In The Sanctuary Of Outcasts_ A Memoir Part 10

I tried explaining that the $20 limit-two rolls of quarters-imposed on inmates made things appear appear more valuable, but Link lost interest in my explanation. more valuable, but Link lost interest in my explanation.

I had to admit, my perception of money had shifted, too. Now, I found it hard to believe that two years earlier, in the summer of 1991, I had finalized the $1.2 million purchase of Louisiana Life Louisiana Life (the first step in my five-year plan) and moved my corporate offices into a $4,000-per-month penthouse suite in the old Markham Hotel building. My office was once a grand ballroom where Gulfport society danced on marble and men leaned against mahogany walls smoking cigars. It was the very place my grandmother and grandfather met at a spring ball in 1938. (the first step in my five-year plan) and moved my corporate offices into a $4,000-per-month penthouse suite in the old Markham Hotel building. My office was once a grand ballroom where Gulfport society danced on marble and men leaned against mahogany walls smoking cigars. It was the very place my grandmother and grandfather met at a spring ball in 1938.

At that time, she was among the wealthiest single women in the United States. Her grandfather, an early industrialist who had financial interests in anything made of iron or steel, was one of the men who financed young Henry Ford's automotive venture. Later, he built a company to supply parts to the burgeoning auto industry. It became the Borg-Warner Corporation.

My grandmother's father died in the 1918 flu pandemic when she was a baby. She had no memory of him. The only reminder was the fortune she inherited.

In 1938, my grandmother, Martha Johnson, was a short, muscular, athletic nineteen-year-old college girl and she was painfully shy. Despite all she could buy, beauty was unattainable for her. But she was generous and kind.

On a Friday evening that May, on a break from Va.s.sar, she went to the spring dance at the top of the glamorous Markham Hotel building. She sat alone in a chair next to the mahogany walls until a handsome young man, on a dare from a friend, asked her to dance. They spent the evening together dancing on the marble floor and drinking from the boy's silver flask. Martha was enamored with his charm and wit. In the early morning hours, in a fog of alcohol and euphoria, Martha and the boy drove across the state line and married.

The next morning, this young man-my grandfather-not yet nineteen, awoke hungover, next to Martha. And suddenly, nothing was out of reach.

They threw lavish parties and bought a mansion with a huge swimming pool. They spent their summers at a home on Walloon Lake, Michigan, and never missed a party at the country club. Their live-in servants, Wash and Esther, traveled wherever they ventured to care for their growing family.

To an outsider, my grandparents' life must have been something to envy. Money was not an issue, and my grandfather did not need to work. Instead, he went on a thirty-year odyssey in search of adventure. It started with excessive parties, reckless investments, and extravagant purchases, like his fifty-foot yacht, The Weekender. The Weekender. As the years pa.s.sed, adventure became more elusive. He turned to alcohol, gambling, and women. As the years pa.s.sed, adventure became more elusive. He turned to alcohol, gambling, and women.

The family money had survived the Depression, but the wealth couldn't bear the strain of my grandfather. When the money ran out in the 1960s, he divorced Martha and married a woman almost twenty years younger.

Martha's life unraveled. She spent her remaining funds on a reconditioned riverboat that drove her to the verge of bankruptcy. She was committed to the state mental hospital in Whitfield. During her holiday stay with us, she told me how much she liked the people at the inst.i.tution.

"They're nice to me," she said.

In the last decade of my grandmother's life, she waited in line at free medical clinics; she received a small welfare check; she worked part-time at Goodwill Industries as a clerk; and she rented a government-subsidized apartment that smelled like cats. Old photo alb.u.ms lined her cheap bookcase. Reminders of a privileged time.

Fifty-three years after the spring dance of 1938, I worked each day in an office not more than a few feet away from where my grandfather first saw my grandmother. I liked the symmetry. As I planned my rise in the world of publishing, I vowed to bring our family back to its rightful spot. And I was determined to do it fast.

CHAPTER 33.

Because the leprosy patients liked my menu board ill.u.s.trations, the guards gave me another job: garnish man. They also gave me a Better Homes and Gardens Better Homes and Gardens garnish book that ill.u.s.trated the most up-to-date garnishes being used by the finest caterers in America. I took the book back to my room and read it at night in preparation for my new duties. garnish book that ill.u.s.trated the most up-to-date garnishes being used by the finest caterers in America. I took the book back to my room and read it at night in preparation for my new duties.

My first day on the job, I ran into a problem. I had spent hours studying the garnish book , , and I felt ready to prepare a centerpiece like Carville had never seen. But I was missing the most important tool. A knife. Inmates weren't allowed to have knives. I tried carving into some fruit with a plastic knife from the cafeteria, but it was useless. and I felt ready to prepare a centerpiece like Carville had never seen. But I was missing the most important tool. A knife. Inmates weren't allowed to have knives. I tried carving into some fruit with a plastic knife from the cafeteria, but it was useless.

I asked the guard on duty how I was supposed to prepare garnish without cutlery.

"You can check out a knife," he said. He led me to a closet locked with a dead bolt. Inside, there was a small cage welded to the wall. The cage was secured with a padlock. Inside, two large magnetic strips held a dozen sharp knives with black plastic handles. Each knife was marked with a number, a slapdash, hand-drawn digit that looked like it had been written with Liquid Paper.

"I could rewrite those numbers, if you like," I told the guard. "I could make them neater." He ignored my offer, opened the cage, and handed me knife number 6, a small paring knife. He wrote my name and inmate number on a clipboard, said the knife was my responsibility, and added that if it turned up missing, I'd be put in the hole for thirty days. I made a mental note not to leave the knife lying around the kitchen.

My garnish station was just outside the produce cooler on the leprosy patient side. Two large stainless steel tables were dedicated for garnish. I was the only inmate allowed to enter, though I could hear the conversations of Chase and Lonnie, the two inmates in charge of the food warehouse. They had been at Carville since the day the prison opened. If the federal prisons had had a trusty system in place, Chase and Lonnie would have held the distinction of being trusties. The two of them ordered the food for the cafeteria. They drove trucks. They held shrimp boils on holidays. They had the run of the place. As I carved into the fruit and built the foundations for my first set of garnishes, I listened to Chase and Lonnie discuss flaws in the plotline of Gilligan's Island Gilligan's Island, explore the dangers of spitting on a guard's food, and engage in a debate about whether a horse will fall in love with a human who urinates on its feed.

The garnish business was messy. I had always hated to get my hands dirty. As a husband charged with changing a flat tire or hollowing a pumpkin or potting a plant, I would get agitated. I performed the tasks hurriedly, with trepidation, tight-lipped, nostrils flared. I worked fast so I could get to soap and water quickly. But it was more than the dirt that bothered me. I liked the way my hands smelled after I had applied cologne. Each morning, I dabbed the backs of my hands so they would smell nice whenever my hands pa.s.sed anywhere near my nose, or that of another. Washing my hands to rid them of dirt also rid them of the scent I so loved.

I wasn't able to cut into the fruit without getting my hands covered in sugary, sticky juice. If I stopped to wash after every cut, I would never finish. So I decided to be outrageous. I lost myself in the carving of cantaloupes, strawberries, peaches, and watermelon. I felt like a child again, making mud pies or building a sandcastle. The garnish book's step-by-step instructions were brilliant. And simple. On my first attempt, I made a rather elegant swan from a honeydew melon. Its long, curved neck looked as if it could reach around to clean the tall feathers that stretched upward from its wings. As a companion for the swan, I carved a duck from lemons. The duck's webbed feet were made from intricately notched carrot slices. Then I made a series of islands. For sand, I halved a baking potato. I made shallow cuts into a carrot stick, transforming it into the trunk of a palm tree. I added long, curved slivers of green peppers to make perfect palm branches. Then, from an oddly shaped watermelon, I pieced together the head of an alligator with an open mouth and sharp teeth. I thought it would make a great centerpiece to adorn the salad bar.

I was starting to like the garnish business. I understood why the guards would prepare a garnish for the leprosy patient cafeteria, but it seemed odd they would bother to decorate a salad bar for prisoners. Then again, it seemed pretty odd that prisoners had a salad bar.

As I became more familiar with the traits of certain fruits and vegetables, I experimented with combinations of color and texture. Purple-headed lettuce, cut with a certain precision, opened like an exotic flower. When accented with maraschino cherries, it took on the traits of a rare, insect-eating blossom. Soon, using cantaloupes and oddly shaped gourds, I learned to sculpt the likenesses of certain inmates, and even guards, complete with bad hair, bulging eyes, and badges.

Ella and the other patients said the cafeteria line looked like a formal buffet. It gave them something new to look forward to each day. My creations got lots of compliments on the patient side. Harry stopped to take a look and stuck his thumb, his only fully intact digit, in the air to show his approval.

As I carried the last of the trays out of the kitchen, an inmate stopped to admire my work.

"That's gorgeous," he said in a Cajun accent. "Did you do that on the outside?"

"Yes," I told him, "I'm in here for garnishing with reckless abandon." In a way, it was true. I was good at the job. Polish, shine, attention to detail, and the appearance of perfection were my forte. It came quite naturally. I'd had plenty of practice on the outside.

My financial statement for Coast Magazine Coast Magazine was a thing of beauty. I used advanced publishing software to design it. I selected an old-fashioned font-Baskerville-and adjusted the tracking so the numbers aligned in a way no accounting software could match. My software didn't actually add numbers, but it enabled me to produce a specimen the likes of which the banks had never seen. I printed the financials on custom-made, cotton-fiber stationery for the bankers and investors who requested the statement. It looked and smelled and felt like affluence, almost too good to be true. was a thing of beauty. I used advanced publishing software to design it. I selected an old-fashioned font-Baskerville-and adjusted the tracking so the numbers aligned in a way no accounting software could match. My software didn't actually add numbers, but it enabled me to produce a specimen the likes of which the banks had never seen. I printed the financials on custom-made, cotton-fiber stationery for the bankers and investors who requested the statement. It looked and smelled and felt like affluence, almost too good to be true.

Before acquiring Louisiana Life Louisiana Life, kiting checks was an occasional financing technique. But now, I watched the clock carefully. At 2:00 P.M P.M. each day the banks would collect the last deposits. On any given day, I would check the mail for advertising payments, chat with investors about their next installment, and explore sources of alternative financing. Then I would calculate any cash shortfall and prepare a covert transfer.

December 21, 1991, was a typical day. I sat at my desk and wrote two checks. One for $89,000; the other for $118,500. The latter probably didn't need to be quite so high, but I thought it better to be safe than to fall into the insufficient funds realm and the attention that would bring. Both checks were written from my company; both were made out to my company. But the checks were drawn on different banks.

I wrote a tiny note at the bottom of my daily planner. A reminder of what I would need to cover tomorrow. I put off, for a moment, the preparation of the deposit slips. I wanted to arrive at the banks as close to 2:00 P.M P.M. as possible. I wanted the bookkeeping people to be in a hurry, to be so absorbed, so intent on meeting their cutoff time that they wouldn't question the size of the checks.

I pa.s.sed a few moments standing at the corner window of my ninth-floor office. The view of the Mississippi coastline was un.o.bstructed. South, I could see the barrier islands more than ten miles out into the Gulf of Mexico. East, a stretch of man-made beach, bordered by live oaks and pines, curved along the Gulf of Mexico coastline. The walls of my office were lined with covers from vintage Life Life magazines, a tribute to one of my idols, Henry Luce, and a reminder of the power that goes along with media ownership. magazines, a tribute to one of my idols, Henry Luce, and a reminder of the power that goes along with media ownership.

My leather-topped desk, a gift from my father, was covered with a carpet of work-page proofs from the new issue, a stack of letters, my planner, and two large corporate checkbooks.

The stack of letters on my desk included our nomination as Small Business of the Year, a request to speak to a civic club, a few notes from parishioners at St. Peter's by-the-Sea Episcopal Church where I served as senior warden, an invitation to serve on the board of directors of the Coast Anti-Crime Commission, and a letter from the school board president who had agreed to let me send a young undercover reporter to pose as a student at Gulfport High School.

I didn't have time to respond to the correspondence. The antique clock on my wall read 1:40 P.M P.M. Twenty minutes until the banks would post.

I prepared the two deposits, one for each bank. I mingled the large checks among smaller subscription payments, as if they were just another in a line of routine deposits. I waved to employees as I pa.s.sed by their offices and cubicles, making sure to smile an encouraging smile to my salespeople, and called out to no one in particular that I was off to the bank.

At the elevator, I noticed the recently polished copper-and-gla.s.s mail chute, a still-operational holdover from the building's hotel days, and the perfectly reflective bra.s.s doors of the elevator. I placed the two deposit books under my arm and straightened my tie. Every afternoon, a few minutes before two o'clock, I waited for the elevator to make its way to the ninth floor and examined my reflection. My hair was beginning to turn gray, but I really didn't mind. I actually wanted more. It added, I thought, an air of stability and soundness. Maybe even prudence.

Ella Bounds meanders down the corridor.

CHAPTER 34.

The prison was quiet and cool the day I turned thirty-three. My mother sent me several books, and my father put $100 in my commissary account. Neil and Maggie sent homemade birthday cards.

On the same day, Doc also got some good news. He was awarded a U.S. patent for his medical injection device designed to cure impotence. The one-page doc.u.ment contained an ill.u.s.tration of the injector with a curved base for a snug fit around the p.e.n.i.s. But, to me, that wasn't the most interesting part. The doc.u.ment listed the "inventor" as Victor Dombrowsky. It even listed his federal inmate number.

Doc was a brilliant physician and innovator. But he didn't pursue medical ventures unless there was potential for great profit. When it came to money, Doc went for the jugular. He dispensed heat pills to the obese and invented a cure for impotent men. No two groups would be more willing to pay any price to be cured.

Thirty years earlier, another trailblazing physician lived at Carville, Dr. Paul Brand. Dr. Brand was the ant.i.thesis to Doc.

Brand, the son of missionaries, grew up devoutly religious in India. After completing his medical training in Britain, Dr. Brand returned to India to follow in his parents' footsteps. When he first encountered leprosy patients, he was reluctant to treat them for fear of contagion. But then he realized that few, if any, qualified physicians worked with the "lepers." Their care was provided by religious zealots or monks.

With the help of his faith, Paul Brand overcame his own fears. During the time he worked in India, his knowledge of, and skills in, the orthopedic aspects of the disease surpa.s.sed any physician's before him. He developed groundbreaking techniques for restoring nerve-damaged hands. But it wasn't always appreciated by the leprosy patients. His successful surgeries created a financial hardship. Begging was their only source of income. With corrected, functional hands, their ability to collect alms was greatly diminished.

After two decades of selfless service in India, Dr. Brand accepted a position at Carville.

The patients called him "Saint Paul." Brand treated each patient with the utmost respect. He wanted to help patients regain their dignity, as well as repair their bodies. One Carville patient said that Dr. Brand touched her foot as if he were "handling a delicate, but broken instrument."

Better than anyone else, Brand understood the curse of insensitive limbs. Sores on numb feet went undetected. Injuries to anesthetized hands could go unnoticed for weeks. He had perfected techniques and surgeries to repair his patients' damaged hands and feet.

In the years before his arrival, amputations at Carville were commonplace. But in the first seven years he served as lead orthopedic surgeon, not a single amputation took place.

Ella rolled into the cafeteria wearing her prosthetic legs.

"You wear those because it's my birthday?" I asked.

Ella knocked on one of her artificial legs and smiled. "How old you is?"

"Thirty-three," I told her.

"Jesus that old when he rise up," she said.

All good southerners knew Jesus had died at age thirty-three. I figured Ella would recount the lessons she had heard in church about the thirty-third year being one of change and transformation for Christians, but she didn't.

So I told her a story my mother recounted on birthdays. It was my favorite family story. A great tale of our Scottish heritage.

The MacNeil clan chieftain, the story went, was feuding with another clan leader over ownership of an island. Rather than risk widespread death and injury, the two agreed to settle the issue in a compet.i.tion. The two chiefs would race from the mainland to the island, and the man who first put his hand upon land would claim the isle for his clan. In the early morning fog, the two men set out in their open boats. The race was a dead heat until the very end, when the opposing clan chief inched ahead. At the end of the race, with MacNeil a few boat lengths behind, the island looked lost for the MacNeils. As the other chief stepped out of his boat in the shallow water near sh.o.r.e, the MacNeil chieftain removed his blade and severed his right hand. He picked up the b.l.o.o.d.y stub and hurled it onto sh.o.r.e, winning the island for the MacNeils.

I loved hearing the story as much as my mother loved telling it. Afterward, she would point to the red hand on the coat of arms that decorated our wall and recite the Latin motto printed under the crest-Vincere Vel Mori. "To Conquer or Die."

"That 'splains a thing or two," Ella said.

Just as I finished telling the story, I looked at Ella's legs, and I realized she might not want to hear a story about a man who performs his own amputation. I tried to change the subject.

"Do you remember your thirty-third birthday?"

"Sure do," she said. "Got these." Ella tapped on her prosthetic legs again. "Looks like they was made for a white woman." Ella laughed, but she was right. The light color didn't come close to matching her skin.

Ella didn't want to miss anything. When she was young, she loved to run and dance. She stayed on the move. And over the years, her legs were badly damaged, but Ella didn't feel the pain. In the late 1940s, when she turned thirty-three, her legs were taken away just above the knee. Paul Brand arrived at Carville twenty years too late for Ella.

Her surgery forever altered the way she looked and the way she lived. Her body was transformed. And for nearly fifty years, she had meandered the halls in her hand-cranked wheelchair-welcoming new patients, visitors, even inmates; taking drinks to the residents who couldn't make it to the canteen on their own; smiling at everyone. I couldn't imagine her any other way.

At thirty-three, Ella started over.

Stan and Sarah, the blind couple who tapped their way through the corridors.

CHAPTER 35.

During the five months I'd been at Carville, I had talked to almost all the patients who ate breakfast in the cafeteria. I'd made some good friends. However, I had never approached Stan and Sarah, the blind couple. I couldn't convey with a smile or a nod that I wasn't a dangerous criminal. They couldn't see me, but I had watched them as they walked arm in arm around the colony. Most blind people tapped their cane lightly, but Stan slapped his stick against the floor and walls to send the vibration past his numbed hand to his arm and shoulder. I could hear them coming down the corridors before I ever saw them. They maneuvered fairly well in the cafeteria, at church, and in the hallways, but on occasion, Stan became disoriented.

After lunch one afternoon, when I was alone with them in the patient cafeteria, Stan, with Sarah on his arm, tapped his way around the tables and chairs. They had almost made it to the door leading to the leprosy patient dormitories when he veered off course. Stan ushered Sarah into an empty nook. A coat closet. I watched for a moment. I noticed the confusion on his face. He turned and guided his wife into a wall. Then, he turned, and tapped his way back into the corner again. I couldn't stand it. I walked over and softly gripped his tapping arm.

"This way," I said, gently tugging Stan's elbow, leading him toward the exit.

"Don't touch me!" he snapped. "We don't want your help."

Stan jerked his arm out of my grasp. I stepped back into the hallway. Stan gathered his bearings and led his wife out of the alcove. They tapped their way to the exit and turned left toward their dormitory. I stood alone in the cafeteria listening to the sound of his stick against the concrete. It faded away, and I sat down.

Stan and Sarah couldn't see me. They didn't see my expression. They didn't know I was trying to help. All they knew was that I was a convict. They were afraid of me. And for the first time, I understood how the leprosy patients must have felt when people were afraid of their touch.

Me in Oxford, Mississippi, just after the fall that left scars on my forehead, 1961.

CHAPTER 36.

As I immersed myself in reporting on the patients, my reaction to their deformities changed in ways I never could have imagined. The shortened fingers of a patient from Trinidad were perfectly smooth and symmetrical. At times when I saw him talk and gesture with his miniature hands, he looked like a magical being who didn't have to bother with human traits like fingernails that needed to be cleaned or clipped or groomed. His hands were nothing short of perfect. For him.

I had grown accustomed to Harry's distorted voice. When he would reach deep into his front pocket to retrieve his wallet and say, "My mudder taut me to do dat," I heard him clearly. His specially designed Velcro shoes fit his unique feet in a way that made standard shoes seem like restrictive boxes. His tools-from a device to help him b.u.t.ton his shirt to the utensils he used to eat-didn't seem unusual anymore. And his incomparable hands. The white skin under his palm met the dark skin from the back of his hand to form a seam where his three middle fingers once existed. His hands were one of a kind. White circles covered the knuckles where his left thumb and index finger once were, as if the pigmentation had been rubbed off. I imagined no other man or woman on earth had hands quite like his. The more I saw them, the more comfortable I became.

Ella was no different. I couldn't imagine her without her wheelchair. The only time she seemed odd was when she put on her prosthetic legs. I was so accustomed to the way her dress fell across the front of her chair, the way her hands gripped the handles of her cranks, and the way her wheelchair wobbled as if it were the seasoned gait of any other nondisabled woman in her eighties. Her deformities disappeared.

I had experienced this before-at the other end of the spectrum. When I dated the homecoming queen at Ole Miss, I was at first astonished by her loveliness. To see her walk across the Ole Miss campus, a beauty among some of the most beautiful women in the world, would make me light-headed. At times, I couldn't believe she was attracted to me. I watched people stop to stare. Men couldn't help turning their heads. Sometimes women did, too. She possessed the kind of physical perfection that seemed almost unfair. But as our relationship progressed, my awe of her waned. Her appearance had not changed, but I ceased to be dizzy when I saw her. Her perfect nose and lips and hair and eyes were as mundane as the features on my own face.