The God of Salt & Light

by Logan Ryan Smith

  My father was speaking, but not speaking. The words coming out of his mouth were pure gibberish. He was giddy. He had nothing actual to say except that he knew it was me because he recognized the sound of my breathing.

  That’s when I broke the phone against my brother’s temple and was dragged out to the street by the regulars. They threw me out the door, onto the sidewalk, gave me a good kick in the ribs before I could stand. Then my brother exited. He saw the Light in my eyes then. He couldn’t have missed it. That confused look in his own eyes gave him away, advertised that he saw that Light, despite the welt that ballooned half his face. My brother even looked behind him at the group that had followed us out into the city night, cars zipping by, buildings looming high on all sides. Lights, lights everywhere, and each one artificial. My brother took a step back away from me. The Light in my eyes terrified him. He eyed the door, stuck in the start-stop paralysis of indecision. Should he stay? Or should he go?

  Before he could make the choice, I hit him like a tidal wave. I knocked what little Light there was from his eyes and sent him face-first to the concrete. I leapt onto his back and bashed his face again and again into the red stain his face had already made on the cement. His people eventually yanked me from him, threw me back and complained: That’s your brother, man!

  That wasn’t my brother.

  You only had to see the Lightless meat crumpled up there, outside the bar, awash in the neon haze coursing out of the bar windows. How could anyone call that my brother? My family?

  After that, my brother hardly ever spoke again. Just like the boy that thought he was my son. A dim soul trapped in a rigid cage of meat and bone. Some voiceless wonder. How could it be possible there was any relation?

  fifteen

  The trouble presented itself again during the absence of my friends. At first, it started with a half-pint of moonshine procured from Sparky, the grey-haired townsman running Slab City’s sun-powered internet café. One day I was in there, beneath the mesh netting offering only mild relief from the desert heat, typing away at an ancient boxy computer screen, letting Her Word spill from me into whatever chatroom I joined, or whichever one seemed appropriate. I found myself drifting, however, on that sea of words. Drifting until I could no longer find the shore from which they launched. It was gibberish. Meaningless stuff. I sighed and pushed away from the screen, watched others in the chatroom talk of movies, TV, comic books. Useless things. These people, that day, were not interested in anything I said. My own interest, even, wavered.

  It was then that Sparky leaned from him his stool in the corner of the dirt-floored café. He palmed a chipped teacup. In his other hand, a mason jar of clear liquid. Sparky said, Hey, partner, and offered me his jug. I said no at first but relented more quickly than I’d care to admit. I accepted the mason jar and swallowed down just one swallow before handing it back. Instantly, I felt renewed. Invigorated. I could sense my sense of meaning again. I could find the paths to freedom and where to launch the words that made that possible. All the fibers of my body lit up at the burn of that jar’s stuff. I thanked Sparky and accepted another pull on the mason jar, then got back to work, throwing hooks baited with salvation into the endless reaches of the ethernet. I was talking to people as far away as India and as close as Indio. My reach knew no bounds.

  After forwarding electronic copies of my book-in-progress only to those that requested them, I dropped five dollars in Sparky’s tip jar. That five dollar note really lit old Sparky up, so used to the clang of change in his jar, not paper. He told me to hold up, a yellow and black grin wrinkling his face. Quickly, he grabbed a seemingly random bottle from a table, dusted off the outside, blew the dust out of it with one powerful huff, and poured me a helping of his homebrew. About a half pint, as I said. It was a gesture of gratitude for gratitude, which was common around those parts.

  With bottle in hand, and darkness in my heart, I walked along Her beaches, white with pulverized fish bone, and drank. I asked the Sea why my hands no longer crystalized, the crystals forming and falling away daily. I asked when my people would return. I asked how long would I be tested before I could walk into Her and drown in The Light. For the second time in my time at the Salton Sea, She went silent. No sound but wind scraping dry land and birds making ugly, selfish sounds in the sky. The Chocolate Mountains, under slanted light, appeared so clear, extradimensional in the east. It was a beautiful day except for two things: Her silence and my friends’ persistent absence.

  How long would it take for them to spread Her Word? I asked. Why did I send them out into the world when there’s the internet that could do the work of thousands of missionaries? I knew the answer. To test me. She had no words for me that day, but I knew the answer.

  I drank down the last drop of moonshine and chucked the bottle into the Sea. It landed with a thud on a patch of bloated, expired fish. It didn’t even sink.

  I found myself in that nearby town of Niland not long after that. That town of abandoned banks with Roman columns. That place of tumbleweed roads and collapsed school houses. It was a town so lacking in color it blended right into the desert dirt. You’d not have to feel embarrassed should you miss it when passing through, on your way to where, exactly? Hard to say. Unless you’re coming here to the Salton Sea, I’d have been hard-pressed to guess your destination.

  It was an unsavory town, Niland, and populated by so few. Those that were there were border patrol agents, sheriff’s deputies, and members of the Salvation Army. One day the Sea would sweep them all away. How they’d been permitted to stay for so long, settled nicely within Her cloud of rot, I couldn’t say. I could only assume, somehow, these nonbelievers could also grow used to the taste in their lungs, that mass that sits there with each inhalation of decomposition. Perhaps the truth is: some people’s salvation is other’s damnation. Perhaps they were being held here, as a lesson.

  Who knew. Who could possibly understand all the webs of meaning worked into the very fabric of everything?

  But there I was again, in that town of Niland, that place of Law planted right next to freedom. Just outside Slab City. I ended up in some dive bar there. A dusty bar of yellow-brown light and peanut shells. Shells everywhere. On the sticky concrete floor. On the sticky linoleum bar-top. I sat there, wearing only jeans, tanned and glistening, drinking only what I could afford until my pockets had to be turned inside out to reveal all I had to my name was lint and bubblegum wrappers.

  It was mostly old-timers in there. Toothless men spending their social security checks on well whiskey and gin. I chose to speak to Jim, sitting at a table in the back corner, because he was drinking gin and I loved the bouquet that bloomed before his face with each word he said. I accepted that floral fog into my lungs, let it push aside the Sea’s great weight.

  In one hand, Jim held his glass of gin. His other hand rested peacefully atop his well-read Bible on the table. He told me he didn’t go anywhere without it. He asked me if he could read some of it to me: So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to their kind. And God said it was good.

  He told me he knew of me. Of course he did, for how could he not? He told me that God created the seas and all things beneath the sun. He created the sun, as well, and the moon and the stars.

  I told him I understood these falsehoods. I’d heard them before. I grabbed his book, which he reluctantly let me have: And I saw what looked like a sea of glass glowing with fire and, standing beside the sea, those who had been victorious over the beast and its image and over the number of its name.

  There, I had told him, pointing at the page. The whole thing comes down to that.

  He looked at me with gin-soaked eyes, his nose red and bulbous. He called me misguided and bought me a drink. Sinatra crooned from the jukebox and patrons mumbled over him about potholes, lost loves, ex-wives, and lost grandchildren. They talked about how Sinatra used to
have a house here, you know, before the rot. The barman collected change from our table, swept dollars from the linoleum bar-top, replenished the peanuts all around, which I cracked away at, having forgotten to eat the last several days. Famished.

  Jim went on, in an endless pour of gin, for both himself and me, talking of Jesus but mostly the Old Testament God.

  I asked him what he had seen. I told him I had seen so much to fuel my belief. What had he seen?

  He said he’d seen wars. He’d seen heads explode. He said he had shot men in their hearts because that’s what he was told to do. He’d seen jungles with moths as big as birds and massive holes in the ground filled mostly with children. He told me he’d seen politicians come and go, family members rot away in their bones from cancer. He said he’d watched the Salton Sea shrink each day and said She’ll too be gone forever one day.

  That’s when I stopped him. I had wept at his words and could go no further. He called the barman over to replenish my drink and when he did I drank half of it before I said this: I’ve killed, too. But not for wars or governments. I’ve killed for the Sea so that She may live. So that She may grow. The rot that rots within Her feeds Her soul. You’re wrong. We’ll never be without the Sea. So long as I’m around. You’re wrong.

  His wet eyes widened. He asked me to tell him more.

  I told him of Marcus. The Outsider that showed up one day, ready to disrupt the DNA of our little group, The People of the Salton Sea. I told him how we choked him and pulverized his head bone just like the Sea does to the fish, whirling them back and forth within Her guts until they’ve turned to dust. I let Jim know we buried the intruder in the wake of Her waters, but that the foul man had made Her sick, so She spat him up. I told him that Uncle Fred was the one they thought did it. I admitted we used the Law to allow the sacrifice, but the sacrifice is what justified manipulation of the Law. I told him that I felt bad about it, that manipulation of the Law, the thing that the Sea had worked so faithfully to stave off.

  He placed a shaky, liver-spotted hand over mine, told me that I needed to turn myself in.

  I laughed. I said, But you’ve done nearly the same thing!

  He said that was war. War. It was completely different. He called me son and again told me to turn myself in.

  Shocked, I nodded, mouth agape. I thought he’d understand.

  I kept nodding throughout the night, listening to him speak. He explained that I had no choice, but not to worry because God forgives. He said he’d help. He could have the barman call in the Imperial Sheriff. Jim told me he’d wait with me. I finished my drink, removed my hand from his hand, and took hold of his Bible, continually nodding, hardly able to push my jaw back into place.

  I told him I’d like to borrow his book. That’d I’d like to think about what he said.

  I felt my heart race. I felt the salt push its way out of my blood and through the pores of my skin.

  Hesitant, Jim nodded in agreement. Allowed me to take his book so long as I promised to return it. I told him I would and I thanked him. Said he had given me a lot to think about, though my head was so foggy with gin I’m surprised a single thought could sail through it. All thoughts should have remained at port, waited for more clement weather.

  I went back to my camper, back to that luxurious bed, and I read and read Jim’s book. I didn’t write my own or talk to anyone on the internet about Her Word. So lost was I that week, surrounded by bottles of moonshine, gin, and piss-yellow beers. Crumpled up under bedsheets and blankets, I read that book from morning through night, using a flashlight when it got too dark.

  I read: And before the throne there was something like a sea of glass, like crystal; and in the center and around the throne, four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind.

  Immediately, and drunkenly, I stumbled out of bed to the mirror on the wall of the camper. I grabbed a hand mirror and held it so I could see the back of my head. I parted the hair at the back of my head, but there were no eyes there.

  Days later I read: But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.

  And I felt my soul sicken. Could I have been so wrong? I made preparations for my surrender, but moonshine, beer, and gin kept me in bed, weeping, too heavy with indecision to get off that bed soaked through with tears and sweat.

  Days later still: Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth, for the first Heaven and the first Earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

  The Sea was no more?

  I threw the book against the wall, buried my head in pillows.

  That night I dreamed, but it was absurd. I have no way of explaining it except to say I dreamed without sight, I dreamed without sound. It was all feelings, abstract, floating. I felt the Sea split, fracture, disintegrate. I felt the Sea call out to me, the way my boy once called to me during one of his many night terrors. And it was the same feeling: I lay there, immobile, unable to address the calling. Leaving the boy to stew in his terror.

  The unintentional sacrifices we all make.

  I knew in the morning what I had to do. I cleared the empty bottles from the camper’s floor, emptied the rest down the sink. Then I picked up Jim’s book and walked back to Niland under a blazing sun, the land turning the bottoms of my bare feet black and burnt.

  Jim had wanted me to return the book to him at the bar where we first met, but because Jim had written his address on the first page of the book, I knew where he lived, and that’s where I found him.

  I asked him if he had told anyone yet what I had told him. He shook his head, frail and tremulous, and told me he didn’t, just like he said he wouldn’t. He would let me find my own way back and here he was, ready to help. Ready to guide my eternal soul toward forgiveness. Ready to help me pay for my many sins.

  He reached out for his book with that liver-spotted hand. I bashed his head with the book, once, and it left an impression on his forehead. He stumbled back into the tiny dilapidated home on a sparse street of tumbleweed and dust. He fell back onto stained carpet, fell back into the house that reeked of urine and spoiled cabbage. The place was a mess. That house was a hoarder’s house, a labyrinth of the miscellaneous, of boxes and stacked newspapers.

  Alas, that was all it took. One good hit from the Good Book. I pulled him further inside the dark house, laid him next to his coffee table in such a way as to suggest he’d fallen and hit his head against it. While I did this, five small mutts came out of a maze of stacked boxes, books, and newspapers. They barked and nudged their muzzles into the palm of my hand, complained about their aching bellies. They asked me to clean up the discharge from their eyes. To remove the cobwebs from their ears. They asked me to view the Light in their eyes, and so I did. I grabbed each one by the snout and looked deep into their eyes.

  That was the first time my people returned to visit me since their departure. Through the Sea’s eternal magic, they returned as dogs, eager to touch me, to tell me how they missed me. Of course they did! Dogs, what purer creature than they? What better way to send their souls my way for a quick visit?

  I opened several cans of dog food and nourished my people, petted them, groomed them, and listened to the contentment of their breathing. Their breathing and panting mimicked the Sea, a low rattle and hum. We sat for a time around Jim, watching the color drain from his skin, and enjoyed each other’s company before I finally left that cave and left Jim to be eaten by my family of dogs. There’d hardly be enough left of him to even determine that his cause of death was from a nasty fall against the coffee table. Which it was. Tragic news in all the local papers.

  Anyway, I walked away from that, walked back into the blinding light of the desert, across asphalt as blanched as the dirt, and back to Her waters where I baptized myself for the first time in weeks.

  Once again the crystals clung to me. I wondered if this time they’d stick. I wondered how long before my throne would rise from the Sea.

  s
ixteen

  Due to the loss of my theologian counterpart, and because conversation with other Slabbers grew stale, I again became restless enough to mingle with people on the internet. Oh, sure, I’d chat with Sparky, who runs Slab City’s internet café, but it was all small talk. You know Sparky. He’s the old tree with the poison apple. He runs things off solar panels, sells coffee he makes, one at a time, with a French press. I’d enter chatrooms, pass along Her Word, invite others to join us. Not the inner circle, no. I’d invite them to accept Her Word. They’d ask why I wasn’t out there with my friends spreading Her Word. It was because She could not let me go far. She needed me near to hear Her Word. She needed me near as nourishment. Though they said Her waters were drying up, drifting up to the heavens in invisible gasses, I knew She wouldn’t disappear so long as I was near, keeping watch and listening. For She told me so. Some of those people on the internet understood me, though I couldn’t meet them face to face. Though I couldn’t show them the Light in my eyes or the Light my crystal hands could catch. They knew and they believed. I remember how much I longed to meet them all, having grown so lonely.

  After my time at the internet café, and after several sips of Sparky’s special moonshine, I’d often stroll into Salton City or Bombay Beach, some nearby town not usually worth my attention. I’d walk along chain-linked streets, running my fingers through the twisted metal keeping me from walking through the dead yards of dilapidated homes barely more livable than those in The Slabs. I’d breathe in the Sea’s pungent scent and nearly collapse beneath the weight it placed in my lungs.

  I’d be on one of my walks and a flock of gulls would crash at my feet, fight over a rotted fish dropped in the middle of the road by some other bird. Squawking, ugly things, those gulls. There’s no Light in those things. All they say is me, me, me.

  On one of those leisurely strolls one day, all the homes to my left were either burnt or fallen down. The sky above them was burnt, itself. The ground beneath my feet sweltered and billowed blurry heat waves skyward. I continued walking until there were no more homes to my left or to my right. Everything took on a dusty haze, a yellow-brown hue.