They died in separate traffic accidents in 1977. They were quickly forgotten by just about everyone except their daughter Jenny.
All trace of them could have disappeared.
But Jenny had a box of photos. She didn't show them to anyone. Except when she was drunk which wasn't very often. The box contained photos of her parents, taken in the years when they were married which was from 1945 to some time in the 60s.
The pictures had been taken around the country at famous landmarks like the Lincoln Memorial, Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty and Yellowstone. There were a series taken on court house steps from Paint Rock Texas to Moro Oregon.
One thing was the same. In all of them P.D. and Duke were butt naked. Sometimes posing, sometimes running across the frame. At first Jenny thought a third person must have taken the pictures, but she soon realized they had set the delay.
The pictures told the story of twenty years of hard living. Sometimes P.D. was thin, sometimes fat. Sometimes she had long hair sometimes short. Duke graduated from Greek god to bald guy with love handles.
``Why do men get those creases in their backs?'' Jenny wondered.
She knew the pictures were special. Surely there was nothing like them. They could be in a gallery. A book perhaps. But who would want them?
She took them to the art museum.
The curator dismissed them.
``Not our type of thing,'' he said.
At a gallery they laughed.
``Outrageous,'' they said, ``but not for us.''
They were still laughing as she passed their window. White trash woman with long lank hair and a pale, unfocused face. She went to the Great Independent Bookstore and asked if a book of the photos would sell.
``You'd never get your money back,'' the manager said.
When her apartment house burned she lost all the pictures.
She sat in her car and watched the firemen, the excitement, the roaring flames.
Everything she had was gone. Nothing left. The box of photos. Her cashmere sweater. Her little TV. Her birth certificate. The new purple towels she had just bought.
She drove away from the scene and found a 24 hour WalMart and bought a camera.
The kind with a delay function.