In God's House (12 page)

Sister Julianne was confused by her phone conversation with Monsignor Moroux. Normally, the monsignor’s telephone manner was gruff, held to a few words. Usually, he just said, “Please come to my office now.”

But this morning, when she answered the phone, Moroux had been full of cheer. “Good morning, Sister. How are you and how is your world this bright, sunny day?”

“Fine,” she said. “Everything is fine.”

“Well, I do hope so. Would you have any free time today for a visit with me?”

“Yes, Monsignor. I can walk over now.”

“Good, good. I am in the bishop’s office. Can I have Lydia make you a coffee or tea?”

“I have my water bottle. I’m okay.” A jogger, Sister Julianne always carried a dark blue metallic flask of water with her.

“Good, good then. Come on over at your convenience.”

When Sister Julianne walked into the bishop’s office, Monsignor Moroux was standing at the window, looking out toward the cemetery. He had his back to her.

“Monsignor?”

“Yes, yes. Come over here, please.”

She walked over and stood next to him.

“Do you know what I am doing, Sister?”

“No.”

“Pondering. I’m pondering. You ever ponder?” Moroux said.

“I guess so.”

“You know what I’m pondering, Sister?”

“No.”

“Two things, actually. First there is that dying oak tree on the edge of the old part of the cemetery. You see the one I mean?”

“Un-huh.”

“I’m pondering whether I should have it cut down before a hurricane topples it onto the old graves. That would be a pity. Some of those old crypts are beautiful with the sculpture work crowning them.”

The monsignor turned almost in slow motion, like a dancer on a music box winding down. “I am pondering about that tree, Sister, and I am pondering about you.”

Sister Julianne took a sip from her water bottle.

“Why would I be pondering about you, Sister? Can you tell me?”

She shook her head.

“Come with me. I’ll show you.”

Moroux led her down the steps into the vault that housed the secret archives. More than a half-dozen file-cabinet drawers were pulled open. “Now do you know?” he asked.

She sipped water again, shook her head, and hoped she was convincing.

“There are only three sets of keys to these file cabinets, Sister – the keys to all the secrets of this diocese. Bishop Reynolds has a set, I have a set, and our personnel director has a set. That would be you, Sister. When was the last time you were down here?”

“About a week ago, I think.”

“About a week ago?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, then immediately felt stupid for addressing a priest as if he were a cop.

“And what is it you were doing down here? Exactly what?” he asked.

“I was pulling files.”

“A lot of files, I think. The drawers are a mess, Sister. I want you to explain what you were doing.”

“Sometime, I don’t remember the exact details, but I found an error, I think more than one error, on our personnel charts. I think Father Cecil Mosely was shown on my chart as having served in two different church parishes but the whole time he was actually serving full time as Chaplin at Holy Cross Hospital. I thought there could be other errors on the listing. I brought the chart down here and pulled files to see if the information corresponded to what was in the personnel jackets. While I was in the middle of this, I got sick, dizzy, felt like I had the flu and stuck the files back in the drawers and checked out for the day and went home to rest. Maybe I made some mistakes when I put the files back. I was feeling horrible then.”

“Interesting, Sister. Some of the fasteners holding documents were undone as well as files being in the wrong places. Why would you have unfastened the documents?”

“I don’t remember doing anything like that,” she said.

“Let’s go upstairs, Sister. It’s hot down here.”

Once they were in the office, Monsignor Moroux said, “Sister, I want you to return your keys to the secret archives to me now.”

“Monsignor, the keys are in my apartment. I’ll ride my bike over and retrieve them for you now.”

Back in her apartment, Sister Julianne rifled the yellow pages of the phone book, looking for a locksmith shop nearby that could duplicate the keys to the secret archives. She felt she might want to review the files again and was not going to be denied access.

It had only been four days since I first met with Father Francis Dubois in New Hampshire. Now I was fulfilling a request he had made of me. It took several hours to drive to the Dubois family home. It was in the middle of the state – a hilly dry woodland characterized by rises of red dirt and graceless, ramrod straight pine trees. Hardly anyone came here and few ever left. The hills sat as signposts announcing loneliness. Like the sand blown in from the west and waiting to be blown out again on the next gust, the people here were awaiting another wind – the wind from the fire of God’s destruction, the Godwind.

The winding two-lane blacktop roads were lined with
prefabricated
metal buildings topped by awkward steeples. Out in front of these gathering places, where self-ordained ministers reigned in this home field of hard-hitting religion, there were portable message signs. Some simply displayed the name of the church, like “Church of the Holy Savior, Lord Jesus Christ”. Others carried a message, announcing that the rapture was near, but my favorite proclaimed, “God Don’t Gamble, God Don’t Ramble. He’s Here!”

All the roads off the highway were unpaved, red-dirt tracks leading into piney woods and hollows. The only Catholic church in fifty square miles, the parish of Saint Sebastian was deep in the woods, far from any settlement. There were only seventy-eight Catholic families in the entire area and less than half
attended services in the unpainted pine box that passed for a church. On the side of the altar was a life-sized carving of the patron saint of the parish, a nearly naked martyr with nine arrows stuck in his body.

Later Dubois told me that the wood sculpture of Saint Sebastian had been carved by his uncle, John Thomas Dubois. One Saturday afternoon during Francis Dubois’s childhood, men from the parish had gathered to drink moonshine whiskey and shoot the arrows into the sculpture. One at a time, the men had taken up the bow and fired at the target. Most missed and the shooting would stop while the children ran to retrieve the arrows from under the pine needles on the forest floor. The young Francis did not know much about the many other branches of Christianity in the area and as he watched the archers he asked his father what the difference was. His papa told him, “Those in them religions don’t drink liquor, son. Drinking is against their religion. They make the liquor and sell it to us.”

When Francis was a child, on Sundays and holy days a priest would drive up in a white car spattered with reddish mud from the long road leading in from the highway. The priest would hear confessions, say Mass, distribute communion, schedule baptisms and confirmations, and then he would leave. He came in a hurry and left in a hurry. The young Francis Dubois had envied the priest for he was the only one who ever got out of this place.

The Dubois family was poor. Francis’s father, Mr. Willifred Dubois, spent his life “farming trees”, meaning he clear-cut timber for a rich man from Shreveport whom he had never met. When Francis Dubois was young, there was nothing he was good at in school or on the playground. He helped his father haul trees. When he was not hiding on the far side of the barn roof, paging through the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogue, he was in the woods.

Before he was twelve years old, he knew the woods better than anyone except his father and Uncle William James. He could go deeper into the woods than any of the children and most of the adults, and he always found his way back. At an early age, he
began to kill. First he killed bugs and birds, then worked his way up to squirrels, raccoons, ducks, deer and wild hogs.

Because Francis Dominick Dubois was not smart, he was teased at school. Because he was the fourth of nine children, he was ignored at home. Because he spent almost all of his time alone in the woods, he knew no one. After a childhood of rejection and isolation, Francis chose a career as a Catholic priest. He was the only Catholic priest ever ordained from the parish of Saint Sebastian.

It would have taken me forever to find the Dubois place in Morgan’s Hope had Joe Rossi not been with me. Rossi knew where every place was in Louisiana. It seemed he had explored for oil or gas in every region of the state. I had told Monsignor Jean-Paul Moroux that Father Dubois wanted someone to talk to his family. When Rossi heard I was going, he volunteered to accompany me. Rossi and I would travel on to New Orleans later that night after meeting with the Dubois family. There was a morning meeting scheduled in the city with the archbishop and every lawyer involved in the eleven civil suits.

Iris Dubois, Francis’s mom, had been quiet when I called her early that morning. The conversation was short and she asked no questions when I told her I would be coming that evening on behalf of her son, Father Francis, whom I had visited with over the weekend. I advised Mrs. Dubois that I would want to talk with her, her husband and as many of her children as possible.

The light was fading fast in the red hills when we reached Morgan’s Hope. Rossi and I had stopped talking ten miles back. Pickup trucks and old cars crowded the small clearing in front of the Dubois home, a frame building balanced on short concrete piers. A rusting glider and a galvanized tub sat on the unpainted pine slats of the front porch.

Heavy footsteps shook the house. Through the rusted screen I could make out a short, rotund female figure doing a kind of a waddle walk, wiping her hands on her apron as she approached.

“My, my… I’m Iris. So happy ya’ll made it. Ya’ll come in. I was just making coffee. Coming all the way from Thiberville, that’s a big trip. We went there one time. For Easter, I think.”

I realized she was nervous and was going to jabber until I stopped her. “Thank you, Mrs. Dubois.”

The living room was small enough to be mistaken for a foyer. One wall was adorned with a large faded photograph of Father Francis Dubois on the day he was ordained. An amateur oil painting, an attempt to copy the photograph, was on the opposite wall. There were no other pictures or paintings in the room.

Iris Dubois waved at the pictures with her dish rag. “It’s Nicky,” she said. “My, my, what a day that one was. That’s the day the bishop made Nicky a priest. Thought I was gonna pass out. Jus’ from bein’ proud. It felt like a sin to be so proud.”

From the small entrance room, Iris Dubois led Rossi and me to our left, through a passageway connecting the house to the kitchen. The kitchen was larger than the rest of the house. The long table would accommodate a dinner for at least twenty. The room was crowded.

“Say your names again,” Iris said, motioning to us.

After I spoke my name and Rossi’s, Iris went around the room introducing Father Dubois’s brothers, his sisters and their spouses, and finally her husband. Dubois’s dad was dressed in work clothes which were clean but stained by pine sap from the trees he cut and the motor oil of the engines he worked on.

“We have a good gumbo and some red beans, fresh okra and—”

“No, thank you,” I said. Rossi and I took our seats at the head of the table. “We’ve already had something to eat,” I fibbed. “Why don’t you just have a seat?”

A long silence followed. I faced the family, mentally counting fifteen people in the room besides Rossi and myself. I knew it was not the entire family. A few siblings were missing.

“I have some very sad news. Sad news I need to tell you, about your son, about your brother.”

I paused, in part because I was not sure I could go on. As the
moment arrived, I was fully conscious of the weight of what I had to say, a weight so heavy it could crush the heart of anyone who loved Francis Dubois. I knew my visit would alter the lives of these people forever. This was the hardest thing I had ever had to do and I had no idea how to do it. I realized the monsignor or bishop should have come. This was a job for a priest.

“Your son, your brother. Father Dubois. Nicky. He is going to be indicted soon by the district attorney in Thiberville. He could be charged with hundreds of crimes. The criminal charges will involve allegations that… that while he was in Amalie at Our Lady of the Seas… that… that he sexually molested a large number of young boys… very young altar boys.”

Iris Dubois stared stoically at something across the room. She seemed to have shut down. I thought she wasn’t listening, but then she spoke.

“My, oh my… God. The children. Mr. Renon, the children. Who is taking care of the little children? Are they hurt? Did they get hurt? Oh no… little children…”

“Yes ma’am. Doctors are taking care of the children.”

“The bishop? Does the bishop know?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Nicky did this to children?”

She put her head in her hands. It was as if she had not cried over anything in her whole life and all those tears had been saved up and were rushing out now.

One of the men seated at my left grinned inappropriately, and I assumed there was something wrong with him. He wore a New Orleans Saints sweatshirt and appeared to be about the same age as his brother, the priest.

“Did Nicky do this? Is it true? Did he?”

I didn’t see who asked the questions. As my eyes searched the room, a pudgy blond female about thirty-five years old kind of raised her hand.

“I’m Houston’s wife, Glenda. Did Nicky do these things? Is he guilty?”

Looking at her, I answered the question as best I could without violating the confidence of my client, while trying at the same time to remain truthful. “At this point it is not my intention to argue that he is not guilty of the charges. We will argue that he was very sick, legally insane, at the time these alleged acts occurred.”

“When will this happen?” asked a man wearing a ball cap and suspenders over a worn tee-shirt.

“I don’t know. There are also civil lawsuits filed against your brother and the diocese. It could be a long time before there are trials. But I am pretty sure all this will come out in the press quite soon. From now on there could be reporters around here.”

Five or six people asked questions simultaneously.

“Do we have to talk to them?”

“What do we say?”

“Will Nicky be able to come here again?”

“What do you think will happen to Nicky?”

“What can we do to help Nicky?”

“Is the bishop on Nicky’s side?”

I motioned for a little quiet and did my best to field the queries. “The bishop has hired me, and the bishop is paying for Nicky’s medical care now. The Church is paying for the care of the children. I just saw Nicky the other day and he’s okay. He has been moved to a more secure place and the press will not be able to harass him where he is. I think what you can do to help Nicky is to continue to do what you’ve always done. If you used to write him, keep doing that. I have his new address. Just act the same and let him know he has your love and support. And remember you do not have to talk to the media at all. Just be polite and say that you do not want to talk, and walk away—”

Rossi cut in on me with a booming command. “Do not – I repeat – do not speak to anyone in the media about anything at all. No one in the press is on your son’s side, your brother’s side. Do not for a minute make the mistake of saying anything to the press.”

Everyone nodded, almost in relief.

“Do you think he is going to jail?” It was the feisty pudgy blond again, Glenda, Houston’s wife.

“Yes, ma’am, I do.”

The one Iris had identified as the oldest brother, Russell, spoke softly. “What is the worst we should prepare for?”

“The worst for your brother is that he could receive a series of multiple life sentences and spend the rest of his life in prison. And that could happen. These are very serious charges.”

A voice from my right asked, “Do you think he’s crazy?”

“I don’t know. It may be he was deranged then because of some organic or chemical problem in his brain. That’s why we will argue he was legally insane. Hopefully we will end up with some kind of sentence where he can continue to receive medical treatment in prison. The point is that, in my judgment, he is going to go to prison. The only questions I have are how long he will be in prison, where he will serve his sentence, whether he will get medical care in prison, and what kind of treatment he might receive, if any. The psychological tests and brain scans are just now being ordered up. I will seek out the best experts in the country in this field and hopefully be able to mount a credible defense on the issue of his mental condition.”

“Who sent you up here?” I could hardly make out the male speaker who had his chair propped against the wall in a dark corner. The man’s mustache all but covered his mouth and he sounded like he had a speech impediment.

“Your brother asked me to come here. Monsignor Moroux wanted me to come. The monsignor specifically asked me to tell you that he and Bishop Reynolds will do anything your family needs.”

A soft female voice echoed itself, “I don’ believe. I don’ believe.” It was the voice of Iris Dubois, muffled by a dishtowel held against her mouth. Iris walked us to the porch, reciting the phrase like a mantra. The last thing I heard in Morgan’s Hope was the priest’s mother mumbling, “I jus’ don’ believe.”