I don’t know what perversity of human nature causes us to remember where we were when tragedy strikes. Men who can’t remember their anniversary can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when a war broke out or a president was shot. Somehow that becomes fixed in our minds. I was with Elise on Thursday, May 14 when we got the news. We were being pretty lazy that morning. We were up and were puttering around the kitchen, moving at the kind of pace people normally have on weekends. I had some coffee going and she was making crepes. I think we were discussing what cities to stay in as we drove east. It was an insignificant conversation for an insignificant morning.
One of Elise’s neighbors pounded on our door, pounding so hard I ran to the door thinking she was being attacked. All Angelique would say when I opened the door was “Turn on your TV.” Then she was off to bang on another door. I did as she asked, realizing that I had forgotten to ask which channel to tune in. As it turned out, of course, it didn’t matter. All the channels were showing the same scenes -- the new Cathedral of Biloxi was a smoking ruin.
The announcers were trying to add some information to the picture, the fact that it had occurred at 6:45 that morning, the fact that casualties were unknown. And then they showed the new tape – the tape of the little man with the blue armband with white crosses standing in front of the church just at dawn. He was angry. He was shouting. I understood the words “Papists” and “taxes,” and “rights” but the rest seemed slurred together. He shouted at the camera for about five minutes, and then signaled someone off camera. Then the cathedral exploded. There must have been a huge number of explosive charges in the building to cause it to go up the way it did. It seemed to become an instant cloud of dust. It must even have surprised the men on the tape since they could be seen ducking and looking for cover as the debris rained down.
Then there was a tape of the explosion from the other side of the church, and then a third view taken from a little more distance and a slightly different angle. Three cameras on the explosion? Did the TV station know the church would be blown up? No, the announcer explained that the tapes had been delivered by a spokesperson for the Louisiana Nationalist Army. The criminals had taped the crime! And then it occurred to me why the explosion had occurred at 6:45 rather during the night – they had waited until after sunup so it would be easier to tape the destruction!
Elise turned off the stove and we sat and watched the TV together. She was crying constantly while we watched. I could feel her crying as I held her, but both of us kept staring at the TV and at the sight of a cathedral disappearing. Sometime that morning I called the office and told the office manager I thought it would be best to close for the day. He said that was already in progress. Some of our employees had never come in, having heard the news on their car radios, and those who had arrived at work simply sat and cried. There would be no work done today. I suspected he was speaking for all businesses in Canada. This would be a day for mourning, not for work.
A few of Elise’s neighbors began coming over. It appeared they didn’t want to be alone while they watched the destruction. Nobody said much. They added what they had heard on the radio, or comments from other announcers on other channels, but in fact nobody knew much about what had happened down there, and none of us felt much like talking. We stared at the TV like zombies – somehow less alive than we had been hours earlier.
As the morning progressed, the TV announcers tried to add in press conference information from the local police, filled in with some experts talking about the construction of the church (it was essentially a replica of the National Cathedral), and had other experts trying to explain who these people with armbands were and what their motives might be.
At noon the local channels brought in local connections to the tragedy, and the news was not good. That morning a group of Huguenot students had seen the explosion on one of the TVs in the student union at the National University and had loudly cheered. Other students, leaving classes as they heard the news, were just entering the union when they witnessed the cheering. They attacked immediately, hundreds of students jumping on the dozen Huguenots. None had been killed, but all were now hospitalized while police arrested scores of Catholic students. In this day of ubiquitous video recorders, a student had captured some of the fight and it was being broadcast, complete with angry Huguenots being carried off still shouting “Hooray for the LNA” while other students were restrained by cordons of police. It was clear that without the police there would be dead Huguenots on campus.
The channel also broadcast man-in-the-street interviews, all of which seemed to provoke violence. Catholic women cried, Catholic men demanded swift justice, while the one Huguenot they could find on the street ended his interview with “Now maybe you will get out of my country.” I hoped no one outside of Green Bay had seen that interview. Unfortunately, by four that afternoon the local clip had been inserted into the national news. It was after all, the capital city. It felt to me like a virus being inserted into a weakened cell. This would spread the hatred fast. “Get out of my country.” How many men would die on both sides of that statement?
By two, the local news segments began announcing cancellations. The first round was athletic and social events. Some soccer matches were called off, and various scouting meetings were cancelled. It seemed obvious more cancellations were coming. You could almost feel the country shutting down. Elise’s apartment kept getting more crowded. Most of her neighbors were in the room now, sitting in front of the TV. I couldn’t tell if they were gathering together to share the pain, or to seek some kind of protection in numbers.
Elise pulled herself away from the TV and started making food. She made a second attempt at crepes, with several of her friends joining her in the kitchen. I was sent out to find more food at the store. She made a list of things she needed to make spaghetti.
Being out in the city was odd. The day was beautiful. It was mid-May and spring had finally come to Green Bay. The grass was green, trees were leafing out, flowers were in bloom everywhere. The weather was out of step with the public mood. I drove around town a bit more than I needed to in order to see what was happening before I went into the grocery store. I saw some lines at gas stations. I didn’t understand that. Maybe because so much of our gas comes from Louisiana? Other areas of the town were quiet, with little pedestrian traffic and few cars.
The grocery store was crowded. I can’t say that people were buying in a panic, but I saw lots of folks with carts filled to the top, far more than I would have expected to find on a Thursday afternoon. I worked my way down the list of things Elise wanted. They were all in stock, although the supply of bread seemed to be getting a bit low. I steered clear of the one place in the store where there seemed to be a real crush of people – the shelves of bottled water. Did they think water also came from Louisiana? Did they expect utilities to be bombed next? I steered my cart down the next aisle and stood in a long line to check out.
As I stood there I looked at my fellow shoppers. Few were talking to anyone. Even those who had come in with others were staring straight ahead or down at their shoes. And all were wearing colors. This being a capital city and university town there are lots of people from lots of places living in Green Bay, including Huguenots. Over the past months Huguenots up here had come to join their compatriots in the south in the wearing of white. Just a few at first, and then it seemed like they all changed their wardrobes. But today I could see no white. If there were Huguenots in the store, they were wearing colors to hide that fact.
By the time I got back to Elise’s apartment, I had trouble getting in her door. It was just a student apartment, not very big, and every inch of it was now taken up by her neighbors and their friends. The TV was on mute while one of the students described what had happened in the cafeteria that morning. It was just before nine, he said, when he had gone into the cafeteria near the library. This was one of the biggest cafe
terias since it was situated at the junction of several tunnels. The campus was designed for the library to be the central building, so this cafeteria became the main cafeteria by default.
He was just standing there sipping his coffee before heading to class when a student ran in and changed the channel on the TV. Each of the cafeterias had huge projection TVs at one end of the room, which to the chagrin of campus faculty, were normally turned to soap operas during the day. When the student changed the channel there had first been some complaints from students concerned about the show they were watching, but most of them stopped in mid-sentence when they saw what was happening. First they saw the explosion of the church, and many of the students had been confused, since it looked like the National Cathedral had been blown up. Then the spokesman for the LNA was shown talking and then the various views of the explosion were shown again and again.
Most of the room had been silent, students staring and not fully understanding. But a group of Huguenots all dressed in white sat near the TV, and they seemed to grasp what had happened first. When the LNA spokesman came back on TV, they started shouting things like “Go Renee, go!” as if they could cheer him on. Then when the tape of the explosion came on again, they cheered. Jean, the student who was telling us the story, said he never heard any shouting or any sound from the other students in the room. They just pounced. One minute there were a dozen white-clad boys shouting at the TV, the next there were fifty other boys running toward them. The Huguenots just disappeared under a pile of boys. Jean said he didn’t think any of the Huguenots were too badly hurt – there wasn’t room for anyone to swing a fist and there were no weapons in the room. There was just a huge pile of humanity up near the TV.
Cell phones being ubiquitous among students, calls to the campus and city police went out immediately. Three campus cops got there first, but they had no weapons and could do nothing with the crowd. Their response was to call for more police while they attempted to keep other students out of the room. Four city cops arrived next and waded into the crowd with night sticks, but there wasn’t much they could do either. Finally a dozen cops were in the room and they pulled the boys apart, pushing the Catholics toward one wall. Jean said he left at that point. The cops were clearing the room and seemed to have things quieted down.
There were lots of questions for Jean, and some additions about cops elsewhere on campus, and questions about classes and exams. The campus had been shut down for the day. Would it reopen tomorrow? What about all the exams that had been scheduled for the final weeks of classes? Most in the room were graduate students, so they were concerned both about the class they took and the classes they taught.
Elise and I stayed in the kitchen. She gave me a hug periodically, but kept crying and kept cooking. With the help of several other women she turned out a huge platter of spaghetti, and then went back and made a second batch. I sliced bread and put it out in the main room with a pile of cheese slices. People ate and talked and looked over at the TV, wondering if anything new would appear.
At five the regularly scheduled local news appeared. It consisted mostly of cancellations. The university was shut down for the rest of the week, as were all other schools in the nation. A decision would be made soon about when schools would reopen. Professional sports were also cancelled. A pattern emerged in the cancellations. Anything that would draw a crowd was cancelled. The government wasn’t quite ready to order to people to stay in their homes, but it sure was taking away reasons to go out.
At five thirty the national news summarized the events of the morning and then explained what was happening currently, none of which was good. Arrests had been made of people presumed to be involved in the destruction. At LNA headquarters a shootout had occurred with two cops and two LNA members killed. The news reader reported unconfirmed sources saying a number of Louisiana Provincial Police had refused to participate in the arrests. This was then hotly refuted by the Louisiana governor, but the head of the police union confirmed that some officers had called in sick. He downplayed any political connections.
The fight in the student union was then shown again, and followed with descriptions of other fights in other schools. In many cases it was the Huguenot kids getting beaten up; in others it was the Catholics who were in the minority. The fights were widespread and included both high schools and colleges. Interviews at all of the schools showed angry kids ready for more fights. The last news was that the President would address the nation at seven.
We muted the TV and went back to talking and eating. Should the university be reopened? Would it be safe? Next week was the main exams of the year. How could grades be assigned if the exams were cancelled? On the other hand, how could the campus be made safe? Would any Huguenots dare show up on campus? Could they have a reasonable opportunity to take the exams? No one in the room could arrive at any solutions.
At seven President D’Stang gave his speech. He said about what you would expect. A crime has been committed, the perpetrators are under arrest or being sought, it is time for the nation to come together with respect for all faiths and belief in a just God. The words were right, but his face was wrong. He was an angry man. There was no forgiveness in his eyes. He looked like he would happily lead a mob looking for people in white. After D’Stang’s talk the Governor of Louisiana made a short speech about progress that was being made in the case, the respect all Louisianans have for all religious denominations, the need for all Frenchmen to unite. Unfortunately, he looked like he was giving the speech while someone held a gun to his back. He was on camera so briefly it looked like he was hoping to run from the studio the instant he could.
Someone muted the TV again, and there was more talk, and more food, but gradually folks drifted back to their own apartments. By eleven it was just Elise and I again. I shut off the TV and brought lots of dishes back to the kitchen. It took us until after midnight to clean everything up, but neither of us cared – it gave us something mindless to do. That was what we wanted at that moment – simple tasks, familiar tasks, tasks we could do together. I remember going to bed, but I can’t remember when I drifted off to sleep. Neither of us said anything. Elise laid her head on my chest, and I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, and we laid like that for a very long time. Eventually we both slept.
The next morning we left the TV off and went for a walk. It was another beautiful day. We heard no sirens and saw no smoke, so it appeared the rest of the city had also had settled down. Would a weekend be enough time to recover? Could classes and jobs resume on Monday? We hoped so. We were due to drive to Philadelphia in just a few days. It would be nice if the world would just settle down and our biggest concern while driving would be whether the next rest stop had good food or not
The walk did us good and we returned to Elise’s apartment feeling like the world was somehow fixed. But we were wrong. I turned on the TV and saw a church burning. Two Huguenot churches had been set ablaze during the night. There had also been more fights, even two shootings. Then the news switched to a bizarre traffic report. They had a camera on the Mississippi Highway just south of St. Louis. All four lanes were jammed bumper to bumper. It was quickly clear that Huguenots were heading south in huge numbers, just as Catholics chose the safety of the north. It is the French who love the biological sciences, but it seemed like one of their metaphors would be most apt in explaining what we were seeing – a cell was dividing in two. Nuclear materials were splitting and moving towards each of the new cells. If the traffic continued this way for very long, Canada would be two countries before any political action was taken.
It was too sad to watch, so I reached out to turn off the TV. Then a funny thing happened – it turned off by itself. My hand was still a foot from the controls when the screen went blank. I stopped in mid-motion, confused. And then the TV came on again, this time showing a church service. The camera angle was odd, just a simple corner shot with poor a
udio and no close-ups of the priest. But it was clearly a church service in progress.
I changed the channel to see what other stations were broadcasting, but it was the same picture from the same church. Every station had stopped news coverage and gone over to the church service. We stared carefully at the TV. Was the President dead? Was this his service? It didn’t appear so. It looked like a routine mass in a routine church. After a while the priest delivered his homily. The camera was at such a distance it was hard to see the priest’s face, but he didn’t appear to be anyone well known, nor did he say anything profound. He spoke as if he were speaking on a normal Sunday, except this was a Friday, the Friday following a national disaster. You would never know it to hear him.
We were totally baffled by what we were seeing until a line of text began to crawl across the screen. “President D’Stang has declared today a national day of prayer. Please pray for peace.” The line was repeated over and over during the next hour. It was hard to know how to react. We had relied on the TV for news, and now it had stopped providing that. On the other hand, the news was bad and getting worse. Maybe a church service was a better idea.
Then the phone rang. It was Picard. President Jolliet would like to meet Elise and me at the National Cathedral. We of course agreed. Elise jumped back into her bedroom to change into something appropriate for church, and I looked around to see if I had left a tie at her apartment. She interrupted her own changing and handed me a shirt. “I was saving it for your birthday.” She said. It was another ruffled card sharp shirt. Now I had two shirts I could never wear in Philadelphia.
The drive to church was more complicated than I thought it would be. We were not the only ones going to church that Friday. I managed to find a parking spot a bit down the street from the church and Elise and I walked to the main parking lot where we saw Jolliet waving to us from a huge black limousine.
“Thank you for joining me,” he said as we approached. He was surrounded by security guards who let us near him and then surrounded us too. I thought I felt a hand on my back as if the guards were doing a quick check on me. Since I was only wearing pants and a ruffled shirt, I was in no position to hide much, but they apparently were going to be very careful. Elise gave Jolliet a kiss on the cheek and a long hug.
“Thank you for inviting us. This is the perfect place to be.” She said
“Yes,” I added, “They are showing a church service on TV, but this is better.”
“I am afraid the production values are not the best, are they? Is that the right phrase? ‘Production values?’ But we didn’t have much time. Loyola Cathedral outside Montreal was testing a new television system for use on the local cable channel, and we just took their feed. I hope we will have more professional looking broadcasts within a few hours.”
“We?” Elise asked. “For a retired man, you aren’t getting busy again, are you?”
“As I told you once before, a retired President can have many uses. My current use is Information Minister. I am afraid it is my job to make television very boring for the next few weeks. When things settle down President D’Stang can fire me and the press can beat their chests for years about how I violated their rights. In the meantime we will have no pictures of churches burning and children beating each other. I know they think they were giving people news, but I think they were giving people bad ideas. By the way, you will probably also notice some changes in the newspapers and radio. As for the Internet, we are still working on that. We have a couple young men who are teaching me about “denial of service” attacks. It seems to be a way to keeping some of the most rabid sites quiet. Now come with me. We need to pray for our sins, me more than most.”
So we walked up to the church, the ring of security men with us step by step. Many other people were also moving toward the church. Those who knew the President – which was many of them – said hello or waved. None tried to break through the security cordon to shake his hand. We entered through the huge doors, then paused by the holy water. I was pleased to see even his security men genuflect. They may have machine guns under their coats, but they were entering a church and acted appropriately. Jolliet led us to his pew near the front in the central nave. Guards were already stationed at the end of his pew.
Once we were in the pew, Jolliet pulled down the kneeling pad and we all prayed, our knees on the pad, our butts on the edge of the pew behind us, our forearms on the back of the pew before us. We stayed that way a very long time. I found myself saying “Hail Mary’s” over and over. At some point the prayer did what it always did -- it combined with the rhythm of my breathing, and I began to feel an additional level of peace. Time passed. Finally Jolliet sat back on his pew and we sat back with him. He wanted to talk. There was no service in progress, just hundreds of people coming and going and praying.
“The cathedral will be rebuilt, as will all the churches that have been burned. We have the plans, we have the money, we certainly have the talent to build great churches of all denominations. The men who blew up the cathedral will be captured and imprisoned. Their punishment awaits them. They have sacrificed their souls and will live an eternity in agony. My fear is for your students, Elise, and all the other students of our country. It is their souls that worry me the most.”
“We are not a mean people. Shawn, your country and mine have fought three wars and tens of thousands have been killed. Men, women, even children died on both sides. There was anger, but I know of no time where the character of either country changed and people became mean. Yesterday morning I saw people become mean. When that beautiful church was blown up – blown up so that all could see – and people cheered, well, that cheer changed people. To celebrate death and destruction is a mortal sin. To celebrate death in the face of innocent people, well that is a sin so unexpected God did not tell Moses to write it down.”
“We have to close the schools. They will not reopen this week or next or next month. I hope they can open in the fall. But the violence has to stop and the hatred has to stop. In the meantime, we will ask people to reconsider their actions. We need to spend more time on our knees before we lose our national soul.” As if to underline his words, Jolliet then went back onto his knees and prayed again. Elise and I followed suit. We stayed there for a very long time.
Then Jolliet wanted to talk again. This time he stayed on his knees and pointed up at the ceiling of the church. “Shawn, you know those windows portray the life of Christ. Which do you think tells us the most about God?”
“Father Patrick asked me that question before my first communion,” I answered. “The way he asked it was, of all the acts of Jesus Christ, which means the most to you? My answer was the miracle of the loaves and fishes. I think he believed I was just being a silly boy, always hungry, always thinking about food. And I suppose that played a part. But even now that I am grown and less hungry, I still like that miracle. It tells me that in God’s world there is enough. There is abundance. God has given us a good world. There is plenty for all”
“I like that answer.” He replied with a big smile. “Let’s take a walk. I want to show you the end of your book.” He rose and immediately security guards started scurrying around. He threw them off a bit when instead of walking all the way out the back of the church, he turned left at the transept and exited by the side doors. He stopped at the top of the stairs while the guards scattered. The head guard waited for Jolliet to continue down the stairs, and when he didn’t, he approached.
“Please, sir. You are totally exposed up here. Let’s go back to the car.”
“No, I am going to show my friends something. We will be up here for a few minutes. Please adjust as best you can, but we will not be moving.” The security team seemed to have all heard that, for they moved around in a perimeter that protected the stairs.
“Now you see why we chose the Prague design for our church,” Jolliet said to Elise and
me. “A view like that should be used. In Prague, the St. Vitus Cathedral opens toward the Presidential Palace. Here, we open to our whole city and the bay beyond.” He was right, of course. The whole church was on a hill, and this side faced north. Down below us was the bay, the Fox River running through the heart of town, and the city of Green Bay. On a sunny day like this, the sight was impressive.
“Our last discussion was of Marquette’s death. He was a holy man and a great man, but no book should end with death. I think you should add in one more year – 1676. Louis came back to Green Bay. He had wanted to build a settlement among the Illinois, and there is no doubt that would have been a great success. But he was denied that. So what was he to do? Creditors hounded him on every side. He spent many days in court defending himself. Fortunately he had friends who sustained him. But what was he to do next? He was recognized across Canada as their greatest explorer and map maker. Would he explore more lands? To what end? He was thirty one, and his blood told him it was time to settle in one place.”
“In the spring of 1676 he was finally clear enough with his creditors that he could once again put together a stock of trade goods. Claude DuPry would join him. They would stop first at the Sault to see how his brother Zacherie was doing with the family business, and then he would go on – not to Illinois which had been forbidden to him, but to Green Bay where he had seen the possibilities of a trading post.”
“They arrived in June of 1676 and built their stockade there.” Jolliet pointed up the river to a point where a small coal dock now stood. “They have a replica trading post on the wrong side of the river, but at least they remember roughly where everything started. The Jesuit mission was within a hundred feet. Most of the land around them was woods or marsh, but they did what all men did in those days – they cleared the land, building with some of the logs and burning off the rest. They had a small crop of corn in the ground before the end of June.”
“We have talked about the tension between traders and missionaries because some missionaries used alcohol to improve their skills in trading. But Louis was a former seminarian and so got along fine with Father Andre. Father Allouez had moved to Illinois by this time. Louis set an example to the other Frenchmen in the area, and he set an example to the Indians for he never missed mass and was regular in his confessions.”
“His faith was rewarded. Father Andre was also trying to build up the settlement, and he had managed to bring a number of Mascoutins to Green Bay. Among them was Angelique. She was the woman they had met three years before in the Mascoutin village – the one who met Father Marquette with the sign of the cross. Hers had been a hard life. She had married in her teens to a man who then been killed in a fight with the Sioux. He left her with a baby who died in his first year. At eighteen she had experienced the death of a child and the death of a husband. The teachings of Christ were her sole comfort.”
“Whenever Louis went to church, there she was. Father Andre was so convinced of her complete understanding of the gospel that he had baptized her and given her a Christian name – Angelique. She had learned some French and some ways of French cooking. Father Andre introduced her to Louis and God did the rest. Just before Christmas they were married. Under the laws of the Hundred Associates created by Cardinal Richlieu, once she was baptized, Angelique had full legal rights to marry, to own property, even to emigrate to France. She was a French citizen in full. Say what you want about Richlieu, he was no bigot.”
“Their marriage worked. It must have worked, because a year later Claude followed suit with Marie, another Mascoutin widow who had been baptized. Both couples produced large and happy families. The land they cultivated grew, the trading post grew, and the number of Indians who visited Green Bay and then stayed on grew as well. Father Andre was happy to report ten or twelve baptisms each year, a significant number since priests were always very careful about the permanence of the conversion.”
“For the first time since its founding, there were children in Green Bay. They grew up to play in the trees and in the river, and in the fields. Father Andre gave them some instruction – basic letters and sums – while the boys also learned to hunt and fish while the girls learned to cook and sew. And there was laughter in this valley. Children ran free and laughed. I sometimes think I can still hear it coming from down by the river.”
“What happened next? That is a new story. Each of the children grew up to lead this community and then other communities. The Jolliets and the DuPrys were like the loaves and the fishes – they were fruitful and multiplied.” We all laughed at that. “And that reminds me of my favorite miracle. There is no stained glass for this miracle in our church or in any church that I know of, but I still love it. You will recall that the Bible shows Jesus just once did a favor for his mother – the miracle of the wedding where water becomes wine. I like the idea of Jesus obeying his mother Mary, and I like the idea of Jesus caring for the success of a wedding. Weddings are important, don’t you think?” The look on his face was both mischievous and serious. He expected an answer.
“Yes,” Elise replied, while holding my hand. “Weddings are important.”
Jolliet left us at that point. He wanted to go back in and pray some more, no doubt to the great relief of his security guards. Elise and I stayed out on the stairs and looked toward the river. We couldn’t hear children laughing, but we could see where so much good had begun.
“Let’s leave Sunday after mass, OK?” Elise finally asked.
“Yes, that would be a great way to begin the trip.” We stood for a while longer looking at the city. We heard no sirens, saw no smoke. Maybe people were praying. We could certainly hope so.