Part 20 (1/2)
I turned and noticed the , blond curly hair; and he carried a large, nized hi Jackson Square Soed on street corners Other ti eye contact I would make room on the sidehen he passed et close enough to smell his sweat-soaked teddy
I turned toward the man and smiled He squinted his eyes, and I nodded, the kind of nod you give someone you know, but not really The man nodded back He had a box of Cap'n Crunch under one arlared at e teddy bear ”Me, too,” he said
As I waited in the checkout line, it registered that ed I was perfectly happy to be right here-at the French Quarter A & P standing between the transvestite and the man with the stuffed bear
CHAPTER 67
On the first two days of furlough, the kids and I rode go-carts, watched movies, jumped on trampolines, and went to the aquarium I was determined to cram as much fun as possible into these five days, but there was one thing I needed to do on ie or Mom or Dad I wanted to travel to a remote spot in the city A place I had never been
As alked back to our apartet to the corner of Hagan and Perdido He thought for a moment ”Won't cost you nothin',” he said, ”'cause that intersection don't exist”
He had to be wrong, I thought
”You got Hagan And you got Perdido,” he said, ”but they don't never cross”
Late in the afternoon, I took the kids to the New Orleans public library, just down the street from the Loyola Street Post Office, where Jefferson had operated the X-ray ie read children's books while I found a detailed city an and Perdido did not cross But once they had Hagan, I discovered, had been renaan was now named Jefferson Davis Parkway, after the president of the Confederacy
On thebefore I was to return to prison, I awoke just after dawn I had arranged for Mo air in the French Quarter ser was hosing down the sidewalk in front of his club on Chartres Street The Stage Door bar was still open Five or sixthe day I walked to the edge of the Quarter, where I found a taxi
”I have a strange request,” I said to the driver
He shrugged as if there were nothing I could possibly request that he hadn't seen before
”I'd like to go to the intersection of Perdido and Jefferson Davis”
The cabbie told et in, and we drove down Canal Street A few hoht shelter inside abandoned retail entrances Otherwise, the streets were empty
The driver's hair was oily He had the heat blaring, and he sine the fares hein New Orleans Business from Bourbon Street, prostitutes and strippers, jazz musicians who played the Quarter but couldn't afford to live there
We drove under the interstate to Broad Street and eventually hway I had no idea what kind of neighborhood wePerdido was filled with potholes and cru asphalt We passed old warehouses and a few abandoned vehicles One car was left in the ot out and walked ahen the car stopped running
Daylight had arrived by the time the driver pulled to the side of the road We had traveled ht dollars,” he said
I asked if he could wait I needed only five minutes
I stood in the middle of the intersection On one corner, a dozen telephone repair trucks were parked in a lot protected by a chain-link fence with barbed wire on top Across the street, metal pipes, probably left over from a public works project, were stacked under an overpass A sign read no du, 100 fine It could have been any corner of any city, but one hundred years earlier a two-story wooden cottage sat at this intersection The building had been rented by the city of New Orleans Local papers called it a pesthouse In 1894, about a dozenthat year, as the result of coverage from the Times-Picayune Times-Picayune, citizens demanded removal of the occupants to prevent an outbreak of the dreaded disease A group of men had anonymously threatened to burn the house and all elled within
A physician at Tulane Medical School had wanted to establish a leprosy hospital in the city, but fate intervened The public's fear of exposure made New Orleans less than suitable for a leprosarium The physician persuaded a friend, as also a islature, to lease thirty acres of land a little over an hour north of the city to establish a colony But in order to get the land, the legislator had to lie He acquired the lease under the auspices of establishi+ng an ostrich farht of November 30, 1894, five men and tomen-ere never told of their destination-were transported eighty e on a coal barge (It was against the law for lepers to use public transportation) At dawn, the seven were unloaded at the plantation where they would live out the rest of their lives
Nothing of the pesthouse reine the home I tried to picture the victims of the disease, as well as the physicians who hurried them out of the city A century separated us, but I felt a deep connection to the men and women who had lived in the pesthouse At Carville, we had found a place of refuge
On the ride back to my mother's apartment, I told the driver about the story of the nondescript intersection and its historic significance in the establishment of the only leprosarium in the continental United States
”How you know so much about it?” he asked
”I live there,” I said ”Upriver”
For the first time he looked attentive He stared at ht be worried
”Five-day pass,” I added, happy to not be just another boring fare And proud to be a part of Carville
At the end of our short ride together, I would tell him that leprosy wasn't h And I would probably give hier tip than he deserved because deep down, I suppose, I still cared too ht about umbo and cornbread, Moht on River Road The last time I had been on this road, on ht I was headed to an ordinary federal prison I had no idea of the absurdity, coic that was Carville
Just before dark, we passed the lights of the chemical plants, the Carville fan that read pavement ends two miles Then we passed a lone, ancient oak tree The last one before the colony walls
I couldn't help but think about on Jimmy Harris in his father's Buick As we approached the colony, I noticed a landing for ferries on the Mississippi River In 1894, as reported in The Star The Star, Fritz Carville (grandfather of the Clinton aide James Carville) rode his pony to this spot The ten-year-old boy, accompanied by a far Carville watched the barge dock on the riverbank But instead of unloading ostriches, seven leprosy patients were left at the abandoned plantation The farmhand looked at the boy and said, ”Little Boss, them ain't ostriches-theate and the sun disappeared behind the levee, I sat between Neil and Maggie in the backseat And we held hands
PART V
Spring
CHAPTER 69
Back inside the colony, a guard gave me a urinalysis test Another one perforain, forgotten to climb the levee to see if the river actually flowed north
Contraband-and drug-free, I was cleared to enter the prison The guards did not escort me, which meant lockdoas over I was still anxious, concerned about tension between the white and Hispanic in In the hallway, I saw prisoners waiting in line for the telephones and in into the TV rooossip, yelled, ”Hey, Clark Have you heard? They sendin' everybody home!”