The Bodyguard ("Mission" -- #13)

MISSION
by Michael Kroetch

The necessities of life are food, warmth, shelter, and clothing. The bodyguard knows this. It’s why he’s here. He doesn’t look at those around him. They have a different story than he does and he does not want to be a part of their stories. He also doesn’t want to sit beside them, but he’s hungry. He can smell the soup. He can see the cots in the next room. Unlike outside, it’s warm in here.

The line shuffles forward. Flies buzz on the clothes of the man directly ahead of him. The bodyguard wants to swat them away, but sees a thing that looks like a stab mark on the back of the man’s neck. He doesn’t want the man to think he’s up to something. He doesn’t want anyone here to think this. He has seen them looking at his suit and at the wire going into his ear. He knows he troubles them. Even with his dark glasses on, he can see it in their eyes.

He touches his rib, the broken one where the man at the Christmas pageant hit him with a chair after somebody else had wrestled his gun away. It had surprised him then how loudly the frightened baby Jesus had screamed and how high pitched the tone of the scream became. The bodyguard had thought it might cause the windows to crack. But it didn’t.

The windows in here are all cracked, yet somehow it’s still warm. As the bodyguard sits on the bench with his styrofoam bowl of barley soup, he looks at one of the cracks in the windows. It is such a thin space for air to travel through to get from the inside to the outside. He will be out there again soon. He knows this. He can already feel the wind stripping away his skin. But he won’t scream like baby Jesus did. He has been trained to wait in silence for his mission.