Authors: Rob Stennett
Goodland is the test market for the rapture.
The ultimate warning sign for all to repent.
Will was running late. At this rate he’d never make it home in time for dinner. And this wasn’t just dinner. This was Monday
night dinner. This was the most important meal of the week for the Henderson family. The meal for which his mom spent the
whole day cooking things like roast, garlic potatoes, fresh baked rolls, and pistachio fruit salad.
Will knew he should have left Nate Jackson’s house sooner. But Nate had just returned from a family trip to Kansas City where
he got the most impressive set of brand-new, mint-condition DC graphic novels Will had ever seen. “Look how cherry these are,”
Nate said as he opened the cellophane packaging and slowly took out the comics. Nate was right. These were cherry. Batman
and Superman looked lifelike on these pages. No, they looked better than lifelike. Every detail on every page was breathtaking.
Otherworldly. How could someone be expected to keep track of time when looking at comics like this?
“Can I read it?” Will asked.
“Yeah, just be real careful. Mom said I’m not even supposed to open these because they’re so nice.”
Will sat on the edge of Nate’s bed and flipped the comic books open. He turned to one page after another, reading about the
adventures of the superheroes. Will’s mind always got lost in these stories, and at that moment he was lost in thought about
Batman. Will felt bad for Batman. The Flash could move at the speed of light, Wonder Woman had an invisible jet, and Superman
had a ridiculously unfair amount of powers (flight, laser vision, X-ray vision, wind breath, super strength — and those were
just his basic powers — it seemed like he could just come up with a brand-new power whenever he needed it). And then there
was Batman. He had exactly zero superpowers. He was rich. He had a lot of money. His trust fund was his power. He could buy
really cool cars and planes and bat gadgets that could do anything and everything. But Batman couldn’t
do
anything for himself. Will thought all the other superheroes probably looked at Batman like he was a poser. Batman was the
rich kid who had to buy his way into the Super Friends club. That must have made Batman really sad. Will thought Batman probably
lay in bed late at night and tried not to cry at the mean things the other superheroes said. Batman probably would even look
towards the heavens and pray, “Please God, give me some kind of superpower. It doesn’t have to be much. Just the ability to
jump over a building or become invisible or shoot beams of ice or fire out of my hands.”
Will was almost in a trance flipping through the pages thinking about Batman when Nate said, “Dude, don’t you have to be home?
It’s almost dark.”
Will looked up at the clock. “Shoot. I gotta go.” He jumped off Nate’s bed, ran down the stairs, and opened the door to leave.
“See you later Mrs. Jackson,” Will said.
“If the Lord tarries,” Mrs. Jackson called from the kitchen.
Once Will was out of Nate’s house he started walking home down the gravel road. The road was on the outskirts of Goodland
and on either side were large cornstalks as tall as NBA players. Will walked as quickly as he could. But even at his quick
pace he wouldn’t make it home in time. His family lived so far away from everybody.
Still, he
needed
to make it home in time. This was Monday night dinner. This was a huge deal. So, the only chance he had to make it home before
he was grounded for the next month was to cut across the cornfields.
Will stepped into the fields and knew that if he walked in a straight diagonal line, he would cut at least twenty minutes
off his walk home. He’d just have to keep walking quickly and he’d be there in no time. He’d be there before his mom could
call Nate Jackson’s mom and ask where he was. Will didn’t like when his mom talked to Nate’s mom. They always talked about
religious things.
Of course most people talked about religious things in Good-land. Will had visited some of his cousins in Denver last summer
and noticed that no one around there ever said things like, “If the Lord tarries,” when they said goodbye. But in Goodland
that was just how most people said goodbye. Kind of like saying “Geshundheit” after someone sneezes. But the thing is, most
people say “Geshundheit” after you sneeze. It seemed to Will that no one said “If the Lord tarries” anywhere else in the world.
He wanted to make sure so he tested the theory out a month ago when his family visited Worlds of Fun amusement park in St.
Louis. The teenager buckling Will into the roller coaster told him, “Have a good ride.” And Will answered, “If the Lord tarries.”
The teenager looked at Will as if he were from Neptune.
On their road trip home from the amusement park, Will asked his mom, “How come nobody else talks like we do?”
“What do you mean?” his mother answered.
“Nobody in Denver or at Worlds of Fun says things like, ‘If the Lord tarries.’ Only people in Goodland say things like that.”
“That’s because they’re not concerned with the rapture,” his mother said.
“Oh.”
“You know what the rapture is, don’t you?”
Of course he knew what the rapture was. Everybody knew what the rapture was. He’d heard about it lots of times in Sunday school.
People around town talked about it every once in a while. And from the way people talked, Will always worried that it was
coming soon. That made Will scared. He didn’t want to die.
Not that it was really dying. Or was it? He’d have to go away. His life on earth would be over. Isn’t that essentially what
dying is? Does it matter if you skip the pain? Or is the pain part of dying? Do you have to experience something bad like
a bullet through your chest or a car wreck or liver cancer or AIDS or burning or drowning? Is that part of dying? Probably
it was. So that was one of the things that Will
liked
about the rapture. He’d get to skip the pain part of dying. It was like God would hit fast forward or skip to the next chapter,
and he’d be whisked away to some magical place with clouds and harps and singing. He’d be whisked away to heaven.
So it wasn’t really heaven that bothered him — it was just that there was so much
here
that he hadn’t experienced. He hadn’t graduated and thrown his cap high into the air. He’d never learned to drive or been
able to pick up a girl by himself on prom night. He wouldn’t be able to go on a camping trip with just his friends like they’d
always planned they would when they were old enough. He hadn’t ever owned his own house, or had a job where he made lots of
money that he could spend on video games and guitars and flat screen TVs.
Worst of all, he’d never even had a girlfriend, he’d never kissed a girl like all the other guys at school said they had.
And he’d certainly never had the
S
-word with a girl. And he sort of wanted to do that too. Not until he was older. Not until his wedding night, and maybe not
until a while after that. The
S
-word sounded crazy and weird and like a lot of fun, but also kind of scary and intimidating for Will right now.
But it wouldn’t always be scary. Someday he would be ready.
Still, he didn’t think about the
S
-word much, but he thought about his wife all the time. He wondered what she would look like. She’d probably have blonde hair
and she’d like to play soccer or volleyball. Will even wondered if he knew his wife right now. Sometimes, during math when
the teacher was writing long division problems on the board, he’d look around the classroom and wonder if his wife was sitting
in class with him. Was she a few desks away and just as bored as he was? What if someday, once they were married, they’d talk
about math class and tell each other, “That’s where I first noticed you, in math, during those super boring lessons. That’s
when I knew we’d be married.” But that day would never come. He’d never get to have that conversation with his wife. He’d
never even get to know who his wife really was.
He’d probably be raptured before then.
And that wasn’t fair. This was a point Will often brought up in his prayer time. “God, why can’t you wait until I’m old, like
twenty-five, until you bring the rapture? Let me do some of the stuff that people have gotten to do for thousands and millions
of years before me. Isn’t that fair?” And then Will felt like God spoke the answer to him: No, that wasn’t fair. The rapture
had to come someday; it couldn’t wait until everyone turned twenty-five. Because then it would
never
happen. And besides, there were some people who were babies or little kids and they’d never get to experience all the good
stuff Will had. They’d never get to ride a bike, or white-water raft, or go see the Kansas City Royals play live and in person.
He should consider himself lucky he’d gotten to do all of that. Even more, he would be
very
lucky that the rapture was going to happen in his lifetime. He was special.
And then he stopped.
He looked around. He was so deep in thought about the rapture and Worlds of Fun and his future wife that he’d lost his place
in the cornfields.
Where are you?
There was barely any sunlight left. He wasn’t even supposed to be in the cornfields. If his parents knew that he’d cut across
the cornfields, he couldn’t imagine how grounded he would be, but it would be bad. He would probably still be grounded after
the rapture. The adults didn’t want anyone in the Johnsons’ fields because they stretched on as far as the eye could see,
in every direction, rows and rows of endless cornstalks like trees in a forest. Will could navigate them; he’d done it before,
but he had to pay careful attention to the subtle changes and markers along the way. And he thought he
was
paying attention. But all the thoughts of the rapture crept in and distracted him. It happened to him sometimes. Emily made
fun of him because of it. His mom said it wasn’t his fault. One thought could jump onto another and another. But she
also
said just because it wasn’t his fault didn’t mean he wouldn’t have to fight against it. She said he needed to pay attention,
and that wasn’t easy; that’s why they called it
paying
.
He was paying attention now.
He knew exactly what to do to get out of the fields; he hadn’t been so lost in his thoughts that he’d completely lost his
bearings. He needed to walk straight about three hundred steps, and then right five hundred steps, and then left six hundred
steps. Like that, he’d be out of the cornfields. He could run home, he’d be there before dark — he’d outrace the sun if he
had to. Then he could go back to normal things like worrying about the rapture.
He started counting each step. He knew right where he was the whole time, and once he got near his last few steps he could
feel the outside world, taste the fresh air, and imagine what it would look like outside of the green and yellow and brown
blur he’d been staring at for the last half hour. And as he walked out of the cornfields something odd happened.
There was more corn.
The six hundredth step looked just like every other step. He hadn’t left the fields at all. He closed his eyes and listened.
Surely he could hear people playing and talking; there would be cars driving on the road, and these sounds would guide him
out of the field. He had miscalculated. But he was close. He just needed a little help to guide him the rest of the way.
He listened — and — nothing.
Now he was going to have to do something that would give him away. He’d have to yell. And then everyone for sure would know
that he was in the cornfields. They would tell him, “I told you so. This is exactly why we say, ‘Don’t play in the cornfields.’
” He would tell them he wasn’t playing, he knew exactly where he was. He just got a little distracted. But those logical explanations
would fall on deaf ears.
That was a price he was willing to pay. “Is anybody out there?” Will said, loudly and confidently without quite yelling it.
There was still a shred of hope that someone would be nearby, someone who’d guide him out of the fields so he could avoid
trouble.
“Anybody?” He half-yelled again.
No answer. He started worrying much less about being grounded and much more about dying of thirst in the cornfield. He knew
that you died of thirst way before you died of hunger, which seemed weird to Will because he usually felt hungry a lot more
than thirsty.
So this time he yelled, “Please, I’m lost. I need some help. PLEASE!”
Silence. Someone could hear him. They were just trying to prove a point. They were trying to teach him a lesson.
“Okay. I’m sorry! DO YOU HEAR ME? I SAID SORRY! I WILL NEVER GO IN THE CORNFIELDS AGAIN!”
Nothing.
He walked up and down the rows of corn explaining things over and over. Screaming for help. Admitting guilt. Apologizing.
More screaming. And towards the end he started to cry. He didn’t want to. He knew it was such a baby-kid-lame-o thing to do.
But he couldn’t help it. If someone could hear him, they were playing a sick-cruel-scary joke.
But what if someone
could
hear him?
He closed his eyes and listened one more time. Not for the obvious things like cars driving and honking or kids playing and
laughing or parents talking. No, he listened for the quiet types of things. Like someone breathing or soft footsteps. And
then he could hear it. Slow breaths, in and out, from someone else, as if they’d been there all along. He could feel someone
else’s eyes burrowing into the back of his neck, he could almost see whoever it was behind him, smiling.
“Hey, mister, listen, I’ve got a knife so you don’t want to — ”
And then he ran. It was a trick he’d learned from watching movies. The hero would always act like he was talking to the bad
guy, and then mid-sentence, out of nowhere, the hero sprung into action. Except the hero probably wouldn’t have run; he would
have turned around and snapped the bad guy’s neck, but Will didn’t know how to break someone’s neck. He couldn’t even punch
very hard. So he just ran. He didn’t even look back to see who it was behind him. He knew if he ran in any one direction long
enough and fast enough and hard enough, he’d get away from whoever was following him and out of the cornfields.