The Bodyguard ("Zoo" -- #20)

ZOO
by Michael Kroetch

The bodyguard’s mother is upset again with her priest. She doesn’t like it that he thinks he can tell her how to behave and the proper procedure for a wedding. She even puts her fingers in her ears sometimes when he is talking to her. She thinks he must have glandular problems because his neck is so long. In fact, if she were to compare him to any creature in the animal kingdom it would have to be a giraffe. God’s giraffe, that’s what she tells herself he is. She thinks with his twitching ears where he belongs is behind bars at the zoo, not up in front of everybody telling them what Jesus did and did not think was okay to do in a church.

It’s not like it’s her fault she’s divorced, that her first husband was insane, and that he actually had the nerve to threaten her to either get rid of her little blue gun or he would leave her. Now, obviously, she’s not the kind of person prone to violence, but this was too much and was said right smack dab in the middle of a hotdog casserole dinner she’d made especially for him from the back of Better Homes & Gardens. Here it was, a man, again, trying to tell her what was right and wrong in her house? Of course she slapped the husband. And hard. You bet she did. And then sent him packing off to Wenatchee, or Houston, or wherever the dickens he came from. She loved that little gun like it was part of her own body—and if some stupid man thought he could get between her and it, well, there you go. Goodbye.

She just wishes she could somehow say “goodbye” to this giraffe in black pants who thinks he’s got a radio from Jesus jammed up his rear end broadcasting the daily tips and how-to’s of God’s wisdom on weddings. So what if she had her son out of wed-lock and now is going to marry a Hindu? She knows Jesus doesn’t mind. She’s talked to Him about it several times already while she was brushing her teeth. She even thought she’d seen him smile a little once, like maybe the nails in his palms were tickling.