The God of Salt & Light

by Logan Ryan Smith

  Soon we were naked and drawing in all the Light around us. Sucking color from the land and sky. Growing brighter and brighter and brighter from it, ourselves. Right there in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of everywhere. Right where we belonged. A single ray of Light burning so bright and so hot that those on planets thousands of lightyears away will one day see it and think us a star.

  When we were done, Jasmine told me I was turning to crystal. That I shined too bright for her. She could hardly see me in the Light. She had to put an arm against her eyes just to bear it.

  I laughed, but it was Truth. She nestled into me and picked at the skin of my upper arm. She went at it with the tip of a nail, determined, until a bit of crystal broke away and I bled.

  Quick, she put her full mouth to the spring and drank. She said it tasted of the Sea.

  six

  They say the Salton Sea is shrinking. They say She’s losing a foot a year. They say She won’t last. She won’t be around forever. They say when She’s gone the dirt She leaves behind will rise up into the air, resurrected, and suffocate us all. They say we’re Her fishes and deserve no different fate.

  That is what they say. What they’ve said.

  Some things never change.

  And so one day I wandered away from my people. I left them rolling around in the mud ejaculated from the mud volcanoes at the Sea’s southeastern rim.

  Jacob had cooked up something nice for us that day. When he shared it with us, he ran hands through his long hair, nervous for validation. He said he was quite proud of it, and excited to share it with us, those that he loved so dearly. Like I said, those concoctions were his passion.

  Inside the effervescent haze that Jacob and the land had gifted us, She told us to bathe in the sludge. To breathe in those gases. So we ran, happy and free, from the wet lips of Her shores to the cracked nipples protruding three feet or more out of the land. They burbled and gurgled and spat grey sediment into the air, burping and bubbling. We ran there and threw ourselves immediately into the clay from which all was made, that primordial ooze, that God juice. We stripped first, let it into every crevice, every orifice. We kissed and smoothed each other’s skins with the mud, losing our colors, our flesh becoming land. Our flesh becoming that of the Salton Sea’s. Under the high noon sun, we baked and cracked. We spat and laughed and came over and over again, a blinding Light behind our eyeballs with each convulsion as we mixed our juices with that of the land’s. We didn’t fear infection, we didn’t fear the abusive sun. We didn’t fear anything. For She told us there was nothing to fear. Nothing at all.

  When I walked away from my people they were hardly human, except for those reddening eyes. Caked in grey mud, they laid in the sludge, pools of sienna or mustard-yellow water surrounding the gaping, squirting nipples. They had exhausted themselves, yes, but that’s not why they hardly moved. They were in commune with the land. Commune with our home. We felt it so often there, in Her good graces. There where freedom reigned. Where our souls became nourished.

  I left them there, for I felt restless. And spent. I gave everything to them, and to the land, in that moment. So I rose from the oozing clay like a golem wished to life. And I walked, painted by Her, a living masterpiece, into the collapsing town of Niland. It was there where I took refuge from the sun beside these old Roman-style columns of an abandoned bank. In that shade I sat and began to speak Her Word, caked in clay.

  There were few there to hear. Few walked past me. Those that did squinted from the bright white light of the desert. But their ears were not open. Their hearts just as closed. Passersby told me to get a job and clean myself up. When I protested, when I informed them that I was cleansed, that it was them, in fact, that were impure, they scoffed or picked up their pace, distancing themselves from me and Her Word.

  During that time, on that dusty cement in the shade of Roman columns, Her Word started as a whisper and became a howl. I screeched at the random passerby. I wailed with a heart full of love, ready to give. I clawed at myself, pulled at my hair, ran nails down my face, begged them to ask for Her forgiveness. I screamed that I worried for their souls. I wept openly at the prospect of all those people being extinguished upon their final breath, for they would all die with souls too dim to cross over to the next dimension. I provided, in language that didn’t always adhere to the Laws of language, a guiding Light that anyone within earshot could step onto and ride to salvation.

  All passed me. All pretended to be deaf.

  But I was determined, and I was filled with Her spirit. The Light came pouring out of me. It was especially obvious at night, sitting there beside the Roman columns, the Light would exit me every time I parted my lips to speak. A persistent glow grew from my wide-open eyes. It saddened me, for that dead town offered no one to me. For most of my residence there, my Light shone only on abandonment in the form of cracked asphalt, broken sidewalks, and small, boarded-up buildings.

  Eventually, someone in a van scooped me from the shaded sidewalk beside those columns in front of the desolate bank. I had collapsed under the ecstasy of Her love, so filled with Her Word. In service of Her Word. They wrapped a grey blanket around my hard grey skin and slipped me into their van. I was in a daze, but I knew what was happening. They drove me further into the town and I felt no fear. I could still hear the Sea. Before I slipped into total darkness, I could still taste the rot of Her on my tongue.

  She wasn’t far.

  That comfort was shaken once I woke again, the Salton Sea’s clay washed and scraped from my skin. Somehow they removed every last bit of Her from my body. Inside my ears, up my nostrils, between my buttocks, and beneath my scrotum. They took Her from me while I slept. And I slept like the brick I had become. I awoke on a cot in the town’s abandoned junior high school gymnasium. There were twenty or thirty other cots, most of them filled with sleepers or people hunched over, head in hands, looking up only to take deep drags on their cigarettes or to wipe the sleep from their eyes.

  I asked one of the orderlies where I was and they told me the Salvation Army. I told them that I am Salvation’s army. I tried to say more but felt something catch in my throat, the words blocked. I tried to whisper Her Word. I attempted to tell them to worship the Sea and that the Sea would reward them in due time. Eventually my vocal cords moistened and warmed and I told them freedom spreads from Her waters into the land around Her. Real freedom. Freedom of the soul. They told me I had been there, asleep on my cot, for three days and three nights. What’s more, they informed me that I had been perched beside a column, spreading Her Word for another three days and three nights. They said they had injected me with a saline solution and I asked them if it was made from the Sea. They seemed confused so I didn’t press. I asked them if they would come back with me to the Sea, and they shook their heads no. They told me I shouldn’t either. They told me that She was poison. They told me the lake (how dare they call Her that) was drying up and Her seafloor was toxic. They said the lake was drying up and might take us with it if we weren’t cautious. If we didn’t find a way to fix it. I told them I am the way. I told them to worship. I told them that if they believed, the Sea would only reward us. There’d be no poisoning, no dying of collapsed lungs. There’d be no colossal and unified asthma attack if they would just let Her into them. They called me delirious. They said that they were sorry but that they were going to have to give me something to put me back to sleep. They told me it was for the best. They told me to stay away from the Sea, and especially Her oozing clay. They had the audacity to imply that She was making me sick. That my current state was a sickness. This made me furious. I stood from my cot and flipped it over. I got into their faces and demanded they put me in their van and take me back to where I came from. I reprimanded them for scraping the land from me, the Light within me leaking out of my pores. I screamed, How dare you remove me from my post! Where are my people? I’ve been away from them too long! Where are my people?

  They pushed me back onto my cot, tried to hold
me down. Those around me, those people that were also held captive there for their own reasons, stirred from their sleep or their daze. I pleaded with them. I asked them to save me. I begged. I wept as the Salvation Army cut my skin with their fingernails, bruised my shoulders with their faithless grip. I told them that only I can interpret Her Word and that these people were gagging the Mouth of God.

  My fellow captives laughed and twitched. They stood from their beds and howled. They howled like a great desert wind brushing over the oily sheen of the Sea. And I understood. Right then, She was filling their souls, controlling them to save me. These men and women, stripped away from the land, howled and encircled those holding me down. They screamed and squawked like birds in Her desert sky. They flapped their wings and leapt upon my captors. They ripped patches of hair from my jailers’ scalps, left half-moon teeth marks on the backs of their necks. So filled with Her spirit. So full of Her love.

  Once my oppressors were pulled from me, I slipped out of the gymnasium through a heavy metal door, screams and howls fading behind me. Immediately, the ruthless sun welcomed me. I walked the broken street trafficked with tumbleweed until I came to a wide-open space of ocotillo, low cactus, and creosote brush, and I walked. I realized then I was still wearing the paper gown they must have dressed me in at the gymnasium. Quickly, I ripped the thing off, felt the sun sting my shoulders. It renewed me. I could see the sparkling surface of the Sea in the distance, could smell Her righteous odor, that weight once again in my lungs informing me that I am never without Her.

  I wandered into The Slabs, found each of my people in their shacks, each one of them lying motionless, eyes open, on their backs. I had to shake each one from their stupor, place my mouth to theirs so that they may breathe again. Once I had them responsive, we gathered on the beach, baptized ourselves again in Her viscous waters, parted the dead fishes on Her surface with our hands, and wept our own tears into the Sea. My people had nearly died without me. They said it must have been the Sea that shut them off, for they are nothing without me. It was involuntary, they assured me. After I’d been gone for two days, then three, they shut off. It was the Sea. She switched them off, conserving their energies, for they are not like me. They do not carry with them the bottomless well of Light that She gave me. So, we made our way to the Sea, bathed in Her crystal waters, and when I told them to drink of Her, they didn’t hesitate. Just a sip, I told them. Just a taste to bring Her back into them. They listened and they obeyed.

  A sip of the Salton Sea to take the blues away.

  It wasn’t long before we were back to our old selves. I asked Marcy to grab that old nylon-strung guitar and sing to us. We gathered on the bone-sand beach and loved each other endlessly until we fell to sleep under stars, only feet from Her reach.

  seven

  A man came to The Slabs one day. A drifter. Just in time. For he had a calling. It wasn’t long before he was among us. One of us. A part of us and the Sea.

  His name was Marcus.

  He had a beer-belly and a bald spot. He also had a nice camper with a luxurious bed, air conditioning, and potted water. The pickup he had used to haul the thing was stolen his first day in The Slabs and he took that as a sign he should stay. Little did he know the important role he’d play.

  Marcus knew right away that I loved the camper, so he let me have it. Most of the time they were all with me, so it hardly mattered who that camper actually belonged to. But it was mine.

  Suffice to say, it wasn’t long before Marcus earned his place.

  He welcomed our welcoming arms, our welcoming touches, and the welcoming of Her Word. He told us he had been searching for Her all along. He just hadn’t known it. Who knew such glory would reside in the middle of the wide-open desert, in plain sight?

  He was lost, he told us. But now he was found.

  And it wasn’t long before he had Marcy pregnant. Somehow, he recaptured her womb from the Sea.

  This was unexpected. Confusing. My heart ached. I fell into a sea of anger.

  One night, I stood out there by the Sea, digging my naked toes into Her bones, and I asked Her why She gave it to him. And She didn’t answer. Under broken particles of moonlight, She sung, She hummed, or She murmured. I couldn’t understand any of it. I cried. I slammed my fists into sand. Again and again. Until my hands were cracked where crystals had broken away.

  I dipped my cracked hands into the Sea and screamed. I howled like a banshee having a bad dream.

  It’s in the pain where we can get most clean. It’s in the pain where we find clarity.

  In the gelatinous waters rippling beneath me, I saw my reflection. My eyes were two of the brightest, bluest moons you’ve ever seen in your life. That night, while salt licked my wounds, the universe fell in love with the Sea and granted Her three moons.

  And it was my soul, overflowing, that caused the moons of my eyes to glow brighter than any other moon on any plane of existence.

  With my hands crystalizing in the Sea, I could finally hear what She was saying.

  It wasn’t so much what She was saying as the echo of my own voice that She threw back at me. It flew at me, grazing the dark purple sheen of the Sea as wisps of cloud streaked across the night sky. It flew right at me. It was a nasty scream. One full of longing. And pain. So much pain. I hadn’t known what She was missing. What She was desiring. Until She had me utter the violent sound for Her.

  The next day I told Jacob, Curtis, Jasmine, Angela, and Marcy about my experience. After I told them, they made me promise immediately that I’d put it in my book. And I agreed that I would. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

  Later in the day, all seven of us lay naked in my camper. It was hot and muggy, all skin and what sticks to it. Hair matted and tongue tacky. Though the air conditioner was on the fritz, it was a wonderful day. I asked Marcy to get up and turn on all the fans, setting the room abuzz. And when I asked Marcus to make us a pitcher of ice-cold lemonade, he was happy to oblige, walking his bare ass to the middle of the camper where the counter was.

  Outside the camper, dogs barked. They sounded near. Perhaps right outside the door. They kept barking.

  Once Marcy slipped the rope around Marcus’s throat and pulled back, Curtis proceeded to hit him again and again in the face until he was unconscious. Then Angela tied a plastic bag over Marcus’s head, for our hearts could only handle so much violence. To let him deplete his own foul breath was gentler for all involved.

  His wet breath condensed inside the bag to a point where we could hardly see him. Where we could hardly be sure that was our Marcus in there. However, it wasn’t enough to cover up the fact that it took longer than we thought. And longer than it should have. He kept breathing, in and out, as if that plastic bag had enough oxygen to fill a hundred lungs.

  Outside our camper door, the dogs continued to yap and snarl.

  For a moment I wondered if I had misheard. If the Sea had meant something else entirely. That perhaps I had lost my connection to Her the previous night. That perhaps I was hearing only what I wanted to hear. Perhaps I’d no longer be the conduit of Her Word. Was it to be him? This Marcus? This pathetic man who thought he could steal the womb of Marcy back from the Sea? It was thievery. Pure thievery. If the Sea didn’t mean to have it, She wouldn’t have taken it in the first place.

  No, Marcy could never be pregnant. And Marcus could never be the conduit.

  So I booted him in the face to speed up the process. I pulled back my foot and drove it down into his bagged head, over and over again, not nearly as sickened by the act as I had expected. I booted him until the bag over his head was just a bag of foamy red liquid.

  No, there was no purity in there. Not from what I could see.

  As soon as Marcus’s soul extinguished for all eternity, the ruckus of the dogs retreated from our camper door. All we heard at that time was the blood in our ears and the Sea’s faint whisper following it.

  Later, in the cool and quiet of the desert night, under a blanket
of stars pulled from the glowing lips of the Chocolate Mountains, we loaded Marcus into the back of Uncle Fred’s pickup. Uncle Fred? He’s nobody’s uncle, he just ran the local hostel and called himself that. He’d shake your hand with both of his and say, Call me Uncle Fred. Everybody does.

  So we loaded a soulless corpse into Uncle Fred’s pickup well after dark and closer to sunrise. We also hitched Uncle Fred’s aluminum skiff to the truck then made our way to the Sea, Jasmine and Angela riding in the back with Marcus. We backed the boat out into the thick water and dropped it, loading Marcus into it as quickly as Jasmine and Angela could manage, Jacob tugging at the feet to help. It was a tight fit, but we all managed to make it into the skiff. Those of us that could get leverage rowed. We rowed and rowed until we were dead center of that massive land-locked Sea. Once we got there, we just rocked. We let the Sea quell our fears and our anxieties. We let the Sea calm our nerves and soothe our souls. We must have done that for over an hour as we nearly missed sunrise, lost in the restful bliss She granted us.

  But the Sea, like a loving mother, gently rocked me awake in time to wake the others. And the second that golden light laid across the Chocolate Mountains, we slipped the body into the water, properly weighted so that it, unlike many, may be blessed with a kiss from the bottom of the Sea.

  Of course the Sea grew intolerant and days later spat Marcus out of Her, right onto the bone-sand beach. He was bad meat, that Marcus. He was rotten to the marrow. Of course She couldn’t feed on that. What a ridiculous notion, for I did misunderstand her, at least in that regard. She had more than one job for me, but I hadn’t understood at the time, my fists growing crystals in the graces of Her good waters.

  She threw him up onto the beach. Gulls and vultures ate away at him and the sun and sand sucked all the color out of him before he was found. As his head was missing, eaten away by cancerous crabs and suffocating fishes, it was a mystery. A real who-dunnit. But it wasn’t long before the Imperial County Sheriff was out there with a couple collared men in suits. He had them both on a leash. He placed bowls at his feet and watched them drink, then sent them off with a sniff from something secreted in his palm.