A Sniper At Cavalry Baptist.

Ten years later, we still talk about the day a man came to church with a gun.

Peter gave the sleeve of my shirt a gentle tug and I turned away from the front of the sanctuary, peeling my eyes from the always-enigmatic sermons of Pastor Arhipov.  Peter did not say anything.  He let his eyes do the talking, directing me to where his line of vision fell, far above the first floor and to the balcony.  It was a fairly recent addition to the church; still not open for parishioner use.  Donations and bake sales paid for it, though that morning it was home to an unexpected visitor, leaning over with his elbows on the ledge.

There was the gun.  It was a big enough of a weapon to grab my attention, with a long and thin barrel and a scope mounted on top.

He was an odd man at first glance; unshaven yet well-dressed, and a bald head with a scar that ran around his left ear.  He didn't look down at us from his perch, only straight ahead to the words printed on the front wall of the sanctuary.

Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words will never pass away.

Arhipov must have seen him there from the front, but did not let it stop him for one moment.  A man with a gun was nothing to him.  Arhipov had been a pastor overseas for the troops, and before then, a missionary in a country with more landmines than people.  Perhaps it was not out of the ordinary enough for him.

Not at all, we would later learn.

Peter whispered into my ear, "I'm scared."

I think we were the first two to notice.

A few of the elderly women were the next to see him, looking over their shoulders as their hulking summer hats blocked another person's view.  They gasped, not loud enough for others to grow suspicious but loud enough for Peter and I to still hear.  Then they whispered to those around them, aware that loud noises would result in dead bodies.  At least, that's what I thought at the time.  Why else would a man come to church with a gun?

Arhipov continued on, even as the congregation grew aware of the visitor.  Soon we were all in the same position, shifting uneasily in our seats and wondering what the right thing to do was.

Soon Ma's hand was on my knee, and she promised that "everything is going to be fine."

Peter whispered, "Maybe we could crawl to the back, underneath the pews."

"What about everyone else?" I asked him, unable to keep my eyes from the sniper for longer than a few seconds.

He didn't answer me at first, then said, "I don't want to die."

I picked up a conversation on the pew behind us.  Priscilla Angeline, a friend of Ma's, was already feeding the rumor mill, a gun directly above her.  "Looks like the Hammond boy, the one they shipped off to war."

The same war that found Arhipov serving as a pastor, I later found out.

Another woman piped up, though still only loud enough for the rows in front and behind her to hear.  I didn't recognize her right away, later finding out it was Priscilla's cousin Dorothy, another friend in Ma's circle.  "Last I heard, he went nuts in the head after coming home," she said, and then whispered the words, "Shell shock."

A condescending voice, owner unknown, added, "He was lucky to come back at all after what happened to the others."

Peter looked as if he was about to straighten his legs in preparation to get up, but Ma quickly reached across to sternly grab his knee.  She looked at him, right in the eye, and ordered through her teeth, "Stay."

It wasn't long until Arhipov began the conclusion of his sermon.  Back then you knew when it was coming because his voice would rise in dramatics, nearly shaking the rafters in the process.  The sniper remained seated above us, doing nothing with his gun yet.

Arhipov stopped speaking, rested his hands on the podium, and paused for a long time before speaking again.  I'm sure it wasn't for any outrageous extended period of time, but it sure felt like it with Ma tensed up next to me, her hand on Peter's knee since he attempted to move.  I now realize that if he had been able to crawl under the pew, everyone else would have seen that as the signal to escape and panic would have ensued.

"Go," Arhipov said.  "Go in peace, my children."

No one stood up.  No one did as much as breathe.

"Go," he repeated.  "In the house of God, you cannot be harmed."

The first to stand was Joseph Angler, perhaps one of the only people in town who had something in common with the sniper.  He too was one of the few men who returned from overseas.  The cowards, they were often called.  He stood still for a moment, waiting to see if Arhipov's words would hold their truth, and when nothing happened, he began to shuffle his way to the center aisle.  He made it there without an issue, turned around, and exited the church.

The sniper remained seated, doing nothing with his gun.

Slowly, but surely, others repeated the same process as Joseph Angler.  More men, as I should point out, but when we all realized that they were leaving without incident, church was let out as usual.  Ma removed her hand from Peter's knee as she stood up with the other women around her.  My brother and I followed suit, and stayed close together as we followed everyone out.  No one dared to utter a word.  The church was more than silent that day.  The last time I saw the sniper and Arhipov, they were locked into a fierce staring contest at opposite ends of the church.

A large crowd remained in the parking lot for some time after we got out.  Ma held Peter and I close to her on either side as she gossiped with Priscilla, Dorothy and the others.  Most of their conversation circled around the war, an event that still weighed heavily on our lives back then, but at that point had nearly blended away into the other stories of our past.  Peter had always claimed to have sparse memories of that time.  Me; well, I was two weeks overdue when Ma and many of the other women in town got the same phone call.

The police had been alerted, I was sure.  A few of the elderly ladies had run across the street to Agatha Anderson's home, shrieking about gunman and needing to use the phone.  They unfortunately didn't show up until five minutes after the first gunshot echoed from inside.  We all jumped at the sound, and found ourselves backing towards our cars.  

The second gunshot ended that day's service.

...

The incident of the sniper who came to Cavalry Baptist only came up ten years later because Jacob and Zeke had come over one night for a poker game with Peter and I.  Peter and Jacob were both home on leave, though Zeke and I would both join them for our first tour two weeks later.  Jacob, revealing his tell with a scratch of his nose, was telling us about men in their platoon who had gone crazy during their year away.

"Remember the Hammond guy that day in church?" Peter asked us all.  "That's really what war will do to you."

"Everyone knows it wasn't just that," Zeke replied, his lips pursed as he looked at his cards.  "Arhipov did something to him over there that made him not right in the head.  That's why he took him with him when he snapped."

"That's a crazy rumor," I sighed.

"Rumor or not, you don't see Hammond around to defend his actions.  It takes a certain man to come to church with a gun."

Jacob, still the most religious of the four of us, crossed himself thinking of that day.  We weren't Catholic, but it was a tick he adopted when he spooked himself with his own memory.  It was also another tell, only for the stellar hands.  "Just thank God he didn't get us, or anyone else who was there that day.  Our dads were watchin' over us that day."

"You really think so?" Peter laughed.  "Pa couldn't even watch over himself when they were all hit by those shells."

"So you don't think we had any divine help that day?"

"If there was divine help, it wouldn't have let Hammond get inside with a gun that day to begin with.  Now, Jake, are you in or are you out?"

"I'm in for five," he answered, tossing his chips into the center of the table.

"I fold," Zeke added sheepishly.

I looked down at my own hand, and the three queens looking back at me.  It might have been easy to tell when Jacob was sitting on a flush, but I always knew he was smarter than we all thought.  "I'll see you for five."

Peter, always in for anything, responded with seven chips.  "I see your five and raise you two.  I didn't shoot my way out of the jungle to sit on something good, boys."

"Boys," Zeke snorted.  "I don't think you can call us that anymore, Pete."

"Come back from overseas in one piece, without the urge to shoot up a church full of women and children, and then I'll stop calling you both boys."  He shot me a knowing glance; I was never left out of the equation simply because I was his brother.  "Now, anyone gonna see my seven?"

"He didn't shoot up the whole church," I reminded him.  "How do you think we got out?"

"What if he came in thinking he would?  After all, Arhipov screwed with him..."

"Literally," Zeke disguised with a cough.

"...and everyone else in that church was evidence of the men who died honorably when he didn't.  Now, thank God, Jesus, Mary and Joseph that he changed his mind about that one, if that was the plan.  However, he didn't back out of shooting Arhipov and then taking his own life, so that man must have really..."

"I got it," I groaned.

"So are you still in?" he asked, cards held tightly in his hands.

"Yes."