Short People Read Online Free Page B

prays, Jesus will miraculously respond.
    The door is opened, and Shawn steps humbly forward, his head down, his face red, out of the darkness and onto the stage. He climbs the portable stairs behind the water tank—as big as a coffin, glassed in on four sides—until he stands, terrified and exhilarated, on a thin, carpeted platform next to Preacher Dan.
    He looks out into the congregation, finds his mother and father, holding hands. His mother waves at him. His father whispers something in her ear and softly pulls at her arm. She waves again, this time with a waist-high flicker of fingers. Shawn grins and blushes.
    Behind him, Preacher Dan kneels in the water and whispers, “Lie prone, now. Relinquish your body into my hands.” Preacher Dan is a vessel of the Lord. Quick with sympathetic nods and mild jokes, he carries an unassuming personality inside his beefy body, a protective authority that his parishioners trust absolutely. His hands are thick and calloused. Shawn lets them buoy and cradle his head. He breathes deep and bobs on the water’s surface.
    The question, the dare, “Do you, Shawn Casper, accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?”
    “Yes.”
    “Are you, Shawn Casper, prepared to die with Christ, who in His infinite kindness sacrificed His life to save you from sin?”
    “Yes.”
    With his right hand, Preacher Dan braces the back of Shawn’s head. Preacher Dan is built like a football coach, barrel-chested, square-jawed; a sandy mustache cut perfectly straight partially masks a hairlip scar. With his left hand, he presses a towel over Shawn’s mouth and nose. He squeezes his hands together around Shawn’s head. Shawn can’t breathe.
    “I baptize you in the name of Jesus Christ, your Lord and Savior.”
    Submerged, Shawn clenches his eyes shut and waits for the change. Now that Jesus is about to arrive, Shawn wants to cement the misery and confusion of his past life into his heart forever. That way, when he’s out planting seeds, he will know whereof he speaks. He tries to call to mind the totality of horror and fear he’s felt in his nine years on Earth, but the chill of the water, the clamp of the towel, the second-by-second deoxification, all these things are overwhelming. He squirms. He is drowning. He knows, from years of public-pool competitions, the exact number of seconds he can go without a breath: thirty-two. To press his lungs further makes him dizzy. The blood rushes to his brain. He didn’t think he’d actually
die.
His heartbeat echoes in his ears. His lungs burn and tremble. He doesn’t want to
die.
He grasps at his face, but the preacher’s thick arms are like boa constrictors—Shawn can’t reach around them, the elbows block and overpower him. He kicks and splashes. His knees beat against the glass.
    Jesus, please, if I die now, forgive me for all the sins I have done. Forgive me for not eating breakfast this morning—it was just because I was nervous. And forgive me for . . . for . . . You know what I mean, Jesus, everything, even the sins I can’t remember. I’m so scared now, Jesus. Make me go to Heaven. Please, please, make me go to Heaven. All I wanted was to get baptized. Please, help me, God. A-men.
    Shawn stops struggling and lets his body go limp. He can feel himself leaving it behind.
    Then he is coughing and gasping, back on the surface. Alive.
    “As you died with Christ, so you are born with Christ.”
    He gulps down air. Everyone claps and the shallow vibrato, the preprogrammed beat of the electric keyboard, starts in on Hymn 162. Wet needles of hair poke at Shawn’s eyes, filling them with water every time he blinks. He flips the hair back with a jerk of his head and slaps at his ear, trying to pound out the sluicing, logged water. The laughter this elicits from the congregation humiliates him. He gazes out at them. Except for his mother in her Christmas dress and his father in his best tan suit, the parishioners are clothed in t-shirts and jeans,