Forty Days at Kamas (6 page)

Mills returned after a few minutes with Renaud and six additional warders wielding ax handles. Behind them was a black–uniformed DSS officer whom I had seen during the march from the railway station. It was Major Jack Whiting, the camp's security chief. Whiting stepped ahead of the two warders carrying a battery–powered bullhorn and stopped at the very spot where Lillian had fallen.

"Listen up, prisoners," he said through the bullhorn. "I see that some of you have stopped working. In this camp, those who don't work don’t eat. Nor do they sleep. Nor do they get shelter from the cold or other privileges. Until your work is finished, you will stay here in this yard and receive no evening ration. I will be back in one hour to check on your progress."

As soon as Whiting lowered the bullhorn and turned to leave, the warders moved among us in pairs, whacking any prisoner who did not make a vigorous display of shoveling. They bashed a dozen or more of us to the ground before they succeeded in breaking the informal work stoppage. After that we worked slowly but without interruption, taking extra care to stay away from the wire.

An hour later, the shoveling was completed to Whiting's satisfaction, even though the wind had by now scattered much of the piled snow across the camp yard once more. The warders looked on impassively as we lined up to receive our second meal bar of the day and our permanent barracks assignments. When the last man had received his ration, we were dismissed to report to our new barracks. I looked for Roesemann without success. I was beyond exhaustion, beneath depression. Having no energy left for anything other than claiming a bunk, I set out to find my new home in Barracks C–14.

By the time I arrived, no vacant berths were left. Too tired and cold even to get angry, I found a space on the floor under a bed near the center of the room, gnawed at my ration bar and settled in for the night. Lights went out moments later. I had survived my first day in camp but the experience had been far from reassuring. And tomorrow showed no sign of being any easier.

The last thing I heard before falling asleep was a muffled cry, a momentary creaking of a nearby bed, and the sound of bare feet dropping to the floor and padding quickly across the room. Whatever they were doing to each other sounded dreadful, but I was too spent to care.

C
HAPTER
5

"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions. Only the people have that right."
—Mao Zedong

THURSDAY, MARCH 7

When Claire opened her eyes, she found herself curled between crisp white sheets. She wore the fresh T–shirt Helen had given her and clutched in one arm the gray velour elephant that had traveled in her backpack all the way from Philadelphia. Her body was shivering and when she closed her eyes she remembered that she had been dreaming about last night’s walk through the snowy hills and her encounter with the men in orange overalls.

In her dream, she thought she had recognized her father among the column of prisoners and had tried to pursue him through loose, knee–deep snow up a steep mountain path much like the one that had led to Helen's cabin. The men in her dream were moving much more slowly than the men she had seen on the road, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't keep pace with them. Time after time she strained to get a better look at the prisoner who looked like her father, but most of the time his back was turned to her, and besides, he looked too skinny to be her dad.

Still, there was something about the way he held his head and the way he stooped when he walked that made her pretty sure it was Dad. But she kept falling behind and it made her terribly unhappy because she wanted so desperately to catch up to him and wrap her arms around him and take him home to someplace where they could be a family and she wouldn't need to be afraid anymore.

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."

C
HAPTER
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 and 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."