Forty Days at Kamas (16 page)

Colonel Tracy, still blocking the doorway, was forced to scramble outside to avoid being crushed in the stampede. His face filled with disgust at being so close to the foul–smelling and disrespectful prisoners. As I watched him brush the dust off his uniform it seemed to me that the irony of Murphy’s gesture had been utterly lost on him.

Barely an hour later, Tracy ordered the trucks to depart. The operation ended after making off with fewer than 200 prisoners. Our spirits soared as we watched the gate close behind the last of the guards. Within minutes, however, Tracy announced over the loudspeaker that those who were jailed would remain in jail until the rest of us went back to work. Then he added that all of us would be put on bread and water at once. This crude attempt to divide us hit home with some of the men. Within moments I felt an odd tingling at the back of my neck.

It was D’Amato glowering at me from the barracks door.

"Satisfied?" he snarled.

That night I received a summons to visit Glenn Reineke at his barracks just after lights out. When I arrived, Gary Toth met me at the door and took me back through the semi–darkness to Reineke's bunk. The Major was writing in a notebook by the light of a single stubby candle.

"Sorry for asking you to come over so late, Paul. But I thought it might be better for you if we met more discreetly."

"You're probably right," I replied, relieved that he had sensed my reluctance to stand out in the crowd. "How can I help?"

"Something has come up and I need a hand from someone whose judgment I can trust."

"Happy to oblige," I said uneasily. "As long as it doesn’t involve any throat–slitting."

"Not this time," Reineke replied with a half smile. "It’s about Alec Sigler. Did you know Sigler left a widow in Heber?"

I said I’d heard.

"She doesn't know yet that he’s dead. I'd like you to tell her."

I didn't know whether he was joking or had lost his marbles.

"Would a letter do or should I visit her at home?"

Reineke chuckled.

"A letter would be fine. And in case you're wondering how to send it to her, you’ll be using the same method Sigler used to smuggle his own messages to her."

"It sounds risky," I replied.

"Possibly," he answered. "But having a connection to the outside could be valuable to someone who intends to get out of here someday."

"All right, tell me what I have to do," I said with reluctance.

Reineke went on to reveal the details of how Alec Sigler would conceal a written message in the cylindrical hole of an ordinary brick fragment, seal each end of the hole with mud and drop it along the shoulder of the road on his way back from the recycling site. His wife did something similar by rolling her paper message into a spindle and tucking it into a hollowed stick of a certain size to be tossed over the fence into the brickyard. Reineke drew me a map of the spots in the brickyard and along the road to the recycling site where the messages were left. Some thirty minutes later, after learning these and other details, I was ready to begin my clandestine correspondence with the widow of a man I had never met.

"I'll need some paper and something to write with," I told him.

He gave me a manila envelope with a dozen sheets of blank copy paper and a cheap ballpoint pen. I stuffed the envelope into my coveralls.

"Keep it in a safe place and return what you don't need. And don't let anybody see you what you’re doing. Whiting's stoolies are on high alert. If you suspect anybody is watching you, tell Gary or me, then keep clear of them. There's going to be a night soon when they’ll get what’s coming to them."

Reineke rose from his bunk in a way that made clear he was ready for me to leave. But before I did, I couldn't resist asking him for news about the strike.

"Has the Warden responded to our demands yet?" I asked.

"There’s not going to be a response," Reineke replied calmly. "They're out to crush us."

His words hit me like a blast of arctic air. Like many of the new prisoners, my decision to strike had been an emotional one. From the beginning, I had assumed that the work stoppage would be settled quickly and that a settlement would bring at least minor concessions from the camp bosses.

"What now?" I asked.

"Same as before. We refuse to work."

"That's all?"

Reineke was silent for a moment.

"Until someone comes up with a better idea."

I thanked him and made my way back to the barracks.

The next morning was the third day of the strike. I could sense that some of the weaker prisoners had begun to waver after hearing that they would no longer receive full rations. Even the hardiest of men could not maintain his strength on punishment rations. At roll call the word spread that the threat of jail and loss of rations had proven too onerous for our brothers in Division 2. Their section leaders had already notified the Warden of their capitulation.

In Division 3, each prisoner watched his neighbor for signs of what was to come, much as we had when the first strike broke out a week before. Anxious prisoners milled about the mess hall doors and the edges of the parade ground to catch any last–minute signs of flagging resolve. But, as before, when the siren blew, it was clear that Division 3 had decided to continue the strike. No one set foot on the parade ground.

I watched from the barracks door as I had the previous Tuesday and saw the normal complement of warders and escort troops waiting for us to line up by work group. As before, they waited thirty minutes before they withdrew to the perimeter. But instead of leaving us in peace, within ten minutes the largest–ever phalanx of officers, guards, and escort troops massed outside the gates. At their head was a company of warders in plastic helmets and body armor.

I estimated the entire force at 300 men, which meant that the Warden must have drafted additional troops from State Security units all along the Wasatch Front. There were also at least two dozen empty troop trucks, each escorted by armed infantry. This time the bosses had come fully equipped to achieve their objective of breaking the strike once and for all.

The troops used the same tactics as the previous morning, moving against the barracks in squads of ten and removing anyone who did not agree to line up for work. The trucks filled quickly with strikers and carted them off to the camp jail in Division 4. There the trucks remained just long enough to unload before returning for more strikers. By my calculation, within an hour the jail must have exceeded its official capacity of 500.

By the time the shock troops reached Barracks C–14, they seemed to sense that they were winning the battle and moved at a more leisurely pace, pausing to bait and harass us as they went.

Colonel Tracy seemed to be in a particularly expansive mood. He entered our barracks in a fresh uniform and imposing peaked hat, backed by a retinue of nine or ten hulking guards. He sat down on one of the low bunks nearest the door, ignoring the gaunt and forlorn old prisoner who squatted next to him on the bed. Tracy elbowed the old man aside and sat with arms akimbo so that no space at all was left for the miserable prisoner.

"Come on, old friend, move over a bit, eh? Can't you see I'm a colonel?"

Three or four other black–uniformed officers followed his lead, displacing the occupants of nearby bunks and appearing every bit as uncomfortable with their proximity to the foul–smelling prisoners as the latter were with being shoved aside. Tracy then grabbed his quaking neighbor by the elbow and thrust him into the arms of waiting guards, who ran him out of the barracks as if on rails. The other officers followed suit, though carefully so as not to soil their uniforms.

When they reached my row of bunks, I saw no point in clinging to a bedpost or otherwise resisting the trip out to the truck. I rose as my captors approached and offered them both arms to escort me outside. It was an almost dignified journey down the aisle and out into the yard to join the other strikers.

But to my surprise no truck waited for us there. A load of prisoners roared by, then another, before I noticed that all the trucks were heading for the gate while none was returning. The camp jail, it seemed, was full.

The guards escorted the rest of us on foot to the parade ground. About 2,500 of us squatted side by side, the great majority of whom had surrendered rather than go to jail. Of the thousand or so who had refused to work, most were presumably behind bars.

The guards warned us to remain seated on the ground until the Warden addressed us over the loudspeaker system. Before long we heard his voice.

"This is the Warden speaking. Your elected leaders have now informed me that the illegal strike is at an end. All of you will report for work immediately. Guards, assemble the prisoners in columns for departure to their job sites. That is all."

The strike had broken on its third day. We gained nothing by it.

C
HAPTER
15

"The task of Soviet corrective labor policy is the transformation of the nastiest human material into worthwhile, fully useful, active and conscientious builders of socialism."
—I.L. Averbakh, Stalinist–era penal theorist

FRIDAY, MARCH 22

After the Warden announced the end of the strike, the troops assembled those of us who remained on the parade ground into columns and marched us off to work. Guards with attack dogs harassed us all the way.

At the recycling site we worked slowly and steadily to avoid any pretext for the warders to harass us. With Alec Sigler's death still fresh in our minds, we also took pains not to approach the perimeter wire. When anyone stopped working or dropped a load, the warders showed no mercy with their truncheons.

Our work team was lucky that we had Ralph Knopfler to guide us through these critical hours. Knopfler reorganized the brickyard crew around the absent workers and managed to turn out a respectable day's work despite our short–handed crew.

The march back to camp was tense but uneventful. The uppermost question in most minds was whether we would still receive our evening meal or would be dropped off at our barracks and locked up for the night. We all regarded this as a key indicator of how the camp authorities would treat us after the strike. I felt enormous relief at seeing the column head for the mess hall, where we were served an unusually meaty chicken stew.

Once back in the barracks, however, the rows of empty bunks left me anxious about how events would unfold once those in jail rejoined us. Nearly everyone lay quietly in his bed. There was little of the customary storytelling or card playing that went on most nights after dinner. As soon as the lights went out, I climbed down from my bunk and crossed the aisle to visit Knopfler.

He lay on his back with his head resting on folded hands and eyes staring up at the bunk above.

"It's Paul," I said quietly. "I need to talk."

"Sure, climb up."

"You've been around here a while, Ralph. You've seen strikes before. What do you think they’ll do to us?"

"These days it's not easy to say," Knopfler answered, sitting up. "A year ago, they never would have let us get this far. By the second day, they'd have taken a few dozen of us off to the gravel pit to be shot. And they'd have kept on doing it until the strike was broken or there was no one left to shoot. I haven't seen any trucks going from the jail to the gravel pit yet. That's a good sign."

"What will they do with the men they put in jail?" I asked. "By my count, there must be nearly a thousand."

"It all depends on what the bosses see as more important right now: meeting quotas or enforcing discipline. If it's work quotas, whoever’s in jail will be left to stew for a few days on punishment rations. Then Whiting will throw a few of the ringleaders into the isolator and send the others back to work. If it's discipline they're after, they'll pack the entire thousand off to the northern camps and bring in a whole new crew to replace them."

"So what do you think it will be?"

"My money is on transfers," Knopfler replied. "We've been watching the stoolies closely ever since the strike started. Whiting has been working them like dogs to identify the strike leaders."

"You know who the stoolies are?" I asked in surprise.

"Most of them. They're not all that hard to spot. Usually it's the ones who ask too many questions." He stared at me hard, then broke into a smile.

"Uh oh," I gulped.

Knopfler laughed.

"Don't worry, Paul. You don't fit the profile. Usually stoolies have the softer jobs in the warehouse or the dispensary or the mess halls. Typically they transfer in from other camps within the district. As soon as we spot them, our people put them under ‘round–the–clock surveillance. Before long, we usually catch them sneaking off to meet with Whiting's people. While they're making their hit lists, we make ours."

As we spoke, I had a growing sense of being watched. I didn't know whether it was simply the result of hearing Knopfler talk about stool pigeons or whether someone's eyes were indeed following me in the dark. I thanked Knopfler and returned to my bunk. My heart was pounding.

Having seen so many prisoners shot, beaten, worked to death, or driven to suicide over the past two weeks and now hearing Knopfler talk about mass transfers north brought home to me just how vulnerable I was. Even under the best conditions, the odds of outliving my sentence seemed poor. To be singled out as a hard–line opponent of the Unionist regime, however, would expose me to the harshest possible treatment.

Ever since my arrest, I had done my best to hold my temper and remain as inoffensive as possible. I had taken pains to avoid making controversial statements. I had refrained from provoking my interrogators or cellmates and, on all but a few occasions, had even declined to defend myself when challenged. But by helping Glenn Reineke in the railroad car, by attacking Renaud, and by associating with people like Reineke and Gary Toth and Knopfler, I had almost certainly identified myself to the Wart’s informants as one of Reineke's diehard anti–Unionist clique.