Authors: Rob Stennett
So he ran until he was out of breath, until it hurt too much to go on. And then he ran a little farther. When he finally stopped,
his face was covered in tears and sweat and dust and pieces of cornhusk. He took off his shirt and wiped his face the best
he could. It made his shirt filthy. Another thing to be grounded for. He didn’t care now. He wanted to be grounded. He would
give anything to be home, to be yelled at, to be sent to his room for a month. All of that seemed small now. Because he knew
how bad the situation had become.
You could die out here
.
They might not even find you until weeks from now.
This didn’t even scare him. He just knew it was true. He’d watched survival videos in boy scouts where grown men had gotten
lost in the wilderness. In one video a man got frostbite and his leg had to be cut off. In another video a man got lost in
the desert, and his face had gotten so scorched that it looked like he had leprosy, and when they found him they tried to
give him water, but even a thimble of it made him sick.
“I’m serious, God, please help me find a way out of here. I’ll be good. Really good. I’ll help others and feed the homeless.
I shouldn’t have come here. I know that now. I learned my lesson. But you have to help me. DO YOU HEAR ME? Please, if you’re
really out there you have to help me.”
This wasn’t the first time he’d prayed this kind of prayer. There were two other times (he got lost in Disneyland when he
was eight, and Nate had broken his leg when they were tree climbing last summer) and both of those times God didn’t say a
word.
Right now Will didn’t have time to wait on God. He’d have to get himself out of this mess. He needed to run more. But he was
tired. His head was cloudy, and everything looked blurry. Even worse, the sun had set. The cornstalks created crisscross shadows
all over the ground. The moon was starting to shine now, but just enough to make things seem eerie and alive. There was no
point to running anymore. This is where he would end. This would be the final resting place of Will Henderson.
The winds picked up again, howling and making the cornstalks dance around him. Will was paralyzed. It was like when the nightmares
were so bad he couldn’t even scream.
Then a face appeared in the cornstalks. It looked just like Moses did in all of the movies, only it was made out of the cornstalks
coming together: bright yellow eyes, a ripe green mouth, and a cornhusk beard. Will wondered if God was finally about to speak
to him. Then again, maybe it wasn’t God at all. Maybe it was an angel. Or maybe the face was Satan or a demon. Maybe it was
there to trick Will.
He’d have to listen carefully to be sure.
When the face finally spoke, it told Will he had nothing to be afraid of.
Will said he was afraid of the wind. The wind stopped.
Then the face told Will about the rapture (only the face didn’t call it that but Will knew what he was talking about), about
what would happen in the next week. Will listened; his mind was calm and it soaked up everything.
When the face finished talking, it went back to looking like cornstalks, and Will was so calm and tired that he couldn’t help
but sleep.
The sun set a Reese’s Pieces orange as Jeff Henderson flipped down his dusty visor. He was driving home from another day of
automotive sales on the access road next to I – 70. He could almost feel the cars as they whizzed by him at eighty miles per
hour.
They were all on their way somewhere.
They didn’t think of Goodland as a town or a city. They thought of it as more of a glorified truck stop. Most travelers know
Goodland has a Holiday Inn Express or a Comfort Inn to stay at if they need a place to rest before they head 189 miles west
to Denver or 394 miles east to Kansas City. They read the road signs and see that within the city limits there’s a McDonald’s
and a Dairy Queen, or a Rusty’s if they want to experience an authentic small-town diner. And observant travelers notice Goodland’s
slogan handpainted in white on the side of a splintered maroon barn that reads, “Goodland. Stay a night. Stay a lifetime.”
But that’s about all those who drive past Goodland know about the town. To them it lasts for about three exits along I – 70
and then it disappears in their rearview mirror. It’s quickly forgotten with the promise of a bigger, better Dairy Queen forty-five
miles ahead in the next town.
What they don’t know is how close-knit Goodland is. They don’t know about the Goodland fair and livestock show that happens
every summer, or that fall is everyone’s favorite time of year because it’s when the cornstalks reach up towards heaven like
they are trying to touch God himself. They don’t know that nobody from Goodland actually eats at Rusty’s because they’d much
rather go to one of the diners near downtown or the café at the airport. And most of all those tourists driving through Goodland
don’t know that the motto on the handpainted sign has everything to do with the belief by some (but certainly not all) that
they have been chosen for the rapture. Those who think of Goodland as a truck stop have no way of knowing that to “Stay a
Night” means you are a tourist passing through, but to “Stay a Lifetime” means you’ll get the honor of experiencing Goodland’s
fate with the rest of the town.
Jeff Henderson was born in Goodland so he knew all these things. He knew exactly what the sign meant. He passed by it every
day, but he never looked at it or read it because to him it was just a piece of the scenery. It was part of the background
like skyscrapers are to natives of New York or mountains are to natives of Colorado. He didn’t think of it as normal, nor
did he think of it as eccentric. It was something he took for granted. Some small towns have legends of old haunted mansions
on a hill or stories of spooky graveyards on the edge of town, and that’s what the Goodland rapture talk amounted to for Jeff.
It was a quaint legend which added to the charm of Goodland, but nothing more. Nothing that needed serious thought and consideration,
because there were other things in life. Pressing things.
Everyday things.
And those were the things Jeff thought about as he drove home from work. At the moment he was thinking about his Ford Taurus,
which was too old, clunky, and unfashionable for someone in his line of work to be driving. It was older than both his kids.
If he had a promotion he could buy something much nicer and reliable and slick. But just as much, a promotion would validate
everything: the hours away from his family, the stress, the phone calls, the hustling, the twisting and scheming, the smile
he had to have plastered on his face forty hours every week, the nine to five, the long days without a sale. The blood, sweat,
and tears would all be worth it if he could just get promoted to senior sales rep. Even better, he wouldn’t have to put junior
sales rep on his business card anymore.
Junior
. It was so embarrassing. He was a father of two, he was a husband, and he’d been in the business world for a little while
now. And he still had a card that said
junior
.
Still, worrying about things like business cards and titles was an entirely new thing for Jeff. A couple months ago he didn’t
care what was on his business card. He was just happy to have a job. Well maybe not just a job. He’d had lots of those — he’d
been a farmhand, he’d framed houses, and he’d been an assistant manager at Señor Clucks.
For his whole life he’d been paid by the hour. But he’d done whatever it took to survive. Jeff had been living in survival
mode ever since his senior year of high school. It was second semester and he was ready to graduate. He was imagining life
in college. He didn’t know what he wanted to study, didn’t even care, he just wanted to live the college life. He’d take all
the easy classes and party for a couple of years; he’d get serious about his major and figure out life junior year. That was
the plan. But then on one ordinary day, Amy came up to his locker and her face was pale. She was already pretty fair skinned,
but on that day she looked almost translucent.
“What’s up, babe,” Jeff said. He was wearing his letter jacket and chewing gum.
“I’m late,” Amy said.
“So am I,” Jeff answered.
“No, I’m
really
late,” Amy said.
He gently grabbed her elbow and smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ll go to class with you.”
“Is that your way of saying you’ll marry me?”
“Wow. Um, okay, I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of commitment.”
“Jeff, I don’t think you’re following — ”
“Listen, you have history, right? Mr. Smith loves me. I’ll give him some excuse for why you’re late — ”
“No, I’m late.
Late
, you know — ”
Jeff stared at his girlfriend blankly.
“ — Pregnant late.”
And Jeff aged ten years. He’d never had a steady girlfriend, and euphemisms like
late
just weren’t in his vocabulary. But
pregnant
was.
Everything came flooding in. He could hear a crying baby, smell diapers, and he could see a tiny messy apartment overstuffed
with cribs and rattles and toys that blipped, blinked, and beeped. He could also see his college life disappearing. He’d never
get to drink beer while standing on his head, never get to write a paper after thirty-six hours with no sleep; he’d never
get to tie sweaters around his shoulders and flirt with sorority sisters. His next eighteen years were etched in stone.
It didn’t even matter that he never really saw himself as the family type. He knew what the right thing to do was. And if
he had any doubt, Amy’s parents knocked it away by insisting he make Amy an honorable woman. Jeff agreed that it was the reasonable
thing to do. But as soon as they were married, he was just in over his head. All they could afford for a honeymoon was a weekend
in Kansas City and when they got home real life began.
Jeff didn’t know how to act in real life. He’d never been anything but a student. He didn’t know how to support a family or
be a husband. There were a whole bunch of experiences like going to college that were supposed to get him ready for all of
that. But there wasn’t time anymore. It was as if Rocky had to go straight to fighting Apollo Creed without the jogging in
sweats.
So from the moment Emily was born, Jeff worked whatever job he could to support his family. To make sure Amy and the baby
had food on the table, clothes to wear, and a warm roof to protect them at night.
At Hansley things were different. A friend had helped him get a job there about two years ago and now he finally had a career.
For the first time in his life he wasn’t just paid by how many hours he spent at work. Now there was incentive. Selling pre-owned
cars would mean he could double and triple his salary.
The problem was every Friday, Charles Hansley Jr. (Mr. Hansley’s son who’d never sold a car in his life) printed off reports
of the top sales rankings of the week. The names of all the salesmen were listed, starting with the week’s best salesmen at
the top. Guys like Kevin Grabowski were always in the lead. He wore expensive shoes, had the million-dollar grin, and he was
a natural. Sales was in his blood. He was a shark. But Jeff wasn’t like Kevin and that was maybe why his name was always near
the bottom. And that made him afraid. He worried that Mr. Hansley would decide Jeff didn’t have what it took to be a salesman.
Jeff lived in constant fear of a conversation that would start and/or end with the words, “Maybe you’d be better off in another
line of work.”
Lately he’d decided to change. He could do this. He could be a top salesman. He’d just have to fight a little harder. He’d
have to develop a killer instinct. He decided he needed to read business books — everything from motivational books, to books
on time management, to books on improving his sales techniques and approach. So, long after Emily and Will had gone to bed,
Jeff would sit in the dark with Amy sound asleep next to him and a reading light clipped to his book so he could scour the
pages for any insight they had to offer on increasing his sales.
And the reading helped Jeff. It reminded him that he was dedicated to his job. He was dedicated to his family. He was dedicated
to providing them all the stable, normal existence they’d always wanted.
When Jeff got home he stopped at his mailbox, opened it up, threw a pile of mail into his passenger seat, and then he drove
down his long concrete driveway. Coming home always made everything worthwhile. He had a great house out in the country; the
nearest neighbor was five hundred yards away. He had a large windmill that faced the Johnson’s cornfield. It was something
he’d always wanted. The windmill didn’t even do anything really, it was just there for decoration, but it was so great to
own one. Sometimes he would just sit on his porch and drink lemonade and stare at it.
Jeff walked by the windmill and into his house where the smell of the roast Amy was cooking wafted towards him. It was Monday.
That meant they were going to have a real meal. The type of meal that black-and-white television families had, the type where
June and the Beav and Wally would laugh and share their day. The type where he could ask his kids, “How was your day at school?”
Where they could share the highs and lows of life, where they could be a family.
Jeff hated that this only happened on Mondays now. He hated that they were getting too old to be a family.
Emily practically had one foot out the door. She couldn’t wait to leave. Goodland was too small for her. She wanted to go
to the University of Kansas, study marine biology, and who knows, maybe take over the world from there. It wasn’t that she
was bratty or mean — she was just disinterested. Emily saw her dad as more dorky and goofy, rather than the hero and white
knight and rockstar he used to be. Still, he was proud of what she had become. Proud of her good grades, proud that she was
planning to be nominated to homecoming court this fall, proud that she’d been elected student body treasurer. He just didn’t
want it to be over so quickly. He wanted to raise her all over again. It was so much fun the first time, but so often he was
too busy to realize it. And now she would be out of the house. She would go on with her life. She would call on birthdays
and visit on Christmas. There wouldn’t be much left to look forward to.