21 THE HOT HOUSE

It was like wandering through the catacombs of memory. As

White walked along the cell block tiers, he could see figures from
his past, their eyes peering out from behind bars, their bodies
gleaming with sweat. He saw Hale and Ramsey. He encountered
members of the old Al Spencer Gang and the former head of the
Veterans Bureau, who had committed bribery during the
scandalous Harding administration. And White came upon the two
deserters who had killed his older brother, Dudley, though White
never mentioned the connection, not wanting to cause them any
distress.

White lived with his family on the prison grounds. His wife was
initially unable to sleep, wondering, “How do you raise two young
boys in this kind of environment?” The challenges of managing
the prison—which was designed to hold twelve hundred inmates
but instead had three times that number—were overwhelming. In
the summer, the temperatures inside rose as high as 115 degrees,
which is why prisoners would later call Leavenworth the Hot
House. One August day in 1929, when it was so nightmarishly hot
that the milk in the prison’s kitchen soured, a riot erupted in the
mess hall. Red Rudensky, an infamous safecracker, recalled that
there was “ugly, dangerous, killing hate” and that White rushed in
to quell the unrest: “Warden White showed his courage, and came
within a few feet of me, although cleavers and broken, jagged
bottles were inches from him.”

White   tried   to  improve conditions  in  the prison. A   custodian