In the Sanctuary of Outcasts (25 page)

Not to be left out, I drafted my own short business plans—five streamlined plans, including marketing strategies, product plans, and financial projections. Three plans called for magazine launches:
Southern CEO
, for the business decision makers in the South;
Slammer
, a magazine for prisoners; and a yet-to-be-titled magazine for college-bound students. I also wrote a plan for a boat rental business at Walloon Lake, as well as a prospectus for leading seminars.

The prospect of operating a new business was exciting, but I was also apprehensive. I had no seed money; borrowing was out of the question. Taking on investors opened the door to financial loss for others—a risk I would never take again.

As I reviewed the plans, I was interrupted by a guard. My father had come to visit.

Dad had recently moved to Alexandria, Louisiana, to take a position as a federal administrative judge, so a trip to Carville was just over two hours. He greeted me with a hug, and we sat at a table.

“Drove through Gross Tete, today,” he said with a grin. Dad loved the names of Louisiana towns. He found joy in little things.

Dad had visited whenever he could, and I felt lucky that he came so often. He always introduced himself to my inmate friends. He was friendly to the other families. He didn’t lecture me; he didn’t preach to me or scold me or warn me about future actions; he just wanted to be with his son. Even in a prison visiting room.

His relationship with his father, our namesake, Neil White Sr., was different. His dad was a drinker, too. His nickname was the Old
Dog. As anyone who grew up on the Mississippi coast could tell you, the Old Dog was the life of the party. And he didn’t miss many. After he eloped with my grandmother Martha, he never needed to work. He had a sharp mind and was offered a job in the White & White law firm making $6,000 per year, but my grandmother’s interest income was more than $50,000 per year. In lieu of work, he drank. He turned his wit into a wicked tool to mock those who were too earnest, or not part of his entourage. The Old Dog didn’t intend to hurt anyone. He would probably say he simply didn’t want to be inconvenienced. But when you marry a woman at age eighteen and produce seven offspring, convenience and solitude are hard to come by. His frustration, coupled with too much drink, sometimes came across as cruel. His edge was shrouded in humor, but it was most costly to the people who loved him—his wife and his children.

But my father didn’t deal with his father’s cruelty by passing it on to the next generation. He bore the full weight of it himself. He didn’t lash out. He never made fun of us. To his children he was loving and loyal and sweet. There was not a mean bone in his being.

When I was young, I considered him weak. I thought he stayed in bed too much. I chalked it up to someone who just couldn’t cut it. I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to make a difference, leave a legacy, be the kind of man who was admired, and return glory to the family name.

Back then, I didn’t understand. And until recently, I had been too absorbed in my own ambition to fully appreciate how strong he was.

As a sober man for the past fifteen years, my father had spent his days helping others get sober. One person at a time. He did it quietly. Anonymously. And for the last year he had spent many a weekend driving to a remote colony in South Louisiana to sit by his son in a prison visiting room.

The men I had admired so much, the men who were so different from my father, would never consider sitting with me now.

My father put his arm around me. He wanted me to know I was loved. And for the first time, I realized I wanted to be more like him.

The prison population dwindled. U.S. marshal buses and vans arrived daily to transfer inmates.

On a sunny spring afternoon, as I returned from the education department, I saw Link. He was escorted by two U.S. marshals. They had restrained him in handcuffs and leg shackles.

When I reached Link, I asked the marshals if I could say goodbye. They told me to make it quick. Link wore an orange jumpsuit and his signature smile.

I held out my hand, but his hands were bound by the chain around his waist.

“I never got your address,” I said.

He looked at me and laughed. “You think we gonna be friends on the outside?”

“Sure,” I said. “We’re friends now.”

“You don’t know shit, do you?” One of the marshals snorted, but I didn’t care. Link had helped make prison tolerable for me, and I did consider him a friend.

“So we’re not going to be friends anymore?”

Link shook his head like he knew something he couldn’t explain to me.

The marshals grabbed his arms and walked him down the hallway toward Receiving and Discharge. I stood in the middle of the hall and watched. They turned to go inside, and Link leaned his head
back as far as he could and let out a big laugh. The marshals jerked him up and dragged him through the door. I expected to hear him yell out one more time about how boring or white or stupid I was, but he didn’t. I heard the door lock behind them. And the prison was quiet.

A Carville patient Mardi Gras parade, ca. 1950s.

In preparation for the annual patient Mardi Gras parade, the leprosy patients and staff built floats out of wheelchairs and bicycles and carts. The parade route was short, but the patients took it seriously. They even minted their own doubloons. The gold, purple, and green coins featured the patient recreation hall on one side. An armadillo graced the back side of the doubloon.

Armadillos, it was discovered in 1971, were the only other creature to naturally contract leprosy. In some parts of Texas and Louisiana up to 20 percent of wild armadillos are infected with the disease. Some experts believe that they comprise the greatest reservoir of
M. leprae
, and many suspect leprosy can be attributed to handling the animals.

Since the bacteria had never been replicated in a test tube, the armadillo accelerated the discovery of new treatments. After 1971, leprosy patients were no longer the guinea pigs; that role was passed along to the nine-banded armadillo. The patients adopted the animal as their informal mascot.

For this year’s parade, the patients had built a special float—the “thing” Smeltzer had mentioned earlier—specifically for the Bureau of Prisons. Chase and Lonnie, the inmate trusties who could go anywhere on the patient side, anytime, helped the patients build it. The float depicted a huge tombstone. Engraved in the faux marble were the letters “RIP, BOP.”

The warden had heard about the Mardi Gras float and he was livid. After losing the battle for Carville, the float was like rubbing salt in a wound.

The warden wrote a letter to Dr. Jacobson, the Public Health Service officer in charge of the leprosy patients, demanding that the float be removed from the parade. But what the warden didn’t understand, Dr. Jacobson did. Mardi Gras was a playful, festive time. And he refused to interfere with the patients’ plans.

On the day of the celebration, hundreds of inmates lined up at the corridor to watch the patients parade, but we couldn’t see very well since the parade wouldn’t proceed down the breezeway. The patients couldn’t throw us any beads or doubloons because the windows were covered with screens, but we could hear the band leading the procession. And the patients could hear us cheering for them.

I caught a glimpse of the tops of wheelchair floats. As they rolled by, I tried to identify my friends. But most of them wore masks.

As the floats moved toward the recreation hall, the patients waved to the inmates. We were their only audience. The warden watched from the large glass window on the second floor of the prison side. He stood with his arms crossed, his two lieutenants at his side.

When the float with the tombstone turned the corner, Chase gave us a signal, and more than a hundred inmates cheered and jumped and danced like we were standing on Bourbon Street. A roar that sounded like a riot echoed through the inmate courtyard.

The warden had been beaten by an unlikely convergence of leprosy patients, nuns, convicts, and the men and women who worked to get Carville on the historic registry. It was time to celebrate.

The note that Doc left me when he was transferred.

Five days after the Mardi Gras parade, on Ash Wednesday, I knelt at the altar of the Catholic church. I hadn’t decided what to give up for Lent. And I wondered about the six or seven leprosy patients to my left. What would a man or woman who had lost so much forfeit for the Lenten season?

After the service, I caught Ella in the hallway.

“What are you giving up for Lent?” I asked.

“Hopscotch,” she said. Ella gave me a smile. “You?” she asked.

“Freedom,” I told her.

But I didn’t really know what to sacrifice. Most of my temptations were already beyond my reach: wine, money, cars, clothes, houses, boats, vacations, and fine cuisine.

When I returned to my room, Doc’s bed was stripped. His locker was empty. I opened the closet. His journals were gone. The marshals had transferred Doc, and I hadn’t had a chance to say good-bye.

The room felt empty. I would miss him—our conversations, his theories and musings, our time together.

One by one my inmate friends were leaving. I felt alone, and oddly sentimental about the friends I might never see again.

That night, just before the ten o’clock count, I found a note Doc had left under my pillow. The short message was scribbled on a brown paper towel. It said:

Neil

Good luck and hang in on all the personal stuff. Don’t
believe
everybody.

Doc

“If you’re not careful,” Jimmy Harris said while riding his three-wheeled bike down the hallway, “we’re gonna outnumber you.” Jimmy was right. The inmate population was down to about 150. During the last few weeks, over 300 inmates had been transferred or released. In my unit, Dutchtown, empty beds outnumbered inmates.

On a Sunday afternoon, the guards announced that three of the seven inmate dorms would close. The guards were so disinterested they didn’t even bother to make room assignments. They told the inmates in the three mothballed units to find an empty bed, anywhere.

In prison, a roommate can make your daily life tolerable or miserable. Within minutes, more than forty inmates, holding as many clothes and personal effects as possible, dashed to find a room. I imagined it being not much different from the 1800s when men raced to stake claim to land in the territories of the West. Dan Duchaine, out of breath, ran into my room and tossed an armload of clothes on the bed formerly occupied by Doc.

“They’re closing St. Amant,” he said. “I claim this spot.” I nodded, and Dan left to gather what was left in his old room. I was flattered that he wanted to be my roommate. Dan’s inmate guinea pigs would have given just about anything to room with the Guru. Dan seemed a good replacement for Doc. Same temperament. Same smarts. And the conversation would certainly be rich.

During Lent, I established a routine. I spent my mornings in the education department. Six or seven of my students had already passed the GED test, and I was making progress with the other inmates. I felt good. This was just the sort of thing I wanted to do when I was released—help people, put my time to good use.

I spent my afternoons and evenings walking the track. Asking myself how would I act toward those who shunned me. Asking if I could remember to live simply. Asking if I could repay my victims without risking another financial failure. And asking how I would provide for Neil and Maggie while meeting my other obligations.

I thought of all I had taken for granted. I’d had the support of parents and family and employees and bankers and investors and friends. So many people wanted me to succeed. So many people would have helped me had I asked. So many people supported me financially.

But just like my grandparents, Neil and Martha, who were young and talented and could have done so much good, I had taken my blessings for granted. I had thrown them all away.

And when I wasn’t thinking about how I could change, I thought about the friends I’d made at Carville. I was grateful to know them all. I was already starting to miss them. I was in serious danger of becoming overly sentimental. Especially when it came to Ella. I was acutely aware that we would soon be separated. And I was afraid I’d never find another friend like her.

On a Saturday morning, I stood in the breezeway entrance and watched Ella crank her wheelchair toward the patient side. Even after fifty years she had not perfected a synchronized crank. Standing behind her, I saw her waver. She would veer off a bit to the right and then adjust with a longer crank to the left. She constantly adjusted her course. And as long as she paid attention, she would never hit the corridor wall. Ella veered and corrected, veered and corrected, a thousand times a day.

While I was trying to live a quiet Lenten season, the leprosy patients and the PHS staff were planning a fall celebration—Carville’s one hun
dredth anniversary—commemorating the arrival of the first seven patients in 1894.

The plans had almost been finalized. For the patients, the event served a dual purpose—a centennial observance, as well as a celebration of the exodus of the inmates. James Carville, Bill Clinton’s adviser, was scheduled to make a speech. Carville’s family had made a fortune selling goods to the colony. Other events included an open house, special exhibits, a golf tournament, the premiere of
Exiles in Our Own Country
(a movie about the patients at Carville), the unveiling of a mural wall, special tours, speeches by dignitaries, the publication of a centennial history book, and speeches by patients and activists from around the world. Jimmy Harris had been commissioned to create an oil painting depicting the landing in 1894. And Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards had agreed to endorse an official State of Louisiana resolution recognizing the one hundredth anniversary event.

I wanted to attend the centennial celebration. My growing devotion to Carville—its history and the leprosy patients—made me not want to miss anything. But I knew I wouldn’t be invited. The Public Health Services, after its skirmish with the Bureau of Prisons, considered the prison and the inmates a blemish on its history. But I felt proud to live in a room that offered a century of safety for leprosy patients. I was honored to take Communion in the same sanctuary where society’s outcasts asked God to console their suffering. I felt privileged to live and work and play in a place that few had ever seen. And I was grateful I had been imprisoned here, in a leprosarium, where I could begin to rebuild my life in a different way.