Roland Goity

Baptism by Fire

Clyde Flowers wrangled his torso and overgrown belly out of his sweaty blue t-shirt with the Chicago Cubs logo across its chest. Then he discarded his socks, shorts, and underwear and slipped into the comfy flip-flops he kept in his locker. He stuffed the damp and clammy clothes into a large clear plastic bag, tied off its end, and slung it back inside where it smashed against his hanging safety goggles, inadvertently testing their overall effectiveness.

“You sure play a mean game of racquetball Father Downey,” he called out, before quickly adding, “’mean’ means good in that sense, father.”

Father Downey, standing at the bank of lockers across the way, grinned and said, “I know what you meant, Clyde.” The priest may have been twice his age, but he was taller and more chiseled than Clyde in every respect, traits for which the younger man envied and admired him. 

From a television perched high in the corner of the dank locker room, newscasters and reporters intoned new details on the church shooting halfway across the country a day earlier. The “alleged” shooter had been an altar boy at the church just over a decade ago. There had been rumors of untoward sexual conduct among church leaders during that period. It was sad news in every aspect imaginable.

“You’re in corporate security training, aren’t you Clyde?” a now-seated Father Downing said from the nearby bench, clad only in a wraparound towel, same as Clyde.  

“Yeah. I run Worst-Case Scenario Security; we prepare you for... well... the worst.”

“Like what happened there, I suppose,” Father Downing said, casting his gaze to the television.

Clyde exhaled a deep breath and nodded, strumming his hairy torso like a guitar.

“Hey Clyde, would you be open to an informal meeting with me and a colleague to see if your company might be a fit for our security needs? We could do a ‘happy hour’ over at Rosie’s bar around the block from here. You know the place?”

The self-proclaimed “security guru” now ran an index finger across the thick padding of his mottled mustache, pretending as if he didn’t know the bar like the back of his hand. “Sure, that sounds good. I’ve seen the place,” Clyde said. He pulled a business card from the pocket of his gym bag and handed it off to the priest on his way to the showers.   

“Great, I’ll call to set up a time,” Father Downing said. “Everyone seeks a ‘safe space’ these days, and we want to ensure our church is the safest space of all.” 

**

On a stormy afternoon two days later, Clyde ducked into the warming comfort of Rosie’s an hour before the appointed meeting time. He implored everyone to act as if they’d never seen him before, with huge tips for the bartenders and numerous drink rounds for regulars now bellied up to the bar counter, as long as they played along. He ordered a whisky shot and a beer. And then another of each, only on the second round he quickly slammed the shot but took the beer with him to a secluded booth in the corner, not far from the old-style jukebox machine that spoke to the age span of the bar’s clientele—selections by Carly Simon and Deep Purple alongside Taylor Swift and Maroon 5. 

Rosie’s was a neighborhood institution, and part of its charm—besides its cheap drinks—was that its lacquered wood booths featured knife and key carvings by many a patron over a period of several decades and counting. Clyde made sure the booth where they’d meet was as far away as possible from the one where he etched the first advertising slogan for his business: Didn’t call Clyde and so they died. Not altogether classy or subtle, but it got people thinking about the consequences should they neglect security concerns at their organization. No place where people gathered was immune from the artillery of a madman today. Not a cineplex, a supermarket, a preschool, a ballpark, or—in today’s case—a place of worship. 

It wasn’t long until Father Downing and an older balding man, a head shorter than he, arrived. “Good timing,” Clyde noted, tapping his smartwatch as he rose to shake his fellow club-member’s hand. “Happy hour just started.”

“In that case, we’ll be right back!” Father Downing announced, as he and the other man headed for the bar station area. When they returned, they each held a glass of pale-gold liquor with bobbing ice cubes in one hand, a bowl of snacks in the other. “Jameson on the rocks,” the priest said, as they sat down. “We’ve consecrated it, the pretzels too. It’s our secular form of communion.”

“Well in that case…” Clyde said, diving his big hairy hand into the pretzel mix. 

“Clyde, I’d like you to meet Reverend Kellerman, he’s been with our church even longer than I,” Father Downing said. 

“It’s uh, a pleasure to m- me-… meet you, reverend,” Clyde managed, the roof of his mouth now coated with worked-over pretzel dough that hung like stalactites.

The trio quickly segued from small talk to the matter at hand. Father Downing referenced the recent shooting in Wyoming that was still all over the news. “It’s got us all incredibly shaken,” the older reverend said, his soft, high-pitched voice indeed lilting and quavering. 

“The shooter had a grudge to settle,” Clyde said. “It was a unique case.”

The two members of the clergy exchanged a quick glance, then Father Downing said, “Even so, we want to be ready for anything. We’ve done some reading and think an active shooter drill is essential. One where our parishioners aren’t notified beforehand and, instead, are totally caught by surprise.”

“You sure you want to go that far?” Clyde asked. “I could review various scenarios with you and point out stress points and vulnerabilities in a church walk-through. It would be a lot more affordable.”

The reverend took a sip of his whiskey and then thumped the glass down on the table. “Time is of the essence,” he said. “We need to see how our congregation reacts in the moment to know where we stand. Are you familiar with our church, St. Anne’s in the Rosemont District?”

“I’ve attended more than a few of Father Downing’s services,” Clyde said.

“Not many more,” the priest said with a laugh. “I think I’ve handed you more losses on the racquetball court than I’ve handed wafers to your tongue.”

Clyde reddened, knowing it had been many months since he’d attended a service. In truth, guns were his passion; he loved them more than his famous namesake, the one who hung out with Bonnie. But professional football was a strong second, and now took up much of his Sundays, especially since he’d begun to wade deeper into fantasy football pools where the stakes were high. Church was barely on his map. He’d come to realize over the years that faith and religion were simply a form of guilt management. And he hadn’t worried about things as much recently with mass shootings ricocheting across America and his business on the upswing. 

“If you want,” Clyde told the men. “I can really bring the fireworks.”

“How so?” the older one asked.

“Well, I can create a Hollywood-action-picture type of production—a staged shooting, which includes paid actors as perpetrators or victims. To the churchgoers it will seem entirely real. Utter chaos will ensue, but no one will get hurt. At least not physically…”

“I like what I’m hearing,” the reverend said.

“You sure?” Clyde said, narrowing his eyes and trying to contain his excitement. “I mean that kind of drill costs around ten grand.”

“Money well spent, if it keeps us safe…the whole congregation, I mean,” the reverend said, leaning forward over the table until his shiny little dome was so close, Clyde could have rubbed it for good luck.

“How soon can we get started?” Father Downing asked. “This Sunday?”

Clyde gave a little shiver with the realization that this was now really going to happen. A quick reality check was in order. “It will require at least a few weeks of planning.” He looked at the calendar app on his phone and said, “How about Sunday, the twenty-eighth? That’s the soonest I can do it if you want it done right.”

The men of the cloth turned to each other. 

“Excuse us one minute,” Father Downing said to Clyde, and the two left the booth and backed themselves up against a nearby wall, consulting for far fewer than sixty seconds, as it turned out. When they returned and sat down, they wore smiles on their faces.

“Well?...” Clyde asked, gunfire and cash registers ringing in his head.

“We’ve got a deal,” Father Downing said, and raised his glass before downing the last of his whiskey

**

The big day had arrived; ready or not, it was all-systems go. 

A sleep-deprived Clyde was confident that he and his drill team were ready. The team members, seven people he sent off in a van thirty minutes ago, were already sitting inconspicuously in the church in locations they selected when they joined Clyde in attending the prior week’s service. The team was composed of a couple of Clyde’s drinking buddies, two young women from the local community college drama class, and three thespian aspirants who’d answered his online ad to play a distraught mother, a grandfather in his death throes, and a young child meeting an early fate. All were decked out in their “Sunday best,” which included polyester suits, silk blouses, and plaid wool skirts. Each had ready-to-pop pouches of red dye strapped to various locations of their body—stomachs, legs, chests, arms, often with the added benefit of a prosthetic to give the appearance of deep, open wounds that most people found shocking and repulsive and totally unforgettable. It would be one hell of a production.

Truth be told, however, Clyde had never actually conducted an active shooter drill. So, he was relieved when the leaders of St. Anne’s didn’t seek references. Nonetheless, he’d done a brief rehearsal in a warehouse with those now seated in pews, and they performed well enough to make the drill appear totally legit and real to all but the most discerning critic.

Despite his confidence, he’d tossed and turned under the sheets all night. He received the church’s full payment for today’s activities in advance and his bank account was busting at the seams. He wondered if this project was just the first in what would be a steady stream of lucrative business dealings. Awake in bed, he imagined homes of various sizes and locations that he might one day have an opportunity to buy. He did the same with cars, boats, golf clubs, and other recreational expenditures. Finally, he grabbed his phone from the bedstand to check on airline flights to Cancun and noticed the lateness of the hour—sunrise was fast approaching. In the end, he managed two hours of sleep, three tops.

Still, Clyde was amped on adrenaline that would undoubtedly see him through. As long as he was careful. A mile or so before he arrived at the church he glanced down and noticed he was doing a good ten or fifteen miles over a middling speed limit, making him easy fodder for an end-of-the-month speeding ticket to make an officer’s quota. The anticipation was becoming unbearable, making the drive across the final few blocks to the church’s doors seem an hour long. Up to this point, he’d only entered St. Anne’s as a humble semi-believer who hoped to fade unnoticed into its fine woodwork. Now, in his first lead acting role, he was about to create such a scene that the faithful parishioners witnessing his actions might think him the Devil himself. 

Clyde parked in the far corner of a dirt lot across the street from the church next to where his friend Freddie had parked the actors’ van. Then he quickly adorned himself in all-black militia garb, including balaclava, tactical vest, combat boots, and an assault rifle with a blank fire adapter slung crosswise across his chest. 

“You got this, you know what to do,” Clyde said to himself before bounding from his vehicle. The street was clear, not a soul or car in sight. As Clyde mounted the steps to the church he noticed the click-clackety echo his boots made and the faint sound of Father Downing’s voice inside as he delivered the day’s sermon. According to the plan, Clyde was to make his grand entrance at half past the hour. There were still two minutes to go. Fuck it, he gave the door a hearty pull. He was ready to fire, and there was no time like now. 

As outside light entered the vestibule and marked a path into the nave, Father Downing’s words halted and the heads of parishioners turned. Suddenly, a bit too suddenly perhaps, the tall ashen-haired man who answered the ad to play the grandfather jumped up and yelled “No-o-o-o!”

That’s when Clyde let out an animalistic grunt and fired the first of several blanks in the old man’s direction. “Grandpa” hammed it up before landing in the center aisle, the crimson dye and wannabe-be blood spreading across his head, face, and neck from the punctured balloon hidden in the band of his hat. Girls and boys shrieked, their mothers screamed, and the men in the church yelled out expletives. Father Downing made a show of calling on God to strike down the evil that had entered the building. 

Clyde saw a couple of his crew—the friends from the bar—make a planned run at a side exit. He instantly gunned them down to their theatrical deaths, which appeared anything but staged to the congregants lining the rows of pews within striking distance. The other actors made their presence known, but time was of the essence and Clyde was now firing at everyone in range, whether they moved or not. He found himself surprisingly calm; the whole activity made him feel supremely powerful. During this ongoing frenzy, churchgoers stayed low behind benches, phones in hands that anxiously banged out texts or dialed out in hysterics. In the moments that followed, Clyde kept on gunning, and people not in on the ruse fell over one another in such ways it looked like they’d been shot too, although nothing but blanks had ever been fired. 

He loaded another clip and then another and continued the onslaught. Again, the real believers inside St. Anne’s dropped as easily as his buddies Freddie and Mark and the actors Clyde had hired, and the blood flowing from their bodies, their gasps for air, it all seemed entirely real. But how? It was impossible since they weren’t in on it. What was going on? 

Father Downing came running down from behind the pulpit, and then Revered Kellerman appeared out of nowhere behind him. One shouting “Clyde, no!”, the other “Clyde, stop!”, as Clyde “shot” them both in the face. The reverend slipped and landed flat on his back by the altar in a hard fall. Father Downing crumpled like a sack of potatoes, and it somehow appeared as if a scar the size of a bullet hole now graced his forehead. 

“Clyde?” someone said. Thanks to the clients he’d pretended to gun down, churchgoers now knew the name if not the face behind the mask. 

He began to wave the gun around to keep people at bay, but refrained from actually firing rounds as he tapped his memory to recall which of the two sets of magazines he’d grabbed off the table in his early-morning stupor. However, even as he managed to picture them and be fairly certain he’d taken those on the left, he couldn’t remember which sets were fake and which were the real thing. Had he put the blanks on the left side of the table or were those the live rounds?  He looked at the far end of his assault rifle. The blank adapter at its end had split wide open. The first shot he fired must have ripped it apart. After that, it had been anything goes. When he named his security business Worst Case Scenario, he never expected a scenario this bad. 

Meanwhile, people were scattering haphazardly, staying low but exposing themselves like targets at the arcade, but Clyde was no longer pulling the trigger. Natural light flooded in from every exit as churchgoers made their escape. Sirens sounded louder and louder, until police cruisers came into view through the open doors. Officers in tactical gear soon swarmed the church, and one—seeing Clyde with an M15 in his hands and bodies lying up and down the aisles—shot Clyde in the side of his neck, just below his ear. The security guru’s searing agony was multiplied when another shot tore into his thigh, and another near his hip.

The PD’s special weapons team surrounded him. Whether from pain or lack of oxygen or some other cause altogether, Clyde could feel himself about to black out, perhaps for good. He hoped the open-armed angels on the stained, beveled glass would welcome him like they appeared to promise. As several officers stood with the full weight of their boots on his chest and the muzzles of their guns inches from his temple, Clyde was desperate to let them know one thing.

“It was a drill,” he said. “It was just a drill...”

Roland Goity lives in Issaquah, WA, where he writes, hikes, and contemplates the human condition. His stories appear or are forthcoming in PANK, Fiction International, Raleigh Review, The MacGuffin, Pithead Chapel, Louisiana Literature, Sheepshead Review, and elsewhere.