Elmore Leonard - Pagan Babies

He had told Terry one time, years ago, he had never picked up a girl in a bar, even when he was single. Terry said, "You never tried or you never made it?" Fran told him he'd never tried. Why didn't he have the same confidence in a bar he had in a courtroom? Terry said that time, "You're too buttoned up. Lose some weight and quit getting your hair cut for a while."

Terry's answer to any problem was based on the serenity prayer. If you can handle it, do it. If you can't, fuck it.

AT NIGHT CHANTELLE KEPT HER pistol close by, a Russian Tokarev semiautomatic she bought in the market with money Terry had given her. There were hand grenades i:or sale, too, but they Јrightened her.

This evening she brought the pistol outside with her and laid it on the table where he was twisting a joint he called a yobie. She had told him that here mariiuana was sometimes called erniyobya bwenje, "the stuЈЈ that makes your head hot." From that he had made up the word yoie. They had smoked one before supper-goat stew left over from last night, Terry complaining always about the fine bones-and now they would smoke another one with their brandy and coЈЈee, the mugs, the decanter, and a citronella candle on the table.

Always before when they smoked he would tell her Јunny things he heard in Confession, or about his brother the lawyer, what he did to get money for people who were iniured. Or he'd tell iokes she never understood but would laugh because he always laughed at his jokes.

This evening, though, he wasn't saying funny things.

He was serious this evening in a strange way.

He said he had never seen so fucking many bugs in his life. He used that word when he was drinking too much. The fucking bugs, the fucking rain. He said sometimes he would turn on a light in the house and it would look like the fucking walls were moving, wallpaper changing its pattern. She said, "There is no wallpaper in the house."

He said he knew there wasn't any wallpaper, he was talking about the bugs. There were so many they looked like a wallpaper design. Then with the light on they'd start moving.

She was patient with him. This evening there were lulls, Chantelle waiting through minutes of silence.

Now he surprised her, coming out of nowhere with "Some were mutilated before they were killed, weren't they? Purposely mutilated."

Lately he had begun to talk about the genocide again.

She said, "Yes, they would do it on purpose."

He said, "They chopped off the feet at the ankles."

"And took the shoes," Chantelle said, "if the person was wearing shoes." She believed he was talking about the time they came in the church, an experience of the genocide he had not spoken of in a long time.

He said, "I don't recall them hacking the feet off with one whack."

It sounded to her so cold. "Sometime they did."

He said, "This was your observation?"

She didn't like it when he spoke in this formal manner. It didn't sound like him and was another sign, along with that word, he had been drinking too much. She said, "Some they did with one blow. But I think the blades became dull, or were not honed to begin with. The one who iniured me-I raised my arm to protect myself as he struck.

He then took hold of my hand as I tried to pull away and he struck again, this time severing the arm. I saw him holding it by the hand, looking at it. I remember he seemed surprised. Then his face changed to a look--I want to say horror, or disgust. But was he sickened only by what he saw or what he did to me?"

"What if you run into him again?"

"I hope I never see him."

"You could have him arrested and tried."

"Yes? Would I get my arm back?"

Terry smoked in the light of the candle. After a moment he said,

"The ones they murdered in the church stood waiting, crowded together, holding each other. The Hums would drag them into the aisle and some of them called to me. I never told you that, how they called to me, 'Fatha, please…'"

She didn't want him to talk about himself, what he was doing or not doing that time. "You know," she said, "all over Rwanda they were cutting off the feet of Tutsis, so they not taller than the Hum killers anymore."

He brought it back to the church saying, "They stood there and let it happen."

She wished he'd be quiet. "Listen to me. If they had no weapons they knew it was their fate to die. I heard of people in Kigali, they paid the Hum killers to shoot them rather than be hacked to death with the machetes. You understand? They knew they would be dead."

Her words meant nothing to him. He held the yobie to his mouth but didn't draw on it, saying, "I didn't do anything to help them. Not one fucking thing. I watched. The whole time they were being killed, that's what I did. I watched."

He said it without feeling and it frightened her.

"But you were offering the Mass. You told me, you were holding the Host in your hands when they came in. There was nothing you could do. You try to stop them they would have killed you. They don't care you're a priest."

Again he raised the yobie to draw on it and paused.

"Let me ask you something."

He paused again and she said, "Yes, what?"

"You think I do any good here?"

Sounding like he was feeling sorry for himself.

She said, "You want the truth? You don't do as much as you could." She said, "Do more. Talk to people, preach the word of God.

Do what a priest is suppose to do. Say Mass every Sunday, what people want you to do."

"You really believe," he said, staring at her in the candlelight, "I can take bread and change it into the Body of Christ?"

What was he doing asking her that? She said, "Of course you can.

It's what priests do, in the Mass. You change the bread, and also the wine." What was wrong with him? "I believe that, as all those who come to Mass believe it."

"Sally, we believe what we want to believe."

Calling her that, Sally, from asali, the Swahili word for honey, which he did sometimes.

He said, "You want to know what I believe?"

"Yes, I would like to know."

"I did come here with a few good intentions. One thing in particular I wanted to do was paint Fr. Toreki's house. Every picture I ever saw of it, going back years, the house needed painting. I knew how, I used to help my dad sometimes when he had a big job, the outside of a two-story house."

Why was he telling her this? She believed she was listening to his mind wander from having too much to drink.

"My dad was a housepainter all his life. Forty years at least he stood with a wall in front of his face painting it, smelling it, going to his truck with the ladders on top to smoke a cigarette and drink vodka from the bottle. He said to me-it was when I dropped out of college and was helping him he said, 'Go back to school and get a good job.' He said, 'You're too smart to spend your life pissing in paint cans.' The only time he took off was to go deer hunting in the fall.

Never saw a doctor, he was sixty-three years old when he died, my brother Fran said watching the Lions on TV. Not real ones, the Detroit Lions, a professional football team. Fran said in a letter our dad's last conscious experience was seeing the Lions march all the way down the field, fumble on the two-yard line and lose the ball."

She watched his expression looking at her. He seemed to smile. Or she could be wrong.

"You have to know my brother," Terry said. "He wasn't being disrespectful."

Was he speaking to her in that quiet voice or to himself? She watched him draw on the yobie It had gone out.

"You should go to bed."

"In a while."

"Well, I'm going." She got up from the table with her Russian pistol and stood looking at him. "Why do you talk like this to me?"

"Like what?"

Walking away she said, "Never mind."