An insistent pressure on his bladder forced Joe out of bed. Light pouring in the bathroom window, which lacked curtains or blinds, told him it must be nearly noon—the crack of dawn in a rock’n’roller’s life, especially since they had jammed until five in the morning. But the others would be getting up soon.
He stumbled to the kitchen—also blazing with the harsh light of the Great Plains sun—and put on a pot of coffee. Then he stepped out onto the front porch to see just how hot the day promised to be in Lubbock.
It was quiet outside, the kind of quiet Joe associated with actual dawn. No traffic sounds to speak of, no lawnmowers, no children running through sprinklers. Lubbock usually bustled at midday on Saturday. But it couldn’t be early: the sun was straight overhead.
Linda joined him on the porch, handing him a cup of coffee. “Have you seen Travis?”
“Everyone’s still asleep.” He sipped the coffee.
“He’s not still asleep. We were sharing a bed and he’s not there. I looked around to see if he’d moved anywhere else, but I can’t find him.”
“Well, then, he probably went home.”
“His truck’s still here.” Linda waved at the shiny red pickup parked across the street. Travis’s labor of love—an early 50s Ford that he’d rebuilt himself.
“Maybe he walked?”
“He lives five miles from here. Anyway, he also left his phone.”
“If he walked off, he was probably drunk and just forgot it.”
“It was in his pants. Do you think he forgot those, too?”
An image of Travis wandering the streets of Lubbock without his pants took over Joe’s brain and made him giggle.
“I’m serious, Joe. Where could he be?”
He shook his head as a couple more people joined them on the porch. “Sure is quiet out here,” Mary Jo said. “Is it Sunday?”
“Saturday,” Linda said.
“It’s never this quiet on Saturday.”
“Weird,” said Jesse. “Where is everybody?”
Indeed, where was everybody? “You suppose there’s some big revival?” Joe said. “Maybe everyone went off to it.”
“And left their cars behind?”
Several more people joined them on the porch just as Mary Jo said, “Oh, shit. Remember those billboards, the ones about Judgment Day May 21? Maybe they were right. It is May 21. That is, if it’s Saturday.”
“I don’t see any heavenly tribunal,” Joe said.
“Maybe it’s not like that. Maybe it’s the Rapture,” Linda said, jumping up and running back into the house.
They all stared at each other. They’d grown up in Lubbock. They knew the Book of Revelation.
Linda came back out with an iPhone in her hand. “Travis said he’d put the Rapture Tracker app on this thing.”
“The what?”
“Rapture tracker. An app that tells you who got took if the Rapture comes.”
Jesse, who kept up the band’s website, said, “That couldn’t possibly work,” but Linda said, “Here, look. A map of Lubbock showing who’s gone.”
They passed the phone around. The map of Lubbock was full of little stars. Someone scaled it down to their block; theirs was the only house still occupied.
Linda took the phone back. “You can look people up by name. Travis showed me.” She thumbed the keys. “Jesus Christ. Travis was Raptured.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Joe said. “Travis was drunk as a skunk last night, and excuse me for saying so, Linda, but you know he was a married man and not to you.”
Linda was wiping away a tear. “Yeah, I know. But he went to church every Sunday. Sang in the choir. He believed, y’all. He believed. For all I know he got up and prayed for forgiveness last night after I went to sleep.”
“Anybody else we know on that list?” The phone got passed around, with everyone looking somebody up and making exclamations as they discovered who was still here and who was gone.
“Well,” said Joe, “we still got a gig at the Cotton Club tonight. And I’d venture to guess that most of the people who’d come out to hear us ain’t on that list, a few like Travis excepted.”
“Probably won’t be no cops to make us quit at closing time, either,” Jesse said, and there was a cheer.
“I’ll meet you there for the sound check,” Mary Jo said, coming out the door with her guitar case. “I’ve got to go take care of the dogs.”
“You don’t have any dogs, Mary Jo.”
“I do now. I promised my sister, and my cousin Darlene and my aunt and my next-door neighbor and probably about ten other people that I’d take care of their dogs if they were Raptured. I mean they all figured I was bound to be going the other way, playing in a rock band and all, so they asked.”
Joe sat down on the porch step and drained his coffee cup. Linda sat beside him. “Things are going to be real different now,” she said.
“Yeah. I was just thinking. I bet the whole city council is gone. And the judges. And maybe even the people who run the electric company and stuff.”
She handed him the phone. “Here, check it out.”
He took it, but didn’t type in any names. “That means folk like us are going to have to take over local operations. Could be a lot of work.”
“Well, it’s not as big a town as it used to be.”
Joe laughed. “Still, we better use this gig tonight to start getting people organized.”
“Rock’n’roll city council. Gonna be a different town.”
“Yeah, Lubbock ain’t gonna be Lubbock no more.”
“It’ll still be flat.”