Chapter 1 - Ricky Wake Up!

“Ricky, wake up!"

Ricky awoke in the dark, startled.

The same dream. More real than a dream. A premonition? Fire and explosions, weeping and screaming, blood, the mushroom cloud, people running before evaporating, dogs and cats and squirrels and cows and bugs and birds all gone in a flash. The stench. The heat. The blinding light.

“Hurry up or we’ll be late for the sunrise service,” Mrs. Smith insisted as she flipped on the overhead incandescent bulb nearly blinding him.

●●●

“Mom!”

“Quiet down, Ricky,” said the camp counselor leaning over the top bunk, his flashlight in the six-year-old's face. “The others are sleeping. And look what you’ve done - you’ve wet the bed again.”

They called it “Camp S&M” for the initials of the church, Southern Methodist. When Ricky would get much older, he would think of the initials differently. The next morning he heard the counselors talking over breakfast and looking at him, laughing. He wanted desperately to go home, but he was stuck for the rest of the week with his shame.

Swimming in the afternoon was his only escape. Ricky would swim out to the middle of the pond and tread water for the hour and a half of “recreation time." Alone - or at least far from the other campers - he felt safe. Floating. Weightless. Free - almost.

●●●

“Ricky! The service starts in a half-hour.”

Ricky shoved the memory out of his seventeen-year-old head and crawled out of bed. No time for a shower. He reached into his chest of drawers and fetched a pair of underwear. Sitting on the top of the bureau, souvenirs from family trips. He paused and scanned the treasure: a polished pebble from Cape Cod, an Indian drum on a stick - made in China, a shot glass from a trip to the Grand Canyon. The shot glass was clear and embellished with the words GRAND CANYON ARIZONA, and below that, two men in sombreros atop donkeys with what appeared to be snow-covered mountains in the background. Odd that his parents let him buy a shot glass, but being teetotalers, they probably thought it just a cute little something to drink medicine from. Ricky would find out just a few years later that it did indeed work well for holding “medicine.”

Then his eyes stopped on a miniature metal globe from the 1964 World's Fair in New York. It was a rainy day five years previous, and looking for some shelter and a bite to eat, the family boarded the elevator of the New York State Pavilion attached on the outside of the 226 feet tall tower. Other visitors were already crammed in the compartment. Ricky, the last one in, found himself separated from his parents and smashed against the elevator’s large window. Rain pounded against the glass; still, Ricky could see the hundreds of fairgoers milling around with their umbrellas, some with baby strollers struggling to keep their precious cargo dry. The door closed with a swoosh. Then the floor slammed up.

Ricky lost his breath. He clutched the metal rail as the fairgoers, umbrellas, and babies below rushed away. His palms began to sweat, the bottoms of his feet, too. He wanted to scream but didn't. Ricky clenched his eyes shut, but he could still feel the earth sinking away, this capsule of strangers hurtling into space.

“Harold!” Ricky’s mom yelled from the kitchen, “you’re going to make us late!” Ricky set down the little metal globe and hurriedly dressed.

“Your father’s going to be late to his own funeral,” his mom complained as Ricky walked into the kitchen. She handed him a cup of coffee, then,“Go do something with that curly mop.”

Easter sunrise service was held every year in a gazebo located in a cow pasture at the edge of the tiny southern town of Lowman. Beneath a canopy of moss-covered trees, this early morning service had convened there every year from time immemorial, the only service in which all three of the white churches in Lowman participated in together, and the only function that the tiny structure filled the entire year.

The sky was just getting light when Ricky and his mom stepped into the cool, damp early April air. Ricky slipped into the back seat of the gold 1969 Chevy Impala behind his mom. The vinyl seat was slightly clammy with early morning dew; the new car smell had only just recently escaped.

Mrs. Smith warmed up the car using the car keys she had pocketed in anticipation of her husband's dawdling. Finally Harold Smith arrived in his coat and tie.

“About time,” Mrs. Smith complained.

Two short town blocks and the Smith family was on Main Street, a two lane stretch through the smallest town you could imagine, still mostly asleep, not that it was any different any other time on any other day. Main Street consisted of a hardware store, a dry goods store, a five-and-dime, a small grocery store, a couple of gas stations, the post office, and Mr. Smith’s pharmacy. And, the oddest shop in town, Keturah’s Curio Shop.

Ricky was fascinated with the Curio Shop; his parents thought it “full of heathen objects." The store, more a museum than a place of business, had a perpetual musky smell and clearly had not been dusted in a millennium. Carved wooden animals crammed the shelves along with Native American jewelry, old coins, baskets of rabbits’ feet, abused musical instruments, shrunken heads. In the very back was a mostly-neglected book section.

“GASP!”

The Smiths had just passed Lowman’s only liquor store on the edge of town. June Smith was pointing at a ray of sun setting a single cloud formation ablaze. Without them saying a word, Ricky knew what they were thinking: this could be the second coming. But when Jesus had not appeared as they reached the gazebo, Mr. Smith pulled into a field that this morning served as a parking area. A few others were already present and gathered around the little circular wooden structure.

“I’ll join you in a few minutes,” Ricky announced, wanting to avoid all the mandatory small talk with people he hardly knew.

With the engine off, the car quickly began to lose its warmth. Ricky sat, arms folded around himself, and watched other vehicles drive into the open field, the rising sun glinting off chrome and glass. Slouching down in the seat, he looked straight ahead, trying to avoid the peering eyes of neighbors. It wasn’t that Ricky disliked the townspeople; he just had a hard time relating them most of the time. He had lived all his seventeen years in the small town, and the older he got, the more convinced he had been dropped off in the town by mistake, by aliens, maybe. It was as if everyone else was in a secret club of which he had failed to join.

As the crowd assembled, Pastor Clark stepped up to the portable podium at the edge of the gazebo. On cue, the organist from the Smiths' church began the hymn "Blest Be The Tie That Binds" on a small electric Farfisa organ summoning all in attendance to gather round. Ricky slid out the Chevy into the damp morning air, closing the car door as quietly as he could.

But before he could make his way through the still-wet grass toward the gazebo and the whining organ drones, a movement in the sky caught his attention. The sky above was clear and glowing an orange-red. And directly overhead, a formation: four brightly shining metallic points hovered far, far above. Then, zip, one point shot across the sky, hovered, then zipped back into formation. After a couple of seconds, another of the objects broke formation and zipped in another direction before returning to the formation.

There’s no way those are airplanes, Ricky thought. He steadied himself against the car: even with his feet solidly on the ground, just looking up made him queasy. The early morning damp didn’t help either.

“Good morning, everyone,” Reverend Clark announced in his affable southern fashion. The silvery objects continued their maneuvers high above the residents of Lowman gathering around the round wooden structure to celebrate the death and resurrection story being repeated for the umpteenth time. Ricky left the extraterrestrial spectacle and proceeded to the gazebo.

“The Lord has risen,” Pastor Clark announced. A few heads nodded. “We are here like every Easter Sunday to celebrate that wondrous event.” The flock looked on as if waiting for their number to be called at the DMV. “He died for our sins, then rose again.” The few children present were already beginning to get restless, wandering off into the trees that lined the cow pasture. “But this morning, I want to talk about his second coming.”

Ricky looked up hoping to catch sight of the flying objects, but the canopy of trees and moss was too thick.

“In I Thessalonians chapter 4, verses 16 and 17, the Bible tells us, For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God.”

Beep beep. Beep beep. Beep...

Dr. White, the only doctor in town, fumbled through his pockets. BEEP BEEP, BEEP… “Damn pager,” he said under his breath, glanced at it, and turned it off before trodding over to his car.

“Yes,” Reverend Clark cleared his throat, "Jesus will descend from Heaven. Verse 17 says, Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so, shall we ever be with the Lord.”

As Ricky pondered floating up to meet Jesus, his feet and palms began to sweat. He imagined floating higher and higher, the town shrinking below him, past the UFOs, through passing clouds. He reached out grabbing his mother’s shoulder just before swooning. She patted his hand.

“God will wreak havoc on the sinful, the immoral, the sodomites, the infidels. But in his mercy, he has given us a way out. Romans 6, verse 23 says, For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. While God is merciful, he is just. In the time of Noah, the world had become full of iniquity. And so, God destroyed his creation. Then when Sodom and Gomorrah had become places of licentiousness, God destroyed it. And now, with our world sinking deeper into sin and turning away from him, his judgements are going to rain down again.

“The dead in Christ shall rise first," Reverend Clark continued. “Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.”

Now Ricky's stomach began churning as he thought of the Lowman Cemetery less than a mile away and all the decaying corpses that lay below the surface. He shivered.

“That day, our homecoming, is coming soon,” announced Reverend Clark. “Very soon!” Clark shifted at the podium. “I believe we are just months away from His return.”

The assembled group ceased their fidgeting.

“As I’m sure you are aware, last June Israel reclaimed the holy city of Jerusalem. Not only that, but against all odds, they beat back the Arab nations who want nothing more than to destroy them. This is the fulfillment of prophecy, people! In the book of Joel, chapter two, verse one, the Bible says, Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand. For the first time in over two millennia, since before the Roman conquest, Israel has regained control of Jerusalem!

“It is time for our Lord’s return!” Amen. “Turn on the TV and you’ll see what a mess our world is in. There are wars and rumors of war; riots in cities throughout our country; the deterioration of morals; countries like Russia developing nuclear bombs.

“It is time for the Lord to come back and set things straight!” Amen! Amen! “There is another prophesy that is weighing on my heart that I want to share with you. Again, in the book of Joel, chapter two, verse 31, The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord. What is meant by a ‘blood moon’? A blood moon occurs during a total lunar eclipse when the Earth is between the full moon and the sun. When this happens, the moon appears red, like blood.” Reverend Clark paused again. “The next blood moon is only six months away, October sixth.”

The folks who had just minutes ago been staring off into the distance now turned to each other, whispering.

“Now, we can’t be certain when the Lord will come back, not exactly, but I feel led by the Lord to say that it will be very soon after the sixth of October. The signs are there! He is coming back!” Reverend Clark took a slow breath and released it even slower. "So, what I want to ask you, I want you all to check your hearts: be sure that you have accepted the Lord as savior. If you have not, please step forward and let us pray with you. Come forward - please - before it is too late.”

The organ began to drone out the old hymnal Just As I Am as several people shuffled forward and kneeled on the still damp grass in front of the gazebo.

The metallic UFOs were gone when the Smiths returned to their car. And the sky had returned to normal on their drive home: no aliens or giant Jesus in the sky.

“I think the minister is right,” said Mrs. Smith.

“About…”

“Our Lord’s second coming. I’ve been feeling like it was close for a long time!”

That’s practically all you’ve talked about since I was born, Ricky thought.

“Yes. It does add up,” agreed Mr. Smith. "That’s really soon - October sixth."

Then more earthly concerns now caught Mrs. Smith’s attention. “There’s that awful liquor store, Harold. Isn’t there something you can do about it? You are the mayor.”

“Well…”

“I bet you could pull some strings. It’s... it doesn’t belong in our town, especially now that the Lord is coming.”

“I guess it is rather close to the school. I’ll see what I can do.”

Meanwhile, Ricky was following a lone airplane streaking across the sky and wondering who was in it, where were they headed on an early Easter Sunday. Cancun? New York? To rendezvous with long-distance lovers or returning from a steamy clandestine getaway. Maybe to visit a dying relative? What if the Rapture happened right now? Would the plane’s occupants wait until landing before departing to meet Jesus in the sky, the saved ones, anyway? What if Christians floated up in front of the jet? What then?

“And Harold, I was thinking, what if we built a little shed next to the garage to store food, you know, for emergencies. Just in case.”

“You think the Lord is going to let us suffer, June? I bet we get called up before any of the craziness starts.”

“Maybe. But some say it’s the other way around - the fighting, then the Rapture.”

“I’ll check into it. Maybe Harry Jackson could put one up."

“Thanks, dear.” Mrs, Smith patted her husband’s arm. “OK, a quick breakfast and back to church for the service.”

I wonder if it’s cold up there, Ricky wondered.