Forty Days at Kamas (10 page)

"He was still in the Army then, posted to the Defense Attaché's office at the American Embassy. We were married six months later and had two more wonderful years in Paris before Doug was transferred back to the Pentagon. But I'll let Doug take up the story from there, because since we returned it's generally been a matter of where Doug's career has taken us."

Claire felt the joy leave Martha’s voice the moment she mentioned the transfer from Paris. Claire wondered whether love at first sight lasted as long in real life as it did in love stories. She examined Doug’s face closely for clues.

"Okay, my turn," Doug began with relaxed good humor. "First of all, I have to confess that I only got the assignment to Paris on a fluke. If I hadn’t still been on medical hold when the job opened up I’m sure they would have shipped me off to Vladivostok to fight the Chinese. So, for me, getting wounded by the Canucks turned out to be my lucky break."

He gave an uneasy laugh.

"So off to Paris I went. But as much as I enjoyed France, when it was time to come home, I couldn’t stand working in the Pentagon. When I heard State Security was looking for officers with combat experience, I quit the Army and joined on the spot. That was two years ago. We transferred to Heber last summer."

Claire looked at Helen and saw that her expression had suddenly hardened. She seemed to regard Doug Chambers as if he were a poisonous snake.

"And what sort of work are you doing now, Mr. Chambers, if you're at liberty to say?"

"I'm deputy chief at the labor facility over in Kamas."

"And do find that you enjoy that sort of work?" Helen's voice now had a brittle edge to it and Claire sensed that she wasn't the only person in the room to have noticed.

"Why, yes, Mrs….." His voice trailed off seeking her last name but Helen did not offer it up. "I find it highly rewarding. Since I joined the Department, I’ve had a hand in removing some of the most destructive elements from our society and have put them in camps where they can’t do any more harm. I think camps like Kamas do the country an enormous service."

He returned her icy stare.

"But perhaps you see it differently," he went on. "May I ask what sort of work you do?"

"I have a small trade in medicinal herbs and homemade baked goods. I gather the herbs and bake the breads and sell them both in town."

"Medicinal herbs," Doug replied. "How intriguing. Do you work at all with the local health clinic or the military hospital?"

"No. I'm not a doctor," Helen said.

"But still, isn't it still a bit like practicing medicine?" he asked. "Doesn't it require a license to do that kind of thing?"

"Not at all. It’s considered self–treatment."

Doug Chambers nodded slowly and settled back on the sofa with a predatory smile.

"You know, Martha, I find this medicinal herb business fascinating. I can't imagine why the government isn't doing more to promote something like this. You know, I think I'll make some inquiries tomorrow morning at the military hospital about how this fits into the national health care program. And maybe I'll ring the EPA office in Denver. We wouldn't want to use any herbs that were on the endangered species list, now, would we?"

"Make whatever inquiries you like, Mr. Chambers," Helen answered while casting a sidelong glance at Martha. "Now, if you'll excuse us, Claire and I have business to do at the station."

Helen took Claire firmly by the hand and rose to her feet.

Claire appealed with tearful eyes to Martha, who seemed bewildered at the sudden turn in the conversation.

"But, Helen, I was under the impression that Claire would stay here tonight. Have we said something to make you think we wouldn't take good care of her?"

"Not at all, Mrs. Chambers, but we do have other interviews lined up tomorrow that I think we should keep."

"But Dottie said we were your first choice. Why would that have suddenly changed? I don't quite understand what's happening."

Doug Chambers whispered a question to his wife and his wife whispered back. Then Doug spoke to Helen.

"Please don’t go," he said in a conciliatory tone. "I’m sorry if I was rude to you. I didn’t mean to be threatening. After all, this is all supposed to be about Claire, isn’t it? It seems to me that Martha and I have a lot to offer Claire, advantages she might not get living with another family. Why not let her spend the weekend with us? I’ll get out of the way and you and Martha can talk on Monday about where to go from there."

Claire lowered her eyes, folded her hands and prayed to God to give her just this one thing in exchange for all the things he'd taken away. When she looked up again, Helen seemed ready to speak. Her face was pale and her hands trembled ever so slightly.

"Sometimes it's difficult to put strong feelings aside," Helen answered. "But for Claire I will."

She turned to Claire.

"My dear, it's time for me to go off to work. Be on your very best behavior for Mrs. Chambers. I'll try to come by tomorrow afternoon to visit. If not, I'll see you Monday morning."

With that, Claire threw her arms around Helen's waist and buried her face in her dress to hide the tears of gratitude and relief that streamed down her cheeks.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," she whispered quietly to herself before raising her eyes to meet Helen's loving gaze. Then Helen kissed Claire softly on the forehead and left.

C
HAPTER
9

"Mankind is tired of liberty."
—Benito Mussolini

MONDAY, MARCH 11

My fifth day at Kamas was a Monday. Sunday had been a day of rest, when all prisoners were confined to quarters except for meals. In Barracks C–14, most of us went back to sleep after breakfast and remained in bed until dinner to conserve our strength. I spent much of the day thinking about how much I would miss Will Roesemann. He had been a selfless friend and had brought out the best in me at times when, left to my own devices, I might have wallowed in depression and self–pity. Without him, I knew my path would be more treacherous and my chances of survival substantially worse.

At five o'clock Monday morning, we all dragged ourselves out of bed to prepare for roll call and another day of work. All except for one prisoner, a frail–looking fellow in his early twenties who had slit his wrists with a piece of broken glass during the night. The warders examined the corpse to satisfy themselves that this was not another stoolie execution, then ordered two prisoners to drag the remains off to the camp morgue. The rest of us hurried to the latrines so that we would not be late for breakfast or roll call. An hour later we stood in formation on the Division 3 parade ground and assembled for work.

By seven the metal gate had closed behind us at Recycling Site A. This was my third day in the brickyard. As soon as my work team arrived and received instructions from the foreman, I picked up my hod where I had left it Saturday evening and started filling it slowly with clay bricks from the heap near the perimeter fence. When the hod was full, I carried it on one shoulder to the pallet yard and lowered it to the ground. Then I knelt to stack the bricks on the nearest pallet and did it all over again. This was mind–numbing work that should have been done with a forklift. But forklifts were scarce and prisoners were not. So we continued.

At one o'clock, the foreman blew the whistle for our fifteen–minute lunch break. I felt the gnawing ache of hunger as I sat down on a pile of bricks to rest. For this was to be a lunch break without the lunch. As punishment for our hour–long work stoppage when Lillian was shot, Jack Whiting had ordered all new prisoners to be deprived of midday ration bars for three consecutive workdays. This was the third day and I had never experienced hunger as intensely.

So instead of breaking out a ration bar, I sat on a stack of bricks and contemplated what had become of my hands after three days at Recycling Site A. Working in the winter cold without gloves had given them a bluish–gray cast. Even at rest, my fingers remained curled into claws that required superhuman effort to straighten. Tiny shreds of skin hung from my fingertips and the heel of my hand from having handled so many hundreds of bricks. And I looked with disgust at the pits and gouges, now infected, that had caused both my hands to swell. But I also felt relief that the skin was hardening into callous tissue and that none of the nicks was deep enough to cause much bleeding.

I heard a rustle in the dirt behind me and turned my head in time to see Jerry Lee and his friend D.J. Schultz approaching. At twenty–three, D.J. was several years younger than Jerry Lee and looked even younger than that. He was a total smart aleck and cracked jokes at every chance, often at the risk of a clubbing. Before his arrest, D.J. had worked as a mechanic at a government motor pool in Ohio, while D.J. had been a long–haul driver for a nationalized trucking company in Dallas. Both shared a love for sixteen–wheeled tractor–trailers, stock–car racing, and the open road.

The two of them had met on the train to Heber and had become inseparable. All the same, I was surprised that both had managed to land spots at the same worksite and even on the same team. Either they were extremely lucky or they were shrewder operators that I had realized.

"Mind if we share your lunch?" Jerry Lee asked before sitting beside me.

"Sure," I replied. "How about a steaming bowl of three–alarm chili?"

"Don't get me started on chili. I won a chili–eating context once in Galveston. I could eat the stuff every day."

"Pull up a brick, anyway, and get comfortable," I offered. "I've been meaning to ask you boys how both of you managed to get work at Site A when the work assignments were supposed to be handed out randomly."

"Well, not quite randomly," D.J. pointed out. "We figured that since they do everything by counting off, we'd find out how many worksites there were and sit that many spaces apart at roll call. So we got the answer from an old–timer and it worked. Then, once we got here, Jerry Lee switched places with another guy to get us on the same work team."

"I can see that you boys are going to fit in here just fine. Bent minds in a bent system."

"Hell, they put me in here for conspiracy," Jerry Lee said. "The least I can do is live up to the label."

"Conspiracy, hell," D.J. snorted. "You just happened to mouth off to your boss one time too many."

"Well, what about your sabotage rap? All that means is that you were a total screw–up on the job."

"Screw–up, my ass," D.J. retorted. "I was the curve buster who made all the other jack–offs look bad. And now here I am working in a goddamned junkyard, hauling bricks with my bare hands. Some reward."

He wasn't laughing anymore.

Jerry Lee turned to me.

"How about you, Paul? How many years?"

"Same as you," I answered. "A fiver."

"Conspiracy?"

I nodded. "I used to own a vitamin company," I said. "Come the Events, business went downhill fast but I didn’t want to let go. By the time I made up my mind to sell, there weren't any buyers left. I closed it down and applied to emigrate. Apparently, the government hates quitters. State Security arrested me at the bank the day I paid the exit tax and planned to leave. The charge was economic sabotage."

Before Jerry Lee or D.J. could respond, the foreman blew the whistle that signaled the end of the lunch break. They rose to leave.

"Are you guys holding up okay?" I asked them.

D.J. stretched his arms out wide and gave a gigantic roar of a yawn.

"Yeah, we're okay. As long as you do what you're told around here, they’ll leave you pretty much alone," he replied. "There’s too many of us for them to do it any other way."

"Beneath all the craziness, there's a certain order to this place," Jerry Lee added. "You just have to take the time to figure it out. Hell, this morning they even let Major Reineke out of the isolator a day early. I saw him over in the lumberyard a while ago."

Jerry Lee pointed toward the fence. There I spotted Glenn Reineke talking to Ralph Knopfler through the barbed wire. Reineke looked unsteady, but after a week in the isolator, it was a miracle he was on his feet at all. Even from a distance I could see that Reineke carried himself with the total self–confidence of a natural leader. Beneath his inexpressive features I detected a powerful determination that would not be cowed nor diverted from its goal.

As the afternoon wore on, Knopfler stepped up the pace so that our work team would be sure to meet its quota before dinner. From time to time I had to stop and put my head between my knees to avoid feeling dizzy. But whenever I bent over, my lower back pain flared up again. I was back to feeling sorry for myself until I heard screams from across the yard and saw a warder beat a gray–haired prisoner to the ground with a rubber truncheon.

As bad as my afternoon might be, the newcomers on the adjacent work team appeared to have it even worse. Their usual foreman had not appeared for roll call and had been replaced by a warder who was notorious for the sadistic pleasure he took in driving his prisoners to the limit. I had been watching their ordeal for several hours. Any man who failed to keep up with the warder's relentless pace felt the bite of the truncheon. Those who complained were assigned heavier loads. Those who refused an order were beaten into submission.

Several of the older prisoners collapsed and were carried off to the dispensary. More would doubtless have taken that escape route but for a rumor that prisoners beyond the age of sixty who reported to sickbay ran the risk of being euthanized by lethal injection. Some even claimed that the sound of bulldozers during the night came from mass graves being dug in the hills east of camp. Although we had no evidence to support the rumor, many chose to believe it. Preposterous rumors swept through Kamas so often that even sensible prisoners became conspiracy theorists over time.

When the workday finally ended, I was almost as relieved as the men in the neighboring work team to see the warder's abuse come to an end. Knowing that one could be put at the mercy of such a sadist at any moment completely undermined the sense of order that good leaders like Knopfler labored to create.