In God's House (38 page)

The two of them slowly walked toward the old house. The old man’s arms were filled with gift wrapping and tissue. Sasha carried the old basket in one hand and the statue in the other.

Finding directions to the Courville farm took one stop at a gas station. As I was walking back to the car, the old Cajun in khakis followed me and said, “Hattie Courville’s gettin’ famous for those preserves and jelly. Be sure you buy some mayhaw jelly from her. It’s the best.”

The long, paved drive bordered a neatly mowed expanse of lawn. As we slowly approached the house, the lawn gave way to a small stand of oaks with circular flower beds planted at the base of the trees. The rambling single-story ranch home cut the property in two. Over the roofline one could see the tall tin roof of a barn. It was a working farm, with a pecan orchard on the north side of the house and a garden of a quarter acre or more that was fringed by a grove of fruit trees. Acres of rice fields lay to the south of the home.

We walked up the front steps and I pushed the bell. When Hattie Courville opened the door, I was surprised. She was tiny, in perfect physical shape, looked like a teenager with her shaggy brown hair falling unevenly over her ears. Her dark eyes were lively. She was wearing jogging shoes, a pair of blue shorts and a white polo shirt.

“Yes. Can I help you?” She looked behind me to where Julie and Matt stood. “Help ya’ll?”

“Ma’am, my name is Renon Chattelrault.”

Her eyes widened, and she blurted out, “It’s you. Wait here.”

Before I could say anything, she spun around and shut the door, leaving Julie, Matt and me staring at the wooden crucifix mounted on the door.

I turned to Julie and Matt and said, “Well, I think it’s going pretty good so far.” Mrs. Courville did not return to the door for ten or fifteen minutes. Julie and I stood still. Matt walked around inspecting the flowers. At one point Julie looked at me, smiled nervously, and punched my arm. “You’ve got us in a fine fix now, Ollie.”

We heard them before we saw them. Pulling off the road and roaring down the long driveway was a caravan of three oversized, jacked-up pickup trucks. The first truck was spotless and it parked under the carport. The dirty trucks blocked off my Mercedes.

One of the biggest men I had ever seen jumped out of one of the trucks, shotgun in hand, and headed our way. The other men closed in from different directions.

I immediately started walking toward the armed man, lest he make a mistake about which one of us was Renon Chattelrault. I didn’t want Matt killed in a case of mistaken identity. The huge man slammed a shell into the chamber. I opened my mouth to speak but it was too dry.

A second man caught up to the big guy. “Gimme a minute, Poppa.” To me he said, “What the hell you doing on my property? You got no right—”

I stepped closer to the gun and the speaker. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the letter from Mrs. Courville and handed it over. “Your wife wrote me this letter and said she wanted me to come here. Behind me is a doctor who knows more about these things than any doctor around here, and a woman who may be able to help your son. The doctor is also a priest and the lady is a nun, but the bishop did not send them here and doesn’t know they’re here.”

The fellow shouted, “Hattie. Hattie, honey, get out here.”

When Hattie came out, man and wife walked back in the direction of the pickup trucks and my car. I could see the man was
reading the pencil-written letter. I never looked at the huge man with the shotgun. I turned to see Matt with his arm around Julie, her head buried in his chest so she would not see whatever was going to happen.

When the Courvilles walked back to me, Hattie’s husband said, “Poppa, I’m gonna try to do this Hattie’s way rather than your way. I’ll catch ya’ll later at the store.”

The roar of those big trucks leaving the Courville property sounded like a symphony to my ears. The Courvilles led us inside, to a well-appointed den, and Mr. Courville pointed out the places where each of us was to sit. He kept me isolated from Julie and Matt, whom he situated on a sofa.

Wes Courville spoke first. “So, we settled our case two days ago. They gave my boy six hundred thousand dollars. Our lawyers stole two hundred thousand dollars, taking a whole third as legal fees, for doing next to nothing. That’s what they think Will’s life is worth, a human life destroyed – four hundred thousand. No apology, nothing. Now that the case is finally over, you come knocking on our door.”

It was the first I had heard about any settlement of the Ponce–Thomas cases. I did not want to get into that, but decided I had to. “Mr. Courville, I didn’t know your suit was settled. None of the lawyers or anyone else with the diocese speaks to me anymore. I don’t see these things the way the diocese and their lawyers do.”

“Yeah? Well how do you see it?”

I thought about it for a moment and realized I had spoken the truth to Monsignor Moroux on Thursday. “I see it as children versus criminals. Obviously, the man I’m representing is a criminal. But the monsignors and the bishop are criminals too.”

Wes Courville stirred in his chair and kind of leaned toward me, casting a glance at his wife. He took a long breath that escaped slowly as his eyes softened.

“What’s gonna happen to them – the monsignors and the bishop?”

“Not a damned thing, Mr. Courville, not a damned thing, except that I think they’re going straight to hell, if that’s any consolation to you. I think your wife’s right about that, but I think they will go to hell before they go to jail.”

“Don’t they belong in jail when they send priests to parishes and they know what the priest has done and they know what the priest is gonna do again?”

“Yes, a whole lot of bishops belong in jail, Mr. Courville, every bishop I know about. But this is not going to happen for a long time, maybe never.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Another thing your wife is right about, I think, is that the bishop, vicars and monsignors don’t give a damn about Will. She sent me the letter and she sent it to the bishop and Mr. Bendel. I knew they were not coming here, but I believed I had to come here and Sister Julianne and Father Patterson wanted to come too.”

Mr. Courville said, “The big man out in the yard with the shotgun is Poppa Vidros. You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you. He’s determined to kill Father Dubois. If he gets a chance.”

I nodded.

“What did you come here to do?” he said.

“I came to say two things. The priest, Father Dubois, is not going to get off. He may get a really long sentence, but I can personally assure you that the shortest possible sentence that man will get is twenty years, a sentence that will keep him locked up until Will is at least thirty years old. I wanted you to know that. I’m not there to get him off. No lawyer could get him off even if he wanted to.”

Wes Courville nodded in relief. His wife sank back into the chair cushions. “That’s good,” she said, “but what’s the other thing you want to say?”

It surprised me when I felt my throat closing, as I choked up. I looked away from the Courvilles a moment, then turned to them and said, “I am so sorry, so terribly sorry for what happened to your boy and your family. I just want to say that.”

Wes Courville nodded.

“I think that’s all I had to say.”

Hattie Courville spoke up. “You don’t know what it’s like. I go to that church every day. I fix the altar flowers.”

Wes said, “Only thing could get me back in that church would be somebody’s funeral.”

I nodded my understanding, momentarily wondering if even a funeral could get me back in a Catholic church.

Wes turned to Matt. “Doctor, you a doctor, a priest, or exactly what? And you wanna see my boy?”

Matt nodded. “Yes, sir, I am a priest, but I am also a psychiatrist. I live and work in Virginia, near Washington, DC. I want to see if I can help Will, but I don’t think he ought to know I am a priest.”

“Lord, no,” Hattie said.

Matt continued, “I came here because I wanted to see your son and meet with you both. No one in the whole Church ever interacts with families of victims of priests. Lawyers are not part of the Church. Consequently, the Church really knows nothing. I know people in the Church who are more important than the bishop in Thiberville, and I believe they will be interested in whatever I learn here. I hope so, but they may be just like the bishop here. Julie is a nun in Thiberville. She cares as much as I do and she will be able to come here more often than I can, if you allow that. I will work with her. If you prefer that we leave, we will. But I do want to help your son.”

Wes Courville stood, took his wife’s hand. “We’re going to go outside and talk.”

The three of us had a clear view of the Courvilles through a big picture window. Wes had his hands jammed in his pockets, his shoulders were hunched. Hattie touched his arm, stroked his arm, looked at his face, and appeared to be pleading. Finally, they stopped talking and opened the door. Wes said, “Come with me, Matt. Don’t say nothin’ ’bout being a priest.”

Hattie said, “Let me make some lemonade. My lemons were so big this year, they scared me. Everything I grow is organic but
these things looked like they’d been injected with something. I may need to add a lot of sugar.”

Julie got up and accompanied Hattie to the kitchen. Wes came back to the den alone. When Julie and Hattie brought the lemonade, we settled in and the four of us talked together about our lives. They wanted to know about my children. They talked about their grown daughters. They never mentioned Will. An hour passed. When Hattie went to the kitchen to refill my glass, she shouted, “Wes, come here quick. Julie, ya’ll come too.”

When we got to the kitchen, she was standing at the window with tears streaming down her face. She just pointed outside.

Matt and Will were perched in a tree house, sitting
cross-legged
. They were playing some version of a patty-cake game and Matt kept making mistakes. The child was shrieking in
high-pitched
laughter.

Hattie wrapped her arms around her husband. “He’s laughing, Wes, he’s laughing.”

Another half-hour passed with the four of us in the den. At one point Hattie asked Wes, “Do you think I ought to offer—” She looked at me. “I’m sorry. I forgot the doctor’s name.”

“Matt. His name is Matt.”

“Should I get them some lemonade?”

Wes shook his head. “Let ’em be.”

When the door opened, Will rushed in, breathless. “Daddy, Mr. Matt don’t believe I can ride horses bareback. Can I show him? On Blackhorse?”

“Go get Blackhorse, son. You show Mr. Matt how a country boy rides.”

All of us went onto the covered patio and watched Will race around the corner toward a barn. It wasn’t long before a beautiful black Tennessee Walker rounded the corner with barefoot Will standing on its back. The kid rode the horse across the yard. He lay down on its back and dropped the reins. Then he stood again and started doing 180-degree jumping turns while the horse was still moving. He’d spin in the air and
come down square on the horse’s broad back while the horse continued trotting.

I mentioned to Weston and Hattie Courville that my daughter, Sasha, had horses, and she’d never believe the riding exhibition I had just witnessed. Hattie said, “You bring your Sasha sometimes on Saturdays when Julie’s coming. She and Will can ride together.”

“I will bring her. I promise.”

When the riding exhibition ended, we told Will goodbye, and Wes and Hattie walked us to the car. Wes shook Matt’s hand and said, “Thank you so much for coming, Matt. This is the first time Will has been himself in a long time. You have a gift.”

“I think Will has the gifts.”

Hattie rushed back to the house and brought a box filled with jars of preserves to the car. “Ya’ll split ’em up even, okay?”

As I put my car in gear, Wes knocked on my window. I lowered the glass. Wes leaned in and said, “I’m glad I didn’t let Poppa shoot you.”

“That’s his name, really? Poppa?”

“Elray’s his name. Always been called Poppa. I’m glad I didn’t let Poppa kill ya.”

“Me too.”

That night at Julie’s apartment we presented Matt with the fifteen files she had copied from the secret archives on her own, and the file on Father O. D. Ellison that I had requested she copy.

“Matt, just please look through the Ellison file on top of the stack. Tell us what you think,” I said.

As Matt read, Julie put on a Pavarotti tape in the background, poured wine for us and spread out small sandwiches she had made. She and I had a cigarette on the balcony and sipped wine. She said, “Thank you for taking me to the Courville family. Maybe with this child I can help, make some amends for the children I failed.”

I nodded.

She went inside and brought out the tray of sandwiches, offering me one. I laughed. “So, this is what I have to do to get something besides pizza here – invite a guest from far away?”

“Yeah,” she laughed.

When Matt finished reading the Ellison file, he slammed the folder shut and stood up. “There it is. Murders. You have evidence of two murders right here in a diocesan file. Christ, it’s in the vicar general’s handwriting. Moroux’s a shrewd guy. The way he couched everything in writing about Ellison, it would be possible for him to argue that this file does not say what it says, but it’s clear enough to me.”

“That’s why I wanted you to read it,” I said, “knowing nothing about it. I wanted to see if you saw murders in that file. I have my own file, prepared by a fine investigator who spoke with Ellison, saw crime scene photographs and visited the crime scene. My file erases any doubt. This priest sexually abused and murdered two boys. The Church has him stashed in a Florida rest home. They’re literally getting away with murder, the murder of two kids.”

“What are you going to do with this?” Matt asked.

“I don’t know yet. I want to see him die in prison. I know that. What I’m wondering is how many other murdering priests are out there. When I first got the Dubois case, I did not think there could be another priest like him. I really believed Francis Dubois was the only Catholic priest ever who did these vile sexual things with young children. Turns out I was way wrong, no? We now know there are thousands of priests like Dubois around the United States, probably all over the world.”