In the Sanctuary of Outcasts (26 page)

On a bright day in April, Dan Duchaine yelled out, “Smeltzer’s got a prostitute!” Dan didn’t get excited often, but this set him off. With the proceeds from the pork chops and newspapers and muffulettas and pedicures, Smeltzer had bought a hooker for the patients’ spring dance.

“Do you think he paid her in quarters?” I asked.

“Just imagine the conversation at the brothel,” Duchaine said, mocking the lady of the house: “C’mon, girls, it’s leper day.”

Smeltzer wasn’t the only one with a date. Spring, and the prospect of freedom, brought romance to the colony. An investment banker from Texas alternated weekend visits between his wife and his girlfriend. Another inmate in his seventies found a lady friend through personal ads. Father Reynolds performed a wedding in the Catholic church between an inmate named Wes and his fiancée, a free woman. CeeCee upped her attempts to woo a new lover by offering unlimited maid service. And the patients were preparing for the dance. The women patients were getting their hair styled and ironing their dresses. The men pulled out their best clothes and filled their flasks with whiskey.

In the early days of the colony, male and female patients had been segregated. Living quarters were separate. Men and women ate at separate times. Mingling was an offense punishable by time in the colony jail.

But everything changed when Dr. Denny arrived in 1921. He came from Culion, a leper colony in the Philippines, and assumed
the role of director of the national leprosarium. He had seen patients suffer. Segregation from society was enough, he believed. Segregation of the sexes was doubly cruel. Patients still weren’t allowed to marry, but Denny dismantled the fence that kept the sexes apart. The year he arrived, the patients held their first dance.

“Be my date?” Ella asked the afternoon before the dance. Ella smiled. She knew inmates weren’t allowed at social events.

“Wish I could,” I said.

Ella said she couldn’t talk long. She had much to do to get ready, and she didn’t want to miss the beginning of
Matlock
.

I told her I couldn’t wait to hear about the dance.

After dinner, Dan and I returned to our room. A guard stuck his head in the doorway.

“White! Duchaine!” he yelled. “Report to the patient ballroom.” Dan and I were instructed to help set up tables and chairs and unload equipment for the dance. I understood why they selected me; I was work cadre, but Dan, who had suffered a stroke, was in khaki. A medical inmate. But he didn’t seem to care.

Around 7:00
P.M
., the patients rolled into the decorated ballroom. Smeltzer arrived with his date. A woman in her late forties with enhanced breasts that caused a slight curve in her back, like they were too heavy for her frame, she did look like a prostitute. She wore a low-cut red dress with tiny straps that disappeared into her shoulders. Smeltzer escorted her to a table without the benefit of his walker.

Smeltzer gave the woman a drink and held his own with both hands. His fingers were tight nubs that looked ready to burst through the skin. He put the drink to his lips and turned it up.

Ella cranked across the scuffed ballroom floor. Her hair was down and neatly combed. Her brass hoop earrings swayed with each turn of her hand. She stopped and smiled at me. Her skirt was empty and flat and draped over the edge of her wheelchair.

“Gonna put your legs on?” I asked.

She shook her head. “You gonna stay for the first dance?”

An old hippie tapped the microphone and said something about how much he loved the Carville gig. A loud, off-key rock song pumped
out of the speakers. The patients limped and wheeled and slid their walkers out onto the dance floor. Stan, the blind jazz musician, scatted in the corner with his white tapping stick—great rhythm, head and mouth cool like Ray Charles. Harry shuffled to and fro. Smeltzer held his hands over his head and shook them toward heaven like this would be the last song he’d ever hear.

Arms flailed. Bandaged hands flew into the air. Whiskey spilled on the floor.

Ella swiveled her wheelchair to the beat in tiny movements. She motioned for me and offered her hand. Her long, elegant fingers, well cared for despite dead nerves, were soft and smooth. She swayed inside her chair. I took her hand and matched her rhythm. Harry, from under his hat, gave me a nod. I moved behind Ella and leaned her wheelchair back. I pushed her chair around the edge of the ballroom and turned her in circles. She stretched out her arms like she was flying. She looked over her shoulder at me and smiled. Her eyes were wide and alive like I imagined they had been when she ran and danced as a reckless young girl. We spun and twirled and slid until we were dizzy and the room disappeared.

Toward the end of the song that lasted too long, Chase and Lonnie, the trusty inmates who spent more time than any others helping patients, danced into the room from the leprosy side. Chase was tall and fit from Duchaine’s diet and exercise program. He wore a cap to keep his long black hair out of his eyes. He danced into the middle of the patients. Chase tapped the shoulder of the prostitute and got a little too close for Smeltzer’s liking. Chase was a good dancer, and the woman liked the attention. She laughed and danced lower and lower as Chase matched her moves.

The music stopped. The patients clapped as best they could.

Duchaine looked at me like I was demented, but I didn’t care. I pushed Ella back to the center of the floor. I took her hand and bowed.

“What the hell are you doing!?” Smeltzer yelled.

I looked up. He was screaming at Chase, who stood perfectly still. The room was quiet, and I was glad not to be the focus of Smeltzer’s ire.

“You’re not invited!” Smeltzer said, pointing the remains of his index finger at Chase. Then he turned toward me. “You either! No inmates at our party!”

I looked for my friends. Ella’s smile had disappeared. Harry looked at the floor.

“Go on,” Smeltzer said to Chase. “You’re not welcome here.” Then he looked at me. “Go on. Get!”

Chase and Lonnie scurried away together. Dan and I walked behind them along the concrete corridor that led back to the inmate wing.

“Jesus,” Dan said, “did we just get kicked out of a leper dance?”

My release notice.

Late in the evening after the dance, the guards came for Chase and Lonnie. They were escorted to the hole. Rumor was they would lose their good time. If they came back for me, and I lost the fifty-four days of good time I had earned, I might be transferred to another prison, instead of released.

When Mr. Flowers arrived in my room, I assumed he had come to take me away. I was prepared to confess to dancing with Ella. I had already promised myself I would tell the truth, no matter the consequences.

“Congratulations,” he said, as he handed me my release papers. I would leave Carville on April 25, 1994. I would report to a halfway house on Magazine Street in New Orleans in a matter of days.

I was relieved that the guards never came for me. Perhaps they didn’t consider my dancing a violation since I was in the ballroom under orders. Or maybe because I didn’t make a move on Smeltzer’s prostitute.

I lay in bed after lights-out, the time of night when, as a child, I would dream about being on the pages of
The Guinness Book of World Records
. I should have been thinking about my release. About ways to remember the lessons I’d learned. But as much as I tried to push the thoughts of breaking records out of my head, it didn’t work.

I had always wanted to achieve one feat never before attained by man, and I couldn’t help but imagine that it had happened. Tonight. The first ever to be ejected from a leprosy dance.

A garden lined with Coke bottles, ca. 1950s. The local Coca-Cola distributor had refused to accept the returnable bottles from the leprosarium.

I stood in the breezeway and waited for Ella. I had two things to tell her. First, I would be going home in a matter of days. The second was more difficult. With my release looming, I was acutely aware that I had not really changed during my year at Carville. I had
decided
I needed to change, but I was the still the same man who walked through the gates a year earlier. I awoke each morning wanting to do something great. I wanted to set records, whether it was the most magazines sold or a 100 percent success rate with my GED students. I relished accolades, even if prompted by a fruit and vegetable garnish. And, clearly, I had not abandoned my dream of being first, even if that first was being evicted from a dance.

“Hard on yourself,” she said, after I told her my apprehension.

I shook my head. “Everybody says I need to become a new person before I get out.”

“You is what you is.” Ella took a deep breath and looked across the inmate courtyard. “You know ’bout them drink bottles?” she asked.

“No.”

Ella intertwined her fingers like she always did when she told a story. In the early days of Carville, she explained, the Coca-Cola distributor from Baton Rouge sent chipped and cracked Coke bottles to the colony, so he could refuse to accept the return bottles. He feared a public boycott if customers discovered the glass containers had been touched by the lips of leprosy patients.

“More drink bottles than you ever seen,” she said. The crates of bottles filled closets and storerooms. But the patients discovered new
uses for the nonreturnable bottles. They used them as flower vases with beautiful arrangements. They became sugar dispensers in the cafeteria. For impromptu bowling games on the lawn, the bottles were used as pins. They were turned upside down and stuffed into the dirt to line flower beds and walks on the Carville grounds.

“CoCola bottle still a CoCola bottle,” Ella said. “Just found ’em a new purpose.”

The day before I was released, I packed my belongings. Everything I owned fit into two boxes. I couldn’t believe a year had nearly passed.

I thought about my conversations with Ella, conversations I would revisit for a lifetime. Of all the wonderful things she taught me—the importance of home, about what people think, about being with my children—the most important might be the story of the Coke bottles.

For five months, I had agonized over how I should change. I examined the details of my past, the character flaws that contributed to my personal failure, the allure that applause held for me, my discovery that a pristine image could cover dark secrets, my attempts to balance bad deeds with good, and my optimism unchecked by good financial sense.

But I knew my essence had not really changed. I would always be the same person. Same skills, same personality, same character traits.

The story of the Coke bottles was a wonderful parting gift. I didn’t need to be a new person. I needed a new purpose. If I could follow Ella’s lead—live simply, hide nothing, help others—maybe I would find a new purpose for my life. The challenge would be whether I could hold on to, and remember, the lessons when I lived on the outside.

Living simply might be the easiest. Many of my temptations would be out of reach. I’d never be asked to be on the board of directors of a bank. I’d never be asked to serve as treasurer of a club. I’d never be
elected to the vestry of a church or be asked to head up the stewardship committee.

Hiding nothing would be a struggle. It went against my nature. But Ella was a great model. If I could embrace my criminal conviction, if I could be transparent about my scars and indebtedness, not hide them, just like Ella did with her leprosy, it would be a step in the right direction. I even had a few things working in my favor. The move to Oxford, one I had dreaded, seemed to fit. In a large city, my felony conviction would be easy to hide. But in Oxford, I would have no choice. I couldn’t hide my past even if I wanted to. And that was good.

I didn’t know exactly how to go about helping others. But if I could remember that truly great acts are the small, quiet ones that no one hears about, that would be a start. I could look for ways to help people in need of a boost, to align myself with underdogs. I needed to remember Ella and Harry. Their intent. Perhaps it didn’t matter what I did to earn a living, as long as the motive was to help others and not just gain attention.

I liked that the bottles were chipped and broken. They were damaged goods. Nonreturnable. I felt the same way. I could never go back to the place I’d been. I could never regain my reputation and credibility. I would never have a flawless image.

As I started packing my boxes, I remembered the day I was sentenced. When Judge Walter Gex said, “Eighteen months in federal prison,” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After imposing my sentence, he warned me about living as a convicted felon and recited a long list of restrictions. I didn’t remember much of it. But I remembered his parting words. As he left the courtroom, he looked at me as if he had been troubled by his decision.

“Neil,” he said, “I hope you can make something good come out of this.”