Forty Days at Kamas (17 page)

I tried to console myself with the memory of Ben Jackson's dream. He had foretold that I would be out of Kamas by summer. But perhaps the dream meant that I would leave Kamas under transfer to a northern logging camp where survival was measured in weeks or months. I resolved not to let negative thinking carry me away but fear had already left its mark. I feared not only for myself but also for my wife and daughters, whom I might never see again, and for camp friends like Jerry Lee and D.J., who might be drawn into the abyss because of me.

I interrupted this tailspin of worry only when I heard someone moaning in a nearby bunk. I listened hard and through the gloom I saw John D'Amato's chest heave in rhythm with the sobs.

"Is that you, D'Amato?" I whispered.

No reply.

"If you don't want to talk about it, then how about keeping the noise level down? The rest of us need our sleep."

"Not me. I'm staying up," D’Amato answered through his sobs.

"Don't be an idiot," I told him.

"If I sleep, they'll come and kill me."

"The damned door is locked, D'Amato. Besides, they’re not coming for anyone until morning. Go to sleep."

"Not the guards. The vigilantes."

"The who? Stop babbling."

"The ones who slit people’s throats. You know them, Paul. They're your friends."

Ah, yes, I did know. And, apparently, others could see that I knew.

After a few moments, D'Amato stopped whimpering. Not long afterward I fell asleep. But it was a troubled sleep. I dreamt of the nightly beatings at Susquehanna and the howling winds in the brickyard and of boarding a prison train for the Arctic Circle.

In the morning, I still had not shaken off a sense of impending doom. I looked across the aisle to D'Amato's bunk. It was empty.

At the latrines, I overheard prisoners talk knowingly about the coming prisoner transfer. Some expected the transferee count to go as high as a 500 or 1,000. Others vowed that they would run into the wire rather than be shipped off to the Yukon or Hudson Bay.

Not until I returned to the yard did I learn what had happened to D’Amato.

"There were two in our barracks," I heard someone say in the next row. "There's not a barracks that didn't lose at least one."

"Suicides?" I asked.

"Executions. The vigilantes must have been preparing a long time for this. I'd say they took out at least thirty stoolies. Knifed, strangled, smothered, garroted–you name it. Now we're really in for it."

"Keep an eye peeled for trucks parked outside the gates," someone said. "That's how you'll know a transfer is coming."

I thought of D'Amato's empty bunk and felt nausea overtake me. Even though roll call would begin in another minute or two, I ran back to the barracks and pulled the blankets off D'Amato's bed. One side of the mattress was soaked in dark, half–congealed blood. While I lay sleeping, someone had walked past me and cut his throat only a few feet away. I threw the blanket onto the floor in disgust and ran back to the yard for roll call.

An unusual silence reigned as the remaining 2,500 prisoners in Division 3 took their places on the parade ground. The guards and warders stood in their usual positions and eyed us warily.

Then the voice of one of the chief warders came through the loudspeaker.

"The following prisoners will rise and take two steps forward. Bravo–0638. Romeo–8996. Foxtrot–7334. Whiskey–0885…"

After the fourth number was called, I didn't need to listen anymore. I stood and took my two steps forward.

As soon as the last number was called, the columns were sent off to the worksites. A squad of warders led nine of us into a waiting van.

We sat opposite each other on two long wooden benches inside the windowless van. Some faces were familiar but the only man I recognized in the dim light was Gary Toth.

"Gary, they wouldn't be doing a transfer with just nine prisoners, would they?" I asked.

"This is no transfer, my friend. We're headed for the isolator. Count your blessings."

"Some blessing," I muttered.

"Don't be greedy," Toth snapped. "The bosses aren't going to let us off without at least some punishment. The only question is how much. What would you prefer? The isolator or a bullet in the back of the neck?"

"A bullet? For going out on strike?" I asked in disbelief.

"For God's sake, Wagner, where have you been? For killing stoolies, man! Over thirty in one night! That's got to be some kind of record." Toth accepted a triumphant high–five from the prisoner across the aisle.

"But I had nothing to do with it!" I protested.

"Okay, maybe not stoolies, but a warder is close enough. They found your pal Renaud face–down on his bunk this morning with a wire around his neck."

The prisoner across the aisle from Toth gave a devilish laugh and I could not stop myself from smiling.

"You ever been in an isolator before, Wagner?" Toth asked.

I shook my head.

"They don't get much worse than the one here in Kamas," he warned, "but you can beat it if you keep the right mental attitude. Just remember, the guards are required to give you enough food and water to keep you alive. And even at this time of year, it won't get cold enough to kill you as long as you stay healthy. And as for the tricks your mind will play on you, don’t pay any attention. You'll snap out of it soon enough once they turn you loose. Remember, it's only a week."

We heard someone unlock the padlock and then the van's rear doors flew open. We were parked at a loading dock in a bleak courtyard enclosed on all sides by sixteen–foot cinder block walls. One by one, each of us was led by a quartet of armed guards across the loading dock, through a doorway and down a flight of stairs to a massive steel door. The moment the door opened, I felt a rifle butt slam between my shoulder blades.

I followed the two guards along a dank corridor down the middle of which ran an evil–smelling drainage trough. Beside the steel door to each cell stood a rusty steel gym locker. When we reached cell number 8, a guard instructed me to remove my hat, boots, and all my clothes except my underpants and undershirt. I stuffed the clothes into the locker.

The chill air induced shivering within seconds. I found myself wondering what the lice would do now that they no longer had any place to hide.

The guards opened the outer door to my cell. A steel inner door contained a recessed compartment at about knee height large enough to hold a daily ration of bread and water. Access to the compartment was controlled by a hinged metal flap that only the guard could lock and unlock. In the brief moment when the cell's inner door opened and I was shoved inside, I could see by the corridor’s dim light that the cell was about eighteen feet deep by six feet wide with a rudimentary porcelain toilet just inside the door and a wooden bench at the far end. I had to step over a six–inch doorframe to enter.

When I set down my foot I discovered that the floor was covered with three inches of ice–cold water that quickly numbed my feet and made my ankles ache. The odor of mildew from the walls and ceiling and of sewage from the open toilet was overpowering.

The cell's inner door closed behind me, leaving only the faintest glow of light around the doorframe. I waded through the icy water, reaching out to the slime–covered walls to keep my balance. At last I stepped onto the bench and squatted with my back to the rear wall, my arms hugging my knees.

A few minutes later, having found it difficult to remain upright, I experimented with lying on my side and bringing my knees up to my chest in a sort of fetal position, with each hand tucked into the opposite armpit. But I couldn't hold that position, either. Finally, I sat with my back against the wall and stretched my legs out on the bench. Before long, I felt the circulation being cut off from my lower limbs. Still, I found the numbness preferable to the cold and closed my eyes to catch a few minutes of sleep.

As I might have expected, the chill air, the hard bench and the insidious dripping from the ceiling made sleep impossible. I dredged my memory for songs to sing but, after a few verses, I didn't like the sound of my own quavering voice, so I hummed instead. Soon I felt the need to urinate, which meant dipping my feet into the cold water again and wading back across the floor. The muscles on the soles of my feet cramped so severely on my return that I collapsed onto the bench with pain.

I tried to control my mounting irritation at the dripping sound by counting each drop in the vain hope that this would at least help me fall asleep. But the ploy was only partially successful and I drifted in and out of a shallow sleep, alternately soothed and agitated by the steady dribble.

This pattern went on for several hours before I heard a clanking behind the steel door and saw a dim glow coming from the food receptacle. Wading across the cell, I reached inside and found two foil–wrapped meal bars and a plastic pitcher of water. I downed a third of the pitcher in a single draft, then brought the meal bars back with me to the bench. For many minutes I weighed the alternatives of eating both bars at a single sitting or saving the second bar for later. Not certain whether the bar would remain available if I returned it to the food niche and having no other dry place to keep it until I was ready to eat, I decided to devour both bars at once and to wash them down with half the water remaining in the pitcher.

After my meal, I lay down on my side across the bench and imagined myself lying in the warm sand of a sun–drenched Hawaiian beach with foaming waves lapping rhythmically at my feet until I drifted off to sleep.

C
HAPTER
16

"The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together."
—Hannah Arendt,
Eichmann in Jerusalem

FRIDAY, MARCH 22

Claire led the way along the foot track to Helen's cabin. It was early afternoon and the sun was laboring hard to melt the two feet of snow that covered the hillside.

"Look, Claire, deer tracks," Martha called out. "It's a regular deer highway."

"Helen says she needs a dog to keep them away," Claire replied, "but she can't afford to feed one."

As they rounded a grove of pines, Helen's cabin came into view.

"What a delightful setting!" Martha exclaimed. "Do you think she's in?"

"Helen’s always here this time of day," Claire replied. "She's probably in the kitchen getting ready to meet the early train from Denver."

Claire knocked and a moment later heard light footsteps crossing the floor.

The door opened. Helen beamed with pleasure at seeing Claire dressed in her newly cleaned and patched red parka.

"Don't be strangers, come on in!" Helen greeted them.

She led them into the kitchen where she was weighing out and packaging dried herbs the way she had shown Claire.

"I hope we aren't intruding," Martha began. "Claire and I needed your help so we decided to come up and ask for it in person."

"I'm glad you did," Helen replied. "Would you like some chamomile tea? I just made a pot."

"I'd love some," Martha answered as she surveyed the cabin’s neat but austere interior.

At a nod from Helen, Claire set off for the kitchen. She came back a few moments later with the pot and three mugs.

"Tell me, Claire, have you started school yet?" Helen asked.

Claire lowered her eyes and said nothing while she filled Martha’s mug.

"We've gone to register," Martha offered, "but I'm afraid we're still facing some administrative obstacles."

"Even in the federal school?"

Martha nodded.

"Doug and I were surprised how rigid they were about letting Claire start classes without her national I.D. card. The principal kept insisting on a full background check, which Doug says could take months. We were hoping perhaps Claire misplaced her documents while she was staying with you."

Helen shot a quick glance toward Claire.

"I truly wish I could help," Helen replied. "But as I've said, Claire seems to have lost her I.D. on the train. She told me it was in a special pouch and that all the papers she had were in it."

"That's what she told me, too," Martha remarked. "Odd that she could lose it if she wore the pouch around her neck."

"Considering the people you run into on the trains these days," Helen said calmly, "it doesn't surprise me at all."

Martha sighed and then turned her attention to Claire.

"Well, I suppose we'll just have to fill out those forms the best we can, won't we?"

"If you wouldn't mind my asking," Helen ventured, "might your husband know some way to overcome the school’s objections?"

"Doug says it’s best not to get their backs up," Martha replied. "His idea is to handle the paperwork through special channels."

"Well, if I can be of any help, let me know. You can't imagine how many government forms I've had to fill out over the years. By now I'm getting pretty good at it."

"Actually, that might be very helpful," Martha said, brightening. "For some reason, getting information from Claire hasn't been easy. Perhaps the three of us could sit down and give it a try."

Claire refilled both mugs, suddenly eager for an opportunity to interrupt.

"Helen, would you mind if I lie down? I don’t feel so well."

Helen reached out to place her hand on Claire's forehead.

"You do seem a bit warm. Why don't you go to your old bedroom and take a short nap? Perhaps you'll feel better afterward."

After Claire closed the bedroom door Martha spoke again.

"Don't worry about Claire's education. We can use home schooling materials from the town schools till fall. By then I'm sure Doug can get Claire a new I.D. card. His office could get new papers for the Devil himself."