In the Sanctuary of Outcasts (24 page)

On the first two days of furlough, the kids and I rode go-carts, watched movies, jumped on trampolines, and went to the aquarium. I was determined to cram as much fun as possible into these five days, but there was one thing I needed to do on my own. Without Neil or Maggie or Mom or Dad. I wanted to travel to a remote spot in the city. A place I had never been.

As we walked back to our apartment, I asked a cabbie how much it would cost to get to the corner of Hagan and Perdido. He thought for a moment. “Won’t cost you nothin’,” he said, “’cause that intersection don’t exist.”

He had to be wrong, I thought.

“You got Hagan. And you got Perdido,” he said, “but they don’t never cross.”

Late in the afternoon, I took the kids to the New Orleans public library, just down the street from the Loyola Street Post Office, where Jefferson had operated the X-ray machine. Neil and Maggie read children’s books while I found a detailed city map. The cabbie was right. Hagan and Perdido did not cross. But once they had. Hagan, I discovered, had been renamed. The street formerly known as Hagan was now named Jefferson Davis Parkway, after the president of the Confederacy.

On the morning before I was to return to prison, I awoke just after dawn. I had arranged for Mom to watch the kids. The morning air in the French Quarter smelled of stale beer and horse manure. A
night manager was hosing down the sidewalk in front of his club on Chartres Street. The Stage Door bar was still open. Five or six men sipped one last drink before facing the day. I walked to the edge of the Quarter, where I found a taxi.

“I have a strange request,” I said to the driver.

He shrugged as if there were nothing I could possibly request that he hadn’t seen before.

“I’d like to go to the intersection of Perdido and Jefferson Davis.”

The cabbie told me to get in, and we drove down Canal Street. A few homeless men sought shelter inside abandoned retail entrances. Otherwise, the streets were empty.

The driver’s hair was oily. He had the heat blaring, and he smelled like he had been working all night. I could only imagine the fares he might have picked up on any given evening in New Orleans. Businessmen returning from Bourbon Street, prostitutes and strippers, jazz musicians who played the Quarter but couldn’t afford to live there.

We drove under the interstate to Broad Street and eventually made it to Perdido. The street ran under a raised highway. I had no idea what kind of neighborhood we might be entering. Perdido was filled with potholes and crumbling asphalt. We passed old warehouses and a few abandoned vehicles. One car was left in the middle of the street, as if the owner simply got out and walked away when the car stopped running.

Daylight had arrived by the time the driver pulled to the side of the road. We had traveled more than two miles on Perdido. He checked the meter. “Eight dollars,” he said.

I asked if he could wait. I needed only five minutes.

I stood in the middle of the intersection. On one corner, a dozen telephone repair trucks were parked in a lot protected by a chain-link fence with barbed wire on top. Across the street, metal pipes, probably left over from a public works project, were stacked under an overpass. A sign read no dumping, $100 fine. It could have been any corner of any city, but one hundred years earlier a two-story wooden
cottage sat at this intersection. The building had been rented by the city of New Orleans. Local papers called it a pesthouse. In 1894, about a dozen men and women with leprosy lived here.

During that year, as the result of coverage from the
Times-Picayune
, citizens demanded removal of the occupants to prevent an outbreak of the dreaded disease. A group of men had anonymously threatened to burn the house and all who dwelled within.

A physician at Tulane Medical School had wanted to establish a leprosy hospital in the city, but fate intervened. The public’s fear of exposure made New Orleans less than suitable for a leprosarium. The physician persuaded a friend, who was also a member of the Louisiana legislature, to lease thirty acres of land a little over an hour north of the city to establish a colony. But in order to get the land, the legislator had to lie. He acquired the lease under the auspices of establishing an ostrich farm. On the night of November 30, 1894, five men and two women—who were never told of their destination—were transported eighty miles up the Mississippi River. They made passage on a coal barge. (It was against the law for lepers to use public transportation.) At dawn, the seven were unloaded at the plantation where they would live out the rest of their lives.

Nothing of the pesthouse remained. I stared at the parking lot and tried to imagine the home. I tried to picture the victims of the disease, as well as the physicians who hurried them out of the city. A century separated us, but I felt a deep connection to the men and women who had lived in the pesthouse. At Carville, we had found a place of refuge.

On the ride back to my mother’s apartment, I told the driver about the story of the nondescript intersection and its historic significance in the establishment of the only leprosarium in the continental United States.

“How you know so much about it?” he asked.

“I live there,” I said. “Upriver.”

For the first time he looked attentive. He stared at my reflection in the rearview mirror like he might be worried.

“Five-day pass,” I added, happy to not be just another boring fare. And proud to be a part of Carville.

At the end of our short ride together, I would tell him that leprosy wasn’t much of a threat, and that I was just an inmate on furlough. And I would probably give him a bigger tip than he deserved because deep down, I suppose, I still cared too much what people thought about me.

After a dinner of gumbo and cornbread, Mom drove me back to Carville. We hit the levee and turned right on River Road. The last time I had been on this road, on my way to prison, I had no idea what lay ahead. I thought I was headed to an ordinary federal prison. I had no idea of the absurdity, complexity, tragedy, and magic that was Carville.

Just before dark, we passed the lights of the chemical plants, the Carville family country store, and the road sign that read pavement ends two miles. Then we passed a lone, ancient oak tree. The last one before the colony walls.

I couldn’t help but think about my friends who had taken this same path. Ella on wagon. Jimmy Harris in his father’s Buick. As we approached the colony, I noticed a landing for ferries on the Mississippi River. In 1894, as reported in
The Star
, Fritz Carville (grandfather of the Clinton aide James Carville) rode his pony to this spot. The ten-year-old boy, accompanied by a farmhand, had heard about the new ostrich farm. Young Carville watched the barge dock on the riverbank. But instead of unloading ostriches, seven leprosy patients were left at the abandoned plantation. The farmhand looked at the boy and said, “Little Boss, them ain’t ostriches—thems sick folks!”

As Mom drove toward the prison gate and the sun disappeared behind the levee, I sat between Neil and Maggie in the backseat. And we held hands.

Back inside the colony, a guard gave me a urinalysis test. Another one performed a strip search. As I bent over, I realized I had, again, forgotten to climb the levee to see if the river actually flowed north.

Contraband-and drug-free, I was cleared to enter the prison. The guards did not escort me, which meant lockdown was over. I was still anxious, concerned about tension between the white and Hispanic inmates over the stabbing. In the hallway, I saw prisoners waiting in line for the telephones and inmates darting into the TV rooms.

Smolkie, an inmate from New Orleans who loved to gossip, yelled, “Hey, Clark. Have you heard? They sendin’ everybody home!”

“What?”

“They closin’ da place!”

“Why?” I asked.

Smolkie shrugged. “The stabbin’, the smugglin’, who knows? But ain’t nobody gonna be here much longer.”

None of the inmates knew what had happened, but Smolkie was right—the prison side of the colony was closing down. Any inmate who had more than six months remaining on his sentence would be transferred to another prison. Those with fewer than six months, including me, would be considered for halfway house, or early release. Whatever tension lingered from the stabbing had been wiped away by prospects of early release. The Mexicans played handball with the white inmates. Ricky and my other friends waved and smiled at me again. The inmates were downright overjoyed, including Link.

“What you did out there, Clark Kent?” Link asked.

“Spent time with my kids,” I said.

“No damn parties?”

I shook my head.

“Goddamn,” Link said, “they let me out for a week, I’m gonna get me a limousine, some crack, and some women.”

With the prison closing, the leprosy patients were free to stay. Ella and Harry were happy again. The patients had regained control of their home. The Bureau of Prisons had completely abandoned its plans. Rumor was the Bureau administration wanted to avoid the risk of another stabbing. Or perhaps they realized that if Smeltzer could help smuggle muffulettas inside for forty prisoners, the prospects of keeping out guns and drugs seemed virtually impossible. But no one knew for sure.

The week before Mardi Gras, our questions were answered. An official statement released by the Bureau of Prisons appeared in the
Baton Rouge Advocate
. The Bureau claimed it couldn’t make the necessary physical changes deemed vital to secure a prison. The reason: Carville had recently been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. With the historic designation, the renovations the warden planned would be impossible.

The closing was a victory for the patients over the Bureau of Prisons. The warden loved Carville and authorized millions of dollars in improvements. In his mind, the colony was perfect for a huge prison, isolated, a white elephant for anyone else. The Bureau had the funds to convert the facility into something spectacular.

The warden had grand plans, but he had not anticipated the response of the residents or the persistence of the ladies of the Carville Historical Society, who ultimately prevented his dreams.

Smeltzer gloated in the hallway. “I knew we’d beat you!”

“We hate the Bureau, too,” I said.

Smeltzer looked confused.

“Well,” he said, “you’ve been nothing but trouble since you got here.”

Smeltzer was about the only patient I didn’t like. “How are you going to make money with us gone?” I jabbed back.

He stared at me for a moment. “Just wait for the Mardi Gras parade!” he said.

“What’s going to happen?” I asked.

“We had to change the route because of you people,” he said. “But we got something for you.”

The Carville Mardi Gras parade had always been one of the year’s biggest events for the residents. Since the 1920s the patients built floats, decorated their wheelchairs, and donned elaborate costumes for the festival. They paraded through the entire colony tossing doubloons and beads. But this year would be different. Because of the stabbing, we were told the patient parade route would be limited to a small hallway and the recreation room. In addition to redirecting the route, we heard that this year’s visiting list would be restricted.

As part of the closure, the warden told the guards they would need to find new jobs. Consumed with their own futures, they lost interest in us. The Bureau promised to help them find jobs at other prisons, but the river region was dotted with petrochemical plants with higher-paying jobs. So the guards worked on their résumés, cover letters, and job applications.

One of the guards remembered the flyer I had posted for the résumé-writing seminar and, during study hours at the education department, asked if I would review his. I edited his résumé for continuity, verb-subject agreement, passive voice, and basic sentence structure. I marked suggestions for spacing and organization.

The next day, three more guards brought in résumés. I suggested a complete rewrite on one. With another, I recommended a format change from narrative to short bullet points. Soon I was proofing for a dozen guards. One asked if I would review his automobile lease.

Jefferson suggested I intentionally insert errors, but I felt pretty good about lending a hand, even to guards.

I reviewed a cover letter addressed to Harvey Press in New Orleans. Ms. Carter, a secretary in the education department, had applied for an administrative assistant position. I told her I had done
a good bit of business with Harvey Press, I knew the owners, and I would be happy to write a letter on her behalf, if she’d like.

I’d never seen anyone so happy to have a federal convict’s recommendation. I borrowed her typewriter and hammered out a fairly glowing endorsement. Ms. Carter reviewed the letter and gave me a big hug. Her eyes went wet. “You good people, Mr. White,” she said.

The white-collar inmates were scrambling to find work, too. They pored over the
Wall Street Journal
,
BusinessWeek,
and
Forbes,
scouring the pages for opportunities.

Doc met with a wealthy inmate about investing in his impotence cure. Dan Duchaine was finishing his book. Frank Ragano was planning his book-signing tour. My friend Danny Coates had developed plans for offshore gaming.

An inmate called Super Dave wrote a business plan for a telephone scam. The plan outlined details like hiring unwitting young women to get investors to pay $99 for the opportunity to make tenfold returns. The plan
actually
described the characteristics to look for in hires so you stay in town for two weeks, pack up, and never show your face again.

“Clark Kent!” Jefferson said as he danced into my room. “I’m getting out today! And I’m going legit!” Jefferson had saved over $40,000 from the cash he’d taken from birthday and holiday and graduation cards. Though he’d never been caught for his X-ray machine work, he couldn’t be rehired by the post office.

Jefferson said he was opening a business with his sister. They had put in an application at a bona fide franchise company, using the seed money Jefferson had taken from the X-ray machine. I stood and shook his hand. I told him I was proud of his new, legal approach to business. He smiled like he always did and started dancing down the hall.

“Hey, Jefferson,” I called out, “what franchise are you going with?”

Jefferson looked over his shoulder and grinned, his gold teeth sparkling. “Mail Boxes, Etc.,” he said.

In the days when leprosy patients were quarantined in the United States, the rationale for confinement was public welfare. It was widely believed leprosy patients would spread a scourge on society. For decades, men and women who had done no wrong were imprisoned for the public good.

As I listened to the inmates’ schemes to reenter the world, I did not miss the irony that we were being released while the innocent remained behind. We were the scourge on society. We were the “lepers.”

And we were about to be set free.