In the Sanctuary of Outcasts

by Neil White

  “God,” one of older inmates said, putting his hands over his mouth, “what is that?”

  “That’s Ms. Woodsen,” Link said. “She opened up her ass and let some air out.”

  “I know who said that!” Ms. Woodsen called out from her office. “I’m gonna write you up!” At that moment, another guard yelled that the census was clear. Link ran as fast as he could back to our dorm.

  As I was leaving, Ms. Woodsen emerged from her office and grabbed me by the arm. “Mr. White?” she asked.

  “Yes?” I said, hoping she wasn’t going to ask me to identify the inmate who said she was the source of the aroma.

  “You still wanna teach?”

  “Yes,” I said, without thinking about it.

  “Good,” she said. “You start Monday morning.”

  A teacher. I would be helping inmates prepare for the GED test. Relieved that I would no longer have to mop floors or wash dishes or serve in the cafeteria line, I realized I would also have to relinquish my post as garnish man and menu board illustrator. I would no longer have access to the leprosy patient cafeteria. I would lose my best opportunities to talk with Harry and Jimmy. And I would lose the chance to have coffee each morning with Ella. Our time together, before the sun crested the levee, when we could talk in privacy, was coming to an end.

  The patient cemetery, where many of the tombstones are engraved with aliases.

  CHAPTER 57

  Link was given a new job, too. The guards, who knew he was scared of ghosts, gave him a job weed-eating the grass around the tombstones in the leprosy graveyard.

  The cemetery, covered in shade from pecan trees, was located at the back of the colony. Leprosy patients, most of whom had been abandoned by family, were buried there. With more than seven hundred white tombstones similar to military markers, the graveyard was visible from the second-floor hallway. As dawn came, the tips of the stones jutted out just above a shallow mist. The tombstones were often marked with nothing more than a patient number. When a name was engraved, it was often the patient’s alias etched in marble.

  After his first day on the job, Link said he stepped in a sinkhole and his leg sank deep into the ground.

  “I felt the goddamn leper bones!” he yelled. I didn’t believe him, but Link was superstitious. After the “leper bones” incident, he refused to set foot inside the graveyard. Later that week, a guard asked Link to climb under one of the buildings to repair a pipe. Link had heard about an inmate who, climbing under the same building, had been bitten by a snake. On the neck.

  “But it wasn’t poisonous,” I said.

  “Goddamn!” Link said. “It don’t matter. A snake bite me in the neck, I’m gonna have a motherfuckin’ heart attack!”

  The following morning, two guards tried to coerce Link into going under the building. One of the guards, in a fit of frustration, tried to push Link’s head under, and Link bit his hand. Free of the guard’s grip, he raced around the colony screaming, throwing his hands in the air, trying to bite anyone who touched him. When they finally caught him, he was sent immediately to the hole.

  As the Bureau of Prisons geared up to take over the colony, the inmate population surged. A new crop of inmates would be transferred to Carville from other prisons, and they would take most of our jobs in food service. Doc got his hands on an internal memo that listed Carville as 99 percent over capacity. In order to abide by federal regulations, the warden would have to take over the entire facility. And that’s what he wanted.

  I told Ella about my new job. She nodded, as though she approved. I wanted to know if she had heard about the future of her home. I wondered if the patients had been informed about the Bureau of Prisons’s plans. I couldn’t imagine the stress relocation would bring for long-term residents like Ella who had spent their lives here, where they were safe.

  If Ella were relocated, I might not see her again. I found myself scheming about ways to pass her notes in the hallway. If I mailed her letters, no one would ever know. I could send letters through the prison mail system, and a few days later, it would arrive at Ella’s post office box. Even if she were relocated, we could keep up a correspondence.

  For decades, mail at Carville was controversial. Until the late 1960s, all mail from the colony was sterilized before being released into the general population. It was baked in a huge electric oven. Even The Star, the magazine published by the patients, was cooked after it rolled off the press to be mailed to forty-eight states and thirty countries.

  One issue of the magazine, almost eight thousand copies, was burned to a crisp because a staff member was inattentive. I would have been outraged had my magazine been charred before subscribers received it.

  “Do you write letters?” I asked Ella.

  “Nope.”

  Many of the leprosy patients didn’t write letters. Holding a pen or pencil was difficult; for those with severe absorption, typewriters weren’t much help, either.

  “Do you get any letters?” I asked.

  “I gets some,” she said, “but I don’t look at ’em.” Ella said she gave them to a lady friend who read the important ones. I didn’t want anyone else reading my letters to Ella. And, if the “lady friend” was an employee of Public Health Services, as I suspected she might be, she might report me to the guards.

  Jimmy Harris sat down at our table. “Good morning to you both,” he said, nodding to me and Ella. Jimmy was the one patient who would talk about any subject. I felt like nothing was off-limits with him.

  “Jimmy,” I asked, “where was the oven—where they baked the mail?”

  “Across the way,” he said, pointing toward the infirmary. “Every piece got the treatment. Sometimes they burned it.”

  Jefferson, the skinny inmate with gold teeth from New Orleans, danced by our table. “They baked your mail,” he said, “but that ain’t shit. You shoulda seen what they did at the Loyola Street Post Office in New Orleans.”

  “What happened there?” Jimmy said.

  “They zap them letters with an X-ray machine.”

  Jimmy and Ella were confused. “What you talkin’ ’bout, boy?” Ella said.

  Jefferson told us he’d worked for the postal service in New Orleans.

  “You delivered mail?” I asked.

  “Naw, I worked at the main post office building. I manned that X-ray machine.” According to Jefferson, every single letter and package went through the X-ray machine before being processed.

  “Ever see anything interesting?” I asked.

  “Every damn day,” Jefferson said. “When I see cash money go through, I just pick up the letter and stick it in my back pocket.”

  “You can see cash through an X-ray?” I asked.

  “Hell, yeah,” he said. “It stands out like you do in prison.”

  Ella laughed. Jimmy smiled, too.

  “But people don’t send cash that often, do they?” I asked.

  “Shit,” Jefferson said, bobbing his head up and down and laughing, “I loved them holidays. Christmas and Easter were the best. People be sending money to everybody they know. I made $900 one day before Christmas.”

  Jimmy looked appalled, and Ella shook her head.

  “You didn’t feel bad about taking people’s Christmas money?” I asked.

  “Hey, I got a heart,” he said. “I took the time to read every one of them cards. Like on Mother’s Day, nicest notes you’ve ever seen. One said: Mom, your family loves you. I hope this comes in handy. And it sure did!” Jefferson laughed.

  Ella scolded him for taking money from mothers. Jefferson acted as if he didn’t hear her. The more he talked, the more excited he became. “Birthdays was better,” he said. “I loved birthdays. I’d take them cards home and read every one of ’em. Then I’d count the money and have me a birthday party!” Jefferson started singing: Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday, dear Jefferson. Happy birthday to me!

  As Jefferson sang, I thought about the birthday cards I’d sent to Neil and
Maggie and how I would have felt if someone had taken them. “Tell me you didn’t take money from little kids.”

  “Sure did!” he said, proudly. “One day I got this card, it say: Tommy, here’s a brand-new $100 bill for every year you’ve been alive.” Jefferson smiled. “And that kid was five years old.”

  “That’s terrible!” Ella said.

  “It sure was,” Jefferson said. “I was hopin’ he was a teenager.” He laughed and danced some more. Jefferson said he had been named employee of the month on several occasions.

  “I was always happy to work overtime on the X-ray machine,” Jefferson said. “They just loved me down at the Loyola Street Post Office.”

  “I bet they didn’t love you when you got caught,” I said.

  “Got caught!” Jefferson said. “I’m in here for money orders. Those dumb asses never knew about the X-ray machine.” Jefferson told us he had saved more than $40,000 from working the X-ray machine. “I’m goin’ legit,” he said. “I’m buyin’ me a franchise when I get out.”

  He turned and danced into the kitchen. Ella shook her head.

  “Mail wasn’t the only thing they baked in the old days,” Jimmy said. “They tried to cook me!”

  Jimmy was one of a handful of patients who in the 1930s volunteered for an experimental fever treatment. Jimmy and the others were transported to an isolated wing of a marine hospital in New Orleans. There, they were placed in fever machines. Ella and I listened to Jimmy talk about the nurses, about spending Christmas in the hospital, about the doctor who pushed boundaries to raise his body temperature higher, and the fever machine that looked like an iron lung.

  “The contraption had two openings,” Jimmy said. “One for my head. The other for the thermometer in my rectum.” At that, Ella turned away and rolled toward the coffeepot.

  “Did it work?” I asked.

  “Just might have,” Jimmy said. “But it almost killed me.” During his final treatment, Jimmy’s body temperature exceeded 105 degrees. He blacked out. The nurses told him later he had gone berserk. They stopped the treatments and sent everyone back to Carville. But a year later, Jimmy was released. Jimmy had tested negative for leprosy twelve months in a row.

  Jimmy’s story corroborated Doc’s theories of thermogenic treatment. The heat had nearly killed Jimmy, but it worked. Doc’s heat pill might have been dangerous, but it seemed like a pretty good alternative for those with terminal illness. And, not unlike chemotherapy, many medical procedures almost kill the patient in order to kill the foreign object.

  “If you were cured,” I asked Jimmy, “why did you come back?”

  “Leprosy came back,” he said. “Stubborn little bug.”

  Jimmy moved back and forth between Carville and home. But it was his wife who needed treatment most of the time. Jimmy built a life and career away from the colony. During his first stint at Carville, a nun named Sister Hilary encouraged him to use a camera. So when Jimmy tested negative for leprosy, he made a living in Ville Platte as a professional photographer.

  “I did more than seven hundred weddings,” he said.

  “Did the people in Ville Platte know you’d been in Carville?”

  “Most did,” he said.

  “Did that affect your business?”

  “Never!” Jimmy said. “And when I started shooting in color, I went to the bank every day. Not to borrow, mind you, but to put money in.”

  Jimmy and his wife still came to Carville to get treatments, but they were outpatients, having lived independently for almost three decades.

  “So why are you back?” I imagined his leprosy had returned.

  Jimmy said his wife’s feet, devoid of feeling, were in terrible shape. She required daily treatments.

  Jimmy leaned in toward me. “Most people won’t tell you this,” he said in a low voice, “but any of us who were forced to be here can come back to live.” He looked around to make sure no one could hear what he was about to say. “It doesn’t cost us a cent.” He sat back in the chair. “Not a bad deal, if you can get it.”

  A guard came into the cafeteria. “Where’s Jefferson?” he asked me. I said I had no idea. “Go find him,” the guard said.

  I found Jefferson asleep in the back of the cooler. We walked together back to the leprosy patient cafeteria.

  “You got a new job assignment,” the guard told Jefferson.

  Jefferson started dancing and singing. “I ain’t never washin’ another dish as long as I live!” The guard escorted Jefferson toward the hallway.

  “Hey, Jefferson,” I called out, “where’s your new job?”

  Jefferson looked over his shoulder and smiled, “Prison mail room!”

  CHAPTER 58

  “Hey, Harry,” I said, “this is my last day.”

  “You goin’ home?”

  “No, changing jobs.”

  Harry tipped his hat, like he always did. “Good luck,” he said.

  “Do you have a job?” I asked.

  “I get minimum wage,” he said.

  “What do you do?”

  “I help out,” he said. Harry assisted other patients. He pushed their wheelchairs to and from the infirmary. He rescued patients with a dead wheelchair battery who might be stranded around the colony. He ran errands. “I do what they ask me to do,” he said.

  No fanfare. No complaints. The work was simple. It was quiet. In fact, I hadn’t even noticed his tasks were jobs. It looked more like a routine. He helped people. Each little rescue was important. Harry spent his days doing small, great acts.

  I would miss seeing him in the cafeteria, watching him eat while using his special utensils. He was as friendly as any person I had ever met. But I was curious about one thing. He never called the inmates by name. He would tip his hat and give us a smile, but he never did use our names, or even nicknames.

  “My name is Neil,” I reminded him.

  “I know,” he said, like I had insulted him.

  When I asked why he never called any of the prisoners by name, he looked down at the floor and shuffled his Velcro shoes. Embarrassed, he said, “You all sort of look alike.”

  When Ella arrived for breakfast, I poured her a cup of coffee.

  I felt a love for her like I’d not felt before. Not quite like I loved my siblings or my wife or my parents. I respected her and she treated me with respect, even though I was a convicted felon.

  “Saturday will be my last day,” I reminded her. “I’ll miss having coffee with you.”

  “Miss you, too,” she said, smiling.

  I would see Ella in the hallways, in church, on our daily walking routes, but I would miss our early mornings together.

  “I’ll miss our talks most of all,” I said.

  “We’ll talk,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “In the breeze,” she said, staring off into the leprosy patient courtyard.

  I nodded like I knew what she meant, put my hand on her shoulder, and told her I’d see her later. As I walked toward the kitchen to turn in my apron and dry erase markers, Ella stared out the window. “Yep,” she said in an airy voice, “I’ll see you in the breeze.”

  CHAPTER 59

  On the morning before my first day of work as a teacher, about fifteen men lined up outside the door of my prison room. I’d never been in the room at 8:00 A.M. on a Monday morning. I’d always been mopping the floor or writing on the menu board. One at a time, the men walked into our room, stood in front of Doc’s bunk, and described their symptoms. Doc would listen, look down their throats or feel underneath their jaw, and jot down a few notes. Then, he would tell them exactly what to tell the physician assistants they were to see later that morning.

  “Clark Kent,” one of the inmates said, “you didn’t know Doc here saved my life last month.”

  Doc had caught a mistake made by the prison doctors. A deadly combination of drugs had been prescribed, inadvertently, by two different physicians.

  The men who came into our room to be examined w
ere young and old, Christian and Muslim, black, white, and Hispanic. For all Doc’s talk of not wanting to be around these men, he still honored his Hippocratic oath. He examined the men, made a diagnosis, and sent them on their way. Not a penny exchanged hands. Doc was full of surprises.

  When I arrived in the education department, Ms. Woodsen sat at her desk in the corner of the room. I had convinced her to let me take the lead in helping the inmate students pass the GED. The Bureau of Prisons received money for each inmate who graduated, and I was certain I could teach them enough to pass a high school equivalency test. Never one to set the bar low, I had a secret goal of 100 percent graduation, but I told Ms. Woodsen I thought I could achieve a 50 percent graduation rate.

  My strategy for success was simple. I would start with questions. I would discover what the men did not know. That was the key. I introduced myself to the class and told them about my background. I emphasized that questions and curiosity were the secrets to learning. I wanted them to be comfortable asking me any question. I waited for someone to speak up, but they were slow to ask.

  The classroom was filled. Several students were my friends. Ricky, a handball buddy, sat on the front row. Mr. Dingham, a union boss from Newark who had signed labor deals for thousands of stevedores at the port, sat in the back. I was surprised he didn’t own a diploma.

  “C’mon,” I said, smiling, trying to make them feel at ease, “you must have questions about something.”

  Mr. Dingham raised his hand and said he had two questions. “Is it true,” he asked in a strong New Jersey accent, “that vultures ain’t got no assholes?”

  Ms. Woodsen screamed at him from across the room. “You can’t use them words, Mr. Dingham!”

  Dingham yelled back. “I heard they just puked up everything and don’t never need to take a shit.”

  Ms. Woodsen stood up and pointed a chubby index finger at him. “We use scientific language up in here!”

  I stepped between them and assured Mr. Dingham that what he’d heard about vultures was a myth, but that it might be true that vultures regurgitated. Even scavengers had trouble digesting bones and feathers, I explained. Then I demonstrated to the class how one would rephrase Mr. Dingham’s question, scientifically.