Chapter 13 –
When in doubt, read history
The first call of the morning came from my father. I was awake, and it was nearing ten, but I was largely immobile. I lay in my bed, suffering every time I tried to move. What kind of punches had that guy thrown at me? And what kind of government sends guys like that after its own citizens? I discovered my father had been working on the second question.
“Elise called us last night and filled us in. We were speechless. Why would a consular employee try to kill you? I woke up Dodson and gave him a piece of my mind. He called back this morning and would not say much other than to apologize and to explain he was working on the problem. I asked him to explain the problem, but he wouldn’t. He said it was a security problem. I told him it was a family matter since his security problem was attacking my family. Our conversation went down hill from there. I don’t think we are going to learn much from him. By the way, how are you feeling?”
“Tell Michael I finally ran into someone who punches harder than he does.”
“Should you see a doctor?” Actually, I had been thinking a lot about that, but since I could not get out of bed, seeing a doctor didn’t seem to be in the cards.
“I am sure I am all right. I will lay low for a day or two and then head back to Green Bay.”
“That might be wise. I would suggest you come home to Philadelphia, but something odd is going on over here, and you might actually be safer in a foreign country, although it hurts me badly to say that.”
“I understand. Thanks, Dad.”
My next call was to Elise. It felt odd lying on my back making phone calls, but at least I could do that and breathe enough so that my speech sounded fairly normal.
“Thanks for Henri. He really saved me last night. But you need to dock his pay. He gave me the gun you said, but not the kiss.”
“I am glad to hear you are feeling well enough to tell bad jokes. Henri thought you might have broken ribs.”
“Only my pride was hurt. I trusted the guy.”
“We are checking with all our sources in your government, but we have no real information yet. I am sorry.”
“No need to apologize. It is my government.” I paused there. What more was there to say? Nothing, really. “For what it is worth, I was at the large screen extravaganza last night, and it really was as awesome as the reviews. I would swear they were using a Broadway producer to script the show.”
“Don’t laugh, but we are checking that angle. We have real doubts that any of our theater people could manage a production quite that well. You Americans have a special skill in that area. I think you get that from the British.”
“Didn’t you tell me once that Moliere was superior to Shakespeare? Having a change of heart?
“Moliere is a better guide to life. The endings are always happy. Shakespeare is a better guide to drama. His endings… well, you know.”
“Let’s hope this ends up being a Moliere event.”
“That is what I pray for every night.”
My third phone call was a surprise. Margaret wanted to know how I liked the diaries she had found.
“I have not read them yet. I was out watching the parade and celebration last night. Did you find good ones?”
“I was able to find two that have already been digitized. Both are from the 1750s and each describes the battles with the British.” That got my attention.
“Marvelous. Thank you so much. Let me take a look at them and get back to you. Are you at the library today?”
“No, I have to do some party business today. But call my cell when you have read the diaries. I want to know what you think.”
I agreed and hung up. Now what? My computer was in the other room. If it had been possible, I think I would have called a cab to get me there. Since it was not possible, I slowly rolled myself to one side. It hurt so badly I was practically in tears. But I kept rolling, and ultimately I rolled out of bed. This left me on my hands and knees next to my bed. Now what? I actually crawled into the other room. That wasn’t too bad. Maybe I would spend the rest of the day that way. If I could just get my computer down off my desk, I could set it up on the floor, and read diaries until my knees gave out.
I was in the process of doing that when the cleaning lady let herself in.
“I have been cleaning rooms for fifty years, and I have never seen anything quite like this,” she said. But she was lying. I could tell from just a glance she had to be a hundred and ten and had been cleaning rooms for a century.
“I am a bit stiff this morning. I plan to start sitting up on Wednesday, and maybe standing by Friday.”
“You are such a baby. Have you taken any aspirin?” Not a bad idea, actually, but they were in a different room and up on a shelf hard to reach from your hands and knees.
“No.” What more was I supposed to say?
“Then I will get you some.” She checked around in the bathroom and came out with a glass of water and four aspirin.”
“Four? Are you trying to poison me?”
“If your ears start ringing, I have poisoned you. Until then, you can do four, as long as you eat something too.” I laid the aspirin down on the floor, and took them up one at a time, sipping water to wash them down. At the end of four, I looked up at her. So far, I couldn’t feel any difference. “In fifteen minutes you will feel better. Until then, I will vacuum around you.” Good thing she was not a nurse. Her bedside manner was awful. On the other hand, fifteen minutes later I reached up to the top of my desk to grab my computer, and my chest didn’t feel like it was on fire. I decided to try sitting up, and when that was not too agonizing, I tried getting myself into the chair at the desk. I made it just before she came around with the vacuum cleaner.
“Are your ears ringing?”
“No.”
“So take more in a couple hours. Did you bleed on the bed again?”
“No.”
“I don’t see how your fiancée puts up with you. You are one stupid man. But then, all men are.”
“Do you earn a lot in tips?”
“If I did, do you think I would still be working at seventy two?”
“You don’t look a day over ninety.”
“Move your feet so I can finish cleaning.” And that was the last word out of her. I moved my feet, fired up my computer, and checked my email. I had to scan lots of emails before I found the one from Margaret. My in box is always full. I didn’t pay any attention to the other emails, except for one – Dodson put in the subject line – "Urgent, contact immediately." I opened it to see he wanted a full report on what had happened last night, and he wanted me to go to the consulate to talk with their people. The second request struck me as probably the dumbest idea I had ever heard. What do I say when I get there – “Hi, you people are trying to kill me. Rather than make you walk to my hotel, I thought I would make the murder more convenient for you by coming here.” Sorry, that was one visit I wasn’t going to make.
If anyone was going to determine what was going on, it would be my father – or maybe Catherine. That gave me a thought. I sent an email to her, and asked her to look into Rene Malroux. How does a bumpkin from nowhere suddenly become a party leader? Maybe she could get some background information.
That was about all the energy I wanted to put into current events. I had two old diaries to read, and those would be much more interesting than the actions of current thugs.
Diary one was written by Jacques Marat. It covered the years 1753 to 1761. That was unfortunate. None of these diaries were very long. Paper was expensive, ink had to be hand made, so the typical diary was maybe eighty pages long. Quick math said that if you tried to cover eight years of events in eighty pages, you were only going to hit the high spots. That might sound like a good idea – why cover the boring days – but in reality, the things you see as boring today might turn out to be very important insights a
couple centuries later.
Still, I read carefully, hoping he would describe important events. For the first two years, I was wrong. He was love struck. For two years he described efforts to see his beloved, his appreciation for the tilt of her head, the glow of her hair, the beauty of her lips. For two years there are encounters and occasional conversations, but nothing more. I felt like yelling at the guy – hey, it’s the 1750s, two years from now she might be dead from malaria or smallpox. Better get a move on. He never gets past letters of lofty passion. She dies. He writes a long love letter to her soul, and then packs his bags. He needs to travel to clear his mind.
Here I discovered something. He really wants to sail to France, to see the home country. But France wants nothing to do with him – he is a Huguenot – a heretic. Unless he is prepared to convert, he can’t go to France. So where does a heartbroken young man go? He goes north. He pays for his passage by helping pole the boat up the Mississippi. He also takes along some wooden toys he hopes will sell. He has a close encounter with a wicked woman in Baton Rouge, and helps fight off pirates in Arkansas, but eventually he makes it to Kaskaskia.
When he gets to Kaskaskia, he discovers that over a hundred men have left to fight the British. Washington has attacked again, this time as second in command to a much larger force of British regulars. The local men had gotten into boats and even canoes to paddle up the Ohio to meet Washington. The men have to paddle down the Mississippi first, then paddle up the Ohio River – a trip of over a thousand miles. Will they get there in time? They don’t know. Washington will have to cross mountains, and the British are notoriously slow. But paddling against the current for a thousand miles will take weeks. They might not get there until the battles are over, but they were determined to try.
Marat is unsure what to do. He has made a few friends on the boat ride north, and several of them are talking about going up the Ohio to help, yet others are talking about going back home to Louisiana. Nobody seems to be in any particular hurry. They have worked hard to get to Kaskaskia, and they want to enjoy the sights. Someone tells them buffalo have come down from the north, so they walk for hours one morning just to see what they might look like. Someone else tells them the crops up here are interesting, so they go to look at fields one day. There are also intimations of whiskey and women, but nothing is spelled out. Basically, they are all young men, and they do what young men do in a new place.
Within a week, they are all bored. It is time to go. Marat is in no hurry to return to New Orleans, after all the love of his life is gone, and it might be interesting to see the Ohio region. I don’t want to belittle his decision process. He has a whole page describing the honor of defending his country, and the virtues of the French, but within a page he is on about the chance to see mountains, so honor and virtue pretty quickly become sightseeing. I can appreciate that.
He ends up taking the same river boat up the Ohio. There are seven young men from New Orleans, and four Illinois. He has never spent any time with Indians before, so much of his journal is about how surprising they are, although mostly what surprises him is that they are pretty normal. Having shared a town with the French for a generation, they have some of the same habits, share the language, even have the same vices. The eleven of them alternately pole or row the boat up the Ohio, taking about four weeks to get to the headwaters.
Along the way, they stop at a number of villages, most of which are tribal. Marat does some business trading his toys for pelts. The biggest surprise for him is the lack of trust between the Illinois he is traveling with and the Indians they meet along the way. He assumes all the Indians somehow know each other and like each other, but he discovers there is a fair amount of distrust, and the Illinois are usually more anxious whenever the boat pulls into a village than the French are. Marat concludes the differences are somewhat like the differences between the French and the British. This seems a major discovery to him.
Two days before they reach the headwaters of the Ohio, they encounter the first men returning from the battle. Yes, they have missed it. The battle is over. The British have been defeated, leaving many dead on the battle field. The British have surrendered, and will be retreating back east. Marat and the others decide to continue. They want to at least see where the battle took place.
Two days later they come up on the French military encampment. The first sight they see is a hospital tent with wounded French soldiers. The smell is overpowering, as are the cries. They hurry past, climbing the hills to the meadow where the battle has been fought. Here the smells are worse. The British dead are lying where they were killed. They have been stripped of weapons and often boots or other articles of clothing. Marat and the others walk for hours through the many areas where the battle has been fought. The British were killed as they attacked, and then as they retreated, so bodies are spread over half a mile.
Marat comes back alone to the meadow that marked the farthest advance of the British. It is an open area surrounded by thick woods. One of the men he had talked to a day earlier explained how surprised he was since "the British just stood out there in the open, loading and firing by ranks, and we stood behind trees and shot them down." Marat looks at the rows of bodies and sees that is exactly how it would have happened. The British stood in ranks, firing, and were killed to the last man. What were they thinking? Marat is first baffled by the strategy; it seems mad. But as he stares at the bodies, now defiled by flies and crows, he begins to think of their courage and discipline. Ordered to stand and shoot into the woods, they stand and shoot into the woods. Hidden by trees and gun smoke, their enemy returns fire, killing troops with every shot. How many volleys did the British get off before the last man died? How many men were left each time they stood and reloaded their muskets, the guns placed with their butts on the ground, the men pulling out the ram rods, pouring powder and shot down the barrel, replacing the ram rod, raising the musket, and standing waiting for the order to fire one more time, while men are falling all around? Did they do that five times before the last man died? Four times? Standing in the sun in their bright red coats while men shot at them from every side. What kind of man could do that? He gets on his knees and he prays for the men, for their peace and for their blessings in the next world.
There is nothing in his diary for the next couple days, and then there is a very angry entry. He has run into his first priest. They are illegal in Louisiana, so he has never met one before. He and his friends are in the French military encampment, getting ready to head back down the Ohio when a priest hurries up to them. He has heard they are Protestants, except he refers to them as Calvinist heretics. Marat and his friends have only a vague sense for who Calvin might be, but they know what a heretic is, and they are not too happy about being called one. The priest then begs the young men to get down on their knees and beg for forgiveness before they burn in Hell for all eternity. By now others from around the camp are listening to the priest, and it begins to look like the young Huguenots might be attacked. They suddenly feel like significant outsiders. Is the whole camp against them? The priest won't stop with his accusations, and he seems to be getting louder, and the young Huguenots get the impression this is all building to their early arrival in Hell. They gather up their belongings as quickly as they can, run for their boat, and take off down river. Safely off shore, one of the men shouts back at the priest, something about Satan and the Pope, and they wonder if the soldiers will come after them, but no pursuit results and the men keep rowing, getting farther and farther from the priest and the encounter. And, as human nature would have it, the farther they get from the priest, the more angry they get about the whole event. Days go by and they talk of nothing else. They have had enough of Ohio and of New France. They want to return to Louisiana where they feel safe. And that is what they do.
Marat's diary goes on for six more years, but he never goes north again. He finds another love, and thi
s time pursues her vigorously. The remaining entries in his diary are about love and life and children. In his final entry he opens a small shop in Biloxi.