The Other Hand

other hunters and spread his arms.
    “Not his affair, him say. Him say, this is black-man business. Ha ha ha ha!”
    The hunters laughed. They slapped one another on the back and the dogs started to circle us. When the killer turned back, his face was serious.
    “First time I hear white man say my business not his business. You got our gold. You got our oil. What is wrong with our girls?”
    “Nothing,” said poor Andrew. “I didn’t mean that.”
    “Are you a racist?”
    Rassist, was how he pronounced the word.
    “No, of course not.”
    The killer stared at Andrew. “Well?” he said. “You want to save these girls, mister?”
    Andrew coughed. I watched him. My husband’s hands twitched—his strong, fine hands I had often watched, gripping coffees, clicking across keyboards, making deadlines. My husband, who had filed his Sunday column from the departure lounge of the airportthe previous day, down to the wire as usual. I’d been scanning it for typos when they called our flight. The last paragraph went: We are a self-interested society. How will our children learn to put others before themselves if we do not?
    “Well?” said the killer. “You want to save them?”
    Andrew looked down at his hands. He stood like that for a long time. Above us, seabirds circled and called to one another in that agonized way they have. I tried to stop my legs from shaking.
    “Please,” I said. “If you will let us take the girls with us, then we will do whatever you want. Let us all go back to the compound, please, and we will give you anything. Money, medicine, anything.”
    The killer made a high, shrill yelp and a shiver shook his whole body. He giggled, and a dribble of blood escaped through his neat white teeth to splash down onto the dirty green nylon of his tracksuit top.
    “You think I care bout that stuff?” he said. “You don’t see this hole in my neck? I am dead in two days. You think I care bout money and medicine?”
    “So what do you want?” Andrew said.
    The killer moved his machete from his right hand to his left. He raised his right hand with the middle finger extended. He held it, shaking, one inch from Andrew’s face and he said, “White man been giving me this finger all my life. Today you can give it me to keep. Now cut off your middle finger, mister, and give it me.”
    Andrew flinched and he shook his head and he curled his hands into balls. He folded the thumbs over the fingers. The killer took his machete by the blade and he held the handle out to my husband.
    “Do it,” he said. “Chop chop. Give me your finger and I will give you the girls.”
    A long pause.
    “What if I don’t?”
    “Then you are free to go. But first you will hear the noises these children make dying. You ever hear a girl dying slow?”
    “No.”
    The killer closed his eyes and shook his head, unhurriedly.
    “It is nasty music,” he said. “You will not forget. Maybe one day you will wake up in Kingston-upon-Thames and you will understand you lost more than your finger.”
    Little Bee was crying now. Kindness held her hand.
    “Do not be afraid,” she said. “If they kill us today we will eat bread tonight with Jesus.”
    The killer snapped open his eyes and he stared at Andrew and he said, “Please, mister. I am not a savage. I do not want to kill these girls.”
    Andrew reached out his hand and he took the killer’s machete. There was blood on the handle, the guard’s blood. Andrew looked across at me. I stepped over to him and I put my hand on his chest, gently. I was crying.
    “Oh Andrew. I think you have to do it.”
    “I can’t.”
    “It’s just a finger.”
    “We didn’t do anything wrong. We were just walking down the beach.”
    “Just a finger, Andrew, and then we’ll walk back again.”
    Andrew sank to his knees in the sand. He said, “I can’t believe this is happening.” He looked at the machete blade and he scraped it on the sand to clean it. He put his left hand on the sand, palm up, and he folded all the fingers except the middle one. Then he held up the machete in his right hand, but he didn’t bring it down. He said, “How do we know he won’t kill the girls anyway, Sarah, after I’ve done it?”
    “You’ll know you did what you could.”
    “I could get AIDS from this blade. I could die.”
    “I’ll be with you. I’m so proud of you.”
    It was quiet on the beach. Seabirds hung low in the hot blue sky, without flapping their wings, upheld on the sea breeze.