The God of Salt & Light

by Logan Ryan Smith

  Once Marcy swallowed me, we helped the others gather kindling. We placed the three bodies on a makeshift wooden raft, dressed them in that kindling, then doused them with gasoline. By nightfall those bodies were out in the middle of the Sea, ablaze, and us the only witnesses. It was peaceful. Beautiful. That was the first sacrifice to the Sea, and one She wholly accepted. We watched that flame for hours before it eventually died down as the raft and those bodies, which we properly weighed down, sunk into the dark depths of the Salton Sea.

  As for the rest of Marcy’s so-called family that ran off into the desert? We never saw them again. The Sea, in Her endless wisdom, knew that those people, the ones that ran away, understood there was no Law here, and they were not of the kind to impose it or enforce it or even see it as an option. They were not believers, but they weren’t completely impure, and She gave them the impetus to turn tail and run. Save themselves, for tomorrow is another day, and tomorrow one might find faith.

  There’s always tomorrow. As long as She is with us, there will be a tomorrow.

  eleven

  I’ve told you how I missed my people. Marcy, perhaps, most of all, though I know I shouldn’t have played favorites. I know that the Sea would have wanted me to love all my people with equal measure. But I am just a man, imperfect, like everyone else. I have my faults and I must accept them in order to accept Her grace.

  This is The Truth of the Sea.

  As lonely and adrift as I was without them, at least I had our son, Marcy’s and mine, to remind me of them, to keep me company. In the mornings I would wrap the child up snugly and take him down to the Sea. There, I’d dip my crystal hands in the Sea, then run my wet fingertips over his lips, blessing him with the water, careful not to cut him. Not on his lips. The child already bore The Mark of our people, The People of the Salton Sea. It was there, on his forehead, on his cheeks, and on his chin. Unlike us, this child would know the meaning of Her love from the very beginning. So fortunate. So special was this child. So much so that I had to listen to Her song in the dark and cold hours of the desert night just to repress this revolting jealousy I sometimes felt toward the child. I knew it was wrong, so I would listen to the Sea soothe me, tell me that, yes, the child is very special, but I would not be drowned out. I would not be forgotten. I was Her conduit and Her Word must be spoken. And I had the tongue with which to speak it. I had the ugly human form needed for the delivery of Her Word. That one day we’d all be of Her. Not just beside Her. Not just inside Her. But of Her. And I was a central figure to that future, the Sea would tell me.

  And the boy, that child of mine and Marcy’s, would also play an important role. And why wouldn’t he? Given he’s my child, and not Marcus’s, his inclination to greatness, to meaningfulness, was written long before he was conceived. Knowing this, having learned this as The Truth from the Sea, I had to ask Her how many more children should I conceive? I asked this, as I usually did, at the water’s edge, dappled in moonlight. That was when the Sea told me I’d never sire another child again. I have a son, and that son would be all I would have.

  So, here’s my confession: I raged against the Sea. When She told me that I should never have another child again, I dropped to my knees in the water and pummeled Her mud with my crystal hands. I screamed: If I can make something so special, why shouldn’t I fill the world with it? Why shouldn’t I plant the seed of the Sea within a world of women?

  I was in a blind rage. If I was so special, why shouldn’t my legacy run through the veins of countless others for countless centuries? Why should my blood know only one line?

  It was then that a sudden wave arose and struck me down. Like a hundred-pound hand, that wave punched me and slammed me into the murky sediment of Her foundation. I was pressed into the mud exactly, a deep indentation left there in the shape of my body. I was held there until I could no longer hold my breath and I breathed in a lungful of Her waters, the moonlight wavering, crystalizing, and cracking through the seawater ebbing over me.

  Then blackness.

  When I awoke, I was on the bone-sand beach, coughing, a stream of saltwater pouring from me, my hands of crystal nearly complete.

  In the shadow of the Sea, one should expect a rebirth, again and again. One should expect to be pressed into Her clay and molded, shaped, throughout a lifetime. Throughout eternity. And there, again, so was I.

  Once the Sea had exited my lungs in long, iridescent torrents, I rolled onto my back and watched the moon slip behind the Chocolate Mountains in the dark distance.

  It was Truth. It was known.

  My son would be special. Unique. I would never have another.

  twelve

  The absence of my people began to take a toll on me. I neglected my son’s daily baptisms. Neglected my son almost all together, except that I found him a personal nanny in The Slabs. A woman by the name of Teresa. I had met her one night at The Range. I sat alone in the outdoor concert venue, kicking at dust, counting the stars in the sky and their shiny glass counterparts on the desert floor. I sat there on an old minivan bench-seat and listened to the spoken word performance. Local poets twisted their tongues for us in ways more excruciating than some. Their poetry so full of untruths and me-isms, I just couldn’t see any Light in it. I must have sat there with a sour expression upon my face because when Teresa turned around in her lawn chair to look at me she immediately began laughing. Bullhorning her hands around her mouth, she shouted that she knew how I felt. Embarrassed, caught off guard, I merely nodded and sensed my face grow hot.

  Later, after she joined me on the minivan seat, I told her we were there, all of us, because the Sea gave us this freedom. Teresa told me I spoke truer poetry than anyone that ever graced The Range’s stage. I explained to Teresa how the only way to total freedom of the soul was to drown your soul in the Sea’s Light. I felt I explained it very matter-of-factly but again she promised me that I spoke in poetry. She kissed me and took me back to her camper where she proved she was hungry for Her Word. Or at least a taste of Her. I told her of the Salton Sea’s history, how in Her infinite wisdom, She drove The Great Eye away and destroyed Law, pulverizing it into bone-dust. Teresa promised me she understood.

  And so I knew exactly what I had to do.

  That night, I planned to wound the Sea.

  So full of loneliness and unnamable pain at the absence of my people, I struck out in desperation. Through pure narcissism. Unable to recognize all the great Truths bestowed upon me by the very one I intended to injure.

  That night, I planned to plant my seed in the womb of a woman not of my people. I planned to bury my history in a child that could escape this place.

  In that time, during the absence of my people, I experienced such dark thoughts. My mind was a hazy cliffside that all thought and emotion ran toward. My eyes watery all the time. I felt a great weight in my heart, and at that time it was not only Her love. I had been crying myself to sleep, alone, tucked into that luxurious bed in that comfortable camper given to me by the once pure Marcus.

  So sad to see one fall from such great heights.

  So, I sought to impregnate Teresa. I envisioned her womb opening and accepting. I envisioned the child born out of darkness into the Light. Though I would never be able to be there for him. I envisioned the child grown up, a man then, walking the streets of some massive city of steel and glass. I envisioned all the collars and all the leashes. I envisioned my once-and-never son to be happy. Genuinely happy. Amidst all that white noise. Happy.

  When, three months later, Teresa lost the child in sheets of blood cascading down her thighs, I knew the Sea could not be injured.

  thirteen

  So many tests there in the wake of Her love. So many trials to take on when separated from those you love. Love is the center of all things. It’s the center of the Sea, where Her heart beats. Down there, at the bottom of the Salton Sea, a twisted muscle pumps and deflates, pushes out more salt with each contraction. She means to suffocate. She means to make Her point
. The lake, as some like to call Her, will tell Her story in so many ways. When life itself within Her is extinct, those left of the unbelievers will quake in their very hearts. Quake like the heart at the bottom of the Sea.

  And so it was there, in that quaint mobile cabin, that my heart quaked at the absence of my people. I knew then that I was always tested. That I’d always be tested. And the rage within me grew. The darkness grew. My very soul dimmed in the looming of my personal assassin. But how unfair it all was! Me, the only conduit of the Sea! Was I really destined to live a life of tests? Never to be trusted? Never to be left to rest? How unfair it all was! My life was not my own? So where was the freedom? Where was my soul? How could I call my captor my savior?

  Lies! It had all been lies!

  I told the lies and I let the lies be believed. Then I added to it by propagation, sending my people into the world to spread Her terrible lie!

  I had so many dark feelings. It was like being lost in a pitch-dark hallway with miles between the rooms. Blindly touching walls for an eternity. Perhaps you’ve felt something similar?

  Then one day there was a knock at my camper door. No, there was no raven, and it wasn’t my lost Lenore. Yet, my heart quaked hard, sure it was one of my own returned to me. Perhaps Marcy? My favorite? Was she my Lenore? Perhaps the Sea would know to send her first?

  But again my hopes were dashed. My soul lashed like a horse too sick to race but forced to carry on. All because I must forever be tested. My soul bridled and bitted for an eternity.

  No, it was not one of my own returned to me. No Marcy sent to wash my feet. Instead, it was my family, those unbelievers I left behind. There. With me. At the camper given to me by one who was once so sweet.

  My jaw dropped to the floor, but I picked it up quickly, containing my surprise.

  It wasn’t long before they were sitting at the little table in the camper drinking tea with me. That is, my former wife and twelve-year-old son. I welcomed them in. I boiled some water on a hotplate. And so we drank tea, quiet at first. I hardly said a thing.

  How grateful, they said, they were to find me. They said they thought I had been abducted, killed during a power grab in the stock market or some such nonsense. I don’t know what they were thinking, but their minds went in all directions when it came to my absence. The police were called. They supposedly looked for me, but I left no trace. I was just gone. Poof. Or so they thought. I guess someone that passed through The Slabs shopped at the grocery store my wife worked at. A job she took after I poofed. Simple as that. Someone told her I was here. Though it inconvenienced me, it proved to me how fast Her Word could travel through me. And how far. Wherever people go after meeting me, they go there to talk of me. And of Her Word. There’s no doubting that. My reach could be enormous. It could span seas much larger than Her, but so much more insignificant.

  After several minutes of my family talking at me, I finally got a word in. I could do only the first thing I thought of. Which was the first thing She told me to do: I asked them who they were, and what were their names. Aghast, my former wife asked me if I’d had a knock on the head. She assumed me damaged by whatever had freed me from her. I told her I was fine, thanked her for her concern. Asked her again if she could tell me her name. Because, really, I hadn’t a clue who she or the toe-headed boy was. I told them I was sorry I couldn’t be of any more assistance and asked them if I could show them to the door. She laughed. She really laughed. She nearly became hysterical, but I poured her some more tea, told her to drink. It would soothe her nerves. My twelve-year-old barely registered a thing, sitting their trapped inside himself, chin pressed into his chest. A dim soul. An even dimmer mind. They didn’t have any truths, these two. They were absent of faith. I could see no Light in their eyes. I would sometimes grab them by the jaw, like one of the mongrels around here, and look deep into their eyes and not once did I see anything larger than a tiny spec of Light. Only once did I even see that. And I had looked into their eyes just like that several times. Hundreds of times, perhaps. I’d find them somewhere asleep in the dark and I’d wake them to a start, their eyes as wide as Heaven, yet their Light hardly registered in any of those dark rooms.

  To live among people whose eyes not only dimmed the Light, but may have even trapped it, keeping it only for themselves? The horror.

  So selfish, that former family of mine.

  Yet here they were. Doing what? Asking what of me? I didn’t understand their search. Or their presence. Who did they think they were finding? The man that left them? The man that abandoned one family for another?

  No. That would be impossible. For in Her clay I am reborn daily. I am remade. The me that was me yesterday, even, is not me today. So how could I repent for things in the past when I am never the same? When I am daily washed clean of sin? How could these people, especially, ask me to account for all the days since last I saw them? They were not my family. Not any longer.

  And I knew this was only another test in a lifetime of tests I’d be burdened to undertake.

  It was a test, for truly my heart sank at the sight of their faces. At the sight of them, there, in the desert of my freedom. My heart sank. Even though their faces twisted at the Sea’s everpresent miasma of strangled fish rotting under the sun, my initial instinct was to embrace them. To both apologize and forgive them. To shed tears of reunification. Lonely and so full of longing had I been since my people went on their mission that I was ready to leap into the car they came here in. I was ready to be the stupid, tongue-lolling puppy in the backseat of the station wagon barking and wagging his tail at everything he sees.

  That was me in the moment I saw their faces drained of color against the backdrop of the desert land behind them. The land burnt and cracked. Drained of color, also. The sky of birds washed-out, blanched. A sun in that sky so hot it boils your sweat.

  It was a scene that hurt my heart. But in that moment, in that darkness, I heard Her song. I heard it loud and clear. She sang of freedom. Not just of a physical kind. She sang of souls and drowning in Her Light. She sang of me, and how my voice was freedom. She told me I had never met them. These people that said they were my family. I had never, a day in my life, met them. She said they were perfect strangers to me. And I felt it. I didn’t know them. Like a time-traveler, the Sea can change the past, which affects one’s present. She took me, for only a few moments, off this plane of existence, and replaced me with another so that my mind should never know these people, nor be hurt by their search, or hurt by the hurt they were feeling. They were erased from my mind because the person that abandoned them, that ran away, was not the same me as the one that stood there that day. My mind was cleansed.

  Who were these people? In our secret way I asked the Sea: Why did I think I knew them? But I did not know them. She assured me I was not pretending. How could I be pretending? She told me that I’ve never seen those people in my life. And so it was Truth. I had never seen those people in my life. That woman? Who was she? The boy? That boy that barely spoke, showed nothing but reserve? Never a day in my life. Not one day have I known them. Who were these people here to oppress me?

  I didn’t know them. It was true. It was The Truth. I showed those Outsiders the door. But I wished them luck.

  fourteen

  A weakness of mine (I know I have many) has always been the drink. I curtailed that, mostly, upon the forming of my new family. Of my coalition with The People of the Salton Sea. Of course I am not one to judge or shame. I partook of the land, smoking it, ingesting it, imbibing in whatever Jacob could pack into that glass pipe from which we all shared. And from that? Shared visions. Shared souls. Shared love. Truly. But drink, for me, was a black sea, and not one of Light. I could drink and drink all the days away. I would pour it all down the gullet of oblivion if I had been left to my own devices. I had, once upon a time. And I was a merciless foe to anyone in my line of sight once I crossed oblivion’s line. I was ugly and mean and cruel. I once fought my brother in a fistfight outside
a city bar. He wanted me to give more of myself to him, and to the people that called themselves my family. He mentioned our father, still living at the time, but hanging on only for one last phone call from me. I asked my brother why he would burden me. I asked him what right he had to burden me. He told me that our father was all that was left of our family. Of our side of the family. I reminded him that he abandoned us, and for no meaningful reason. He had said it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter in the end. Just pick up the phone and call dad, he said. No, I said. Call dad, he repeated. No, I said. Then he grabbed me by the collar and pulled on my leash until he had me in front of a payphone, those ancient things. He put a quarter in the phone box and placed the phone to my ear. He dialed the number. It wasn’t easy to hear my father over the din of the bar: sports on the TV, patrons shouting for meaningless things. Dim lights. Dim everything. I believe the song on the jukebox at the time was Don’t Stop Believing.