The Heretics of St. Possenti

by Rolf Nelson

  “A way with many things. Chief among them giving me more things to study. I haven’t compared Bible translations since seminary, and I wasn’t very happy with the little we did even then. The Church generally frowns on it. Now I’ve got that on top of all this.”

  “A regular life of Job you have there.”

  “Very funny.”

  They sat in silence for a while longer.

  “Well, let’s get that suit wiped down and get some food and more water into you.”

  “Yes. Let’s. And then sleep for a loooong time.”

  First Range

  Hoplophobia is a mental disturbance characterized by irrational aversion to weapons, as opposed to justified apprehension about those who may wield them.

  —Col. Jeff Cooper

  Thomas Cranberry was nervous. From what he knew of Finnegan he thought he was a nice enough guy and fairly level headed, but because Thomas’s one experience with a gun was rather a negative experience, he was uncertain if going to a shooting range was a wise thing to do.

  Wearing street clothes and no collar, he felt particularly vulnerable for some reason and more self-conscious than he’d been in a long time. He hoped he didn’t see any of his parishioners at the range, but because it was many miles out of town, he thought it was unlikely.

  It was a chilly day at the mostly outdoor facility, and the heated building with several training rooms and the cluttered-looking range office felt surprisingly warm and welcoming with the natural-finish wood, pictures, corkboard advertising upcoming matches and announcing old results and guns for sale or wanted, game mounts with a couple of impressive-looking animals, and an old-fashioned, homey look. The man behind the counter, ancient and weathered, taking boxes of ammo for sale from a cardboard box and on the shelf, nodded slightly when the entered to the tinkling of a bell. “Mickey,” came the terse greeting.

  “Roe,” Finnegan replied. “Room open?”

  “Just the two of you?” inquired Roe. Mickey nodded. “Use Three. CW class in four hours.”

  Mickey led him to a side door.

  Behind it was a small room with few tables, a couple of small windows, and one wall made of sandbags that had two sandbagged alcoves in it fitted with benches and lights. Finnegan stepped up to one of the alcoves and set his range bag on it. From it he withdrew a black polymer-frame pistol in a holster. Removing it from its holster he dropped the magazine, worked the action, and locked the slide back. “This is how you check to make sure it’s unloaded and safe to handle. The sandbags will stop a bullet if someone screws up and launches one unintentionally while checking and clearing. See?” He held it up for inspection by his student, keeping the barrel pointed toward the sandbags.

  Thomas looked into the open action. “What am I looking for?”

  “Do you see any brass-colored metal, ammunition, or anything other than an empty chamber—that’s the hollow end of the tube there—and empty magazine well? The mag-well is the hollow part of the grip, here, where the mag,” he picked a magazine up and showed it to Thomas, “this thing, goes.” He pointed to a poster on the wall showing a cutaway drawing of different kinds of ammunition. “See anything like that in here?”

  “No. Looks empty. I think.”

  “We say that the gun is clear. Don’t worry. Lots of terms to learn, but they are pretty easy. You don’t have much to unlearn, so it’ll be a little easier. So…” He set the gun down, pointing away. “First things first. Watch that very carefully.” He crossed his arms, crouched slightly, and proceeded to stare at the very inanimate gun intently, himself motionless but for breathing and the occasional blink. Thomas, not being sure what to expect, stood still, too, and watched. The minutes ticked by. Nothing happened. Sounds from the office beyond of people entering and leaving, and the frequent but muffled and sporadic gunfire beyond the walls reached his ears.

  After nearly three minutes Thomas whispered, slightly confused, “What am I looking for?”

  “To see what it’ll do.”

  “But… it won’t do anything, just sitting there.”

  “You sure?” Finnegan asked, curiously.

  Thomas started to have doubts about the man’s sanity. “Very sure, Mickey.”

  “Good. You passed your first lesson.”

  Thomas blinked in surprise. “I what?”

  “Lesson number one: do not fear the gun. It does nothing on its own. It is inanimate, without life, volition, or intent. A gun is neither good nor evil. It does what the person handling it tells it to do; no more, no less. If it is not hitting the target, the shooter is not doing his job correctly. If it’s hitting the wrong target, the shooter is really screwing up.”

  “I’d have thought that was obvious.”

  “It is. But until you see that and admit that, for yourself, you are likely to blame problems on the gun rather than operator error. You might want to blame crimes on the gun, not the criminal. Now that you admit you control it—not the other way around—you can be taught to handle it properly.” He looked deadly serious.

  “Ah, I see.”

  “People seek to ban guns or certain types of guns, saying they are dangerous. No, they are not. If they were, why is it okay for cops to carry them?” Thomas started to answer but bit his tongue and listened. “Improperly trained or undisciplined people are dangerous, whether using a gun or any other tool. We need to ban improperly trained people. And that’s my job here today.” He smiled widely at the small joke he’d prepared. “We need to exorcise your ignorance of this very powerful tool and teach you the spirit of self-control. And trigger control. Let us begin.”

  Mickey Finnegan was a very able teacher, using precise language and motions and repeating them many times, almost chanting them as he taught his novice student the fundamentals of operation and function, aiming, safety rules, and the rest. He reiterated the basics many times and often paused to see if Thomas could continue on his own.

  Terminology: bullet, powder, primer, and brass make a cartridge; the receiver, action, barrel, serial numbered part, trigger, trigger group, magazine and clip, rifling, recoil versus gas operation, double-action versus single action; sight radius versus optics; safety rules constantly repeated and drilled and inquired about (“so what is a safe direction if you are in a third-floor apartment in the middle of a crowded city?”) and many more concepts and details screamed past his mind, mostly with little more time spent than was necessary to make him aware of them rather than to teach deep understanding. It was a colossal info-dump that Thomas knew he’d only remember a fraction of. He repeated the important things many times while blazing through the less-important elements that helped develop the larger context.

  Cranberry tried dry-firing several different guns in different but similar stances many times, always toward a target in the sandbagged alcove, to get the feel of them before Mickey said it was time to clear out and to head for the range shortly before the room was reserved for another group.

  They headed first to the handgun portion of the range, where Mickey ran a square bullseye target out to ten feet.

  “So close?” asked Cranberry.

  “First shots are always interesting.” Mickey pulled a revolver similar to the one that Thomas had lost, but smaller. “I’ve seen people empty a gun at this range and still have a pristine target. Let’s start with this.” He turned a bit and loaded it at an angle so that the new shooter couldn’t see what he was doing. When he closed the cylinder, he cocked the hammer partway back, spun the cylinder, and then gently lowered the hammer again before laying it on the bench. “Okay. All ready to go. Just like you practiced inside. Finger off the trigger until you are on target, barrel down-range, line up the sights, firm grip, squeeze the trigger gently.”

  The cool wind suddenly felt cold, and the confidence Bishop Cranberry had felt inside evaporated. The safety glasses kept the wind out of his eyes, and the electronic earmuffs kept his ears warm, but his cheeks felt the bite. He stood motionless for a moment.

 
“Try getting into the stance. Just point with your finger first.”

  Feet apart, flex knees slightly, crouch, head down, arms straight out, forming an isosceles triangle, left fingers gripping more firmly than the right, line up the target over the webbing between thumb and forefinger, point at target, and then practice pulling the trigger smoothly. He was ready. The rubber of the grip felt cool. He picked it up and stood uncertainly.

  Finnegan stood immediately behind him, hands clasped lightly together in front of himself, almost as if praying. He started repeating the stance characteristics, again almost chanting them to get Thomas into a conscious rhythm of assuming the proper position. In a moment, he was in a good basic shooting stance. “Squeeze gently,” Mickey said, watching intently.

  The bishop did, sort of. The gun went CLICK and dipped the front sight significantly.

  “I only put one round in. You are jerking the trigger and anticipating the recoil. Pretty common mistake when starting. Try again. Focus on the front sight. Squeeze gently.”

  Thomas tried again, noting the cylinder turning slowly in his peripheral vision as he took of the travel in the double-action trigger. CLICK. But no barrel drop.

  “Excellent!” said Mickey encouragingly. “Much better. Again.”

  He squeezed again. A very modest bang and almost no recoil—much less than he expected.

  “Again,” said Mickey.

  Thomas pulled again. CLICK and a very small dip.

  “Again.”

  CLICK and no dip.

  “Again.”

  He pulled until the cylinder had gone all the way around. Mickey reloaded, showing him that he put two rounds in, but not next to each other, and spun it again. Then they did the same drill. When there was no dip with the .22, and a full cylinder was being put into a hand-span sized pattern on the target, Thomas’s trainer moved him up to a somewhat larger gun, showing him the fatter round. “A 32 Magnum. Don’t let the name fool you. It’s a nice round. Mostly marketing. This is a light load.”

  One gun after another, moving faster as he gained confidence, Thomas tried both revolvers and semi-autos, shooting everything up to a .41 Magnum revolver, an odd-sounding round he’d never even heard of.

  “Time to break for lunch,” Mickey finally said, and Thomas realized he was famished. He no longer felt the cold wind, and the warm metal had started feeling good in his hand, but food sounded like an excellent idea. When he moved to help his trainer/tormentor, he realized that his forearms had the same intensely tight and tired feeling he’d felt after his first workout at the dojo.

  * * *

  Finnegan debriefed him in the quiet of the car as they drove to a nearby greasy spoon, and it continued while they ordered and ate. Endless questions, pointers, and probing of thoughts and feelings. When the bishop commented on how exhausted he felt, Finnegan laughed.

  “You have been intently focused and learning, doing unaccustomed physical activity for several hours. Your brain uses about twenty-five percent of your body’s calories on average, more when thinking hard. It’s like a computer being overclocked; it needs cooling and rest and then a good night’s sleep to let that knowledge sink in and gel, so the memories get written to long-term storage, as it were. Good training is typically tiring. Focusing is hard. When snipers are in peak training, they usually only shoot eighty to a hundred rounds a day. In a whole day. Think about that. Eight hours on the range, about one round every five minutes average.”

  “I wouldn’t think picking up a few pounds of metal would be so draining, but I’m beat, and we were only there for…”

  “In the training room for nearly four hours and then on the range for about two. Not a brutal day for an experienced shooter. But for a newbie, plenty long. We should call it a day and go out next week for some time on the rifle range. Maybe we should go back and just watch for a while, so you know what I’m talking about later. Think you are up for that?”

  Thomas thought about it while he mopped up the last of his biscuits and gravy (which had sounded good, and tasted better, after six hours at the range). He listened to his body. “No, I think not. More things to think about could only muddle all the new things I have rattling around in there now.”

  “Yeah, probably right. Good idea. We can talk a little more on the way home though.”

  He felt amazingly calm when he retired to bed that night, and he thought with amusement that he should likely hang the last target he shot on his wall somewhere other than the living room, or people might talk. But he didn’t think about that for more than a few seconds before he fell into a deep and untroubled sleep.

  * * *

  Four days later Bishop Cranberry found himself back at the range with Mickey Finnegan, this time carrying long guns. The morning training was about the same duration because while basic safety rules were repeated, they didn’t need to be learned for the first time and drilled, but the number of shooting stances and things that could affect accuracy was higher; wind speed and direction made no real difference at ten yards on the pistol range, but at 300 meters they most certainly did, even with the rifle’s much faster bullets.

  Mickey didn’t expect Thomas to be an expert by the end of the day, but he did want his student to have some concept of the fundamentals about what all was going on. Being safe and getting comfortable was the most important goal for the first outing, but if they could tag the X-ring a few times in the process, so much the better. He would also appreciate what some of the other shooters were able to do after trying it himself.

  After the classroom session, they watched some of the more experienced shooters (as well as a couple of clearly not-so-experienced shooters) on the line. Seeing a man put a clover-leaf of holes on paper at 200 meters while looking through a spotting scope over the shooter’s shoulder and watching the bullet trace through the cool but humid air with an arc and an upwind bend, made him appreciate just how much the bullet actually deviated from his previously assumed nearly straight line. Watching a young man firing slowly and steadily as he made a four-inch group at 250 meters with iron sights on an old service rifle blew his mind; he didn’t think such a thing was even theoretically possible. Seeing it firsthand, he found both incredibly impressive and a little disturbing.

  Thomas was started on a .22 rimfire, a simple bolt-action gun with iron sights that he was told was significantly older than he was. He was surprised at how little recoil there was and how easy it was to line up the front post and rear notch; suddenly, the abilities of the other shooters were much more understandable. Shooting from a rest was easy. Standing, shooting offhand, Thomas saw how much even small variations in motion affected his accuracy. Briefly trying a kneeling and cross-legged positions to take a few shots he grasped the idea of “stability” much better.

  When he moved up to a bolt-action .223 Remington (the cartridges almost looked cute, he thought, appalled at the notion of anything “cute” about firearms) with a 15-power scope, he noticed that trying to hold it free-hand he could see movement constantly. Shooting it from the bench, he saw his breathing, and even the pulse in his finger, moving the cross-hairs slightly. He wondered how anyone could hit a small target at 200 meters if standing.

  Before switching to a scary-looking “black rifle” in the same cartridge, Mickey showed him a “proper” deer hunting cartridge designed to kill game of a size similar to a man, the .30-06 Springfield. Comparing the two in his hand, the younger man asked him rhetorically “So why is that tiny little thing considered so scary, when something well over a century old, the ought-six, is considered a perfectly acceptable sporting round? Which is more dangerous?”

  Thomas had no answer that made any sense.

  But after shooting both and feeling the recoil in the lighter semi-auto compared to what his shoulder felt firing a “normal hunting rifle,” he certainly understood the popularity of the “modern sporting rifle.” He didn’t know enough yet to argue the “dangerousness” thing well yet, but he was rapidly becoming aware of the li
mits of his knowledge in the subject.

  When Finnegan simply said, “Shoot the 300-meter target,” he didn’t make even a single hole in it in the ten rounds he slowly fired. He tried to figure it out but was at a loss as to what was wrong or where the bullets were going. He reloaded the magazine very humbly while his teacher explained—again—a few things to him about bullet drop and wind drift. The numbers were much larger than Thomas realized. Previously, it was a vague, academic number of inches. When told to adjust the scope, he was surprised by how much he had to. Then, with Finnegan spotting and coaching, making the wind calls and telling him when to gently squeeze the trigger, he managed to make a group where all but two were in the black. Given another five rounds and asked to do it on his own, he only got three of them on paper.

  Every time there was a ceasefire to change targets, Thomas had a chance to chat with some of the other shooters while someone on an ATV raced out to pull and replace targets for people. He found the other shooters to be mostly intelligent, well (if sometimes informally) educated, and self-disciplined. They were happy to talk about their equipment, reloading, technology, hunting adventures, self-defense preparations, and the costs and benefits of different setups and choices. It had a language all its own, and he frequently had to ask Mickey for “translations” of some of the more technical geek-word explosions he heard. It was so simple, yet so simultaneously arcane, that it was fascinating in its own strange way.

  One of the recurring themes was time. It took time, range-time, to be really good. It didn’t make any difference how hard he prayed, one grizzled old guy said between puffs on his cigar; there was no way to develop actual skills and knowledge of application other than spending time doing. The act of doing was not replaceable with books or study as it took the physical act to acquire the mental focus and technique. Saying, “Squeeze gently and hold it steady,” was easy; doing it the same every time was an entirely different matter.