas

by Preston Fleming

  Helen knocked gently on the half–open door and entered the dimly lit bedroom. She sat at the foot of the bed.

  "You've slept for nearly twelve hours, Claire."

  Claire gave a weak smile.

  "Do you remember where you are, sweetheart?"

  The girl nodded.

  "I have some breakfast for you in the kitchen. It's not much, but it will keep you going till we get to town. Are you hungry?"

  Another nod.

  "Come with me then. I think we need some talking time."

  Helen gathered Claire's dirty clothing and carried it out with her. In the kitchen, she had filled a plastic tub with hot soapy water and began washing the corduroy trousers by hand. She picked the turtleneck off the floor but hesitated before dropping it into the tub. Tucked inside was a zippered travel wallet that contained Claire’s passport, national I.D. card, photocopies of correspondence with her grandparents, and two folded ten–dollar bills. Helen removed the passport, examined it quickly and stuffed it back into the wallet. Then she tucked the wallet inside a cereal box at the rear of the kitchen cabinet and closed the door.

  Claire trudged along behind her and took a seat at the kitchen counter opposite a bowl of hot oatmeal. Without looking up or testing the first spoonful she began to eat.

  "Claire, I wish we had lots of time for this but I'm afraid we don't."

  Seeing her guest stop eating long enough to look up at her, Helen continued.

  "I know it's hard to know whom to trust sometimes. Without your mom and dad around, it's extra hard. Claire, I may not be your mother, but once, a long time ago, I had a daughter your age. If my little girl were ever lost in a strange place, the thing I'd want more than anything in the world would be for some good person to take her in for a while and help her find her way back to me.

  "So here you are, and here I am, and you need help getting back to where you belong, and I'm ready to help you. But for me to do that, you need to tell me some more about yourself. Do you think you could do that?"

  Claire let out a demure burp, covered her mouth with her hand and giggled.

  "I guess I can," she answered. "But could I have some more oatmeal first?"

  Guided by Helen's gentle questioning, Claire told the story of her twelve–year–old life, starting with her birth into a family in which nearly every adult on both sides of the family had earned an advanced degree and achieved success in business, engineering, or law. She told of a contented childhood in a small town with plenty of friends and of her room in the stone farmhouse near Sewickley with a sweeping view of forest and farmland.

  Then she told of how her father had cut his own pay several times to keep his company from going out of business and of her mother's return to work in Pittsburgh when taxes and inflation made it impossible for the family to survive on her father's earnings alone. And she told of how she had missed her friends after the private school they attended had been forced to close its doors under the President–for–Life's latest education reform plan.

  When Helen asked what had made her leave Pennsylvania and travel all the way to Utah, Claire explained that, for as long as she could remember, her grandparents and aunts and uncles had been fighting with the government over money and taxes. During the Events, her grandparents had been forced to sell their landholdings to the state of Pennsylvania and, not long afterward, each of her adult relatives had decided to emigrate to England or Chile except her mom and dad. And they would have gone, too, if her dad been able to sell his company.

  After years on the edge of insolvency, he had finally locked the factory doors and sold what was left for enough to cover the family's emigration taxes and exit visas. But when he had gone to the bank to collect, the security police had arrested him and canceled the entire family's exit visas. Since then, Claire's mother had struggled to get the exit visas reinstated, only to be arrested herself at the Philadelphia airport along with Claire’s little sister, Louisa.

  Helen reached out and clasped Claire's hands in hers.

  "Don't worry, Claire, we'll find them. It took me a while to find where they took my husband, Alec, but I found him. And I'll bet we can find your dad, too, if we try."

  "Do you really think so? You're not just saying that to make me feel better?"

  "Honest. Scouts' honor."

  Claire looked puzzled.

  "Sorry, I guess you're too young to remember the Girl Scouts. Anyway, it may take a little time before we figure things out. Meanwhile, we'll need to put you to work. So, tell me, what sorts of things do you know how to do? Have you ever done chores around the house or odd jobs for your neighbors?"

  "I've done some babysitting for the family across the street. And I help Mom in the kitchen sometimes."

  "What sort of things in the kitchen?"

  "I know how to set the table and wash dishes and clean up after dinner. And polish the silver. And I can cook a little."

  "I wouldn't mention the silver polishing if I were you. But what dishes can you cook? Eggs? Bacon? Pancakes?"

  "All of those. And just about anything that kids like to eat. You know, hamburgers, hot dogs, homemade pizza."

  "Can you sew?"

  "I took some lessons once. And my mom taught me how to make napkins and pillow cases on her sewing machine."

  "Claire, it sounds to me like you're even more qualified than I thought. You know, a hundred years ago, well–bred girls not much older than you were sent off to wealthy people's homes to learn how to run a proper household before they married. Of course, since the Events, there aren’t many homes like that around, but with all the government people posted in the valley, perhaps there might be a General's wife or a Colonel's wife who could use some help. How would that kind of work suit you?"

  "Okay, I guess," Claire answered with downcast eyes. "But I'd much rather stay here with you. Couldn't I just live here and be your helper?"

  "There's nothing I would like more, my dear. But my tiny business is barely enough to feed me, let alone the two of us. No, I think what we need to do is to find us a good home for you to work in for a while. Let's talk to Dorothy this afternoon when we go back to the station, shall we?"

  "Couldn't we wait just a few more days? I'm still kind of scared."

  "Scared? A brave girl like you who's come out here alone all the way from Philadelphia?"

  "What if the police come for me like they did for my dad? They'll put me in jail, won't they? Then I'll never be able to find my mom and dad."

  Claire's eyes brimmed with tears and she hid her face in her hands. Helen drew an arm around Claire's shoulder to console her.

  "I understand. It's natural to be afraid when you've been separated from your parents. But let's look at your choices: If you go back to Philadelphia or start looking for your dad on your own, sooner or later the police will pick you up. When they discover who you are, they may send you to where they're holding your mother and sister or they may decide to put you in a juvenile detention facility somewhere. Not a good idea. On the other hand, if you stay here and let me help you, we can contact your grandparents overseas and let them know where you are while we're looking for your parents. Then, together, maybe we can sort things out. But for that to happen, we need to buy some time. So, are you with me?"

  Claire frowned as she considered the decision.

  "I'm with you," she replied, then slowly wiped away her tears.

  "Okay, then. It's a deal," Helen answered with a cheerful smile. "Come, now, finish your oatmeal so we can find you some clean clothes to wear till yours are dry. Then you can start helping me prepare the things we're going to sell tonight at the railway station."

  CHAPTER 6

  "In any country, there must be people who have to die. They are the sacrifice any nation has to make to achieve law and order."

  —Idi Amin Dada, Ugandan dictator

  FRIDAY, MARCH 8

  An electric school bell mounted on the barracks wall erupted without warning and harassed me out of a deep a
nd dreamless sleep. The clanging penetrated every corner of my brain, distracting me from the throbbing pain in my lower back and the ache in my arms and shoulders from the previous day's snow shoveling. I rolled slowly out from under the bunk and surveyed my new home in the pre–dawn darkness.

  Like the transit barracks, it was a simple rectangular box of flimsy prefabricated construction with no interior walls or partitions. It was smaller than the transit barracks, however, being designed to sleep little more than half the number of prisoners. I counted three closely packed columns of triple–decker bunks, twelve beds to a column. The interior walls were covered with graffiti and riddled with holes stuffed with rags and straw.

  A murmur arose from an adjacent row of bunks. I turned to see a knot of prisoners gathering to look at something in a lower berth just across the aisle. One of the men stepped aside long enough for me to see a pool of dried blood on the bare wood floor. A moment later I caught a glimpse of a bloody arm hanging down from the bunk.

  "They slit his goddamned throat," I heard someone say with disgust. "Served him right."

  "I knew there was something fishy about that guy," another voice added nervously. "He gave me the creeps the minute I saw him."

  "Maybe so," a third voice countered. "But every time somebody goes killing a stoolie, the bosses take it out on the rest of us. Just you wait, they'll be shooting another poor bastard like that girl they shot up yesterday."

  "Just a second. Maybe you don't remember the way things used to be around here," added a voice from the top bunk just behind me. "Whiting had stoolies in every work crew feeding him lies about us to save their own skins. Those rats sent the best of our men into the isolator or off to Canada or the mines. Without stoolies, the bosses can't control us and they know it. Personally, I'd rather take a bullet than go back to the way it was."

  The speaker climbed down from his bunk and stood next to me. He was tall and rangy with a narrow face and tranquil blue eyes. He looked about ten years younger than I and seemed in good physical shape for someone who had been in the camps for very long. I placed his accent as being from Wisconsin or Minnesota. He spoke with a confidence that I associated with higher education and I guessed that he might be a high school or college instructor.

  "I just arrived here yesterday, but I'm with you about the stoolies," I told him. "At Susquehanna there were more stoolies than lice and you couldn't say a word without hearing it played back to you during interrogation."

  "Welcome to Kamas. Here at least we have the stoolies on the run," the man said, holding out his hand.

  I shook hands and gave him my name. His was Ralph Knopfler.

  "Do you have a work assignment yet?" he asked me.

  "No. Any advice?"

  "If you have a choice, go for the civilian recycling plant. They have plenty of work for new men and you don't run much of a risk of being reassigned to something worse later. Military recycling's not bad, either. But don’t go near the silver mines in Park City. They’re killers."

  Before I could ask another question, the bell rang a second time and we followed the crowd of prisoners onto the parade ground. The roll was called, announcements were made, and then a work scheduler read out assignments for the new arrivals. I listened intently as the scheduler called out our names and assignments, which had been made based on the rows and columns where we sat on the parade ground. Road construction, snow clearing, waste disposal, and the ore crushing plant were all read out before they reached recycling sites A and B. I was assigned to Recycling Site A, which recovered civilian building materials on a large scale. I congratulated myself on my good fortune and gave a high five to Will Roesemann, who was assigned to the same place.

  Breakfast was served in the Division 3 mess hall, a two–story factory–like building of cinder block construction. Each of us received a plastic bowl of watery oatmeal with a few elusive globules of margarine floating on top and a ration bar we were supposed to save and eat at midday. I estimated the food’s caloric value and wondered how I would survive until dinner.

  Tucking the ration bar inside my coveralls, I picked up an enamel mug. Self–service urns contained a choice of cold water, weak tea, or a thin coffee substitute unlike any I had ever tasted. I opted for the tea and stepped into the dining area, which consisted of row upon row of metal picnic tables bolted to the floor.

  Selecting a seat in a prison or labor camp dining hall, as I had learned from painful experience, demanded caution. Mealtime fistfights were commonplace. At Kamas the warders, easily identifiable by their sleekness and heft, sat at special tables near the windows. Foremen, work schedulers, and other high–ranking prisoners also sat together, as did prisoners under the age of twenty–one.

  Here and there were tables of silent, slow–moving, painfully gaunt figures who could be diagnosed at a glance as goners or last–leggers. These were the prisoners who lacked the physical strength to carry on much longer and already had lost the will to survive. I had known goners at Susquehanna and in the transit camps and had seen how quickly their final decline could take hold. Every self–respecting prisoner feared this fate for himself and his friends.

  Being over forty, I chose a seat for myself at a table of older prisoners with whom I imagined I might have something in common. One of them was the fellow at the barracks who had expressed fear of reprisals for the killing of stool pigeons. He was a small man whose furtive manner and yellowing front teeth made him resemble a rodent. My intuition told me that he might have been an alcoholic or drug abuser before entering the camps. He recognized me and held his hand out across the table.

  "Just in from Susquehanna, eh? I was there once."

  His name was D’Amato and he worked in the warehouse.

  "You're lucky to be in recycling," D’Amato said. "Sometimes you can find stuff that you can sneak back to the camp and sell to the guards. I found a gold chain once that way. Traded it for a sack of ration bars."

  "What's the warehouse like?" I asked.

  "It's the best, believe me. I used to be in snow removal and I nearly froze more times than I can count. Lost the toes to prove it."

  "How did you go about getting a change in duty? Was it hard?"

  D'Amato's neighbor, a towering fifty–something whose aristocratic features showed several days of gray stubble, inclined his head to hear D'Amato's response. D'Amato gave him a sheepish smile and went on.

  "Pure luck. One day you're at death's door, the next day you're in from the cold. There's no way I can explain it. Take Judge O'Rourke, here."

  He nodded respectfully toward the man on his right, a small, ruddy–faced man of about sixty who wore silver wire–rimmed bifocals.

  "The judge and his partner, Judge Richardson, used to be in waste disposal. Nasty, nasty work. Judge O'Rourke came down with cholera and nearly didn't make it. Now they're both appeals clerks and report directly to the deputy warden. Whenever anybody requests a case review, it goes through them."

  "Every prisoner has the right to due process," Judge O'Rourke added gratuitously. "Oh, you'll hear petty grumbling about the appeals process from time to time, but in nearly twenty years as a judge, I have found that it is the criminal's nature to claim unfair treatment."

  I looked at the man in amazement. To claim that due process existed at all for politicals charged under Title 18 rose to the level of a psychotic break with reality.

  "And what might your offense be?" I inquired. "If you don't mind my asking."

  The judge pulled himself upright and cast a disapproving look my way.

  "Title 18, Section 2384."

  "Seditious conspiracy," I noted. We all knew the sections of Title 18 by heart. "Odd, but you hardly look like somebody who'd be involved in that sort of thing. Could it be that someone made a mistake?"

  "There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for what happened in my case," the judge replied stiffly. "I'm sure it will all be straightened out in due course."

  The man was either a Unionist stooge or
certifiably insane. I shoveled down my oatmeal and chugged the rest of my tea to get away from them.

  After breakfast more than a thousand of us assembled at the eastern gate of Division 3 for our march to Recycling Site A. New snow had fallen overnight and knee–high drifts covered sections of the road leading north. Iron gray clouds hung low in the sky as they advanced steadily to the east.

  I felt a mixture of anticipation and fear as I set out for my first full day of work at Kamas. I had already calculated the precise number of days remaining in my sentence but had reassured myself that this was only the first of many work assignments I would have in my camp career. This one might last days or months, but in either case the tedium would be broken by meeting people and gaining knowledge unlike any I had known before.

  After leaving the gate, we marched a distance of nearly five miles in about an hour and a half. As we came within a mile of the recycling site its outlines became clearer. The place seemed indistinguishable from an ordinary junkyard except for its enormous size. As we came closer, certain sections of the site took on the form of auto salvage yards; others of lumberyards, brickyards, and plumbing supply yards, each specializing in the recovery of a different class of materials. To the rear, a huge structure the size of an airplane hangar opened to receive a flatbed tractor–trailer.

  As the head of our column reached the site's outer perimeter fence, a metal gate slid open on tracks to admit us. Group by group, work teams peeled off to their regular worksites, leaving the newcomers behind. We halted and counted off by fives to form fresh squads. Roesemann and I ended up on different teams. Still, I found some familiar faces in my twenty–man work team, including the Texan, Jerry Lee. Our leader was the same Ralph Knopfler whom I had met in the barracks before roll call.