Baptism by Fire

Before approaching the clinic, he stood for several minutes concealed in the shadow of a broad-chested oak. The light cast off by a nearby amber-colored street lamp was diffuse, a developing ground fog further reducing its strength.

Satisfied that no one was patrolling the outside of the building, he attached the folded cardboard revelation to a road sign planted at the edge of the parking lot's blacktopped surface. As God's crusader against the infidels, he walked unafraid to the clinic entrance. He removed the tightly bound bundle of seven dynamite sticks from his bag, placed the device reverently at the front door as if he were making an offering at an altar, and lit the fuse with a disposable butane lighter. The fuse would burn quickly, and as soon as it began to sputter, the Warrior of God turned and sprinted back toward his truck.

Inside the clinic, Wesley Hardin, a retired police officer with the Granite City force and now part-time security guard, continued his rounds. Wesley had taken the night job at the abortion clinic to help supplement a meager pension. Since his wife Emma had become too ill to continue her work as an assembler at a nearby electronics plant, they had lost her income. Life was tough, but they had learned to survive on eight hundred a month.

Wesley had been spurned by some of Emma's relatives when he began working at the clinic. Emotions ran hot when it came to the issue of abortion, and Wesley knew it. He wasn't exactly sure about his own feelings. He could see both sides of the issue although he did know that he and Emma would never have resorted to such a solution. They had raised three children and had actually hoped for one more, but poor health and money problems had forced them to reconsider. "Working at the clinic was just a job," he told himself.

Thinking of Emma, his wife of thirty-eight years, always made Wesley smile. As she kissed him good-bye earlier that evening, she had said, "Wes, I'll be so happy when you can quit this night security work and find a day job. I get lonely and scared without you around." Wesley suspected that Emma's concerns had more to do with his working at the abortion clinic and the resulting unrelenting pressure she received from her sister, Violet.

Violet worked for the local Right to Life chapter and was always chastising him for accepting employment at the clinic. "I'm worried about your soul, Wesley Hardin." He'd heard her say it a hundred times. "I just can't understand why you'd want to go and work in an evil place like that."

Wesley was quick to admit that he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was bright enough to know that the abortion issue wasn't as simple as Violet made it out to be. "That woman has a gift for oversimplification," he often told Emma. "Violet thinks if your kids don't mind, just spank 'em good. If you're afraid of crime, shoot a few law-breakers to teach 'em a lesson." A lifetime in law enforcement had taught Wesley Hardin that toughness was as much to blame for society's problems as it was a cure. But people like Violet didn't want complications of their simple paradigms.

Mr. Hardin took his break about two thirty. Tonight he enjoyed a piece of Emma's raspberry pie and two cups of milky coffee. The caffeine helped keep him awake through the long, quiet nights; the milk was medicine to calm a small ulcer that had developed in the last several months. Wesley rose to begin his rounds, a toothpick working to remove a raspberry seed that had lodged tightly in the gap between two molars.

He checked the small surgery theatre and found everything in order. Always, when he entered this room and saw the operating tables and tiled floor that was regularly hosed down with jets of antiseptic-laced water, Wesley experienced a strong aversion, a deep-seated, affective response that prickled his skin. A closely examined reality told him that living, growing things were regularly terminated within these walls. "You can't think about it," he admonished himself, as he exited and returned to the central corridor. "Too much thinking and worrying only brings trouble."

When he passed by the front door of the clinic, Wesley saw what looked like a child's Fourth-of-July sparkler throwing off dancing light in the glass-encased entrance. Surprised, he went to investigate.

When Wesley Hardin looked down at the bundle lying on the welcome mat, an 8.6 tremor of fear rippled through him as he recognized the bomb, its fuse only an inch long. He fumbled nervously with the bulky ring of keys hooked to his belt loop and quickly reached to unlock the door. An inner voice was trying to tell him to dive for cover, but tension scrambled the signal like a bad thunderstorm does to a weak TV station.

As Mr. Hardin swung the door inward and knelt to rip the fuse from the dynamite, the full force of the explosion caught him in the chest and face, shredding him like ground meat as a fireball roared high overhead, extinguishing the night.

The Warrior of God was rolling along Tecumseh Street when the sound of the explosion reached his ears. He drove carefully and unobtrusively through the side streets until he was once again headed out into the countryside. He prayed that the destruction of yet another of Satan's houses would reduce the number of transgressions listed against his name in Heaven's book, sins of weakness that had begun on that unforgettable night twenty-eight years before. But time was only important here on earth. He knew that this life was ephemeral; in Heaven, a day equals ten thousand of our years. He'd soon be with his loved ones, and they could reclaim lost time. Now, he must return to his home and rest.

In the cool, quiet interior of the truck, his face bathed in pale green light from the instrument panel, God's Warrior spoke with fervor to his Master. "I await your instructions, God. I am but a dutiful servant of the Lord." He repeated this mystic mantra a thousand times until his pickup rolled silently and darkly into his drive.