Read Forty Days at Kamas Online
Authors: Preston Fleming
Their senior capo, Bernstein told us, was Frank Brancato, a thirty–five–year–old brute who stood six feet six inches tall and weighed nearly three hundred pounds. According to Bernstein, Brancato had once competed as a professional wrestler and was still known by his wrestling name, "The Beast," which some said referred to the mat of black fur that grew on his back, chest, and limbs. After leaving the ring, he had joined a narcotics–distribution ring in western Massachusetts and had served three years of a five–year sentence for drug trafficking.
Two seats away sat Brancato's chief deputy, Randy Skinner, a one–time motorcycle gang leader and methamphetamine entrepreneur. Bernstein explained how, during the Events, Skinner’s network of mobile meth labs had delivered drugs to fighters on both sides of the battles that raged across the Plains States. Skinner's paranoia and raging temper fueled speculation that he himself was a speed freak but those who knew him claimed that these were simply the natural traits of a born psychopath.
The head table of the thieves' contingent also included various sycophants and personal attendants. Among those were Ramon Sanchez, a Mexican–American drug smuggler who spoke for Hispanic gang members at Kamas, and Jabril, a Harlem–born master burglar whose specialty was looting retail stores by night and reselling the wares by day to an army of sidewalk peddlers.
Bernstein painted a bleak picture of what was in store for us once the thieves gained a foothold at Kamas.
"You've got to remember, people like Brancato and Skinner buy and sell small–time government schmucks every day of the week. Labor camp trusties are no different. Before you know it, Brancato's men will show up as warders, then in the mess halls, and then even as foremen and team leaders. After a while they'll be running the whole goddamned camp. Believe me, the best thing you can do is to stay out of their way and give them what they want."
"Come on, Steve," I argued. "Most of the thieves I’ve seen are just ignorant kids. They can't be very bright or they wouldn't be criminals in the first place. For heaven's sake, we've got over a thousand combat veterans among us. It would be absurd for us to surrender to a handful of delinquents."
"Not as long as Rocco and Whiting run the show," Bernstein countered. "Look, if Whiting can grind us into the dirt the way he's doing now, how bad do you think it can get with six hundred criminals on his side? And who's to stop him from shipping in a thousand more? No, this time Whiting's really got our number."
Jerry Lee and I looked at each other and finished our meals in silence. There was no point in arguing with someone like Bernstein. He had already accepted defeat and nothing we could say would persuade him otherwise.
We had finished eating and were about to leave when we saw Reineke, Knopfler, Perkins, and Murphy coming our way. They passed behind us in single file and continued in the direction of Brancato's table. Approaching the table from the left and right were two other groups, one led by Gary Toth and the other by one of Toth's lieutenants. As they came nearer, everyone at Brancato's table stood except Brancato and Skinner.
Jerry Lee and I followed a few paces behind in a show of support.
"We've heard you're the leaders of the new transferees," Reineke began, speaking directly to Brancato. "The four of us were elected a while back to represent the prisoners here. Now that your men and ours are going to be living together, we thought it might be a good idea to have a talk. Can you bring together your top men and meet us outside? We'll be waiting."
Brancato acknowledged Reineke with a slight nod.
Reineke headed for the door with his team in tow. Jerry Lee and I joined them outside and waited for Brancato. In a few minutes he came out the door with an entourage of more than a dozen. They glared at us from the porch.
"Let's talk four on four," Reineke called out to Brancato. "Follow us behind the mess hall. Leave everybody else here."
"There will be six of us," Brancato replied.
"Fine," Reineke called back. Then he pointed in our direction. "I need two more men: Wagner, Quayle, come on over."
I swallowed hard and set off to catch up with them.
When I reached the back of the mess hall, Reineke and the others were already seated cross–legged on the ground. I took a seat next to George Perkins. In a few moments Brancato arrived with his team. I recognized Skinner, Ramon, Jabril, and two of Brancato’s enforcers.
Reineke introduced himself and then followed the camp custom of stating the section of Title 18 under which he had been convicted, along with the number of years in his term. The other five of us did the same. Brancato and his team followed by naming their own crimes and sentences.
Then Reineke went straight to the point.
"In case you haven't heard about Kamas, let me give you some highlights. Over the last year we've executed over fifty stool pigeons. Last month we held two strikes and a thousand of us went to jail for it. Five hundred were sent north. We're not the same breed of politicals you're used to seeing in the transit camps. We know how to enforce our rules and you'll live by them or suffer the consequences."
"You know how my boys are," Brancato replied with a crooked smile. "They aren't used to rules. I'm not sure I can help you much there."
"Then let me make it even clearer," Reineke continued. "There are six hundred of you, three thousand of us. More than a thousand of us have seen combat during the Events or against the Chinese. We can make knives as good as yours but we can also kill with our bare hands if we have to.
"We're offering you a choice: war or alliance. If you want war, we'll start today and we won't stop until you're on our knees. If you agree to be our allies, we’ll expect you to side with us against the bosses each and every time. And your men won't be permitted to work as stoolies or warders or accept any special privileges without my express permission. It's as simple as that: war or alliance. What will it be?"
Brancato looked at Skinner and then at Ramon and Jabril and was silent for nearly half a minute before he replied.
"Perhaps there has been a misunderstanding here. My men are no friends of the bosses, believe me. The way I see it, it's a very natural thing for my men to work with yours. No, we’re definitely with you guys. Count us in."
"Revolution is not a dinner party, not an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly and modestly. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another."
—Mao Zedong
SUNDAY, MAY 19
DAY 1
To nearly everyone's surprise, nearly three weeks after the May Day truce between politicals and thieves in Division 3, the peace was still intact. In every barracks, the criminals obeyed Brancato’s command to refrain from their usual habits of extorting our food, stealing our pitiful belongings, bullying us around, picking fights, raping the weak, and colluding with guards and warders to subvert our rules. At the same time, the Wart and his minions were perplexed by the thieves' refusal to accept positions as warders, foremen, kitchen workers, and orderlies.
At the worksites, the thieves cast aside their usual disdain for manual labor and pitched in as best they could despite their poor work habits and shortage of useful skills. Even the incorrigible slackers showed marked improvement after having their rations docked. And the stool pigeons among them came to have second thoughts about being seen with security officers when two of their number were found hanged outside the mess hall on their second Saturday in Kamas.
The criminals became acutely aware of their numerical inferiority and stayed close to their fellow thieves at worksites, barracks, mess halls, and latrines. Observing their leaders meeting daily with leaders of the politicals, they were cautious not to do anything that might provoke a confrontation. Some whispered that a faction of malcontents was coalescing under Randy Skinner with the aim of ousting Brancato and renegotiating the truce with the politicals; however, most saw this as a move that could only lead to disaster for Skinner and his followers.
The younger thieves seemed to have the most difficult time observing the truce and playing the role of dutiful camp citizens. They expressed their high level of nervous energy and lack of self–control daily through stunts, pranks, and silly antics directed primarily at the warders and guards, since politicals were off limits. The juvenile thieves, or vandals, as we called them, amused themselves by hooting, whistling, heckling, snatching warders' caps, hiding during roll call, climbing the high wall separating divisions 2 and 3, shooting out floodlights with slingshots and even teasing the sharpshooters in their watchtowers. They badgered the guards and warders incessantly to give them a peek at the women in Division 1 and would have clambered over the wall to see for themselves had armed sentries in the Service Yard not stood in their way.
The second Sunday after the thieves' arrival was heavily overcast with a bitter and penetrating wind. Division 3 was characteristically quiet before lunch. Most of us, politicals and thieves alike, had gone back to our bunks to sleep after breakfast. When I joined Ralph Knopfler, Jerry Lee, and Brian Gaffney in the mess hall for lunch, I discerned at once that they were discussing how long it would take for the truce between politicals and criminals to collapse.
"It goes against nature," I heard Knopfler remark as I took my seat and stirred my oatmeal. "Politicals and criminals are like oil and water. The bosses brought in the thieves for only one reason: to torment us. Sooner or later they'll find a way to drive a wedge between us and we'll be at war."
"Ralph has it right," Gaffney added. "The Unionists have always had a soft spot for criminals. No matter how bad the crime, they get plea bargains and paroles while we get shot or sent to the mines. I can understand why the Unionists hate politicals but I've never quite understood why they're so fond of the thieves."
"It's a class thing, like the ant and the grasshopper," Jerry Lee suggested. "The Unionists identify with the grasshopper. They sing and dance all summer long and then, come winter, they hate being lectured about thrift and hard work by the damned ants who’ve stored up all the grain. A Unionist will always sympathize with the bum, the blowhard, and the black sheep and blame all his troubles on the mean, humorless uncaring ant. Remember how the Events started? Doesn't it all come down to the President–for–Life deciding to rob the greedy Rocky Mountain ants to care for his beloved California grasshoppers?"
"That may be so," Gaffney responded. "But from what I've seen, the criminals aren't nearly as fond of the Unionists as bosses as the bosses are of them. They hate all the high–sounding speeches about rehabilitation and class unity. It’s their nature to bite the hand that feeds them."
"Frankly, I think the Warden made a colossal mistake in bringing the thieves here," Knopfler concluded. "Once they came, it was inevitable that we would offer them a choice between war and alliance; that they would choose alliance; and that the alliance would turn the thieves back against the bosses. The only question is how long before the bosses catch on."
After lunch, I returned to the barracks for more sleep. For me, no amount of slumber was enough, given the long workdays. I had slept soundly for several hours when loud hoots and whistles outside awakened me. Then I heard shouts and cheers and noticed that the barracks had emptied.
Outside I found hundreds of prisoners on the barracks roofs watching a troop of young vandals climbing over the twelve–foot stone wall into the Division 2 yard. Some climbers used homemade ropes made from blankets and bed sheets while others stacked crates and furniture to make it to the top.
I spotted some makeshift wooden handholds someone had nailed onto the sides of Barracks C–14 and used them to climb onto the roof. From there I could see vandals and young politicals forming a loose skirmish line under the direction of leaders still perched atop the wall. On the leaders' command, the line charged across the Division 2 parade ground toward the far wall, beyond which lay the Service Yard. Most of the 2,000 prisoners in Division 2, which included many foreign–born politicals and POWs, watched cautiously from the edges of the parade ground. But a few of the younger and bolder prisoners from Division 2 joined the column and followed it toward the gate.
I asked some men on the roof what the vandals expected to accomplish. Some believed it was to plunder the food warehouses, while others were convinced that the attackers would not stop until they had reached the women's camp and satisfied their long–denied lust for the opposite sex.
The column came to a halt outside the sliding metal gate to the Service Yard and dissolved into small squads that searched for tools and materials with which to force the gate or create a breach in the wall. Several attackers set to work with long–handled crowbars in an attempt to remove the rails from a disused railroad spur that led to one of the storage buildings. Others scoured a junkyard in the far corner of Division 2 for a steel beam to use as a battering ram. Still others went to work forcing padlocks off tool sheds.
Meanwhile, the warders of Division 2 had been alerted and were assembling at the division's eastern gate. Outside the gate warders outfitted themselves with helmets, plexiglass shields, and long wooden staves. At the same time, warders were circulating among the barracks in Division 3 and urging politicals to rally to their aid.
I watched Grady and Mills approach Barracks C–14, run inside to deliver their appeal, then re–emerge crestfallen to address those of us on the roof.
"Listen up!" Grady barked. "The thieves are on their way to break into the women's camp! It could be your wife or sister they're after! Come on, we've got to stop them!"