The Bodyguard ("Heaven" story #75)

HEAVEN
by Michael Kroetch

The bodyguard’s mother is sitting on her couch looking at a cruddy old photograph album. It’s from her mother. It’s an accident that she has it out. She was looking for something else in the closet when it slid out with her postcard collection off the topmost shelf, hit her shoulder, then split in half along its binding as it met the floor. Most of the pictures are of strange people she doesn’t know anything about. They stand beside dirty brick buildings and are covered heel-to-head in soot and ash, grinning like chimps. Everything in the town seems broken and this bothers her. Terribly. She doesn’t want to look at this pile of scraps. She never has before. She doesn’t know why she is now. The ex-secret-policeman who sells her soap is supposed to be coming over and she doesn’t have any lipstick on. Stupid photos. Her dead mother isn’t in any of them. A book like this belongs in the trash, not on her lap. It smells like old eggs. But she can’t close it. Can’t stop herself from looking into the ancient faces.

She decides this must be her mother’s drowned town. Stupid place. So filthy and tired. Everyone clapped their hands as the river swelled and the cleansing waters came to take it all away. Like a bad dream. At least this is what her mother’s friend had said. So now the iron-ore mine, post office, these buildings and streets are all underwater—hundreds of feet down. And the disinfecting hydroelectric dam that did the good deed is providing everyone with light and letting vacuum cleaners roar. Good riddance, little town. The only thing built on high enough ground to survive was the prison. In the album’s last picture it’s still there, alone, shrouded in fog. Like heaven. And all around, as far as the camera can see, there’s nothing but motionless gray water. She thinks this photo must have been taken from some kind of boat. It feels that way. As if nothing solid were below the one who clicked the camera’s button.

The image leaves the bodyguard’s mother in a wistful mood. But after she closes the book and sees the dirty smudges it has left on her dress, she gets so angry she can’t get the thing into the trash fast enough. And it’s only after she has and has already slammed the cupboard door closed on it that it occurs to her it was probably her mother who took those photos. So what, she tells herself. It’s too late. Trash is trash—and the past is past. The line must be drawn somewhere. But she can’t stop looking at the closed cupboard door and thinking about the strangely beautiful way the old prison looked in the fog. Like it was floating.