Prisoner in the Kitchen Read online

  I stood there, breathing hard.

  Deer Lodge was a mile and a half behind and below me. If I turned my head, I could see it sitting in the white valley. From high on this hill it looked like a winter diorama; you could see the little churches and houses surrounded and covered with snow, smoke coming out of the chimneys, and a few cars moving slowly down the highway. Snow and distance had bestowed an icy beauty on Deer Lodge, and even the prison had a cold grandeur.

  Anne was out here, too, ahead of me by a long way, marching through the snow, not winded at all. I’d led the search for the first hour, crisscrossing the hillside, but Anne had paced herself; I’d burned myself out. Now I had to catch up. I picked up a foot and moved on.

  We had trekked out on this freezing day because of something Bill and Charlie had said to me at 4B’s. I’d mentioned that Anne and I were going to get our Christmas tree that night.

  “Where?” Charlie asked.

  I said probably the Christmas tree lot on Main Street. Charlie shook his head.

  “Only a jackass buys a Christmas tree,” Charlie proclaimed.

  Bill, sitting next to Charlie, agreed. “A waste of money,” he said.

  “What I meant,” Charlie continued, “is where are you going to cut one down? If you want a Christmas tree, you just go out in the damned woods.”

  “That’s right,” said Bill. “Just make sure you take one on state land.”

  Charlie sipped his coffee and Bill puffed on his pipe. Why did I have to take a tree on state land?

  “Because if you take one on private land, it’s stealing,” said Bill, “and you could be fired.”

  Although I had no interest in breaking the law, I had no idea where private land ended and state land began. Charlie took a napkin and drew a map to a road southeast of town that led to all the public land anyone could hope for.

  While I was sitting in a nice warm restaurant, cutting down my own tree sounded like fun, kind of old-fashioned and Christmas-y. As was true for most people, all the Christmas trees of my life had been purchased at a lot in a city. This year could be different. I took the map from Charlie, put it in my pocket, and went to work. That day I fell into a kind of Currier and Ives reverie, picturing myself striding out of the woods with a tree over my shoulder.

  When I got off work I headed for the bakery where Anne worked. The icy beauty of Deer Lodge, so evident from a hillside, was absent. It hadn’t snowed for several days and the street was gray, slushy, and dirty. There wouldn’t be any Christmas lights that year—it was the year of the energy crisis—but Deer Lodge had dressed up for Christmas. Simple decorations were strung across the street from the lampposts, the same stars and bells and garlands put up by the city fathers year after year. They were perfect for a small town, but quite a contrast to the decorations I’d seen in San Francisco the year before: the magnificent four-story tree in the City of Paris department store on Geary Street, the enormous and beautiful gingerbread house in the lobby of the St. Francis Hotel on Powell, the lights in Union Square and the store windows along Post Street. These were different towns, all right. But in San Francisco a tree could cost a day’s pay. In Deer Lodge—if you weren’t a jackass—it was free.

  When I reached the bakery, I stopped and looked in the window. Anne stood behind the counter, alone, so I went in. I rarely stopped there—it was her workplace—but whenever I did I always started with the same question: Did she have anything warm from the deep fryer?

  She always did, and whatever it was, I ordered it.

  While Anne sacked up the doughnut, I asked her if she wanted to cut down our own tree this year. I knew she would, but I loved watching her face light up.

  “Sure,” she said. “When?”

  We both had Wednesday off, so we decided on Wednesday morning, two weeks before Christmas. Anne reminded me that we didn’t have any tools to cut down a tree, which was good; there’s nothing more satisfying than a project that requires new tools. I went down to the hardware store and bought a hatchet. Somewhere between the hardware store and home the doughnut ceased to exist.

  When Wednesday morning came, Anne and I, along with the hatchet and a thermos of coffee, drove off toward the hills outside town. We went as far as we could, as far as the road was reasonably cleared, and parked, stepping off the road into eight inches of snow; fields of drifts lay ahead of us. There were no other cars or people, so the mountains and all the trees belonged to us. In silence and solitude and with a sense of adventure, we walked into the woods. I thought it might take an hour and a half.

  Now, somewhere in the fourth hour, with the coffee gone and my knees in crisis, I wanted to go home. Anne, though, was still having the promised fun. Invigorated by the cold air and the hunt, apple-cheeked and happy, she forged ahead with her eyes on the horizon, stopping to point up the hill toward a small tree half a football field away.

  “Up there!” she shouted, and headed off toward it.

  I didn’t have much faith. I, too, had been apple-cheeked and happy once, in that long-ago first hour. But hope had faded with the dark knowledge that while the woods may be full of trees, they are not full of Christmas trees, and the few potential Christmas trees don’t grow in their own little grove; they grow where they will, far apart and hard to find, under the guidance of a protective Mother Nature who doesn’t care to have her little trees spending their final days in a living room, festooned with tinsel.

  It took about five minutes to slog my way uphill to the tree and, as I slogged, I couldn’t help but wonder if Bill and Charlie had lied to me. They loved the outdoors, sure, but they must have known how long it would take and how hard it would be to find a Christmas tree in this god-awful, endless wilderness. They were probably standing in the tree lot on Main Street right now, laughing like hell at Bill Bonham and his little hatchet.

  Whatever this tree looked like, it was going home with us. I caught up with Anne and looked at it. There it stood, a crooked five feet tall and spare of branches on one side. It was the best one we’d seen.

  “This could work,” I said.

  Anne circled it a few times. “We couldn’t put it in the window,” she said.

  No, we couldn’t put it in the window. We had both wanted a tree that was full all around, one that would look good from the street and from inside. This tree, to stand without shame, would need its back to the wall.

  “Well,” I started, “I don’t know if we’re going to find a better one.”

  Anne knew it was true. We could have continued to search a million acres of state land for the perfect tree. Or we could have hung our heads, returned to town, and found the nearest Christmas tree lot. Our only other choice was to take the tree in front of us.

  Anne walked around it again. “It might be cute,” she said.

  I took my hatchet and chopped it down. Now I could go home. I grabbed onto the trunk of the tree and dragged it behind me down the hill, following our own trail back to the car. All the way down the hill, Anne—oblivious to my sorry condition and still glowing—commented on the beauty and wonder that surrounded us.

  That night we put the tree up. It looked fine, too, and with a few books placed under one leg of the tree stand, it came very close to being straight.

  With Christmas just over a week away, I was looking forward to it. I’d really had a piece of luck when it came to my schedule that year: Christmas fell on a Tuesday, and I was working Thursday through Monday. If I’d been Bill Perdue, I might have been tempted to pull my weight and ask someone else to work. Me, maybe. But he didn’t. He decided to keep to the normal schedule and work Christmas Day himself. So Anne and I would spend the holiday in Missoula with her folks.

  I would, however, have to work Christmas Eve.

  19

  CHRISTMAS EVE WITH THE BOBS

  As the days before Christmas passed, the always-bleak prison became bleaker. At first, I thought it was my imagination; it felt like sitting in a movie theater before the movie starts, as the lights dim to
black. But the dimming lights weren’t my imagination, nor was the growing bleakness. The convicts grew unnaturally quiet as the prison faded to black.

  Usually, an undercurrent of silence indicated that the convicts were tense or angry or bored. But this silence was different—empty and draining. A weight pressed down on this cheerless world, hard, as if seeking out some still-smoldering fragment of feeling in order to extinguish it.

  By Christmas Eve day, the Ghost of Christmas Present had pieced together a rope and gone over the wall.

  That afternoon, we went through the motions of putting out a meal. The two Bobs prepared the food, Stutzke peeled potatoes, and Aldrich cleaned the trays. Walker ran coffee to the towers, and Smoky Boy sat in the storeroom. The bakers baked and the pot washers washed. The hours crept by, and late in the afternoon I went out and served short line with Stutzke and Aldrich.

  The convicts on short line were as solemn as everyone else in the prison; they ate in silence and returned to the cell house. Aldrich and Stutzke took the empty pans from the steam table back into the kitchen. I was in and out between the dining hall and kitchen for a while, watching the cleanup, then I went into the office and sat down.

  I should have paid more attention to what was going on in the kitchen.

  Main line was only a few minutes away when I heard a sound coming from the kitchen. Someone was laughing.

  I was surprised, but I didn’t believe the Christmas ghost had returned for a last-minute tossing of magic dust. Even so, as I walked into the kitchen, I suppose I hoped to find some small miracle of the season at work. There wasn’t. What I saw instead were the two Bobs, both of them considerably happier than they’d been a half an hour before, standing at the worktable by the stoves. Both were laughing, but Big Bob was the one I’d heard. He leaned over, both hands palm down on the worktable, loud guffaws rolling out of him. Lunatic Bob laughed, too, but not quite as heartily; his laugh sounded like a throaty chuckle. He, at least, was working, filling a pan with vegetables. It took no keen powers of observation to see that both of them had been drinking.

  I looked around the kitchen at the other men; they seemed uninterested in the laughter. The joy radiated from the two Bobs. I walked over and stood next to them; they weren’t full-blown drunk yet, but they were certainly saddled up and trotting down the road. Big Bob finally noticed me, and his laughter settled into a big grin. He straightened up.

  “Oh, hey, man,” he said.

  Well, hey, yourself, Bob. “You have to get this food out on the line,” I said.

  Big Bob looked at the clock, taking a moment to focus. “You,” he agreed, “are right.”

  Neither Bob moved. Big Bob still had a smile, Lunatic Bob had found one, and both were filled with sweet contentment. They awaited my instructions.

  “You have to do it now,” I ordered.

  Big Bob turned to Lunatic Bob. “Let’s go,” he said, and they went into action, each of them grabbing a pan and heading out to the dining hall. They put the pans in the steam table and went back for the rest, returning with the last few pans and setting them in their slots. Main line was ready, exactly on time, just as the convicts walked through the door. I sent the Bobs back to the kitchen.

  According to the rules—wise rules—I should have called for a guard right then and had the Bobs hauled off to the hole for the night or segregation for a few days. If they were lucky, the kind-hearted cell house sergeant might let them sleep it off. But I didn’t want to write anyone up on Christmas Eve, and those two were nearly through for the day, anyway. They only had to set up the trays for the towers and the hospital. I decided to let it go.

  They only had to last a half an hour.

  I served the line. Gloomy men passed before me and took their food without complaint. They filed into their rows, sat down, and started eating. They were silent.

  Max Russeck, the guard on duty, stood near the back row. As the men ate, another guard came in and out, bringing in several large boxes, setting them behind the last bench. There were two hundred and some brown paper sacks in the boxes, a surprise for the convicts. I already knew what was in them: a Christmas present for each man.

  A women’s club in Butte had put the sacks together. Inside were homemade cookies and candy, a pamphlet about Jesus, and a hand-knitted, navy-blue watch cap. Max intended to hand one out to each man as he left. I wanted to be there when he did. There were men in the line I knew, the men from the morning shift and a few others, and it seemed appropriate to be there, handing them a bag and wishing them a merry Christmas.

  Before I could join Max, though, I thought I’d better check on the kitchen and the two Bobs one more time. All was well; the Bobs were laughing and they were working, dishing up trays of food for Walker to take to the towers. The other men were doing their jobs, too, and everything was running smoothly. I stayed there a few minutes, making my presence felt, then walked to the back of the dining hall.

  By the time I got there, the first men were leaving their rows and walking down the aisle. I asked Max if I could help.

  “The more the merrier,” he said.

  As the men passed, they dropped their silverware in the bucket, and either Max or I would hand them a bag. They were as gloomy leaving as they had been when they came in. Max said “Merry Christmas” to each man, saying their names as he did.

  At first, I couldn’t bring myself to say “Merry Christmas.” It seemed out of place in this room. As a few men from the kitchen passed, I blurted out the phrase, and it became easier. About half the men had come through when Toler came by—big, bald, weight-lifting Toler.

  I said “Merry Christmas” and gave him his bag.

  Toler stopped and looked at me. He was the first man to make eye contact with me and the first to speak.

  “Fuck Santa in the ass,” he said. His voice and eyes were dead. He walked out.

  The man behind Toler had heard him, and he too said, “Fuck Santa in the ass.” Then the next man, and the next, all in the same dead voice as the phrase passed like a baton. Perhaps twenty-five men said it before it lost its power and vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. The last part of the line left in the same silence as the first.

  When the final man had gone through the door, Max shook his head.

  “There’s no use doing anything for these guys,” he said. Neither of us said anything for a moment. Max broke the silence.

  “You working tomorrow?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, “I’m going to Missoula. What about you?”

  “I’ll be home. My daughter’s coming in.”

  Usually Max and I talked easily, but tonight it was hard. Handing out the sacks had been depressing. The old ladies from Butte had wasted their time with their cookies and candy and pamphlets and caps. I pulled out a few bags for the men left in the kitchen anyway.

  Max picked up the box with the remaining bags. “Well, you have a merry Christmas,” he said.

  “You, too, Max. Merry Christmas.”

  Max walked out in the dark toward the cell house, and I started back to the kitchen. As soon as we cleaned up, I could go home.

  Back in the kitchen, I set the bags down on a worktable. With most of the work done, the men finished up—except the Bobs. They lounged by the storeroom, sitting on sacks of potatoes. I assumed they had already completed their work and were waiting for me to pat them down so they could go back to their cells.

  Then I noticed Walker, the kitchen runner, standing by the stoves, hitching a horsehair belt. At the end of every meal he brought trays of food to the tower guards and to convicts in the hospital or the hole.

  Walker should have been gone by now. He didn’t need me to pat him down; as the kitchen runner the rules allowed him to come and go without one.

  But Walker waited, making a belt. I approached him.

  “Aren’t you done?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he replied. He frowned. In the background, Big Bob kept yukking it up, and the endless good cheer was start
ing to irritate me.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Walker shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” he said, nodding in the direction of the Bobs. “Ask them.”

  I noticed three empty trays on the worktable in front of us. “Have all the trays been sent out?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Have the trays gone out to the towers?”

  “Yeah.”

  He was making me play twenty questions.

  “Have they gone out to the hospital?”

  “Nope.”

  On the other side of the kitchen, the Bobs leaned back on the potatoes as if they were cushions on a fine leather couch. Big Bob called to me.

  “Hey, Bonham,” he said, in a loud, friendly voice, “we saved those trays for you!”

  I should have sent the two Bobs back to the cell house before main line.

  Big Bob’s voice sailed over the kitchen. “We decided it’s your Christmas present to us!”

  I started across the kitchen.

  “You’d better get it done!” Big Bob shouted.

  Drunk or not, a convict had just ordered me to do his work, in a voice loud enough for everyone on the crew to hear. I had no patience left.

  I strode over to the Bobs and glared down at their happy, stupid faces.

  “Just dish up the food, you guys,” I insisted, “and I’ll pat you down and send you back to the cell house.”

  Big Bob shook his head.

  Lunatic Bob chortled.

  I leaned over and spoke softly, hoping to get through to them. “Look,” I said, “don’t do this. Just go over and dish up three trays and you’re done.”

  The Bobs shook their heads.

  I had to resort to a threat. “Don’t make me write you guys up,” I warned.

  Big Bob narrowed his eyes and returned my glare. “Nobody,” he announced, “gets written up on Christmas Eve.”