Pagan Babies

11

DEBBIE USED THE PHONE IN the kitchen to call Fran.

She could see Terry in the living room by the glass door to the balcony, looking out at the grounds in the dark. She saw him turn to say,

"All that space and no crops growing. You could have an acre of corn out there."

"It's a three-par golf course," Debbie said, "nine holes," as Fran came on the line. She spoke to him less than a minute, unhurried, but anxious to have the call out of the way. Terry came in the kitchen as she hung up.

"What'd he say?"

"He said, 'Oh…?' I told him I'd drop you off after we have a drink, or you could stay if you want. Fran said, 'You sure you have room?' "

"Who doesn't he trust, you or me?"

"Well, since he thinks you're celibate, and he knows I haven't scored or been scored on in quite some time… I imagine he sees me seducing you. Or trying to."

"Wishing he was here instead of me."

She said, "I won't comment on that. Fran and I are strictly business.

You want to know how we got together?"

"He told me he used to see you around Circuit Court, you'd be testifying for other lawyers."

"Yeah, and I always thought he was a decent guy. What happened, I saw a skycap out at Metro drop a suitcase on a woman's foot and I brought her to Fran. He sued Northwest at a time when everyone in Detroit hated the airline. They settled and we've been friends ever since."

"What do you do," Terry said, "show people how to limp?"

"How to limp convincingly," Debbie said, making drinks now, a tray of ice on the counter with the Johnnie Walker and a fifth of Absolut. "But we're still on you. Tell me why, when you were in California, your mom thought you were in a seminary."

"Because all my life she was after me to become a priest. What I couldn't understand, why me and not Fran?"

"You have that sort of haunted look," Debbie said, "like Saint Francis. Haunted or maybe shifty. She probably worked on Fran but you didn't notice."

They were both sipping their drinks now.

"Listen, if you had my mother praying for you, I'm not kidding, you could be a Carmelite nun, like my sister. She was on me even after I quit school, U of D, and went to work for my dad painting houses. I quit that and started selling insurance."

"That sounds like Fran's idea."

"It was, and I hated it."

"You hadn't found your true calling yet, smuggling."

"I ran out of friends who might buy a policy and moved to Los Angeles. My mother put holy cards in her letters, prayers to Saint Anthony to help me find myself. Saint Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases. What I did, I told her, 'You win, I'm going in the seminary,' and had stationery printed up that said across the top, 'The Missionaries of St. Dismas Novitiate.'"

Debbie said, "Wasn't he one of the guys crucified with Christ?"

"Known as the good thief."

"What were you, kind of a smart-ass?"

"I thought I was a genius. I used it whenever I wrote to mom. I'd sign the letters, 'Yours in Christ, Terry.' "

"This is while you were living with the girl?"

"Part of the time. Jill Silver, she was from around here originally, that's how we came to be introduced. I think she was in a high school production of Fiddler on the Roof and decided she wanted to be a movie star."

"She make it?"

Terry finished his drink. "Not till she had breast implants," as he poured himself another. "Though it could've been a coincidence. I told her small ones were more stylish. Jill comes home from an audition at the studio and goes, 'Well, smartie, guess what? My new rack got me the part.' So maybe it did. Within a month she's living with the director."

"Tits," Debbie said, "can make a difference. I'm thinking of getting just a lift."

"For what?"

"My self-esteem, what else?"

"The movie Jill was in, she played a flight attendant who's hooked on 'ludes. Pops one in the lavatory and spills coffee all over the passengers.

The other flight attendant was the star, but I can't think of her name."

"What were you doing at the time?"

"Insurance, the only thing where I had any experience. But as a claims adiuster. Out there it was mostly fires and mud slides."

"No personal iniury?"

"Some."

"Could you tell when they were faking it?"

"Only if they got nervous and offered me a piece of the action."

"Would you take it?"

"It" I felt sorry for the guy."

"Compassion," Debbie said, "influencing your report. Even though you were helping the guy commit fraud."

"You have to look at it more as a tip than a bribe," Terry said. "The lawsuit pays off, the guy gives you a tip. It's like when you win big playing blackjack. You tip the dealer, even though he hasn't done anything to help you."

"You see it as a gray area," Debbie said.

"Exactly. I called Fran one time with a gray-area situation, see what he thought about it. He wouldn't even discuss it. You know what I mean? Fran doesn't like to go on record."

"He's a gray area himself," Debbie said. "If the injury isn't one hundred percent legit, don't tell him. And you know he won't ask. So he knew you weren't in a seminary."

"Just my mother."

"But Fran believes you're a priest."

"Because of Uncle Tibor. He told my mom I got ordained."

"He lied for you?"

"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 thirtk it was the Zombie Surfers, and the Paionny brothers walked in."

"Your old buddies."

"I wouldn't say we were buddies. We played foot-ball 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-Hum 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 "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, Hums. 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-anddime."

"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 comMissions 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."