In the Sanctuary of Outcasts Read online

  In the Sanctuary of Outcasts

  A Memoir

  Neil White

  To Little Neil and Maggie

  He dwelt in an isolated house,

  because he was a leper.

  —2 CHRONICLES

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Map

  Author’s Note

  Part I

  My First Day May 3, 1993

  Chapter 1

  Daddy is going to camp. That’s what I told my…

  Chapter 2

  Leprosy. Kahn had to be wrong. Surely, healthy people—even inmates—would…

  Chapter 3

  My building was called Dutchtown, named for a neighboring community…

  Chapter 4

  The walk took about five minutes. I followed Kahn, winding…

  Chapter 5

  Back in my prison room, I wrote a letter to…

  Part II

  Summer

  Chapter 6

  The guard banged his flashlight against the end of my…

  Chapter 7

  Toward the end of my first week of work in…

  Chapter 8

  After work the following day, I returned to my room…

  Chapter 9

  The guard who had caught me talking to Ella gave…

  Chapter 10

  The prison library occupied two rooms in a building in…

  Chapter 11

  After work each day, I walked the perimeter of the…

  Chapter 12

  My plan to write an exposé about the convicts and…

  Chapter 13

  My menu board illustrations had become popular with the leprosy…

  Chapter 14

  “May I please borrow your iron?” I asked again.

  Chapter 15

  I met Linda in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1984 when we…

  Chapter 16

  That night, just before lights out, Doc asked if I…

  Chapter 17

  On a Sunday morning in late June, in spite of…

  Chapter 18

  On Monday morning, I found myself alone with Ella in…

  Chapter 19

  One balmy night after the 10:00 P.M. count, Link invited…

  Chapter 20

  I was appalled that the Bureau of Prisons would force…

  Chapter 21

  I spent the late summer afternoons walking the inmate track.

  Chapter 22

  On one of my afternoon walks, when the shade from…

  Chapter 23

  Doc’s job as an office clerk afforded him access to…

  Chapter 24

  Carville was full of men whose grand schemes trumped common…

  Chapter 25

  Steve, the ultimate entrepreneur, managed to get the best job…

  Part III

  Fall

  Chapter 26

  Frank Ragano, Jimmy Hoffa’s lawyer, was terrified he would catch…

  Chapter 27

  I missed my cologne. For years, I would douse myself…

  Chapter 28

  Initially, I couldn’t fathom why the federal government would decide…

  Chapter 29

  Carville was strange in many ways, not the least of…

  Chapter 30

  Doc had one close friend at Carville, Dan Duchaine. Dan…

  Chapter 31

  As the leaves started to turn on the trees, Linda…

  Chapter 32

  Smeltzer’s efforts to profit from the inmates reached a fever…

  Chapter 33

  Because the leprosy patients liked my menu board illustrations, the…

  Chapter 34

  The prison was quiet and cool the day I turned…

  Chapter 35

  During the five months I’d been at Carville, I had…

  Chapter 36

  As I immersed myself in reporting on the patients, my…

  Chapter 37

  On a crisp fall day, bundled in a heavy jacket,…

  Chapter 38

  For all that I had done wrong, one part of…

  Chapter 39

  I went to my room, crawled into bed, and pulled…

  Chapter 40

  On a Wednesday afternoon, after days of crippling despair, I…

  Part IV

  Winter

  Chapter 41

  I stood behind the barricade and waited for a guard…

  Chapter 42

  On a Saturday morning in December, I waited with about…

  Chapter 43

  Outside, in the inmate courtyard, Slim waited for the children…

  Chapter 44

  A few weeks later, Steve Read finally invited me to…

  Chapter 45

  The next morning, while transcribing the menu board in the…

  Chapter 46

  “Have you seen this?” Doc asked. He handed me a…

  Chapter 47

  Every day after the four o’clock stand-up count, the Dutchtown…

  Chapter 48

  My nightmares about the children persisted. In every dream, Neil…

  Chapter 49

  Mom brought Maggie and Neil to visit as often as…

  Chapter 50

  “Hey, Doc,” I asked, interrupting his reading, “what are you…

  Chapter 51

  “Ella,” I asked, “do you have any children?”

  Chapter 52

  I looked forward to mail call on the first of…

  Chapter 53

  During the cold winter months, bundled in a brown, government-issued…

  Chapter 54

  During a Wednesday night service at the Catholic church, I…

  Chapter 55

  I waited for my team meeting with five other inmates.

  Chapter 56

  I left the meeting and walked to the library. As…

  Chapter 57

  Link was given a new job, too. The guards, who…

  Chapter 58

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

  Chapter 59

  On the morning before my first day of work as…

  Chapter 60

  As the gray winter months lingered, the leprosy patients became…

  Chapter 61

  As the Bureau of Prisons continued preparations to take over…

  Chapter 62

  Back from two weeks in parish jail, Link had found…

  Chapter 63

  I returned to my room to find Doc burning a…

  Chapter 64

  On a Sunday afternoon in late January, more than forty-five…

  Chapter 65

  The prison alarm echoed through the hallways, and the guards…

  Chapter 66

  In the midst of lockdown, I learned that my furlough…

  Chapter 67

  On the first two days of furlough, the kids and…

  Chapter 68

  After a dinner of gumbo and cornbread, Mom drove me…

  Part V

  Spring

  Chapter 69

  Back inside the colony, a guard gave me a urinalysis…

  Chapter 70

  Not to be left out, I drafted my own short…

  Chapter 71

  The prison population dwindled. U.S. marshal buses and vans arrived…

  Chapter 72

  In preparation for the annual patient Mardi Gras parade, the…

  Chapter 73

  Five days after the Mardi Gras parade, on Ash Wednesday,…

  Chapter 74

  “If you’re not careful,” Jimmy Harris said while riding his…

  Chapter 75

  On a bright day in April, Dan Duchaine yelle
d out,…

  Chapter 76

  Late in the evening after the dance, the guards came…

  Chapter 77

  I stood in the breezeway and waited for Ella. I…

  Chapter 78

  The day before I was released, I packed my belongings.

  Chapter 79

  My last night as a federal prisoner, a few inmates…

  Part VI

  My Last Day April 25, 1994

  Chapter 80

  I dropped my boxes at Receiving and Discharge, in the…

  Epilogue

  Frank Ragano’s book, Mob Lawyer, was published immediately after his…

  Acknowledgments

  Bibliography

  Photograph Credits

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Map

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  For more than a century, Carville, Louisiana, served as the United States’ national leprosarium. Individuals who contracted the disease were forcibly quarantined at its remote location on a bend in the Mississippi River. By the 1990s, the number of patients at Carville had dwindled to 130, the very last people in the continental United States confined because of the disease. The facility had hundreds of empty beds, so the Bureau of Prisons transferred federal convicts to Carville. In the Sanctuary of Outcasts is the story of the year I was incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center in Carville, Louisiana.

  A Note on the Word Leper

  I wish the word leper were not in our vocabulary. For the individuals who contract leprosy, this ancient term is deeply offensive: the label defines individuals solely on the basis of their disease and further alienates them from the world. Early in the book, I have included the term as I used it—in my own ignorance—when I first arrived at Carville. I lived with, watched, and ultimately forged friendships with the residents of Carville, many of whom welcomed convicts into their home. For this reason, I have used the term leper as sparingly as possible to depict the suffering caused by this branding, the misunderstandings about the disease, and the stigma associated with leprosy. My hope is that the book will reflect my gradual understanding of, and empathy for, this community of men and women who survived unimaginable injustice and tragedy. After the “Summer” section, as narrator, I do not use the word. For the remainder of the book, the term leper is confined to dialogue, sequestered within quotations.

  PART I

  My First Day

  May 3, 1993

  Live oak trees separate the front of the colony from the Mississippi River levee.

  CHAPTER 1

  Daddy is going to camp. That’s what I told my children. A child psychologist suggested it. “Words like prison and jail conjure up dangerous images for children,” she explained.

  But it wasn’t camp. It was prison.

  “I’m Neil White,” I said, introducing myself to the man in the guardhouse. I smiled. “Here to self-surrender.”

  The guard looked at his clipboard, then at my leather bag, then at his watch. “You’re forty-five minutes early.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, standing tall, certain my punctuality would demonstrate that I was not your typical prisoner. The guard pointed to a concrete bench next to the guardhouse and told me to wait.

  The grounds were orderly and beautiful. Ancient live oaks, their gnarled arms twisting without direction, lined the grove between the prison and the river levee. The compound—called “Carville” by the U.S. marshal who had assigned me to this prison—was a series of classic revival-style two-story buildings. The walls were thick concrete painted off-white, and each building was connected by a two-story enclosed walkway. Large arched windows covered by thick screens lined the walls. There were no bars on the windows. Nothing but screen between prison and freedom.

  Through the windows I saw a man limping in the hallway. He stopped at the last arched window, the one closest to the guardhouse, and looked out. He was a small black man wearing a gentleman’s hat. Through the screen his face looked almost flat. He stood at the window and nodded as if he had been expecting me, so I waved. He waved back, but something was wrong with his hand. He had no fingers.

  I stood and stepped over to the guardhouse. “Is that an inmate?” I asked the guard with the clipboard, motioning toward the man behind the screen.

  “Patient,” the guard said.

  “A sick inmate?”

  “You’ll find out,” he said, and went back to his clipboard.

  I looked back for the man with no fingers, but he was no longer at the window. I wondered if he had lost his fingers making license plates or in some kind of prison-industry accident. Or God forbid, in a knife fight. I returned to my bench wondering why he was roaming about instead of locked in a cell.

  The prison sat at the end of a narrow peninsula formed by a bend in the Mississippi River, twenty miles south of Baton Rouge. The strip of land was isolated, surrounded by water on three sides. My wife, Linda, and I had driven ninety quiet, tense minutes north from New Orleans. We left the radio off, but neither of us knew what to say. As we passed through the tiny town of Carville, Louisiana, a road sign warned: pavement ends two miles. Just outside the prison gate, I’d stood at the passenger window. Linda looked straight ahead gripping the steering wheel with both hands. I’d leaned in through the window to kiss her good-bye. A cold, short kiss. Then I watched her drive away down River Road until she disappeared around the bend.

  As I sat on the bench, waiting for the guard, I resolved again to keep the promises I made to Linda and our children—that I would emerge the same husband, the same father; that I would turn this year into something positive; that I would come out with my talents intact; that I would have a plan for our future.

  A guard in a gray uniform drove toward me in a golf cart. He stopped in front of the bench and stepped out of the cart. A tall, muscular black man, he must have stood six feet, four inches. A long silver key chain rattled when he walked.

  “I’m Kahn,” he said.

  I introduced myself and held out my hand. He looked at it and said, “I know who you are.”

  I put my hand back by my side.

  He picked up my British Khaki bag. It was a gift from Linda and a reminder of better times. I had packed shorts and T-shirts, tennis shoes, socks, an alarm clock, five books, a racquetball racket, and assorted toiletries, as if I were actually going to camp. Kahn tossed the bag in the cart and told me to get in.

  We drove down a long concrete road that ran along the right side of the prison adjacent to a small golf course, and I wondered if inmates were allowed to play. We passed at least ten identical buildings that looked like dormitories. The two-story enclosed hallways that connected each building formed a wall surrounding the prison. The place was enormous. Enough room for thousands, I guessed.

  I had done my research on prisons. Not as an adult, but in high school. I had been captain of my debate team. I understood the pros and cons of capital punishment, mandatory minimum sentencing, drug decriminalization, bail reform, and community-service sentences. I won the state debate championship advocating drug trials on convicts. I argued with great passion that testing new medications on federal prisoners would expedite the FDA’s seven-year process to prove drug safety and efficacy, that the financial drain on taxpayers would be greatly reduced, and that these tests would give inmates an opportunity to earn money, pay restitution, and seek redemption, while thousands of innocent lives would be saved. When I was debating the merits of drug testing on prisoners, I never dreamed that I might someday be one.

  Kahn stopped the golf cart at the last of the white buildings. He grabbed my bag as if it were his own now, and we entered through a metal door. The walls were newly painted, and the floor was well polished and shone like Kahn’s shaved head. I walked behind him down a narrow hallway, and he pulled the chain from his pocket. He unlocked a door marked R & D. My heart skipped, and I felt panic coming on as we stepped inside.


  Except for a wooden table, the room was empty. Kahn threw my leather bag on the concrete floor, positioned himself behind the table, and assumed a military stance.

  “Front and center!” he commanded. I wasn’t sure where to move. He put his hands on the table, leaned toward me, and yelled, “I said front and center!”

  I stepped between the table and the wall and stood still facing him. I didn’t want him to have to repeat himself again.

  “Strip down,” he said. I removed my shirt, pants, and shoes and took off my watch. I lifted each foot and pulled off my socks. “All of it,” Kahn said.

  I removed my underwear and dropped it on the floor. The concrete was cold on my feet. I held my hands at my side, but I wanted to cover my front. Once an athlete, I now sagged. My ritual of rich business lunches—seafood appetizers, fettuccini Alfredo, filet mignon with béarnaise, and chocolate decadence—coupled with an abundance of red wine at night had added forty pounds. Kahn rattled off a set of commands. Lift your left arm. Now, your right. Bend forward, run your fingers through your hair. After each command, Kahn paused and examined the exposed area. He continued. Lift your penis. Lift your scrotum. Turn around. Face the wall. Lift your left foot. Now, your right. Bend over. Spread your cheeks.