In the Sanctuary of Outcasts (27 page)

My last night as a federal prisoner, a few inmates organized a party in an empty room in the Dutchtown unit. They all pitched in and made a vat of instant soup with slices of summer sausage from the commissary. Brownies from the vending machine were spread out on paper towels. Larry played his fiddle, the one tune he knew, and we recounted stories of the last year. We laughed about Smeltzer’s muffuletta scheme and his prostitute. Slim told about looking for “cubicle hairs” in the women’s restroom. I smiled whenever someone reminisced about Link, Doc, CeeCee, Frank Ragano, or Ms. Woodsen’s butt.

We were the last of the inmates. We would all be leaving soon. We’d had some fun together, even in prison. The party didn’t feel much different from the last night of summer camp sitting around a fire telling stories about the session. But we wouldn’t see each other next summer.

At 9:00
P.M
., a guard told us to shut the party down. Brady passed out small sheets of paper so we could exchange addresses and phone numbers. Gary reminded us that these would soon be obsolete since we’d be communicating over something called the World Wide Web, but I was skeptical.

On my way back to my room, I checked the Call-Out sheet again. April 25, 1994. Neil White. Receiving and Discharge. 8:00
A.M
.

I emptied my locker and left my boots outside the door for anyone who might need them. I gave my
Playboy
s to my friend Danny and a long-sleeve T-shirt to Sergio. Then I packed the rest of my belong
ings: a few pairs of socks, six T-shirts, five books, photographs, and a few remaining letters and notebooks. Everything fit into two cardboard boxes.

I set my alarm for 7:00
A.M
. and climbed into my prison bunk for the very last time. I put my arm over my eyes to block the light and waited for sleep to come.

I dropped my boxes at Receiving and Discharge, in the same room where I was first strip-searched nearly a year ago. Then I walked to the cafeteria to say good-bye to the kitchen staff. I wanted to go into the patient dining hall to say good-bye to my friends on the leprosy side, but I didn’t want to risk breaking the rules on my last day. I did get a glimpse of a few patients through the lattice wall, but I couldn’t get their attention.

After a breakfast of french toast and sausage, I made my way around the colony for a few farewells. I’d arranged to meet Ella and Harry in the breezeway a few minutes before eight to say our goodbyes. On my way, I encountered Father Reynolds and reminded him it was my last day. He stepped off his bike, put his hands on my head, and said a short blessing. Then he said in his soft, stammering voice that I was welcome in the Catholic church anytime.

At the education department I said good-bye to the six or seven inmates who still attended class. I thanked Patty, the librarian, for her efforts, especially for forming the book club. Ms. Woodsen stuck her head through the library door and interrupted. “You leaving today, Mr. White?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“You just might have something comin’.” She smiled. I think Ms. Woodsen liked me. She seemed sincere in her good wishes, and I felt bad about laughing at the jokes about her rear.

Ms. Carter, the education secretary, started to cry when I entered her office. “I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling and dabbing her nose with a tissue, “but some people just make good inmates.”

Mr. Povenmire, the education director, didn’t say anything to me, but he never had acknowledged my presence. I hoped he would drop the hard-line attitude on my last day, but I was wrong.

I walked around the inmate corridor one last time. There were as many guards here now as inmates. I waved to a case manager, a lieutenant, and the assistant warden. I even said good-bye to Mr. Flowers, who nodded and said “Good luck, Mr. White.” He said my name like it tasted bad in his mouth.

I strolled past the handball courts and stopped at the breezeway where I was to meet Ella and Harry. As I waited for them to arrive, I took in the colony one more time. I breathed in the deep aroma of the banana trees. I looked hard at the sun’s rays as they cut through the branches of the live oaks. I watched some inmates meander in the courtyard. Where I was headed, I didn’t imagine I would see many men simply passing the time.

My mother and father waited outside. They had been divorced for almost two decades, but they came here together to greet me. I could only imagine how they felt about my prospects. A thirty-three-yearold son with massive debt, a felony conviction, no job, no home, no spouse, two children, and accumulated assets that fit into two cardboard boxes. They were worried, understandably.

And I was too. My hands were a bit shaky.

But I did feel fortunate. I had made friends with men and women I never would have known on the outside—Doc and Link, Frank Ragano and Dan Duchaine. And of course Harry and Ella. Link was right about one thing: none of us would have been friends anywhere else.

I would miss them all, but as much as anything else I would miss time. Time to daydream. Time to walk. Time to pay attention. Time to plan adventures for my new life, a new life with my children. Time to remember that
great
doesn’t always mean
big
. And time, especially, with Ella.

I had no idea if I would ever see her again. I would be on federal probation for five years. I would not be allowed to leave Oxford without permission. And regardless of what Father Reynolds said, I as
sumed the public health authorities would not welcome ex-cons back to Carville. I didn’t know if I’d ever have another conversation with Ella. I had no idea how long she would live.

I was excited, but also apprehensive. Excited about building a new home with Neil and Maggie. Overjoyed I would see them every day. Hopeful I could make up for this year apart. But I was also afraid. Afraid of going back out to a place that held so many temptations for me. Afraid I would make promises I couldn’t keep. Afraid I would try to impress people with how well I would recover from failure. Afraid of returning to Oxford, where as a child I’d been scarred by a fall, and where as an adult I had acted so recklessly. I was afraid I would build new prisons for myself, the kind I had built long before I was convicted of a crime.

I heard Jimmy Harris squeeze the horn attached to his tricycle handles. He peddled toward me and stopped at the ramp.

“Good morning, young fellow,” he said. I shook Jimmy’s hand and I thanked him for being so generous with his stories.

“Well,” he said, “I just fell in love with you as soon as we met.”

I’d heard him say those very words to at least a dozen other inmates. I didn’t point out that he forgot my name most of the time, but I did remind him that I was leaving.

“Good,” he said, “good for you.”

I wished him luck on his book.

“
King of the Microbes
,” he said. “You’re gonna buy one, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good, good,” he said. Jimmy squeezed his horn again and peddled off toward the patient canteen.

Ella and Harry eventually made their way down the breezeway and stopped where they always did, just inside the hallway. I stood where I always stood, just inside the inmate boundary.

“You packed?” Harry asked. I nodded. I stepped into the hallway, reached for Harry’s hand, and held it in both of mine. I wanted to tell this gentle man that I was honored to be his friend, that his disfigured hand was a symbol—like a unique, broken, beautiful sculpture—that embodied something important for me that I didn’t fully understand.
I wanted him to know that taking Communion with him, watching Father Reynolds place the wafer in the remnants of his palm, was a privilege and would alter, forever, how I felt about the sacrament. I wanted him to know that a tip of his hat and a smile as he rode past me in the hallways reassured me there were kind, understanding people waiting outside the gates. But I didn’t say anything. As usual, Harry didn’t say much either.

Then I turned to Ella. She looked so alive and vibrant. I couldn’t possibly say anything adequate to this woman who had every right to be bitter and resentful, but was more content than anyone else I had ever encountered. She had come to exemplify for me what was good and pure and honest and right in all of us, an angel who’d lost her family as a girl, but made a home in a colony of outcasts. A woman whose words had directed me along a new path.

Ella always seemed to know what I needed to hear. “Any words of wisdom?” I asked.

She didn’t miss a beat. “Don’t forget to go to church.”

I wanted them to know that they had been great examples for me. Examples of how to live a simple, fulfilling life, in spite of the facts. I wanted Ella to know that she showed me a new way to view my flaws and strengths. She even influenced how I would be a father to my children. I wanted to tell them both how much they meant to me, but I didn’t.

The three of us had an imbalanced relationship. I wasn’t nearly as important to Harry and Ella as they were to me. Like the doctors, nurses, and short-term patients who occupied Carville over the years, I was just another in a long line of guests. A transient passing through their secret world.

As I stepped away, down the ramp into the inmate courtyard, I didn’t turn around. I walked backward, slowly. I wanted to remember everything.

I wanted to remember my good fortune. A prison sentence, anywhere else, might have been lost time.

I wanted to remember the smells and the scenes. The long shadows thrown by the stately white buildings and the sweet smell of dust in
the walkways that connected them. The way mist rose from the fairways of the golf course in the morning.

But most of all I wanted to remember Ella. Every detail. The way she cranked the antique handles. The way she twisted in her chair at the dance. The way she turned her disease, the most shameful known to man, into something sacred. I wanted to remember how she held her coffee mug, the way she got excited on bingo night, her smile when she said something unexpected, the joy she found in the smallest encounters, the way her skin smelled like flowers. The way she rested her hand on top of mine when I felt most alone. I wanted to remember her every word. I wanted to remember her especially whenever I was confronted with my own past, in hopes that I could face it with a fraction of her dignity.

I kept my eyes fixed on Harry and Ella. I had no idea what the future held for me. When I stepped outside the gate, I planned to stop at the edge of the levee to see which way the river flowed. After that, I didn’t know.

But at some point after I settled in Oxford, I would take Ella’s advice and find a church. Not just any church. A place like the church at Carville. Where the parishioners were broken and chipped and cracked. A place to go when I needed help. A place to ask forgiveness. A sacred place where people were not consumed with image or money.

I didn’t know if a church like this existed, but if it did I would go. And I would pray. Not the kind of prayers I used to say for miracles or money or advancement. I would ask for something more simple. I would pray for recollection—pray that I would never forget.

I reached the bottom of the ramp and walked up the small concrete steps that led to the inmate hallway. I opened the screen door and looked at my friends again. I wanted to remember them exactly this way. Harry straddling his bicycle. Ella in her antique wheelchair.

I waved one last time, stepped inside the hallway, and turned toward freedom.

Fifteen years ago, as a prisoner, I was welcomed by the secret people. It was an honor I cherish. I left with the hope that I would never forget. But a lesson is never as clear as the moment it is learned. I have forgotten and remembered. Veered off and corrected.

But I am always drawn back. To the place where the river flows backward, where outcasts find a home, where the disfigured are beautiful. At night, I dream about the colony. Sometimes I am lost. Other times, I encounter my old friends. And sometimes, I see Ella. She glides in her chair down the empty corridors. She sways to music I cannot hear. She reminds me there is no place like home. And I know I will always be able to find her. Ella will be waiting for me. In the breeze.

September 4, 2008
Oxford, Mississippi

Ella Bounds in the breezeway.

Frank Ragano’s
book,
Mob Lawyer,
was published immediately after his release. He died in Tampa, Florida, in 1998. In 2007, the U.S. government released secret documents that revealed the CIA
had
paid Santo Trafficante to assassinate Fidel Castro. The report claimed all assassination attempts had failed.

After his release from prison,
Dan Duchaine
was paid an unprecedented advance for
Body Opus: Militant Weight Loss,
a book he wrote while imprisoned at Carville. He introduced DNP, the primary component of Doc’s heat pill, to the bodybuilding world. Its use has been implicated in the deaths of several bodybuilders and athletes. On January 14, 2000, at age forty-eight, Dan died in his sleep of complications related to polycystic kidney disease.

In 1994,
Jefferson
moved back to New Orleans intending to open a legitimate franchise. His whereabouts are unknown.

After his release from federal custody in 1997,
Steve Read
sold yachts in Florida. He died of cancer in 1999.

I have had no contact with
Link
since he left Carville. His whereabouts are unknown.

While in prison,
Victor “Doc” Dombrowsky
was awarded three patents from the United States Patent Office. After his release in 1999, he opened a medical clinic in the Italian Alps to administer his heat pill. The procedure was internationally recognized as an effective treatment for Lyme disease and certain forms of cancer. In 2008, he was found guilty on five of eighteen federal charges related to a se
curities fraud scheme. He was sentenced to fourteen years in federal prison. He maintains his innocence.

Six months after I was released from federal custody, Carville residents commemorated the one hundredth anniversary of the leprosarium—and the closing of the federal prison—with a weeklong ceremony.

Jimmy Harris
’s self-published book,
King of the Microbes,
sold six hundred copies before he died of natural causes at age ninety-two.

Two funeral services were held for
Betty Martin,
who died on June 7, 2002. One at Carville, under the name Betty Martin, with her secret friends. The other in Baton Rouge with her prominent Louisiana family, where leprosy, Betty Martin, and her best-selling book were never mentioned.

Annie Ruth Simon
remained at Carville until her passing in 2002. She is buried next to her husband in the patient cemetery.

Ella Bounds
died at Carville in 1998. She is buried outside Abita Springs, Louisiana, in an unmarked grave.

In 1999, the Public Health Services closed operations at Carville. The patients were given a choice between being relocated to a hospital in Baton Rouge or living on their own and receiving a $33,000 annual stipend.
Father Reynolds
watched as the Carville residents were removed from their home, two by two, and relocated to a nondescript hospital wing in Baton Rouge. A year later, a Catholic bishop ordered Father Reynolds’s transfer. He now lives in a monastery in eastern Kentucky.

Desmond “Harry” Harrington
still lives at Carville. In 1999, he and thirty-six other long-term residents refused to leave their home. Today, he and fifteen others share the facility with Louisiana juvenile offenders.

My mother,
Jane Stanley,
graduated from seminary in 1998 and started a church in a poverty-stricken neighborhood in Gulfport, Mississippi, where she spends her days doing great things.

My father,
Neil White Jr.,
is a federal administrative judge in Alexandria, Louisiana.

Little Neil
is a student at Princeton University.

Maggie
is a student at Davidson College.

I live in Oxford, Mississippi, where I operate a small publishing company. I am married to Debbie Bell, a law professor at the University of Mississippi. We live in a log cabin in the woods. She is allergic to cologne.

In 2000, the
National Hansen’s Disease Museum
was established at Carville to preserve the unique history of the residents and the leprosarium.

Although 95 percent of the population is resistant to leprosy, approximately 6,500 individuals in the United States have been diagnosed with the disease. The number of active cases requiring treatment is just over 3,000. In the United States between 150 and 200 new cases of leprosy are reported each year. Of the indigenous cases, virtually all are discovered in southern Louisiana and Texas, Gulf Coast areas where there is a high prevalence of leprosy in armadillos.

Though leprosy is now treatable, there is no vaccine; there is no test to determine who is susceptible, and the exact manner of transmission is still not known. Most leprosy patients in America never reveal the nature of their disease.