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."