by Neil White
CHAPTER 48
My nightmares about the children persisted. In every dream, Neil and Maggie were falling from a building or a tall tree or a window in an apartment. The setting changed, but there were two recurring themes: I could never quite reach them, and I could not see the ground. And at the end of each dream, like the swinging bridge nightmare, my children fell into an abyss. I would sit up in bed, wailing, covered in sweat.
Doc even got used to it. He would groan and put a pillow over his head. On the nights when the dreams came to me, I would climb out of bed and walk the corridors until it was time for work.
Ella noticed the bags under my eyes.
“Nightmares,” I told her. “Ever have them?”
“Musta,” she said, “just don’t remember.” But Ella did tell me about another dream.
“I’m just a little ole thing,” she said. “My momma holds me like a baby.”
In the dream, Ella’s mother held her against her breast, rocked her in an old wooden chair, and sang hymns. Ella got tickled. “She tryin’ to get me to go to sleep, but I’m already asleep.”
“I be all warm,” Ella said. “I’s a baby, but Momma already know I got this disease.”
Ella’s dream had a recurring theme, too. Her mother said the same words.
“Momma say, ‘You got what Jesus talk about in the Bible. I wouldn’ta throwed you out.’” Ella smiled. “Then we both laughs, and I goes to sleep.”
Listening to her describe this dream, watching her laugh, witnessing the way she held herself, I realized that, somehow, Ella had escaped the shame of leprosy.
I’d read about a brief period in medieval Europe when some Christians considered leprosy a sacred disease. Infection, among the most devout, was seen as a privilege. Being a leper, one of Christ’s poor, meant a sufferer need not wait for any rapture. Resurrection occurred immediately. The belief that leprosy was a godly disease was so widespread that Lazar houses and leper colonies were like monastic retreats. One European prince proclaimed that putting his hands on an outcast, washing the open wounds on a leper’s feet, would get him one step closer to heaven. And Father Damien, the Martyr of Molokai, had perpetuated that conviction. He said that if he were to contract leprosy—which, in the end, he did—he would gain a “crown of thorns.”
But this view of leprosy had disappeared. Over the last five centuries, leprosy, and all the stigma that goes with the disease, found its way back into the human psyche.
But Ella carried her leprosy like a divine blessing. She had faith that she would be healed in heaven. She embraced the life she believed God had chosen for her on earth. She had transcended the stigma that crippled so many.
CHAPTER 49
Mom brought Maggie and Neil to visit as often as possible. Our hours together in the visiting room were a precious time. As we played and talked, my mother sat quietly in the corner and read. She could not have given me a greater gift than those moments with my children.
When Neil and Maggie weren’t on the road to see me, I wrote letters reminding them that “Daddy’s time-out” wouldn’t last much longer. I wrote about the exciting things we would do together when I was released.
I created two comic strips with Neil and Maggie as the superheroes. Maggie’s comic was entitled Magalina Ballerina. The heroine was a four-year-old girl who used ballet moves to fight crime and save her friends from danger. Neil’s comic was entitled Hoverboard Boy. The hero, Little Neil, used his superpowers and a hoverboard—a flying skateboard like the one used in the Back to the Future movies—to save the world from evil.
As I was illustrating one of the comics, Steve Read looked over my shoulder and snorted. It might seem a bit strange to see a dad in prison dreaming up plots where his children fought crime, but, then again, I didn’t feel like a convict when I was being a father.
“Have they captured any check kiters yet?” Steve said.
Steve could be a real ass. But he was funny, too.
When I wasn’t writing to, and illustrating comics for, Neil and Maggie, I wrote to everyone I ever knew. I wrote to the victims of my crime to apologize, to make amends, if they could imagine some way for me to be helpful. I wrote to old college buddies. I wrote to old girlfriends. I wrote to former employees. I wrote to high school teachers. I wrote to other journalists and writers. I wrote to friends of my parents. I wrote to Judge Gex. I wrote to my buddy Willie Morris. The return address on my letters included my inmate number, as well as Carville’s address.
Some afternoons after mail call, Link would follow me back to my room to watch me open my envelopes. At times, he asked me to read my letter out loud. He particularly enjoyed my mother’s letters. He thought her expressions were hilarious.
“What’d you get today, Clark Kent?” Link asked.
I held up a copy of the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, a couple of magazines, a package from my mother, and a letter from my old friend Willie Morris. Months earlier, when I was still in the denial phase, I had written Willie and described some of the characters living in Carville. I explained my George Plimpton–esque plan, and asked if he knew any editors who might be interested in a participatory journalistic piece. Willie knew just about everyone in the literary world. He was vaguely encouraging, and he suggested that I just continue to write. Willie was too kind to point out the absurdity of pretending to be an undercover journalist during a prison term, but his tone said it all. He had lost the enthusiasm he had for me earlier in my career.
Despite the mood of the letter, I was proud that he had written me. “Willie Morris,” I told Link, “is one of the great living southern writers.”
“What he write?” Link asked.
“North Toward Home. Good Old Boy. The Courting of Marcus Dupree. He was editor of Harper’s magazine at age thirty-one.” Link didn’t look remotely impressed. “The youngest ever,” I added.
“Another borin’-ass, white motherfucker,” he said.
I tore open the large manila envelope from my mother. It was copies from another self-help book. A note was scrawled in a corner—that I should never forget how precious I was. Mom’s handwriting was terrible, primarily because she was always in a rush. She once made our school lunch sandwiches so hurriedly she left the plastic wrappers on the Kraft cheese slices.
Link sat on the side of one of the bunks. He was quiet, which was unusual.
“Anything wrong?” I asked.
Then he blurted out, “Write me a letter.”
“Sure,” I said.
“To my mama.” Link’s mother had come to the visiting room, but he had always refused to see her. He told me all she wanted to do was read the Bible to him. Eventually, she quit coming. I took out a pad and pen and told Link I would be happy to write a letter on his behalf.
“I’ll write,” I said. “You dictate.”
“Dick what!?” he said.
“You talk and I’ll write.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you say that!”
I wrote the salutation and read it, “Dear Mom.” Then I asked Link what he wanted to say.
“You writin’ it,” he insisted. “Say whatever the fuck you want.”
Link refused to offer any text, so I wrote, on his behalf and spoke aloud: Dear Mom: This place is like a country club. Link smiled and nodded. I’ve made some friends while I’ve been here. The guy writing this letter for me is one of them. I call him Clark Kent. He is the whitest man you will ever meet.
“That’s good,” Link said.
I continued: I play lots of cards and dominoes. And I help leprosy patients in the cafeteria.
I continued to write, as best I could, about Link’s days—until he finally offered to help.
“Ask her this…,” he said, hesitating, like he might be embarrassed. “Ask her how Ashley is.”
“Who’s Ashley?”
“My little sister,” he said. I could tell he really cared about her, and he wanted to know what she’d like for Christmas. He wanted to know what she was
doing with her friends. And he warned her not to get in the car with a guy named Little Feets.
“Do you want me to ask if Ashley will come visit?”
“Yeah,” Link said, pointing at the pad. “Write that down.”
I finished the letter, addressed and stamped the envelope, and told Link I would mail it in the morning.
“Hey,” he said, “it’s OK if you write all that shit I told you.”
I nodded and shrugged.
“No,” he said, “I want you to.”
“Maybe someday,” I said.
“Don’t wait too long,” he said. “Life span of a nigger in my neighborhood is short.”
CHAPTER 50
“Hey, Doc,” I asked, interrupting his reading, “what are you going to do when you get out?”
“Leave the country,” he said.
Doc rambled about the FDA’s enforcement of U.S. laws and said he would never subject himself to their interpretations again.
“Where will you go?”
He thought for a moment. “Latin America might work.” Doc added that Hispanic men viewed impotence as a direct reflection of their manhood. “But my heat pill has other applications.”
Doc’s heat pill perfectly mimicked fever. Fever was the body’s natural mechanism for fighting infection and disease. Other thermogenic compounds might raise the body’s temperature a degree or two, but Doc’s heat pill had no limit. That was its great potential, as well as its danger. An overdose would cook a patient from the inside. But regulated and supervised by a doctor, it could generate enough heat at a cellular level to kill just about any bacteria. And no other physician on earth had as much experience with the thermogenic agent DNP as Doc. He had observed its effects in thousands of patients at his weight loss clinics. Over the years he had developed the art of dosage and frequency. And he discovered hormone supplements to reduce side effects and get the greatest results.
“You know,” Doc said, nonchalantly, “the AIDS virus dies at 107 degrees.” When I asked for details, he explained that the virus could live outside the body for about seven hours, but it died within minutes of exposure to 107-degree heat, and his heat pill could produce those kinds of temperatures.
“You’ve got to tell somebody,” I said.
But Doc had no intention of telling anyone about the potential benefits of his heat pill. At least not until he was a free man. He couldn’t profit from its use as long as he was incarcerated.
A few minutes later, Doc said, “It’s not just AIDS.” His heat pill could potentially cure Lyme disease, several forms of cancer, and just about any other infection sensitive to heat. Doc said his pill could even save lost mountain climbers. If they carried a couple of his pills, the thermogenic effects would prevent frostbite for days until rescuers arrived.
“What about leprosy?” I asked. Leprosy preferred the cool parts of the body. If Doc’s pill generated heat within the cells, it would certainly kill Mycobacterium leprae.
“I guess it would work,” Doc said. He seemed less than enthusiastic. Victims of leprosy, for the most part, lived in underdeveloped nations. It attacked the malnourished, the poor. They didn’t have the resources to buy Doc’s heat pill.
Sometimes, late at night, in the fuzzy state between sleep and consciousness, Doc would think aloud. In a groggy voice, he would question the logic of confinement or speculate on a new prison regulation or contemplate a recent scientific discovery.
“Doc,” I asked, not knowing if he was asleep or not, “can your heat pill really cure cancer and AIDS?”
“Maybe,” Doc said. “But I’ve been thinking a lot about growth hormones.” The room was quiet for a moment, then Doc asked what I thought would be the best market for growth hormones.
The largest was obvious. “Asia,” I said. “China’s got a billion people.”
“Yeah,” Doc said, “short little fuckers over there.” He pulled the gray blanket over his shoulders and turned toward the wall.
I lay in the dark a few feet away from a man who could, conceivably, cure any number of humanity’s dreaded diseases. But he had no intention of sharing the cures with anyone. Doc was biding his time.
CHAPTER 51
“Ella,” I asked, “do you have any children?”
“They wouldn’t let me have none,” she said.
“Did you want kids?”
“Wanted lots of ’em,” she said, her voice trailing off. She looked down at the floor. “But they wouldn’t let me have none.”
Ella’s smile disappeared, and I wished I could take back my question. I didn’t know what to say. We fell silent.
Then Jimmy Harris called out, “Hey, young fella!” Jimmy had severe curvature of the spine, and he wore bright red suspenders that accentuated his stooped posture. He waved me over to his table.
“I’m Catholic, you know,” Jimmy said. “My wife and I used the rhythm method, and it isn’t very reliable.” Jimmy and his wife became pregnant with a son. But rather than have the Sisters of Charity take his boy and place him in an anonymous home, Jimmy arranged for his son to live with a woman in Ville Platte, Louisiana. Two years later, when they gave birth to a girl, the same woman took the child.
“My children were raised by a wonderful woman,” Jimmy added. “A saint.”
“Did you get to see them?” I asked.
“See ’em all the time,” he said, smiling. “They’re coming with the grandchildren to pick me up this weekend.”
While Jimmy talked about his children, Ella left the cafeteria. I watched as she rolled out toward the corridor. It was the only time I had ever seen her look sad.
Jimmy looked over his shoulder and whispered, “Not many people will tell you this, but in the old days they encouraged us to get an operation.”
“What kind?”
“Sterilization,” Jimmy said in a low voice. “They didn’t force it on us, but they dangled privileges out there to encourage volunteers.”
I couldn’t believe Ella would knowingly volunteer for an operation that would keep her from being a mother. I knew about sterilization of mental patients in the United States, and one of the reference books I’d read mentioned that leprosy patients had been sterilized in Japan. “Did many get the operation?” I asked.
“I don’t know about nobody but me,” he said.
I would never know if Ella had been sterilized. I didn’t want to make her sad, so I never brought up the subject again. But I felt terrible for her. She had helped me so much since I’d come to Carville. At a time when I was planning a future with my children, Ella was living out her last years. There were no children to carry on her spirit or legacy or stories. When she died, there would be no others. For Ella, it stopped here.
Just before the ten o’clock count, when I was certain Neil and Maggie would be asleep, I stood in line in the hallway and waited for a pay phone to come available. I knew Linda didn’t want me to move back to Oxford. And for good reason. She wanted a fresh start and I understood. In some ways, it would have been easier for me to settle in a town without Linda, but I could not bear to be away from Neil and Maggie. As I waited and listened to an inmate yell at his wife over the phone, I felt lucky to have my children. When I was with Neil and Maggie, my troubles seemed to disappear.
If I was going to be the best father possible, I needed to live in the same town as my children. For them, and for me. But that commitment to my children came with another commitment. Since Linda would have custody, I would have to follow her wherever she moved. And I was prepared to do just that.
When the pay phone came available, I picked up the receiver and asked the operator to make a collect call to Oxford, Mississippi.
My father and me, 1972.
CHAPTER 52
I looked forward to mail call on the first of every month. That’s when my father sent me $100 for my prison commissary account. In prison, $100 went a long way. I could buy decent toothpaste and mouthwash and laundry detergent, not to mention ice cream. I could also
stock up on quarters so I could buy snacks from the vending machines anytime day or night, or even loan Link money for his card games. Dad had always been generous.
When I was fourteen years old, I moved in with my father. He was different from most fathers I knew. He wasn’t strict. In fact, my father was the nicest dad in the neighborhood. At times, he was the drunkest.
Late at night, when drunken fathers across the country would come home to lash out at the ones they loved, my father did the opposite. He would stagger in the front door, see me in the living room, pull me up from the couch, and hug me tight. I could smell the beer on his breath and the cigarette smoke on his golf sweater. He would shake his head, as if ashamed of himself, and tell me how much he loved me, how proud he was of all I had done, and that he was sorry he wasn’t a better father.
I wished Dad hadn’t been so hard on himself, but I knew without question how much he loved me. I also knew he trusted me. He would not question where I had been or what I had been doing. I was fifteen. I had a car. And all the freedom a teenager could want.
Sometimes I’d sneak into my father’s bedroom after my stepmother had left for work; my father would sleep until lunch. And even then, he might head to the golf course instead of his law office.
I’d pick up the pants he had thrown on the bedside chair and reach into his pocket. Most mornings I slipped in to get some spending money. I’m sure he would have given it to me if I had asked. But this was easier. And he would never notice because he wouldn’t remember if he had spent it at the bar the night before.
I loved my dad, but looking at him hungover, sleeping the day away, I knew he was no model for success. He would always choose golf or drinking or hanging out with his friends over work. My idols were successful businessmen. I admired Jack Thompson, a Gulf Coast insurance man who had made so much money he sat on a board at Lloyd’s of London. I looked up to my father’s oldest friend, George Schloegel, who had worked his way from the mailroom of Hancock Bank to become a vice president destined for the top spot. I wanted to follow the path of Roland Weeks, the publisher of our local newspaper who spent his weekends flying stunt planes and skiing from the back of a shiny speedboat. I wasn’t certain how my life would turn out, but I did know one thing. I would not end up like my father.
