Pagan Babies (10 page)

"That part gets tricky."

"Wait. First you came back from L.A."

"The low point of my life," Terry said. "I was working for my dad again. I was drinking--I mean more than I usually did. I didn't have any money to speak of. No direction. I was in Lili's one night to hear a band, I think it was the Zombie Surfers, and the Pajonny brothers walked in."

"Your old buddies."

"I wouldn't say we were buddies. We played football together in high school. Had some fights--they used to pick on Fran because he had a girl's name."

"I was thinking in the restaurant," Debbie said, "you should have that name. Didn't I say you remind me of Saint Francis?"

"You mean, what you think he looked like? If I'd been named Francis I'd be dead or punch-drunk by now, all the fights I'd get into. You know what's the worst thing about a fistfight? How long it takes your hands to heal."

"Okay," Debbie said, "and now you're in the cigarette business. You make a few runs and take off for Rwanda with the thirty thousand. Or maybe more."

"You want to know if I've got any money?"

"That's what Johnny's wondering," Debbie said. "I wouldn't want to owe him ten grand and not have it."

"I'll talk to Johnny. Don't worry about it."

She wondered if it would be that simple, but decided to move on. "Let's get back to Uncle Tibor. He told your mom you were a priest--"

"You know why I went there? Outside of who's gonna look for me in Rwanda? I liked Tibor. I knew him all my life, from when he used to stay with us, and I wanted to do something for him. Paint his house, cut the grass, whatever'd make him happy. I get over there he says, 'I don't need a painter, I need you on the altar saying Mass, or you're no good to me.' "

Debbie said, "Your mom'd told him you'd gone to a seminary."

"That's right, and I didn't tell him I hadn't. But I knew the liturgy anyway, from being an altar boy."

"You were just a little short on theology."

"When would I use it? Most of the people only spoke Kinyarwanda and some French. Tibor's idea was to get me ordained right away. He was eighty years old, had a bad heart, a couple of bypasses already, he felt he wasn't gonna be around too much longer. He said he'd work it out with a bishop friend of his to get me ordained. I thought, well, the bishop can say the words over me, but that won't in conscience make me a priest, will it? If I don't want to be one? You understand what I mean? I go through the motions--who knows I'm not a priest?"

"Another gray area."

"But before it's arranged, Tibor has a heart attack and I take him to the hospital in Kigali, the capital. I said to him, 'Uncle Tibor, just in case, why don't you write to Marguerite'--that's my mother--'while you still can, and tell her I'm finally a priest? The news coming from you would make her even happier. Write the letter and I'll mail it after I'm ordained.' "

"He wrote the letter," Debbie said.

"Yes, he did."

"And died?"

"Not right away."

"But you mailed the letter right away."

"So I wouldn't lose it."

"You went all the way to Rwanda and stayed five years," Debbie said, "to get your mother off your back."

"She's not why I stayed."

Debbie opened a cupboard and brought out a box of crackers. "You know what it looks like? You were waiting for her to die so you could come home."

"I hadn't thought of that."

Debbie brought a wedge of Brie out of the refrigerator.

"You came, but not in time for the funeral."

"There was something I had to do before I left."

Debbie placed a knife next to the cheese. She said, "Five years in an African village--"

"Fran had to work on the prosecutor."

"I know, but Rwanda. Couldn't you have gone someplace else? How about the South of France?"

"I was there," Terry said. "Fran liked my taking Uncle Tibor's place, the family tie-in. The prosecutor liked it, too."

"You told me you heard Confessions," Debbie said, handing him a cheese and cracker. "Is that true?"

"Once a week," Terry said with his mouth full.

"Come on--really?"

"They tell you their sins, you tell them to love God and don't do it again. And give 'em their penance."

"The guy who stole a goat was real?"

"From around Nyundo."

"The one who committed murder?"

"I took care of him, too. Gave him his penance."

"Don't tell me you said Mass."

She watched him fix another cheese and cracker and put the whole thing in his mouth.

He said, "The first time," and stopped to finish chewing and swallow. "I was visiting Tibor, still in the hospital. There was already talk about a genocide being organized. Now we hear on the radio that it's started--Hutu militia, the bad guys, armed with AK-47s, machetes, spiked clubs, are killing every Tutsi they can find. Tibor tells me to go home and get everybody in the church, quick, and they'll be safe."

Sanctuary. Debbie knew about that from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

"We're in the church, everybody's scared to death and want me to say Mass. I thought, well, we could say some prayers. No, they want a regular Mass and Communion, 'Because we know we going to die.' That's what they told me. They've already accepted it and there was nothing I said made any difference. I put on the vestments--I look like a priest and I know how to say Mass, so I did. I got through the first part, right up to the Consecration, and that was when they came in, all of a sudden shooting, hacking with their machetes . . . I stood there and watched them kill everyone in the church, even the little kids, infants they held by the feet and swung against the wall, the mothers screaming--"

Debbie said, "They didn't fight back?"

"With what? They knew they were gonna die and were letting it happen."

She stood with him at the counter not saying a word now. She watched him take a drink, then another, finishing what was in the glass. She picked up her cigarettes and offered him one. He shook his head. She poured Scotch into his glass, added an ice cube. He let the drink sit on the counter. She lit a cigarette. Now he took one from the pack and she flicked the lighter again, the one the guy in the party store had given her. Terry drew on the cigarette and laid it on the edge of the ashtray.

He said, "I didn't do anything. I watched."

"What could you do?"

He didn't answer.

"You keep seeing it happen."

"I think about it, yeah."

"Is that why you stayed? You didn't do anything and it bothered you? You felt guilty?"

It made him hesitate, maybe surprised, hearing something he hadn't considered.

"Why you spent five years there?"

"I told you why."

"You felt if you left--"

"What?"

"You'd be running away?"

He shook his head. "It didn't--I can't say it made me want to, you know, get revenge. I couldn't believe I'd seen all those people killed, most of them hacked to death by people they knew, their neighbors, friends, some even related by marriage. The Hutus were told to kill all the Tutsis and they said okay and tried as hard as they could to do it. How do you understand that and take sides if you're not with one or the other? Even when I saw a chance to do something it wasn't planned or something I'd even thought about."

"What did you do?"

He picked up his drink, sipped it, and put it down.

"The day I left I killed four young guys, Hutus. They were in the church that time five years ago. I killed them because one of them bragged about it and said they were gonna do it again. They were sitting at a table in the beer lady's house drinking banana beer and I shot them with my housekeeper's pistol."

There was a silence.

Debbie drew on her cigarette, patient.

"You're not kidding, are you?"

"No, I killed them."

"Did it help?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Like now you've done something? Struck back?"

He said after a moment, "It didn't seem to have anything to do with what happened in the church."

"You weren't arrested?"

"The military are Tutsi. One of them helped me get away."

He was solemn about it, his expression, his tone. Still, he seemed at ease with what he had done. Debbie moved closer and touched his face, feeling his beard and cheekbone. She said, "Tell it that way, the scene in the church. That's your sermon." She gave his cheek a pat, brought her hand down and picked up her drink.

Terry said, "Yeah, well, that's the idea. Visit parishes and get permission to make a special appeal at Sunday Mass. Fran got me a directory of the Archdiocese and I wrote down the parishes I want to visit and the names of the pastors. I'll start on the east side, the ones I'm familiar with."

"You'll work your tail off," Debbie said, "and it's nickel-and-dime."

"I've got pictures of little kids, orphans."

"Are they heart-wrenching?"

"They're alone in the world and they're hungry. I have shots of them digging through garbage dumps--"

"The only way to do it," Debbie said, "and score big, you buy a mailing list of Catholics. Start with one area, a few thousand. Send a brochure that features your story, your pitch, pictures of the starving kids, flies crawling around on their little faces, in their mouth--"

"I'm not sure I have any with flies."

"That's all right, as long as they're heart-wrenching. And, you include a postage-paid return envelope."

Terry said, "The cost of that alone--"

He stopped, Debbie shaking her head.

"There's a little note on the envelope that says, 'Your stamp will help, too.' "

"What's all that cost?"

"A lot. Way too much. And it's work." She said, "Wait," and stubbed out her cigarette. "You get a Web site on the Internet and do it, paganbabies dot com."

"There aren't that many pagans anymore. They've all been converted to something. A lot of Seventh Day Adventists."

"Orphans dot com. Missions or missionaries dot com." Debbie stopped. "It's still a lot of work. You know it? I mean like stoop labor, no fun in it. We could get into it and find out the Web sites are already taken." She said, "I don't even like computers, they're too . . . I don't know, mechanical." She went into the refrigerator for another tray of ice, turned with it to the counter, to Terry, the face she thought of as saintly, and said, "What's the matter with me? You're not raising money for orphans."

He said, "That's what you thought?"

"You're using them."

He said, "I don't like the idea especially, but do you think they care?"

Debbie levered open the ice tray. "Well, if all you're looking for is a score, to get you back on your feet--"

He said, "I thought you understood that, once you had me unfrocked."

She dropped ice cubes in their glasses saying, "You know, that gives me an idea," taking her time, as though the thought was just now creeping into her mind. "I'll bet if you helped me out--"

"Yeah . . . ?"

"You could make more than you ever would with your sermon, as good as it is."

"Help you get Randy?"

She said, "Would you?" and watched him grin and shake his head in appreciation, bless his heart, at times appearing to be a simple soul.

"Get him to hit you this time? I think I might've suggested that."

"You did, but I don't want to be seriously injured. Like settle but never walk again. Accidents, you never know what might happen."

He said, "Yeah, but it's your specialty. You must have all kinds of ways to fake it, you little devil."

Debbie let that one go. She put a fresh hit on their drinks and turned to Terry with his.

"You said, 'They were sitting at a table in the beer lady's house drinking banana beer and I shot them with my housekeeper's pistol.' Your exact words. I may never forget them."

She watched him sip his drink.

"Were you scared?"

She watched him shake his head.

"In my mind it was done before I stepped inside."

"Didn't they . . . come at you?"

"I didn't give them a chance to."

"You walked in and shot them?"

"We exchanged a few words first. I asked 'em to give themselves up. I knew they wouldn't. So you could say I knew going in I was gonna kill them."

Chapter
12.

TERRY, IN HIS PARKA,
waited as Debbie drove off past hedges and old shade trees. No palms or eucalyptus, no banana trees in sight, or hills rising out of a morning mist, only manicured lawns like fairways and homes Terry saw as mansions. Debbie gave her horn a toot and he waved with a lazy motion of his arm, raised it and let it fall. He turned to see Fran standing in the entrance, one of the double doors open, and followed the brick walk up to the house; a wide expanse of limestone blocks painted beige, the windows and twin columns of the portico trimmed in white. "Regency," Fran had told him, "copies from a picture Mary Pat clipped out of Architectural Digest."