Forty Days at Kamas

by Preston Fleming

  The next thing we heard was Warden Rocco declaring a cease–fire and announcing that a delegation from State Security would hold an open meeting in the Division 3 mess hall in exactly one hour. All were urged to attend.

  Jerry Lee and I started for the mess hall right away as the building could hold only about 2,000 prisoners. Along the way we saw Glenn Reineke and a half dozen barracks representatives approach the exterior gate of Division 2. My thoughts went back to our original one–day strike some two months before and how our representatives had been duped into accepting the Warden’s empty promises in exchange for ending the strike. The stakes were far higher this time and it was vital that our representatives be less gullible.

  Three visitors entered the gates promptly at eight o'clock as the sun was sinking behind the western hills. Two wore black State Security uniforms and the third a business suit. None was armed and no bodyguards attended them. Instead, a mixed escort of politicals and thieves accompanied them to the seldom–used speaker's dais at the east end of the mess hall. George Perkins introduced the three visitors and announced that he would be moderator for a question–and–answer session.

  The first of the visitors to be introduced was Brigadier General Jake Boscov, Director of the Corrective Labor Administration's Western Region, based in Denver. He was a short, thick–chested man in his mid–fifties with a square jaw and a ferocious demeanor. The second was Major General Gil Hardesty, from the Operations Division at State Security Department Headquarters in Washington. He was tall and lean, rigid of posture, and had chilling blue eyes set in a hatchet–like face. The third visitor was a small, owlish man with a neatly trimmed black mustache and gold–rimmed glasses dressed in a well–tailored charcoal suit. He was introduced as Kenneth Cronin, Director of the Corrective Labor Administration.

  Within moments of taking their seats on the dais, the expressions of the three men softened and they appeared little different from any other senior civil servants one might see interviewed on the evening news or a Sunday morning talk show. It was hard to imagine them as former henchman of the dreaded William Barry.

  Perkins opened the session by commenting that our visitors had come to conduct a fact–finding mission into prisoner grievances and camp conditions.

  Perkins posed the first question.

  "How much do you gentlemen know about Kamas? I mean, have you come here before? Do you receive periodic reports about what happens here?"

  Boscov took the microphone and answered the question in a surprisingly civil tone.

  "Of course we do. I've visited your camp several times. Since I'm based in Denver, I stay in close touch with Warden Rocco and I'm well aware of the incidents that have taken place over the past few months. All three of us sitting up here have made it a top priority to find out what's been going on at Kamas."

  An angry voice boomed out from the back without waiting to be recognized.

  "If you knew about the strikes, then why have our demands been ignored? And why did the Warden go back on his promises once we went back to work?"

  Cronin took the microphone and gazed calmly out at the unfriendly audience of shaven–headed prisoners.

  "I, for one, have read your list of demands and find them quite reasonable."

  An uneasy shuffling of feet could be heard among the audience.

  A voice behind me whispered incredulously. "Reasonable? Then we aren't rebels after all?"

  Perkins recognized an agitated prisoner in the front ranks.

  "What about the shootings? What will you do to punish the guards who’ve been murdering our men?"

  "Those found responsible will be held to account, I can assure you," Cronin answered. "Unprovoked shootings will not be tolerated."

  A full–figured woman of about forty with a round, tomboyish face stood to speak. Jerry Lee whispered to me that this was Libby Bertrand, chief representative of the women’s camp. She had been arrested for writing a letter to the President–for–Life objecting to his ruinous education reforms. Not long after her arrest her husband suffered a fatal heart attack and her four young sons were dispatched to a state orphanage.

  "Why did the troops beat our women last night while trying to pursue male prisoners into our division?" she demanded. "Do your regulations permit guards to bash unarmed women with rifle butts and clubs?"

  General Hardesty leaned over to speak to Cronin and the microphone picked up his words.

  "That can't be true," he insisted.

  "Then please allow me to show you their injuries, General," Bertrand rejoined. She turned around and gestured for a group of her fellow prisoners to rise. Six women found their way to the dais. As they passed close by I could see the bruises on their faces, necks, and exposed arms.

  The visitors examined each woman in turn and exchanged grave looks.

  "I assure you this will be investigated," Cronin promised.

  "Investigated, my eye!" Bertrand retorted. "The men who did this are beasts and ought to be fired immediately. You can easily find out who they are. Just do it and tell us when it's done!"

  Cronin ignored her outburst. Perkins called for more questions.

  "How about taking the locks off the barracks doors?" an older man proposed.

  "Fair enough," Boscov answered amiably. "They may take a while to remove, but in the meantime I'll tell the warders to stop locking them."

  "Take the numbers off our uniforms! Call us by our names, for God's sake!" a hollow–eyed skeleton proclaimed.

  "I believe we can do that. Jake, that's doable, isn't it?" Hardesty inquired.

  Boscov nodded agreeably.

  "Let the gates between camp divisions stay open," a young man shouted from the rear of the mess hall. "We ought to be able to mix with each other."

  Boscov and Cronin exchanged amused looks.

  "Okay, my friend, mix as much as you like!" Cronin agreed. "Let the interior gates stay open."

  There was a pause as we prisoners tried to comprehend all that the visiting officials had conceded.

  Jerry Lee said under his breath, "Quick, Paul, think of something else while we've got them on the run."

  A sonorous voice demanded attention from the back.

  "Yo! Perkins! We've got a brother here who wants to say something."

  The speaker and another young black prisoner raised a third man by his shoulders. It was Ben Jackson, even weaker and thinner than I had seen him in March when he had told Reineke and me about his dreams.

  "You've made us a slew of promises tonight," Ben said slowly upon gaining his feet. "What I'd like is to know is who we're dealing with. General Hardesty, are you fully empowered to speak for your Department and to see to it that these promises really happen?"

  Hardesty leaned over and spoke into the microphone.

  "Absolutely. Among the three of us, we have full authority to carry out all of the changes we've talked about."

  "Well, so far this year, including last night, I've counted over sixty unarmed prisoners shot in cold blood by your men. Tell me, General, if the Department, in its great wisdom, ordered you to shoot another sixty of us tomorrow, would you carry out that order?"

  Hardesty was silent. Having risen to the rank of general officer under William Barry, he could be expected to understand that no order from Headquarters could be ignored. If he said yes, there could be little doubt that his answer would find its way back to Washington and would be waiting in his personnel file for the day when someone wanted his head on a platter. But if he said no, he would destroy his credibility with the prisoners.

  "Ken, would you like to take that one?" Hardesty asked.

  "I make it a rule not to answer hypothetical questions, Mr…¨"

  "Jackson. Ben Jackson," Ben replied boldly. "I kind of figured you'd want to know my name. But I'm not worried about that. I'm pretty much a goner already. Besides, Mr. Cronin, I think I know your answer."

  The visitors made no reply. They’d shoot and we all knew it.

  Perkins cal
led for more questions. There were none.

  As we were leaving the mess hall I listened to the other prisoners.

  "So what if they're lying?" one man remarked. "We got what we wanted. We raised hell for a couple days and now we'll have to pay for it. Let's take our lumps and get on with life."

  Another dismissed the meeting as a diversionary tactic and expected a full–scale attack in the morning.

  But most of the prisoners accepted at face value what the visiting bosses told them.

  "They don't seem like such bad men, on the whole," they said. "Let's see what happens."

  On our way back to the barracks I griped to Jerry Lee about the credulous majority. How could they fall for the same trick time after time?

  "Don't be hard on the weak–minded, Paul," Jerry Lee answered. "Blind faith is the only thing that keeps them going. After every disappointment they've got to raise a fresh batch of it or they'll soon be goners."

  "If they keep putting their faith in men like Cronin and Boscov, we'll all be goners," I replied.

  CHAPTER 26

  "Sometimes democracy must be bathed in blood."

  —Augusto Pinochet, Chilean dictator

  TUESDAY, MAY 21

  DAY 3

  By morning my pessimism seemed amply justified. The conversations I overheard outside the mess hall indicated that most prisoners favored an immediate return to work. The fact that nearly everyone went back to his barracks that night instead of manning the barricades confirmed it. Though many of us doubted the visitors’ promises, our misgivings were not sufficient to outweigh our need to believe that things might somehow get better.

  My fellow politicals in Division 3 appeared nervous at roll call, just as we had been before the two earlier strikes. Through the open gate we could see that the men in Division 2 looked equally on guard. The unusually high number of men lining up for sick bay was a further sign of tension. Then George Perkins arrived to announce that our elected representatives had reached a settlement with Director Cronin that called for all prisoners to return to work.

  Suddenly the tension drained away and the usual submissive mask reappeared on most prisoners’ faces. Except for the hard–liners, who clenched their teeth.

  Signs that we might have made a terrible mistake by giving in did not appear until we began our march out the camp gate to the recycling site. Following not far behind was a column of three or four hundred female prisoners. Additional columns of women led toward the other worksites. With the apparent exceptions of the jails and dispensaries, the entire camp was being evacuated. Later, as we climbed a hill that gave us an overview of the camp, we spotted a procession of heavy trucks waiting to enter Kamas from the west.

  At the time, I didn't give much thought to the trucks because I was fast approaching the spot along the roadside where I was to leave a hollowed–out stick with a message for Helen Sigler. From the moment we left the camp gate, my attention had been focused on the guards, warders, and attack dogs that marched alongside us. Today the guards were positioned at intervals of twenty yards along the column. As luck would have it, their vision was hampered by the cloud of dust that we kicked up as we trudged along the dirt road.

  I unzipped my coveralls a few inches, inserted my hand as if to scratch my chest and palmed the hollow stick. The nearest guard was fifteen yards ahead of me. I faked a stumble over an imaginary rock and, as I bent down, let the stick roll off to the edge of the road as I had practiced dozens of times before. If anyone had been watching, I doubted he would have seen a thing.

  Our arrival at the recycling site was uneventful except for the close attention we paid to the approaching women. Our spirits soared at the prospect that they might be assigned to work with us. Our hopes were quickly dashed, however, when a warder announced that the women would be doing cleanup duty only in areas emptied in advance of all male prisoners.

  The moment we arrived at the brickyard, I scanned the strip along the perimeter fence where Sigler's widow had agreed to toss a brick fragment overnight with her coded message. As I carried my load between the brick pile and the pallet yard, I looked for a peculiarly shaped and marked brick fragment. I found it on my third trip to the pallets, tossed it into my hod and a few moments later slipped it inside my coveralls. The rest of the morning went by slowly as I speculated about what I might learn when I decoded the message concealed inside.

  After lunch, the work team in the neighboring section of the brickyard withdrew and was replaced by a platoon of women who set about gathering trash. At the time, I was teamed up with a young Mexican–American car thief named Jimmy Vega to strap clay bricks into bundles using a steel banding device. As it happened, both of us were paying more attention to the women than to our work and failed to notice a defective fastener that caused the steel band to snap open, slicing into both my hands and tearing a deep gash in Jimmy's cheek and temple. The foreman, seeing blood gushing from our wounds, called for guards to drive us to the camp dispensary.

  I have always reacted badly to the sight of my own blood. As I watched the bloodstain soak through the shop rag the foreman had given me to wrap around my hands, I felt increasingly light–headed and had to take deep breaths to keep from passing out. While Vega held his rolled–up undershirt against his bloody face and waited stoically for our ride to end, I gazed out the window to find something–anything–that would take my mind off my wounds. By the time we closed within a few hundred yards of camp I had found it.

  During our brief absence the camp had become a beehive of activity. The clever officials of the Corrective Labor Administration apparently had spared no pains to restore the damage we had done to the camp the night before. Every officer, guard, warder, and contract worker must have been pressed into service to prepare the camp for our return. As we learned later, security men who had lost the habit of manual labor years ago pushed wheelbarrows and carried hods. The more skilled among them took up trowels or hammers. Skilled tradesmen arrived from nearby military units and civilian workshops to repair metal gates and to change locks. Men in hydraulic cherry pickers replaced bulbs in broken flood lamps.

  As we drove the short distance from the camp's outer perimeter into the Service Yard the extent of their work became more impressive. The breaches in the walls were largely bricked shut. Prohibited zones were being marked with lime twenty feet from each wall. Precast concrete fence posts had been installed along the perimeters of the prohibited zones and barbed wire strung between them. Sandbag bunkers were being built at strategic spots around the yard. It was remarkable what wonders these men could achieve when the brass was watching.

  The guards who had driven us into camp paid no attention to the construction and made no attempt to conceal any of it from us. They led us into the crowded waiting room of the old dispensary, stayed long enough for the receptionist to sign us in and left. After a while the nurses admitted us into the treatment area and directed each of us to take a seat on a steel examining table.

  Paramedics appeared a few minutes later to disinfect our wounds and stitch them up–without the luxury of anesthesia. I marveled at Jimmy’s fortitude as he endured painful stitches to his face. By the time my own wounds had been stitched and dressed, I was a nervous wreck. Once they had finished, however, I had the consolation of knowing that, for many days to come, my injured hands would exempt me from virtually all manual labor. Jimmy would be lucky if he didn’t have to return to the brickyard the same afternoon.

  Back in the waiting room we learned that no one would be admitted back into the yard until after dinner. Since dinner was at least three hours away, Vega and I looked for a place to sit. We found two chairs near the admitting desk.

  "You boys waiting to be treated?" asked the raw–boned man in his mid–fifties seated next to me. He had the suntanned, leathery face of a cowboy and his drawl seemed to match.

  "Nope. Just came from there," I answered. "How about you?"

  "They worked on me this morning."

  He had g
auze dressings on his forehead, nose, and neck.

  "Melanomas," he continued, anticipating my question. "Malignant. I don't even want to know where they’ve spread to. I suppose I'll feel a lump somewhere one of these days and then it'll be downhill fast."

  "Well, if you don't want to die of cancer, there are plenty of other choices around here," I replied. "I'm Paul Wagner. This is my partner, Jimmy."

  "Earl Cunningham. What are you in for?"

  "Seditious conspiracy," I replied. "A fiver. And you?"

  "Insurrection, treason, conspiracy, serving a foreign power. Take your pick. I've got a lifetime, no–cut contract."

  "What did you do to get them so pissed off at you?"

  "I emigrated," Cunningham answered. "Then I came back and fought with the partisans. There's more, but I won't bore you."

  "Wow. How long have you been here?" I asked.

  "Four years. My wife and I and my oldest son were in Mexico for a meeting when the Mexicans signed their secret treaty with the Unionists. We never knew what hit us. The Federales arrested us at our hotel. The next day I was in chains on a military plane to Denver."

  "What about your wife and son?"

  "The last I saw my wife she was on the same plane, drugged out of her mind. My son died during our first week in Colorado."

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "You know, Paul, you're the only person who's said 'sorry' to me in years. I'd almost forgotten the word existed."

  "It must be the effects of being a free man for a day. Funny how civilization starts to creep back in."

  We both fell silent for a moment as we thought of the extraordinary events of the past two days.

  "I don't know about you, Paul, but I want it back," Cunningham went on. Now that I've tasted freedom again, I'd rather die than go back to the mines."

  "You might just get your wish," I told him. "The next time we take them on they’re likely to turn this place into a free fire zone."

  "I don’t care. Watching those kids bust into the Service Yard taught me something important. By God, the next time they head for the wall, I'm going with them. I don't care how far I get. So long as I’m facing the enemy I'll feel like I died a free man."