Read Online Forty Days at Kamas by Preston Fleming - Free Book Online
Authors: Preston Fleming
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judge and his partner, Judge Richardson, used to be in waste disposal. Nasty, nasty work. Judge O'Rourke came down with cholera and nearly didn't make it. Now they're both appeals clerks and report directly to the deputy warden. Whenever anybody requests a case review, it goes through them."
"Every prisoner has the right to due process," Judge O'Rourke added gratuitously. "Oh, you'll hear petty grumbling about the appeals process from time to time, but in nearly twenty years as a judge, I have found that it is the criminal's nature to claim unfair treatment."
I looked at the man in amazement. To claim that due process existed at all for politicals charged under Title 18 rose to the level of a psychotic break with reality.
"And what might your offense be?" I inquired. "If you don't mind my asking."
The judge pulled himself upright and cast a disapproving look my way.
"Title 18, Section 2384."
"Seditious conspiracy," I noted. We all knew the sections of Title 18 by heart. "Odd, but you hardly look like somebody who'd be involved in that sort of thing. Could it be that someone made a mistake?"
"There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for what happened in my case," the judge replied stiffly. "I'm sure it will all be straightened out in due course."
The man was either a Unionist stooge or certifiably insane. I shoveled down my oatmeal and chugged the rest of my tea to get away from them.
After breakfast more than a thousand of us assembled at the eastern gate of Division 3 for our march to Recycling Site A. New snow had fallen overnight and knee–high drifts covered sections of the road leading north. Iron gray clouds hung low in the sky as they advanced steadily to the east.
I felt a mixture of anticipation and fear as I set out for my first full day of work at Kamas. I had already calculated the precise number of days remaining in my sentence but had reassured myself that this was only the first of many work assignments I would have in my camp career. This one might last days or months, but in either case the tedium would be broken by meeting people and gaining knowledge unlike any I had known before.
After leaving the gate, we marched a distance of nearly five miles in about an hour and a half. As we came within a mile of the recycling site its outlines became clearer. The place seemed indistinguishable from an ordinary junkyard except for its enormous size. As we came closer, certain sections of the site took on the form of auto salvage yards; others of lumberyards, brickyards, and plumbing supply yards, each specializing in the recovery of a different class of materials. To the rear, a huge structure the size of an airplane hangar opened to receive a flatbed tractor–trailer.
As the head of our column reached the site's outer perimeter fence, a metal gate slid open on tracks to admit us. Group by group, work teams peeled off to their regular worksites, leaving the newcomers behind. We halted and counted off by fives to form fresh squads. Roesemann and I ended up on different teams. Still, I found some familiar faces in my twenty–man work team, including the Texan, Jerry Lee. Our leader was the same Ralph Knopfler whom I had met in the barracks before roll call.
In a speech as brief as it was blunt, Knopfler announced that, so long as we remained on his work team, we were to regard him as the final authority in all things at the site. It was he who kept attendance, made work assignments, set quotas, measured output, and determined who went on sick call and who was punished for shirking. He urged us to get to know each other and to work closely as a team because our collective output would from now on be the single biggest factor in our individual survival at Kamas.
Knopfler then led us to a nearby section of the yard where dump trucks had delivered a towering heap of bricks, cinder blocks, paving stones, and stone building blocks. For the rest of the day our group's task would be to carry the bricks and
"Every prisoner has the right to due process," Judge O'Rourke added gratuitously. "Oh, you'll hear petty grumbling about the appeals process from time to time, but in nearly twenty years as a judge, I have found that it is the criminal's nature to claim unfair treatment."
I looked at the man in amazement. To claim that due process existed at all for politicals charged under Title 18 rose to the level of a psychotic break with reality.
"And what might your offense be?" I inquired. "If you don't mind my asking."
The judge pulled himself upright and cast a disapproving look my way.
"Title 18, Section 2384."
"Seditious conspiracy," I noted. We all knew the sections of Title 18 by heart. "Odd, but you hardly look like somebody who'd be involved in that sort of thing. Could it be that someone made a mistake?"
"There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for what happened in my case," the judge replied stiffly. "I'm sure it will all be straightened out in due course."
The man was either a Unionist stooge or certifiably insane. I shoveled down my oatmeal and chugged the rest of my tea to get away from them.
After breakfast more than a thousand of us assembled at the eastern gate of Division 3 for our march to Recycling Site A. New snow had fallen overnight and knee–high drifts covered sections of the road leading north. Iron gray clouds hung low in the sky as they advanced steadily to the east.
I felt a mixture of anticipation and fear as I set out for my first full day of work at Kamas. I had already calculated the precise number of days remaining in my sentence but had reassured myself that this was only the first of many work assignments I would have in my camp career. This one might last days or months, but in either case the tedium would be broken by meeting people and gaining knowledge unlike any I had known before.
After leaving the gate, we marched a distance of nearly five miles in about an hour and a half. As we came within a mile of the recycling site its outlines became clearer. The place seemed indistinguishable from an ordinary junkyard except for its enormous size. As we came closer, certain sections of the site took on the form of auto salvage yards; others of lumberyards, brickyards, and plumbing supply yards, each specializing in the recovery of a different class of materials. To the rear, a huge structure the size of an airplane hangar opened to receive a flatbed tractor–trailer.
As the head of our column reached the site's outer perimeter fence, a metal gate slid open on tracks to admit us. Group by group, work teams peeled off to their regular worksites, leaving the newcomers behind. We halted and counted off by fives to form fresh squads. Roesemann and I ended up on different teams. Still, I found some familiar faces in my twenty–man work team, including the Texan, Jerry Lee. Our leader was the same Ralph Knopfler whom I had met in the barracks before roll call.
In a speech as brief as it was blunt, Knopfler announced that, so long as we remained on his work team, we were to regard him as the final authority in all things at the site. It was he who kept attendance, made work assignments, set quotas, measured output, and determined who went on sick call and who was punished for shirking. He urged us to get to know each other and to work closely as a team because our collective output would from now on be the single biggest factor in our individual survival at Kamas.
Knopfler then led us to a nearby section of the yard where dump trucks had delivered a towering heap of bricks, cinder blocks, paving stones, and stone building blocks. For the rest of the day our group's task would be to carry the bricks and
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