Any Minute Now
The screen door never quite latched right after the storm last spring. It clacked open and shut with every breeze, slow and deliberate, like it had something to say and figured it would get around to saying it eventually. Denny didn’t fix it. Said there was no point. If the Lord was coming, He wasn’t gonna use the front door anyway.
I didn’t argue. We’d stopped arguing years ago—somewhere around the third blood moon and the last time Harold Camping opened his mouth. Now we just sat. Me in the old recliner with the stuffing coming out the arm, him in that green plastic chair that creaked like it wanted to die. His Bible lay open on a stack of Field & Stream magazines, the red letters faded at the edges from sun and sweat and coffee spills.
“You know what today is?” he asked, not looking at me.
“Nope.”
“Feast of Trumpets.”
I sipped from the mug I’d microwaved twice already this morning. It tasted like scorched dust and regret. “You sure?”
“I’m always sure.” He leaned forward, squinting past the porch rails like he might catch a glimpse of Gabriel oiling his horn.
This made twelve years since Denny quit his job at the tire shop. Said God told him to be ready. That the trump would sound and all this would be over. He cashed out his 401k. Bought canned beans, bulk rice, and ammo. Started every morning by checking the eastern sky and finished every night by reading Thessalonians out loud like he was prepping for finals.
The trouble is, I believed him at first.
Not all the way—not the “any minute now” part—but enough to sell the camper, enough to stop renewing my teaching license, enough to pull up a chair beside him and squint at the sky with tired eyes. We didn’t call it waiting then. We called it preparing.
And then the world didn’t end.
Not the year they shut down the mill. Not the year of the plague. Not the drought. Not the floods. Not when Russia moved. Not when the river turned black with algae blooms and the deer stopped coming down the ridge. Not when Mrs. Tuttle buried her grandbaby. Not when Billy Renfro hung himself behind the gym.
And the Lord kept not coming.
We never said it out loud, but we’d started living like men already gone.
Neighbors asked us to come help rebuild the youth center after the fire—said they needed people who could swing a hammer and handle insulation without bitching. We told them we had “other priorities.” Pastor Gentry said there was a veterans’ outreach starting up, needed volunteers. Denny quoted scripture about not being entangled in civilian affairs. I just nodded like my mouth forgot how to form apologies.
There was always something we could’ve done. Always someone who needed a ride, or a check-in, or a hand stacking wood. Hell, twelve years is enough time to build an orphanage or start a damn school.
Instead, we sat here, two sentries guarding the absence of a King.
“You remember when Momma died?” I asked.
Denny blinked slow. “Course.”
“She asked you to stay that night. After the machines came off.”
He didn’t look at me. “I was fasting.”
“For what?”
“For clarity.”
I nodded. The screen door creaked again, like it was trying to leave.
“You think she noticed?” I asked. “You think the Lord was glad you skipped her last breath so you could sit in the dark and listen for hoofbeats?”
“Don’t do that,” he said.
“Do what?”
“That.”
There’s a silence men like us carry. It isn’t pious. It’s cowardly. We bury doubt under doctrine, bury guilt under prophecy. It’s easier to believe the world’s about to end than to believe we’re the ones letting it rot.
I thought about Carmen Reeves, who used to be in my AP history class. She’d messaged me two years ago—wanted help with her college essay. Said I was the only teacher who ever saw something in her. I never wrote back. That was the month we thought the Euphrates River drying up was the final sign.
She goes by Doctor Reeves now. Works in Detroit, running a clinic for homeless teens. I saw her on the news once, her braid tucked behind one ear, talking like the world was still worth saving.
Denny scratched at his beard. “What time you think it is?”
I checked my phone. “9:47.”
“AM?”
“No, Denny. The apocalypse.”
He didn’t laugh. He never did anymore.
It got cold around noon. The wind blew ash from someone’s burn barrel across the sky, and for a moment it really did look like something was happening—like maybe the clouds were folding back and time itself was about to quit pretending.
But it was just ash. And a hawk.
And the same slow ache in my chest that’d been there since we decided not to matter anymore.
“You think maybe we missed it?” I said.
Denny squinted. “What?”
“The Second Coming.”
He turned to me for the first time all day. “You think He came and left us?”
“No.” I paused. “I think maybe He came and we didn’t recognize Him.”
Denny looked down at his hands. He had a cut on the knuckle. He picked at it absently, like he didn’t want to hear the next thing I was gonna say.
“What if He came in the form of every hungry kid we ignored? Every invitation we turned down? Every time we could’ve helped and chose to wait instead?”
Denny looked back at the sky. “That’s not how it works.”
“Maybe it is,” I said.
We didn’t speak after that.
The wind picked up. The screen door slammed once, hard enough to make us both jump. I stood. My knees popped like old rafters.
“Where you goin’?” he asked.
“Down to the shelter. They’re short on blankets.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Maybe He’ll meet me there,” I added, stepping off the porch.
I didn’t look back.
I didn’t need to.