My Salvation

Andrew was kicked back on the pavement, dying from a wound in his neck. He knew he was dying, but he had no idea how the wound had occurred, or why. His confused thoughts wondered at what had struck him and how it was he was hit so hard.  Faces and names flashed through his mind as coffee and cake, sparkling water and napkins settled to the ground, spun to a stop or ceased flooding across the pavement. As his blood pooled with the flat white and ran along joins in the tiles his mental checklist rapidly exhausted and the bright sunny day started to fade as he bled out, his last conscious thought being the sound of distant church bells tolling the ninth hour.

I was with Andrew only a few minutes before. Maybe ten at the most. I had ridden the distance to the café so many times beforehand I knew it was a short sprint or a leisurely trundle up through the  mall to the church at the far end of the avenue.  My apartment lies just behind the old steepled place with its musty organs and threadbare fabric cushions. I am sure even the cotton thread of the hymn book bindings came from Lancashire centuries ago, such is their thumb-worn age. It was the serenity that attracted me to the building in the first place after all. The café was my other refuge and that is where I had met Andrew and where we regularly met and grew our friendship. It was my sparkling water bottle that was slowly rotating to a stop on the pavement beside Andrew as his hands finally relaxed and the light went out of his eyes.

Andrew and I went back beyond meeting at the café of course. We had started meeting there when I was wanting to get the measure of the man. It was also a time when I wanted to understand his routines and his habits. It was twelve months after the court case and nearly two years since the accident. I had sat in court watching him in the dock. But really not seeing him, for my vision was clouded with shimmering heat. He seemed indifferent to what was going on and that only increased the haze. He never looked my way though I never demanded he acknowledge me. Nonetheless I was convinced he knew who I was and that I was in the public viewing area. One of those sixth sense things you know.

After the court case, and after he was awarded a suspended sentence for negligent driving I was riven by a red hot rod of rage that became my reason for living. Nothing rational. Just a core of energy that propelled me along.  I went looking for him. He had disappeared for a number of months until, to my surprise  I discovered he was dining regularly at a little café not so far from my place. It was the very café in front of which he now lay. I circled him without being able to speak with him but Andrew caught my eye on a number of occasions. Startled, he would jump up and leave. He must have called the police.  On two occasions the uniforms visited my unit. A young constable suggested I stay away from Andrew’s house and family. He wilted under the abuse I hurled at him. The second visit was by a senior sergeant of the traffic patrol. He had more years rubbed in around his eyes than my earlier visitor and I knew he was not here to argue. It helped that he was the officer who  had investigated the accident and whose report was tended in the court. He gently warned me against doing anything daft, gave me a business card and shook my hand before leaving. He helped right my keel a little.

Sufficiently so that I paused one afternoon at the side door of the old church past which I walked and rode each day. I was not a church man at all but its quiet dimness was appealing and I pushed the old wooden door and stepped into the cool dark. I was not sure what to expect but partly anticipated someone to  greet me. No one did. I could hear the tinkle of metal on metal somewhere out the back of the building, as if someone was handling metal dishes. Then silence. I wandered around reading plaques and memorial stones before finding myself at a small opening in the stone wall which opened onto the foot of a set of stairs. Without any thought I started to climb and soon found myself on a landing. The ceiling above leaked four large ropes and I realised I was standing underneath the bells.  The slatted windows allowed me to look across the tiles of the neighbouring buildings. I paused to look and listen, to the distant echoing shouts of children in the street, the background hush of traffic and the soft cadences of the pigeons in the loft above me. I continued to climb and was soon under the bells.

It seemed that was the end of the stairs but I noticed a wooden ladder set in a wall leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling above. With no thought other than to satisfy my curiosity I climbed to yet another floor. There was a lock set in the trapdoor but fortunately it was broken and I pushed up into a small dingy, octagonal enclave. The floor was a dusty tan – the old floorboards were beautifully grained but the dust suggested no one had been up here for many years. Mesh kept the birds out and there was nothing but a cool breeze and my own breathing to keep me company. I sat down and gazed out of another slatted set of windows and looked around the neighbourhood. There was my unit with its yellow curtains. My old school on the horizon. The town hall. The café.

With a jolt I realised I had an excellent view of the café and its front dining area and in that instant a despicable plan formed in my mind. Not fuelled by rage this time but part of a cold calculation that surprised even me. It called for some careful work but was not impossible. First I needed to fix that lock. Then get a couple of mattresses up here. I needed to buy two rifles. Precisely the same as each other. Set them up and shoot them in, down on the range, each in exactly the same way. Same scopes, same barrels, same trigger mechanisms, same pressures. No weapon is exactly the same as another but there are enough similarities in precision weapons to effectively negate the weakness of difference.

Over the next four months I set up two Winchester rifles in 30.06 calibre. Scopes were the same. Hand loaded rounds. Boat tail bullets of 180grains. With 43.5 grains of powder.  Sufficiently flat flying bullets with enough punch to do what I wanted to do over a distance of 735 yards. Measured. Carefully. With sufficient trigonometric  calculations to allow for my height above the street. And the fall of the bullet.  After sixty rounds had been fired through each rifle I took one up into the steeple loft where I had already set up the nest of mattresses. Along with a barometer and temperature gauge. The ballistic tables would wait for the day itself. Besides, they were getting a thorough checkout on the range.  Bags densely packed with kapok would form the rifle rest and on the day I would remove the netting from the ventilation openings. Three rounds would be all I needed, or had time for.  I fired another 400 over the next few months through the second rifle while I waited. Practising the release above all. Squeeze carefully. Second finger, on the trigger, held straight. Trigger adjusted to the finest point possible –sufficient to take up first finger contact. But all coming together to ensure I was not aware when the round would actually fire. That was one way to ensure I got a good shot away  - if you know you are about to release the trigger there is every chance you influence the flight of the bullet. I could hear my instructor growling over my shoulder “Your best shot it the one you don’t know you are about to fire.” He should know – striking a man half hidden behind a ventilation shaft on top of a building a full mile away across the rooftops of Belfast.

Then I found Jesus. Or he found me as they say. I should not have been so surprised given I was spending so much time around a church. I had just fitted my lock to the trapdoor and was standing among the bells when I heard someone climbing the stairs. I scrambled down to the floor below just in time to meet a portly fellow arrive at the bell ropes. I was embarrassed and he was startled but was friendly enough.  Wiping the sweat from his hands he extended a pudgy offering and introduced himself.

“Hi, I’m the bellringer. Name’s Richard.”

“Ah, sorry about trespassing. I was just wondering what church bells looked like. I’m John by the way.”

He smiled. “You can’t trespass in God’s house. It’s open to everyone. Bells eh? Well, since I am the bellringer around here why don’t I give you an introduction to our bells?”

“Sure, I would like that.”

What else could I say?

But Richard was a friendly, open and genuine sort of guy. When he offered to teach me how to ring I actually thought it would be fun to do. Soon I was practising with his other bellringers and they were coaching me on all the tricks and traps of ringing those bells. I soon found that all the bellringers were down-to-earth sort of people. In fact one of them was the plumber I called on the rare occasion that the plumbing in the unit played up. They were earnest about their faith and after a few months I decided I wanted what they had and committed myself to follow their Jesus.

Now you might say, along with me, that such a thing is madness and that this is only a decision of the mind. But in fact it was a decision made with all my heart as well and to my surprise it was my heart that was changed. If I needed a foil against which to test that change it was Andrew. Suddenly I felt no hatred against this man altogether and I realised my hatred of him had been a corrosive acid  destroying not Andrew but my very self. In that life changing moment I realised I needed to fix things with Andrew.

And that is what I did. It was not easy and it took many months. But making that first step to speak with him was awkward and difficult. And convincing him I was genuine was even more difficult to convey. The traffic policeman visited once more, such was Andrew’s nervousness. Fortunately the sergeant seemed convinced I only intended to mend things. But he warned me to be careful. He was only doing his job. I wonder where he is right now.

I knew where Andrew had his coffee each morning so it was a simple matter of approaching the café and introducing myself.  He was wary at first. Our first meeting was tense and he was suspicious. I could hardly blame him. Soon our friendship flourished and over months we grew to trust each other.

Through all that time the rifle sat in the belfry. Eventually I decided that I needed to retrieve it. I had stopped going to the range and sold the second practice rifle. The spare ammunition I handed over to one of the young shooters in the range club who was grateful for all the carefully calculated and loaded rounds. Care in preparing them can mean the difference between a hit and a miss.

I was still ringing the bells every Sunday. So walking in and climbing the stairs was like being at home. Nobody saw me but if they had my presence would not have been unusual. I was now part of the furniture and my membership had been accepted by these forgiving people. If they knew how dark my heart had been they may have taken a different view.

The key still fitted the lock. It had not been changed in all this time. The rifle was still there, propped under a blanket, plastic and an old cotton sheet. Exactly where it had been left. Rubbed down with a little light oil. Three rounds in a plastic case, mounted carefully in the polystyrene block where I had left them. The rifle bag was folded in the corner.  It would only take a moment or two to collect everything and place them in the bag.

 I lifted the blanket off and removed the plastic.  An idle thought filtered through my mind and I wondered if the scope was still sighted in. Picking the rifle up was an act of love and the caress, as its familiar weight and feel renewed their acquaintance, was seductive. “I wonder…” floated through in a dreamy, mesmerising thought of no focus but it drove me to my knees on the old mattress. The dust flew off and scattered across the shafts of light and spun across the space like a fantasy constellation spinning its stars and moons in silent wonder. I hauled the cotton sheet back, wiping off the oil as I did so and dropping it to one side. The bolt slicked and snicked in and out, soft and deliberate, locking into place with a commitment that always felt final. I pushed the trigger forward and dropped the bolt out, lifted the barrel to the light and checked the bore. Barely a speck of dust, but that which was there was soon pulled through and out and the bolt replaced. I was in love again as I held the comb to my cheek and peered down the street and dry fired, hearing the soft click on a hair trigger squeeze from my second finger. Time to pack up and go before I wasted too much more time up here.  I lay the rifle down, barrel propped on the sandbag at the end of the mattress, then glanced around to take stock of what I needed to gather up and clean up.

She lay on that mattress like an old lover inviting me down with her. I resisted no more and lay down. Carefully. On my side first, and then rolling in to her, picking her up, careful not to knock or bump, hugged her to my cheek, cradled her stock, and looked her in the eye, peering down the  street, along the pavement and then to settle on the café where Andrew sat. I watched him reading, as if in a blurry silent movie.

I wonder, I wonder. Let’s see. It was  about 700 metres was it not? We were sighted in for 700 my love. Allow for maybe a little drift from the occasional northerly breeze. A dry fire to see if I could have done it. Easy now. Easy now. Breath out. Pause. Tension taken up. Recalculate. Breath in. Breath out,  pause. Lift the cross hair off Andre’s chin and aim for the mouth. In there and out the back of the head, less chance of a shot going wrong, deflected by bone.  Helps avoid any reflex action as the brain stems disappears out the back as well. Dry fire then get out of here. Breath in. Breath out. Pause. 

The bells crashed below me and jarred my thoughts, the timber floor vibrating in sympathetic rhythm to the pulleys and machinery below. Nine o’clock.  Whirling dust, a shower of feathers, pigeons beating around my head. Where on earth did they come from? Where on earth is Andrew? I can’t see him at the café any more. His gear is still on the table. Must be visiting the bathroom.  Best clean up as soon as the bell ringer has gone and get out of here before I do anything stupid.  On my knees now.  Rags, coughing dust, cotton sheet, feathers settling, rifle case, scope detached and placed in its padded carry bag. Polystyrene mount for the two rounds. Only two? I wonder what I did with the third.  It must be around here somewhere. No matter, maybe I was dreaming there were three rounds here in the first place. It’s been a few months but I am usually more careful than that. Maybe I only ever brought two rounds up here in the first place.