I notice idly that I am spending more time in churches, temples, and synagogues than I ever would have dreamed. Prison soured me on organized religion. As I’ve said, I saw too many fake conversions by prisoners looking to claim rehabilitation without doing the hard work of changing their behavior. I saw too many priests, chaplains, and ministers who came to prison to save souls but didn’t care about the rest of the person. I could see in too many of their faces that they came to Angola primarily because coming there made them feel good about themselves, and a little self-righteous.
Ironically, some of my closest and longest-standing friends have been nuns, priests, and ministers who live what they preach. I find myself at Wesley Methodist Church in Baton Rouge, where I’ve been invited to say a few words to an inner-city Boy Scout troop sponsored by the church. This is the ten-year anniversary of my first talk to them, when I learned that they were planning a summer outing to the famous scout camp at Philmont, New Mexico. Not all the boys had enough money to attend. I had $213 in my prison account, so I sent it to their scoutmaster. As a thank-you, they bought me a souvenir T-shirt from Philmont. Warden Cain said it was not allowed.
I talk to the scouts and their parents about freedom, and about the value of staying in school and making good life choices. Afterward, the scoutmaster, Elbert Hill, steps to the podium next to me, holding a small package wrapped in brown kraft paper and bearing the Angola mailroom’s stamped notice to return to sender. It is an emotional moment for me when I open the package to find the souvenir T-shirt. Hill had saved the unopened package all these years, having faith that I’d get out of prison and he’d be able to give it to me.
Just as I’m ready to leave the podium, a young scout of about ten approaches. He steps to the microphone and tells me that the troop is very thankful that I helped them ten years ago in their time of need and announces that since I’ve just come out of prison, they decided to help me in my time of need and took up a collection. He hands me an envelope that contains a check for $213. I’m choked up but manage to say thanks and return to my seat.
My first summer as a free man has been great, but now there’s a tropical storm brewing in the Gulf. As it takes shape, Hurricane Katrina is headed directly toward New Orleans. It makes landfall on the evening of August 29, and although we are nearly a hundred miles upriver, it causes massive damage here in Baton Rouge from downed trees. We lose electrical power, which means no air-conditioning in the sweltering heat, no fan, and no television. The next morning there’s still no power, and the streets in this neighborhood of stately old trees are impassable because of fallen limbs, debris, and downed power lines.
I rig up a way to boil water so we can drip coffee. We more or less move out of the stifling house onto the back patio, where we’re glued to the transistor radio for news. We learn to cook everything—even entire meals with rice and vegetables—on a small hibachi that has resided unused in the garage all summer. We begin cleaning up our yard and the street.
When our next-door neighbor manages to get a generator five days later, we go watch television at his house and get our first look at the devastation in New Orleans—dead bodies floating in the water, people on the roofs waiting for boats or helicopters to come, the hordes stranded outside the Superdome and marooned on the sizzling interstate for buses that, it turns out, have been waiting just outside the city for the okay to go in and rescue people. Animal rescue organizations are not being allowed to rescue animals, and some people are refusing to leave their home, rooftop, or asphalt patch without them. The tragedy worsens by the day. The incompetence of government and official leaders is nothing short of criminal.
After a week, we get our power back and are able to resume a fairly normal life. However, Baton Rouge’s population has doubled overnight. Shopping even at the Walmart Superstore continues to feel like a war-torn Third World experience. There’s no fresh meat, no bread, no milk or eggs, few staples. Many of the evacuees from New Orleans are now housed in Baton Rouge’s convention center; others are spread out among the city’s shelters, churches, synagogues, and temples. The streets are clogged with New Orleans cars and drivers who bring their Big Easy U-turning ways to Baton Rouge’s streets. At age sixty-three, I’d been making slow and uneven progress in learning to drive before the storm, but it’s rush hour all the time now. There is no way I can process the information overload out on the streets, and I give up driving altogether.
With all the misery and chaos, we want to volunteer our services. I call the city of Baker, a town just north of Baton Rouge, and talk to the mayor, who claims to be a cousin of mine. He tells us to come help sort food at a distribution center. When we get there, there’s nothing to do. The volunteers there direct us to a local church, which has more volunteers than evacuees, and nothing for us to do but re-sort and refold donated clothing in a back room. After an afternoon of that, we don’t go back.
Linda hears on the news that there is a desperate need for volunteers to care for stranded dogs and cats at LSU’s makeshift shelter. We go there. I stay at the desk outside, logging in visitors and workers who have to show ID because animals have been stolen. I cannot handle the inside, seeing the animals in cages; it’s an emotional reflex left over from death row. I cannot stand seeing caging of any kind, to the point that I have to leave pet supply stores when I see fish in tanks and birds in cages. Linda emerges after four hours reeking of sweat, kitty litter, and hand sanitizer. She’s in her element, radiant.
Early in September I receive a call from Catholic Charities asking if I’d be interested in helping at a turnaround oasis they’ve set up at the Bellemont Hotel in Baton Rouge for New Orleans police, firefighters, and other first responders to come for medical exams, immunizations, debriefing, counseling, and other assistance and services. I’m a little surprised at the request.
“Do you know who I am?”
“I do,” the caller says. “I think you’ll be a great asset.”
“Hey,” I say, “these are the people who have been putting their lives on the line to save folks for the last two weeks. If there’s anything I can do to help them, count me in.”
Linda and I report for duty at the Bellemont Hotel in the morning and LSU’s animal shelter in the afternoon.
The situation at the Bellemont is heartbreaking. Men, mostly, spill from buses that ferry them here after they’ve spent days or weeks fishing people from attics and roofs in New Orleans, after sailing by those, dead or alive, whom they could not help. I’ve seen faces like this in Ernie Pyle’s photos of shell-shocked soldiers in World War II, faces unable to fully engage the horror with which they had to deal. Many of the cops and firefighters, upon recognizing me, express surprise that I’m there to help them and shake my hand in thanks.
“I’ve lost everything,” one dazed man says to me, as I help him fill out the paperwork he needs to get in to see the doctors and counselors. “My house—it’s gone. Everything I’ve worked for my entire life, gone. I’m fifty-nine years old, and I have to start over from scratch,” he says. “My pension—it’s gone. My house …” He trails off. “I have nothing.” Then he recognizes me. His facial muscles relax just a bit. “But you know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Rideau?”
On our fifth day at the Bellemont, Linda and I are finishing our shift as the reception committee for those needing services, guiding them through the necessary paperwork, when Bruce Nolan, a Times-Picayune reporter, arrives to do a story on the turnaround oasis. He’s surprised to see me there and asks me to hang around until he finishes his interview with the man in charge. I say I will. After he leaves my station, a woman in blue scrubs whom I haven’t seen before—a nurse, I guess—strides from across the room to our table.
“Wilbert, you should have registered as a journalist,” she says edgily. I tell her I’m not here as a journalist but as a volunteer. She immediately walks away. It’s quiet, no buses arriving, so I head to the restroom. When I return, Linda tells me the woman in scrubs returned and expre
ssed hostility about my being there. “You think that of all the places he could have volunteered to help, he just happened to end up here?” she demanded. “And you don’t think he’s going to write about this place?”
“Don’t let it get to you,” I say to Linda. “These kinds of things are going to happen, that’s all.”
Soon after we arrive at home, the phone rings. We look at one another and instinctively know it has something to do with the nurse. On the line is the woman from Catholic Charities, who expresses thanks for the wonderful job I’ve been doing. She says how much everyone has appreciated my help—everyone except for one person who, familiar with my background, was complaining about me.
“It’s unfortunate,” she says, “but I know you wouldn’t want one bad apple to spoil all the good work that you and Catholic Charities have done and are still doing at the turnaround oasis.” She suggests that for the greater good, maybe I would consider not returning to the Bellemont. I say I don’t want to be a distraction and will comply.
Five days later Hurricane Rita is in the Gulf. In Lake Charles, my sister Pearlene and her husband pick up my mother and make their way to our home. Some days later, they return to find my mother’s house destroyed, like so many others. Mom moves in with my sister Mary in Houston. After six months, Mother moves into a refurbished house that, because it is in Lake Charles, I will never see. Everyone in my family realizes that owing to the hostility expressed toward me by some of the white townsfolk there, I will never return to Lake Charles. So I seldom get to see my elderly mother, who finds it increasingly difficult to travel. This hurts her heart, as it does mine.
We’ve returned to Baton Rouge after a trip of three days. Our cats act as though they’d been abandoned, and they stick to us like wallpaper. Rodeo refuses to leave the house at all. After going out for his constitutional, Willie B parks himself in my desk chair. Sangha, a young orphan who came to us after the hurricanes, follows Linda from room to room, crying to be held. Even Ladybug, whose lingering wildness stops her from entering the house, won’t budge her nose from the back storm door until we take turns going out to pet her. God, it’s good to be home. It’s so much more than good. It’s paradise to have a home, a place to be, a place where I am wanted and welcomed. I love my new life, which is more precious to me than all the kingdoms of the earth.
“Come feel this lump on Willie B’s jaw,” Linda says a few days later. We notice that he has lost a lot of weight. I feel the lump, which is hard and solid, not soft like the swelling that comes with infection. The next day we take him to the vet and learn that he has an oral cancer. The doctor prescribes medications, and Willie B’s improvement is so dramatic that we take him to another vet for a second opinion. The diagnosis is confirmed. It is a question of days, not weeks, he tells us, until we will have to euthanize our friend, when his pain outweighs his quality of life. “It’s the last thing you can do to show him that you love him,” says the vet.
Willie B begins a clear and rapid decline. The bulge on his jaw grows daily. I’m convinced Willie B knows he is dying. I’m astounded by his equanimity, his stoicism, his strength. I can only pray that I will meet my end with the dignity he refuses to shed. The other cats also sense his illness, his vulnerability, his mortality, and keep their distance.
Last night Linda lay with Willie B on the sofa in my office, where he has taken up residence. They spent more than two hours in there, Willie B uncharacteristically rolling around on her chest, forcing his forehead under her neck, trying to get as close to her as he could, insistently. This morning, he makes the rounds of all his favorite haunts in the neighborhood, literally stopping to smell the flowers in a deliberate way. I’ve gone with him, to photograph what is surely one of his final journeys. Too late, we realized that we have almost no photographs of him as an adult, and I’m trying to make up for it in one morning. When we return home, Willie B refuses to eat, refuses the medication that makes his physical condition tolerable. Linda is distraught, but even now Willie B, who has been her rock for the last twelve difficult years, has a strangely calming effect on her. I think he knows his role. We are all in my office, and Willie B moves from the sofa to the hallway, looks at me, and enters the coat closet, where it is dark and he is alone. A more feral cat would have simply walked off, like an elephant, to die. But Willie B long ago surrendered any wildness he had to his love for Linda. He stays in the closet for about ten minutes, then comes back, jumps in my lap for affection, leaves me, and jumps in Linda’s lap. After a few minutes, he retires to the arm of the sofa and looks at us. It is a pleading kind of look. Like he’s waiting for us to do something.
“I think he’s telling us it’s time,” Linda says, swallowing hard but determined to remain calm for his sake. I agree. Willie B uncharacteristically steps willingly into the carrier, which I cradle on my lap during the thirty-minute trip to the vet, who knows we are coming and lets us wait in his private office until he is free. When he joins us, he takes Willie B from us and hooks up the sleeve for the needle that will administer the lethal cocktail. When we rejoin Willie B, Linda kisses him on his forehead and kneels so she is at eye level with him on his death table. She caresses him one last time, then holds his right front paw, where he will be killed, in her hand. His eyes lock on hers in what I can only describe as a knowing way, and they stay locked there until what is behind those eyes—life, consciousness, intelligence—vanishes.
Willie B is gone, just that fast. We return to the doctor’s private office, where we take turns holding our departed cat for half an hour. If I had any doubts about the rightness of our decision, they evaporate when I feel my little friend finally at rest and realize how rigid with pain and stress he had become in his final days. Willie B was my first pet, and I loved him.
None of the death I witnessed at Angola affected me quite like this. Love had never been a factor, though losing Ora Lee Rogers and C. Paul Phelps came close. At home, Linda’s tears fall all over our forever-changed household. She’s beyond the consolation of human words or kindness. Grief and loss define her. I think back forty-five years to the suffering, the sorrow I inflicted on Julia Ferguson’s loved ones and ask God, again, to forgive me.
Linda retreats to prayers for the dead. She believes deeply that Willie B is on a path and that, maybe, she can help him on his way. This is one of the things I adore in her—her unconditional belief in the power of love. I envy her this devout belief.
Rodeo Joe, meanwhile, is deeply depressed and losing weight fast. He scours the neighborhood looking for Willie B. He stands sentry by the gate, staying out all night waiting for the return of his brother. Several weeks later, Rodeo is killed by a pack of stray dogs at dawn, in our front yard, his cries for help masked by the whir of the air conditioner as we sleep in the bedroom. I discover Rodeo’s corpse and break the news to Linda. She is numb with grief. We make another sad trip to the crematorium. Rodeo’s death casts a pall over our household, and, untutored in such piled-on domestic grief, I wonder if anything can redeem our joy. Ladybug cries day and night for her brothers, in vain.
Summer turns to fall, then winter. Miss Elsie, the best first neighbor anyone could have, decides her house is too difficult to keep up and moves to Mississippi to live with her son and daughter-in-law. A young couple, James and Jennifer, take her place, bringing their newborn and the hope and vigor of youth to our neighborhood.
One day a starving orange tabby shows up in our other neighbor’s backyard, taking refuge from the cold in a spot of sun against the brick wall. Linda talks to him, feeds him.
“He’s just like Willie B,” she says. “Look at his markings.”
It’s true.
“Look,” says Linda. “He’s so sweet and gentle, so Zen, just like Willie B.”
She believes Willie B has sent this castaway to us, and who am I to say he did not? We bring him into our home. Because of his color, we christen him Goldie. He bonds with Sangha and Ladybug. We go forward, with animals we love and care for. I tell
Linda we are a family of discarded strays she has rescued. She smiles and says that we have all rescued her. As time passes, the days we grieve are outweighed by the days we live in wholeness.
It’s spring again. I rise with the sun, brew coffee, set out food for the cats. The birds are starting to sing and a pair of squirrels play chase on the trunk of the old live oak out back. The spirits of my old friends still linger here, reminding me of the blessings of unconditional love. Yes, this is paradise. I go wake up Linda because I don’t want her to miss a thing.
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to more people than I could include in this book, and more than I can possibly mention by name here, for their support, encouragement, and kindness over the course of my incarceration and since my release.
Without the help of the many guards and prison officials who saw something of value in me and opened doors of opportunity that allowed the best in me to emerge, neither this book nor my life as a journalist would have been possible. Also, to the many Angola prisoners who shared my experience of trying to improve themselves and the world we lived in, I want to say thank-you for your companionship and for helping me to keep faith and achieve some of my dreams.
To the journalists and editors who took notice of my efforts and treated me as a colleague during my quarter century as a prison journalist, I owe a special debt.
So many people befriended me along the way and eased the harshness of my prison life with letters, visits, friendship, love; although I cannot mention them all by name, I will never forget their contributions to my life.
Wilbert Rideau Page 45