RECALLING AN INCIDENT

It was spring break at his college, so he decided to go somewhere, to travel someplace.  He was in his freshman year so this would be the first time he had ever had a spring break.  His father, a professor, acquiesced, thinking it would be a good experience for him, particularly because he would be going alone, free of his buddies who might get him into trouble. 

The next thing was, where would he go?  He took out a map and, closing his eyes, pointed to a location.  Opening his eyes, he saw that he had selected a town straight north from here.  Midland, Ontario, Canada was the town, a place where it so happened there was a tourist sight he could explore.  The sight was Martyr’s Shrine. 

The Shrine, a church, memorialized eight Jesuit priests who, in the mid-1600s, were tortured then murdered by the Huron Indians living in a missionary settlement there called Ste. Marie among the Hurons.  It was in the Wye Marsh down the hill from what later would be the Shrine.  The priests had been converting the Indians to Christianity when, somehow, something went terribly wrong. 

It had taken him six hours by bus to get to Midland, but now here he was in the settlement looking up the embankment to the Shrine.  It was all quite interesting to him. 

Was it the massacred priests who then, in that moment, made their presence known to him, or was it his imagination?  Somebody was there other than him.  He looked around to see if any of the other visitors were feeling it, too.   Judging by their wide eyes, three others were, an elderly couple and another man.  They glanced at him as well, as though confirming the experience. 

It was a so-called religious experience maybe, except that it wasn’t.  It was simply God’s presence, generally, except that it wasn’t.  It was a play of the afternoon light somehow, but it wasn’t that either.  No, it was the priests definitely, ghosts now.  The bus, as though itself contemplating what had happened, took twice as long to get back home.