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the marching men, guards on horseback with rifles watch their charges. In antebellum days three cotton plantations occupied these 18,000 acres, worked by slaves from Angola in Africa. The name Angola stuck. Since its beginnings in 1901, abuse, corruption, rage, and reform have studded its history.
    In 1951 eight inmates, known as the “Heel-string Gang,” inaugurated the first reform at Angola by slitting their Achilles tendons with razor blades rather than go to the “long line” in the fields, where they were systematically beaten or shot by guards. The
Shreveport Times
and the New Orleans
Times-Picayune
carried the heel-slashing story, and the ensuing publicity brought a gubernatorialinvestigative commission to the prison and the first rudimentary reforms. But as recently as 1975 it took a federal court to prod state officials to enact needed reforms of Louisiana penal institutions. Before then, at Angola, men were still being kept in the “Red Hat,” a disciplinary cell block made of tiny concrete cells (including a cement bunk) with only a slit of a window near the ceiling. After prisoners were moved out, prison authorities converted the facility into a dog kennel. 1
    I wait in the front foyer of the administration building for the chaplain. Soon he comes in from one of the offices along the side wing of the building. He is an elderly man. His face is kind. His voice seems tired. Why, he asks, do I want to become Sonnier’s spiritual adviser? I say I want to visit him because he has no one else and visiting prisoners is a Christian work of mercy.
    The chaplain says that “these people,” I must remember, are the “scum of the earth,” and that I must be very, very careful because they are all con men and will try to take advantage of me every way they can. “You can’t trust them,” he says emphatically. “Your job is to help this fellow save his soul by receiving the sacraments of the church before he dies,” he says.
    He is strictly an old-school, pre-Vatican Catholic, and he shows me a pamphlet on sexual purity and modesty of dress that he distributes to the prisoners. Later I will be the source of such stress to this man that the warden will tell me, “That old man is going to have a heart attack because of you.” Later, the chaplain will try to bar me and other women from serving as spiritual advisers to death-row inmates.
    But for now, on this July afternoon, we chat pleasantly. As I am leaving he urges me to wear my habit when I visit the inmates. It’s the modesty thing, I think, but, no, it isn’t that. “The inmates know,” he says, “that the Pope has requested nuns to wear the habit, and for you to flout authority will only encourage them to do the same.” Which amazes me. I have serious doubts that Angola inmates know — or care — what dress code the Pope recommends for nuns.
    I have not had one of these “habit” conversations in a long while. There had been much discussion when we had changed to ordinary clothes back in 1968. Seeing us dress like regular people had been upsetting for many Catholics, who said that when they saw us in our long, flowing robes, dressed like “angels,” it had made them think of God.
    Actually, for me, discarding the habit probably increased my life expectancy. As a student teacher my veil had caught on fire from acandle during a prayer service and I had almost gone up in smoke before my wide-eyed class. I tend to move quickly, and more than once my long black veil, flowing behind me, had caught on a door knob and stopped me dead in my tracks. The garb had covered us completely — except for face and hands — and once, when a member of my community, Sister Alice Macmurdo, was in a fabric shop she felt small tugs at her veil and turned to face an embarrassed woman who had mistaken her for a bolt of material.
    But this dear old priest will not like these stories. I thank him for his time and his advice and on the drive home I take some of his