What I remember most about the River Angel Shrine is how dark it was inside, and the dance of the candles in their little glass cups, and the animal odor of the old wooden floors. There was snow on the ground, though not much. I sat in a folding chair, listening to the music of the pigeons in the eaves. Every now and then, one would launch into the dusky air, flap-flap-flapping between the rafters. There was a single shaft of light slicing down from the apex of the barn, illuminating the cold face of the statue—an ugly face, I thought, with its pupilless eyes, its thin-lipped mouth. The stony curve of each wing ended in a knifelike point. It was said the boy’s ashes were buried here. I imagined how it would be to lie on my back in this barn, on a night much colder than this day, encircled by the warm breathing of sheep.
I got up and walked around, fingering mementos others had left. A few stuffed animals, a plastic rosary, pack after pack of cigarettes. Mostly, there were photographs, and one in particular caught my eye. A newborn infant—boy or girl, I couldn’t tell—who already wore the wise and faraway look of the dead. Scrawled on the back were the words Remember me. I walked out into the light. The house across the courtyard looked abandoned, but I could smell woodsmoke from the fireplace, and there were bath towels and sheets hanging from the clothesline. I left a dollar donation, took a little gold angel from the basket. Then I put it back. Then I picked it up again, slipped it into the pocket of my jeans. Another car came slowly up the driveway. Two women were inside. As I drove away, I noticed they had Minnesota tags. One of the women waved.
Later, I found the bridge. The spot the boy had fallen from was marked with a small white cross, and there were a dozen faded plastic bouquets, some of them partially buried in snow, that had been pushed off the highway by plows. I wished I had thought to bring something with me. I walked onto the bridge, looked out over the railing. The water was a clear, cold blue, and I could see the public park, the empty swings rocking just a little, as if occupied by ghosts.
I don’t know what I expected to see, there at the bridge or, earlier, in the barn. Several weeks passed before I discovered the little gold angel I’d tucked in my pocket. Now it hangs above my writing desk from a piece of fishing line. The gold is flaking from its back and wings. Why do I keep it? I cannot pretend to believe that transcendence lies beyond the mind, that the soul is more than memory, which is neither fiction nor fact, but a country all its own. Still, as I type these words, the vibrations cause the angel to tremble on its slender thread, and how eager I am to forget, if only for a moment, that I am the source of its fear. I visit the shrines. I walk into the churches, the temples and mosques, the tent revivals and palm reader’s shops, and even, once, a Wiccan ceremony in a starlit field of wheat. My love for this world is great enough, at times, to shatter my heart. But what does it matter? Someday I’ll slip beneath its surface without a ripple.
And yet I pray for the boy, whom I’ve chosen to call Gabriel. I pray for the infant in the photograph, its mouth like a tear in a pale piece of cloth. Remember me. Remember us. Let the end be more than that unwieldy plunge into ice and darkness. Let there be someone waiting to catch us when we fall.