I approached him after everyone was gone. “Reverend Perkins? Can I ask you a question?” He smiled down at me and said we could go to his office. I followed him back through the chapel but couldn’t smell the gladiolas over the scent of his hair tonic. We went through a door into a wide hallway, deep red carpeting absorbing the sound. I’d never been back there and it all seemed mysterious.
He opened the door of his office. “Have a seat,” he said and he sat in his leather chair, rested his hands on his desk. “What can I help you with, uh….”
“I’m Roland McCray, sir,” I said, “I want to know about the Rapture. I read about it in a Bible Story book, that it will happen in the end-times. The picture showed people rising into the sky, dressed in their Sunday best.”
“In the Rapture we go to Heaven,” Reverend Perkins said.
“But, it said only the saved people would get to go. Who are the saved people?”
“Everyone who accepts the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior,” he said. “You’re saved, aren’t you?”
“I think so. I always try to do what Jesus taught.”
“Accept Christ into your heart and get baptized, and you’re saved. You are baptized, right?”
“No sir,” I said. The little smile left the Reverend’s face. “Oh, I see. Why not?”
“My dad won’t let us get baptized. He says we should be grownups before we make that kind of decision.”
“I take it your father doesn’t attend my church?” I didn’t tell him that daddy says Monument Baptist church is too fancy, the Reverend’s a crook who dresses too nice and drives around in a big Cadillac. A “snake oil salesman”.
“No sir. He doesn’t go to church anymore,” I said. “What happens to the good people who don’t get saved?”
“Good people? What do mean “good people”?
“People who do what Jesus taught and try to live the way He said we should,”
“There is no good outside of Christ,” he said in his best fire and brimstone voice. “Get yourself baptized and you won’t have to find out what happens to those left behind.” I didn’t say anything, just looked at the gold reflecting in the polished wood of his desk.
“If that’s all, then I have work to do,” he said. “You can find your way out?”
“Yes sir. Thank you.” Reverend Perkins never answered my question. But I did learn one thing: when the Rapture comes Daddy and I aren’t going anywhere.