The Salt Line

by Holly Goddard Jones

  “And what’s that?”

  “You do understand reality and make yourself miserable.”

  Andy found himself grinding his thumbnail between his teeth.

  “I don’t think there’s any nobility in misery,” Hakim said. “There’s certainly no nobility in suicide. I was once like you. I saw the world and grieved. I didn’t see any reason for it. For existing. So much pain and so little point. Yet I had a life! This was a fact. It would one day end. This was also a fact. And I could end it whenever I wished. This was my reassurance. ‘I can always end it tomorrow,’ I told myself. And then I discovered something.”

  “Oh, hell,” Andy said. “This is where you start talking about Jesus, isn’t it?”

  “Ha! No, this isn’t. Weeding, Andy. This is where I start talking about weeding.”

  “Weeding.”

  “Yes, my friend. This was when I lived at the logging camp. There was a large garden on the premises and helping with it gave me something to do. When I despaired, I weeded. I lost myself in the physical process, the repetition. I pulled and pulled, and one day I pulled myself out of my sadness.”

  “So that’s my purpose,” Andy said. “Weeding.”

  “There are all sorts of ways to weed,” Hakim said.

  And that was the beginning of things. Each day he could opt to not yet take his own life. Pull a weed. First one, then another. There was always another. Do this instead of thinking and maybe, eventually, the thinking wouldn’t hurt so much. Hakim was right about one thing: Andy had nothing to lose.

  Hakim made some calls. Upon his release, Andy started working for a man named Jude, who owned a franchise location of Southern Farm Supply Co. The store, it turned out, was a front for several kinds of criminal activity, most of it connected to out-of-zone smuggling. Jude received several shipments a week of fertilizer, mulch, and topsoil. One in every half dozen or so of these shipments included extra cargo: recreational drugs, mostly, but also random illegal goods from other zones and countries. Once Andy was tasked with unearthing a hundred boxes of Kawaii sneakers from a mound of compost. Another time it was boxes of Lil Bums Diapers, sizes newborn and one. Once he pried the lid off a crate to find a dazed, light-blind woman and two children, a flashlight, a bucket of eye-wateringly ammoniac urine, and a few empty gallon jugs of what he assumed had been water. “See if she and the kids want something from the vending machine,” Jude had said. “And throw that piss bucket in the Dumpster.”

  He’d been working at the store six weeks when Hakim came by to check on him. “The time has come,” he said, “if you’re ready.”

  “Ready for what, exactly?” Andy asked.

  “To meet your purpose,” Hakim said.

  He was shown his own crate, his own piss bucket, his own (full) plastic gallon jugs. The truck would travel four hours before stopping off at an organic waste facility outside Statesville to pick up a couple dozen barrel loads of compostables collected from area utility customers: food scraps and yard waste, mostly. “It’s gonna smell god-awful,” Jude warned him. Then another two hours to the Wall, and an hour for weighing and inspection. (“Keep your mouth shut and everything’ll be fine. They care more about what’s coming in than what’s going out.”) Two more hours to the composting station, and then another thirty minutes to what Hakim called a “transfer point.” “You’ll be out of the crate,” he said. “Smooth sailing from there on.” His journey would end at Ruby City, “and then you’re going to understand what all of this is about, and your whole life is going to change for the better,” Hakim said. “I promise.”

  This was another promise Hakim kept. Andy spent eleven hours in his crate before emerging to see the sun, and he thought, getting into the ancient Jeep Wrangler with the quiet man named Curtis, who offered Andy little more than an apple and a grumbling hello, there was nothing in Ruby City that could compensate for the time he’d just spent in hell, and he’d sooner find a knife to slit his own throat than repeat this horror in three months. But then he met June. And the people of Ruby City. He saw how they lived, what they had achieved, their harmony and (cheesy, but he couldn’t help thinking this) their purity. For the first time in his life, he contributed to the making of his own food, pulling literal weeds now along with the metaphorical ones, loading a gun, taking aim at squirrels, deer, rabbits. He slept hard at night, his eyes popping open at first light. Mornings, he stood on the bank of the Little Tennessee and watched the sun burn the mist off the tops of the Smoky Mountains. He had never been as alive as this. He murmured thanks at night to a God he didn’t believe existed—his mother’s God, a white-bearded, benevolent king—for this chance. “Thank you for not letting me kill myself,” he said.

  Jude and Hakim covered for him back home—with his mother, with Brightwater. Hakim had even promised to send emails to Andy’s mother from Andy’s account, and Andy got a kick, during quiet moments at Ruby City, imagining them: Hello, Mother. I am doing very well. This job I hold is most stimulating. And how do you fare?

  But the plan was never for him to stay. He’d known that from the start. “What we have here can’t last,” June said, “unless we have some help on the inside. That’s where you come in. You and a few others like you. Will you help us, Andy?”

  He would.

  It was better, in a way. This was what he told himself as he climbed into another, smaller crate—more of a casket than a box—for the journey back in-zone. He had his memories of Ruby City. He had his instructions. And he had a goal, a dream: to save the little community out in the mountains, away from the corruption and consumption that characterized life in-zone, and then, eventually, to take his rightful place among them. He knew that tending the dream, keeping it hidden away like something precious, would probably be, for now, better for him than living it. But maybe, with time, he would heal enough to enjoy his reward.

  —

  They hiked another two hours. The trail, thankfully, had abruptly stopped its uphill climb, swerving north. There was a tense twenty minutes when they crossed a creek and the dogs were in disagreement about how to proceed on the other side. Tia must have waded down or uphill. Roz speculated that she might have circled and retraced her own steps back to some point they’d missed, and Andy was cursing as they cast yet another twenty feet downstream, sure that all was lost, when Tauntaun barked twice, decisively, and ran off ahead. Wampa strained against his leash to follow.

  “Looks like they know something,” Roz said.

  Damn you, Tia, he kept thinking. Goddamn you, Tia. He wanted to shake her. Hit her. He wanted to hug her tightly and press his lips into the ruffle of black hair behind her ear. He was afraid they wouldn’t find her. He was more afraid, in a way, that they would. Roz called for a halt, took a long drink from her canteen, and mopped her brow with a handkerchief. Andy sipped some water, too. He had some knots of jerky in his knapsack, and the time would soon come to choke one down, but he couldn’t stomach it yet.

  He played through scenarios in his head, flickering through them almost too quickly to register. Tia on higher ground, perched on a rock, raining bullets down on him and Roz. Tia waiting, resigned, with her hands raised in surrender. Tia unconscious. Tia dead. Tia, having disguised her scent in some ingenious way, hiding behind a tree and watching them pass. And then there were all of the versions of their return to camp, Tia coming along voluntarily, gratefully, having exhausted herself and her resources in the woods all night. Tia fighting them, and Andy having to use the zip ties again. Why are you making me do this? he asks her. Don’t you know you’re doing yourself more harm than good? Tia swinging from a noose as the Ruby City villagers cheered. (Would they do that? Were they those kind of people? How was it that Andy didn’t know?) Tia incarcerated some way. He pleads to June on her behalf, tells her about the pregnancy. That child—it would mean everything to June. June wouldn’t take the life of a pregnant woman, especially now.

  Then
he imagined—daring himself with this thought—pointing his gun at Roz. Taking her gun. Escaping with Tia back to the zone, to his wife and his sons. It wasn’t too late to reclaim his old life, was it? It depended, he supposed, on the fate of the other OLE hostages. They’d eventually implicate him, if June allowed them to go home. (Would June allow them to go home? Andy didn’t know. He hadn’t had the courage to ask.) If Tia escaped back to the zone, June would have less reason to keep them alive. She’d have the marines descending on her. Or worse.

  He couldn’t believe he was even thinking this stuff. If Tia escaped, if he helped her, went to the authorities with her and turned on his friends, he’d be to blame for all of those deaths—almost five hundred souls.

  But the boys. His boys. God, he knew it was going to hurt, leaving them. But he’d left them lots of times, each time he’d gone on an excursion, and he’d counted on the familiarity of that pattern to get him through the worst of the grief at their loss. By the time the six weeks passed and forever started, he’d thought, there would be distance enough to dull the ache. For all of them. But there had been moments on this trip when understanding rained down on him—I’m holding a gun on these people! This is happening! I’m never going to see Ian and Colby again!—and his chest got tight, his airways seemed to narrow. June had told him: Live your life. Be normal, whatever that is. She’d said: You can’t put yourself on hold for us. For this. Because I don’t know how long the wait will be. I don’t know exactly how we’ll need you. Your job for now is to keep your head down and keep us in your heart. That’s what I ask of you. Keep us in your heart.

  He had. He had. But when he’d become a father, his for-now life had become a real life.

  He could convince Tia not to go to the authorities back home. They’d go to Quarantine with some story. He drank more water, feeling a second wind. A road gang, marauders. You heard about them. He and Tia barely escaped with their lives. Everyone else dead, they presumed. Tia had lost nothing so far, really. And she had blood on her hands. She’d back him up. It would be like none of this had even happened. He’d quit the OLE job and be there for his boys. Ruby City could hang on a while longer—not saved, maybe, but at least not leveled by marine firepower—and if June let the hostages go, well, Andy would cross that bridge when he came to it. There might be time enough to get Beth and the boys and flee somewhere.

  It could work.

  Later, he would wonder: Would he have really gone through with it? It seemed, for a few moments, that he would. Relief had flooded him. His knapsack felt lighter. He wiped his sweaty palms on his jacket, first one, then the other, maneuvering the gun carefully and then resettling his fingers around the pistol grip and hand guard. He registered a flicker of pleasure at the thought of disarming Roz—gruff, know-it-all, dog-drowning Roz. (Could she sic Tauntaun and Wampa on him? He would shoot them if he had to. He, too, could be cruel, if left no other recourse.) He thought about what Hakim had said about showing him his purpose. This was, he’d think later, the tragedy of his life, if tragedy wasn’t too strong a word for the sadness of a man like Andy: if not for Hakim and June and Ruby City, Andy would probably have killed himself years ago. If not for the dream of his secret life, Andy wouldn’t have been around to meet Beth. And even his and Beth’s first date, their courtship, their marriage—did he not owe Ruby City its share of credit for the success of their relationship? Ruby City had been his ace in the hole, his mistress. Beth had been intrigued by his distance, he knew. More certain she wanted him because she was less certain she was wanted. He told himself this each time he felt his guts twist at the thought of all the lies he’d told her.

  But the boys were innocents. Ian, seven years old with a lighter shade of Beth’s sandy blond hair and Andy’s broad feet and blunt toes, sensitive, still young and sweet enough to hold his mother’s hand at the grocery store. Five-year-old Colby, Andy’s little look-alike, who crawled into Andy and Beth’s bed during thunderstorms and slept with his sweaty cheek against Andy’s chest, knees tucked up against Andy’s rib cage. How could Andy have thought himself capable of abandoning him? Even for the sake of a village? Even for the sake of the world?

  Tauntaun, just out of sight, howled. Wampa answered with a yank so ferocious that Roz nearly toppled over, and Andy had to take a hand off his gun to steady her.

  “Must be the girl,” Roz said. She went after the dogs at a trot, swift despite her bulk, and Andy, seeing his moment, raced ahead. He had no plan. He only knew that he had to reach Tia before Roz closed in—look her in the eye, then make a decision about where to point his gun. Tauntaun hadn’t stopped barking, and there had been no gunshots. Maybe this was a good sign.

  He scrambled, with feet and hands, over a washout of rocks, topped a rise, saw the dog first. It paced off a half circle, stopped to keel back on his hind legs. Barked. Then paced another half circle back in the opposite direction. Its attention was directed at the base of a tree, and Andy, letting his finger slide into the curve of his gun’s trigger guard, made out the figure of a person. Head against the tree, a few feet above the ground. Dark, short-cropped hair. Not moving. He drew closer. A dozen meters. Ten. She wasn’t flinching when Tauntaun barked. No reaction at all.

  He pulled up his gun and sighted her, close enough now to make out Tia’s sprawled legs, the scattered contents of her pack. The shape of what he thought had to be her gun, on the ground a few inches from her right hand.

  “Tia,” he called. No response.

  Tauntaun, noting Andy’s presence, stopped his pacing, sat, and barked sharply again. Behind him, Wampa answered the bark, and Roz yelled, “Tauntaun, to me.” A bag rustled—the dog’s jerky treats—and Tauntaun cheerfully obliged. Then, to Andy, Roz said in her coarse, thoughtless way: “What’s she doing? Dead?”

  Andy didn’t answer.

  A few feet away from the figure slumped under the tree, he thumbed on the gun’s safety and slung it over his shoulder. Her eyes were wide open, unfocused. Mouth slack. A tremor of grief gripped him, and then—

  She blinked.

  “Tia,” he repeated breathlessly, dropping to his knees beside her. He cupped her face in his hands, and her staring eyes filled with liquid. “Oh, jeez,” he said then, understanding dawning on him. “Oh jeez, oh jeez.” He touched her neck, and her pulse pounded madly under his middle finger—such frantic, determined life. Like there was another creature inside this still, dead skin, squirming to burst free. And the smell of her, too. Her unwashed body, the two days’ exertions, sour, yeasty, again so goddamn scarily alive. He had heard about Shreve’s so many times. He had never seen it for himself. The horrors he’d be warned about didn’t prepare him for the reality.

  Close enough now that he could kiss her, if he were to lean forward, he could hear her faint, shallow exhalations. Hih. Hih. Hih. She blinked, and the tears made matching trails down her cheeks, cutting through a skim of dirt.

  He took her hand, and it spasmed in his grip.

  “Well, there you go,” Roz said from behind him. “I guess she won’t be bashing any more heads in.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Andy said. There was a sob inside him, wriggling toward the light, and he bit his lip against it.

  Roz made a grunting, displeased sound, then that clicking that signaled the dogs. They retreated, out of sight. Maybe back to camp without him. Andy, for now, didn’t care.

  He sat beside Tia, still clutching her hand. The fingers twitched again in his. He couldn’t tell if this was an act of Tia’s will or some automatic response, unknown to her. He thought, for some reason, of the office tower where OLE headquarters was housed. How the building started to clear at 5:00, as all of the eager clock-watchers fled, the parents with children in daycare, the coworkers with the weekly pub trivia night. That pub—Andy knew it well. Once a month he had to don a shirt and tie and attend a day’s worth of meetings at the office tower, and his reward at the end of it, the only thing that
dragged him through the handshaking and vigorous nodding, all of the assurances he had to offer to men in well-cut suits who talked of “traveler satisfaction quotients” and “extra-virtual entertainment experiences,” was the promise of a sweaty pint of ale at the Artillery Arms. Occasionally Tia joined him. One winter night, they’d taken a window seat, complained about the day’s many absurdities, and watched the lights in the building go out one by one, until only one—eleventh floor, third office from the right—remained.

  “I think we should wait him out,” Tia said. “As long as it takes. We go home when he does.”

  “Or she,” Andy said.

  “Or she,” Tia agreed. She raised her empty glass until the bartender spotted her, smiled broadly. Held up two fingers.

  “Man, Tia, I don’t need another. Beth’s going to be climbing the walls if I’m not home soon.”

  “Blame me,” Tia said. “Thad and Berry are at Thad’s mother’s tonight. I’m having another beer.”

  He’d wondered, nursing his third pint, watching the last lit window in the tower, if that was a hint. An invitation. He didn’t really think it was, but he thought that Tia had maybe known he’d parse her words this way—that there was, for her, the faintest illicit thrill in imagining the course his thoughts had taken. Instead of feeling manipulated, he felt tenderly toward her, and very warm and cozy in this dark wood and gilt pub, and he thought, Don’t go out, light. Don’t go out.

  In another twenty minutes it did.

  Now, her hand stiffened in his, then went slack. But the shallow breaths kept going: Hih. Hih. Hih. She must have been here for hours. One light going out. Then another. The brain, he thought he remembered, continued for a long time to function normally. She’d be thinking of Berry and Thad. Maybe, as he held her hand, she wished with all her being that she could snatch it out of his grasp, pick up the near-at-hand gun, and put his lights out. He couldn’t blame her.