Pagan Babies (3 page)

"Did they rape you first?"

"No, but others they did, fucked them like dogs."

"You could have bled to death," Laurent said.

"I was wearing strands of beads I twisted around my arm."

"Still . . ." Laurent said.

"Listen, I know of a woman in Nyarubuye, where a thousand or more were killed, who hid beneath dead bodies more than a week. She would come out at night to find water and food and in the morning return to chase away the rats and bury herself again among the dead. I was very lucky, the friend of mine, the Hutu, found me and brought me back to Kigali to the home of a doctor. He was also Hutu but, like my friend, not an extremist. The doctor closed my wound and let me stay a few days. After that I was able to hide at Mille Collines because I knew the manager, a man who saved hundreds of people's lives. He was hiding even wives of government officials, Hutu men in power whose wives were Tutsi. When it was safe, the Hutu cowards running from your army, I came here again to look for my family." Chantelle's slim shoulders moved in the undershirt, a shrug. "And, I stayed to assist the priest."

"To keep his house with one hand," Laurent said.

She looked toward the rectory. The music had stopped some time ago, but there was no sign of the priest. "You want to believe I go to bed with him, even if you have no way to know if it's true."

"You do or you don't," Laurent said, "it means nothing to me. What I don't see is what he's doing here, why he stays when he performs only some duties of a priest. All the time he's here, he offers Mass when he feels like it? The reasons I've heard people say--he has to save the Communion wafers because the nuns who made them for the old priest are dead. Or he drinks the altar wine with his supper."

He saw Chantelle smile in a tired way.

She said, "Do you believe that?"

"Tell me what to believe."

"He said Mass Christmas, always Easter Sunday. He's a good man. He plays soccer with the children, he reads stories to them, takes their picture . . . Why do you want to find fault?"

"That's his purpose here, to play with children?"

She said, "You ask so many questions," shaking her head in that tired way and looking toward the house again.

"Don't you think," Laurent said, "he's different to other priests you know?"

"In what way?"

"He doesn't hold himself above you, with the answer to everything, all of life's problems."

It seemed to be something she believed, looking at him now like she was making up her mind finally to tell the truth about him. But all she said was, "He came to assist the old priest."

Laurent said, "Yes . . . ?" not letting go.

"Now Fr. Dunn carries on his work."

Laurent said, "He does?" with a tone he could see annoyed her, not wanting to talk about her priest. Still, Laurent pressed her. "You say he came here . . . But wasn't he sent by the religious order, the one the old priest belonged to? I don't think I heard the name of it."

"The Missionary Fathers of St. Martin de Porres," Chantelle said, "the same name as the church."

"And they assigned him to this place?"

She hesitated before saying, "What difference does it make how he came here?"

Laurent believed he had her in a corner. He said, "You look tired," and motioned to the table.

They sat across from each other, Chantelle with her hand cupping the stump of her mutilation. The light was fading now, the air filling with the sound of insects and the sight of dark specks against the sky, bats swooping into the eucalyptus trees.

She said, "You sound like a policeman with your questions. I can tell you only that Fr. Dunn came or was sent here because the old priest, Fr. Toreki, was his uncle, the brother of his mother who died."

Laurent said, "Oh?" It seemed to interest him.

"Every five years," Chantelle said, "Fr. Toreki would go home to America to preach and raise money for his mission. And each time he would stay with Fr. Dunn's family, doing this ever since Terry was a small boy."

Now Laurent was nodding. "So during these visits the old priest was able to brainwash the boy with stories of Ah-fri-ca, how he lived among savages who painted their faces and killed lions with a spear."

Chantelle said, "Do you want to talk or listen?"

Laurent gestured with the glass in his hand saying, "Please," inviting her to go on.

"During these years," Chantelle said, "he and Fr. Toreki became very close and would write letters to each other. He didn't brainwash him, he showed Fr. Dunn the boy how to be the kind of man he was, to care for people and their lives."

Laurent nodded, keeping his mouth shut.

"Fr. Dunn said it was his mother who pressed him to be a priest, saying how proud she would be, as any mother would."

Laurent, nodding again, said, "Yes, I understand that about mothers."

"His," Chantelle said, "went to Mass and Holy Communion every morning of her life, six o'clock, and Fr. Dunn was there also when he was old enough, serving as the altar boy. Fr. Dunn said his mother was very religious, each day praying for him to become a priest."

Laurent watched the housekeeper raise her glass to sip the whiskey, taking time to look at whatever was in her mind. Taking forever.

Laurent said, "And so he did, hmmm? He grew up and became a priest." He waited while the housekeeper remained with her thoughts, her hand idly fingering the stump of her arm.

She said, "Yes, the time came that he went to a seminary in California to study. The place was the St. Dismas Novitiate. I saw it printed on paper he keeps, St. Dismas, the African saint who was crucified with Our Lord. From that place he came here only two or three weeks before the killing began."

Now it was Laurent who paused to put this in his mind and look at it.

"You're certain he was made a priest."

"He told me himself, yes." Now, because Laurent was silent but continued to stare at her, she said, "He doesn't lie to me, if that's what you think. He has no reason to." She said, "What am I to him? I wouldn't hurt him even if I could."

It was in Laurent's mind to wonder again, what was this relationship between the housekeeper and the priest? It seemed something more than sharing the same bed, even if that was true.

He said, "You talk to each other."

"Of course."

"About what he thinks?"

"He tells me things and I listen," Chantelle said.

"And you tell him things?"

"I try to protect him."

"From what?"

She took her time to say, "Thinking too much."

"I thought he used Mr. Walker for that."

"He doesn't drink because he's here or doesn't want to be here, he drinks because it gives him pleasure. He told me the reason he knows he is not alcoholic, he's never been tempted to try banana beer."

"Does he tell you you have beautiful eyes?"

"He tells me of bodies found near Ruhengeri, this time tourists who came to see the gorillas, hacked to pieces, the genocide beginning again."

"They were staying at the Hotel Muhabura," Laurent said, "and went out for a walk--as you say, tourists, visitors. We don't call that genocide."

"But it begins again."

"Or you could say it keeps going," Laurent said, "but as incidents, unrelated atrocities."

"Whatever you want to call it," Chantelle said, "it's going to happen soon in this village."

"How do you know that?"

"He tells me."

"But how does he know?"

"They tell him, in Confession."

Chapter
4.

TERRY'S BROTHER FRAN PRACTICED LAW
in Detroit, specializing in personal injury, taking on doctors, big corporations, and their insurance companies. During the winter and the dreary spring months Fran liked to fly down to Florida to play golf and speculate in real estate.

The first morning of this trip he told Mary Pat he was going to look at property adjacent to a new development and drove from Boca Raton to Fort Lauderdale and then thirty miles inland to the Sawgrass Correctional Institution, a medium-security facility for women. Fran was here to visit a young lady named Debbie Dewey, who was finishing up a three-year fall for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Before her incarceration Debbie had been doing investigative work for lawyers, a lot of it for Fran, checking out slip-and-fall victims Fran would represent in legal actions against the places where they had slipped and fallen. Also checking out the records of doctors who, Fran would like to believe, had misdiagnosed and malpracticed on his clients.

Debbie wore a gray-green sack dress, prison issue, she had taken in and shortened. Fran told her she looked cute, he liked her hair clipped short like that. It was light brown today, at other times blond. Debbie ran her fingers through her hair and tossed her head to show Fran that it wouldn't muss, saying she liked it, too, and called it a Sawgrass bob. They sat at a picnic table in the visitors compound surrounded by double fencing topped with razor wire. At the other tables were inmates with parents, husbands, boyfriends, some who had brought little kids to see their mommies.

"How're you doing?"

"Don't ask. Mary Pat and the girls with you?"

"At the condo. Mary Pat comes down to watch the maid vacuum, make sure she gets underneath the furniture good. The girls sit around waiting in their plastic inner tubes. I left, I don't remember if I told her I'm playing golf or looking at property. If I'm playing golf I stop at the club on the way back and change. But if I'm looking at property, why'm I coming home with different clothes on?"

"I wish I had your problems."

"What about your release?"

"Next Friday, if I don't kill a guard."

"You coming back to Detroit?"

"I might as well. You know what I'm thinking of doing? Try stand-up again. But with all new material from here, different situations you get into."

"You're kidding--prison humor? Like what?"

Debbie got up from the picnic table and held the skirt of the dress out to the sides. "I wear this in an extra-large with the white socks and the shitkickers? And model the latest in prison couture. I do a bit on forever standing in lines. Another one, getting hit on in the shower. I'm bare naked and this sexual predator I call Rubella makes the moves. The usual stuff."

"You tell how you tried to kill Randy?"

"I mention him in the opening, the reason I'm here." Sitting down again she said, "What's he up to, anything?"

"Well," Fran said, "we won't be seeing him on the society page anymore."

That perked her up.

"His wife divorced him, threw him out of the house."

It made little Debbie sit up straight, a gleam in her eye. She said, "I knew it. When?"

"It just became final."

"They were married what, a year?"

"A little over. There was a prenuptial agreement, so her fortune won't be seriously broken into. Randy's paid off and gets to keep the restaurant."

"He got a restaurant out of it?"

Little Debbie showing resentment.

"Downtown Detroit, on Larned."

"The son of a bitch. Why didn't you tell me?"

"The divorce was only final a couple of days ago."

"I mean about the restaurant. What's the name of it?"

"Randy's, what else. He bought a bar and put a lot of money into it, his wife's."

"Why does he get to keep it?"

"As part of the settlement. She doesn't like the neighborhood. So it's in his name, but I think there might be a partner involved. At least that's what my source tells me."

"What I don't understand," Debbie said, "why it took his wife over a year to find out he's a fucking snake. She should've known the first time he shed his skin."

"You use that in your act?"

"I just thought of it."

"What's it mean?"

"What snakes do, they molt. I'll see if I can make it work." She said, "I'll bet he got a boat out of it, too, the son of a bitch."

"The ex-wife keeps the boats and the country clubs, Detroit and Palm Beach. Randy can have his membership at the DAC if he wants to pay the bills. I have a lawyer friend in the same firm as the guy representing him. That's how I happen to know about the settlement, the main points. Randy comes away with the restaurant and a few million after the lawyer takes his cut. You would think the ex-wife," Fran said, "a woman with all her dough and clout, would've had Randy investigated before they got married."

"You don't know him," Debbie said, "he's a world-class bullshitter. I believed him, didn't I? And I make a living looking for fraud."

"I didn't mean to upset you."

"I'm not upset, I'm still pissed, that's all." She looked over at a table where a child was crying, brought her gaze back and her expression was calm, a cool look in those blue eyes. "Have you been to the restaurant?"