Chapter 10 –
So who was Joseph Thiere?
Back in my room I showered and changed my bandages. You would think I would get better with practice, but no such luck. Layers of bandages already coming loose, I started making phone calls.
Elise was first. I talked about my day, explained I seemed to have a guardian angel in Goulet, and I had found a really interesting diary. Now here is where couples establish their degree of compatibility. I was genuinely excited to have read one man’s reaction to the Washington invasion and looked forward to finding out what he did next. I wanted to know how his community prepared for the coming war. The questions that intrigued me involved human behavior and how things had come to be as they are. I was engaged to a demographer. The questions that intrigued her were population movements and how the government might best respond. To oversimplify, I looked at the past while she looked at the future. That could lead to uncomfortable conversations. And, since much of our personality is defined by the questions that attract us, you begin to wonder about compatibility. But here is where Elise was a marvel. I knew she had spent a long day dealing with really significant national issues, but she not only listened while I rambled on about Joseph Thiere, she seemed genuinely interested. There were so many reasons to love Elise, and this was one more.
My next call didn’t go as well. I called my leasing company to tell them their car was sitting at the harbor in Venice, Louisiana, but I wouldn’t be driving it home. It turned out the police had already called them, and the car was now sitting in a junk yard waiting for a final review and possible disposal. Once the paperwork was completed, I would get a bill. I probably should have left the conversation there, but I asked if the company had a local branch where I might get another car. She just hung up on me.
My third call was to Senator Dodson. Well, the call was really to his office where a very busy receptionist took my name and said the Senator would get to me as his schedule permitted, which I think was a polite way of saying they would check to see if I was worth his time, and if I was, he would get back to me eventually. I got off the phone and began thinking about going down to dinner, when the phone rang – Dodson was returning my call. I wondered if campaign contributors had ever gotten a return call that fast.
“I am pleased you called, Shawn. Do you mind if I put you on speaker phone? I am with some of my staff, and I think they would all like to hear your report.”
“I am not sure that would be wise. If you would like a description of the shooting yesterday, I can do that, but the real reason I called was to ask about people in the local consulate.”
“Oh?”
“I have had two conversations with a young man named Elliot Pound. In the first one he tried to tell me what I had seen during the attack, and then this morning he was back, trying to push me to change my blog. I would bet dollars to donuts he is on the Foster payroll.”
“That’s not possible. We vet consular staff very thoroughly. But we have many people representing many agencies in each of our consulates. Pound is not someone I know, but I will do some checking. Now, do you mind describing yesterday’s events to my staff and answering a few questions?”
“That would be fine.” And for the next twenty minutes I described what had happened. I had the impression there were four or five staff people in the room, and it sounded like I was getting questions from all of them. They were courteous and sympathetic. They also informed me that David Starr was still holding on, though his condition had yet to improve. They thanked me for efforts I had made to help with his wounds.
The most numerous questions were about the LNA. How many were there? How were they armed? What were their vehicles like? What was Goulet like? They seemed confused about why they had come to our rescue, and frankly, so was I. I had no ready explanation for their actions, although I also explained the Goulet had visited me at lunch and warned me about additional attacks. None of them could come up with a theory for why Goulet was protecting me, and neither could I. Eventually the questions wound down, and I assumed they needed to get to the next item on their agenda. I promised I would check back when time permitted, and I got off the line.
By this time I was not sure if I was more in need of food or wine, so I called down to room service for both. I felt safe enough to eat in the hotel dining room, but I wanted to do some research. I fired up my computer, and of course the first place I went to was the local historical society site. They would have the Thiere diaries, and I really wanted to read the next one.
Except the diaries were not on the site. It was not clear if they ever had been. There were some digitized artifacts on the site, but not many. I looked back through meeting notices to see when Guillard might have given a presentation, thinking that might be the link. But I could not find him mentioned anywhere. This was a dead end. I wondered if maybe I had gone to the wrong historical society web site, but a quick search made it clear there was only one Louisiana Historical Society, and no New Orleans Historical Society, or Baton Rouge Historical Society. There was one organization, one web site, no synonyms, no cousins that might be confused with it. I had seen the one web site, and it was empty.
Okay, so maybe I could try from a different direction. I went back to a general search tool and tried “Joseph Thiere”. I got hits, but not helpful ones. Nearly a thousand web sites had some mention of that name, but it turned out it was practically the “John Smith” of Huguenot names. I tried to narrow the search by putting in dates, or concatenating it with Baton Rouge or other places that might be relevant. Nothing seemed to pull this guy out of the clutter. For the next two hours I hit web site after web site looking for the guy. I can tell you about the dentist by that name, the drunk driver by that name, the real estate agent who just made the “million franc club.” The one Joseph Thiere I could not tell you about is the one who was writing diaries in the 1750s. This was really annoying.
Now what? I sat back, had another glass of wine, paced around the room, pushed several bandages back down, and tried to think of another place to look. At some point, it occurred to me to try another angle. If I couldn’t find anything looking from New Orleans, what if I looked from Green Bay? I logged into the National University library and searched there. And I got a hit. The library did not have his diaries, of course, nor did they have a biography about him, but he was mentioned in three books, all describing early merchants in Baton Rouge. So now I knew he had at least made it back home. And, given his gift for gab, I was not at all surprised he had ended up a store, some place where he would have regular interaction with the public. I envisioned him as the kind of merchant who knew everyone in town and never lost a sale. The books were not available electronically, so I could no download them, but just the descriptions told me he had been in Baton Rouge in the 1780s and 90s. So he had survived to late middle age. But what had he been doing in those middle years between 1754 and 1780? And where had the second diary gone?
It was so frustrating. I paced around a bit more, and then I called it a day. Maybe I would make better progress in the morning. It was also time for me to start planning to return to Green Bay. One more day would be enough, and I would find a car somewhere and start north. Little did I know.