It wasn’t long before they were hauling away Uncle Fred with more than circumstantial evidence of wrong-doing.
Turns out Uncle Fred had been diddling little kids at that hostel of his. They found photographic evidence on his personal computer. This was no accident. No, of course it wasn’t. She, in Her infinite wisdom, had this planned all along. His kind were not only Lightless, but Light stealers. She would have no such thing in her presence.
We praised Her righteous cleansing of the land.
So we all said so long to Uncle Fred as they tossed him into the Sheriff’s car and drove him, shamed and ostracized, out of the sight of the Sea.
eight
It’s a windswept feeling, living out here. You can sometimes feel washed out by the sun. You can sometimes be overcome by what you’ve yet to do, and what you’ve done. I’d washed my hands in Her waters so many times, the crystals grew up to my wrists at first. It made touching, bringing people in close to me, difficult. Yet, if it wasn’t pain that let us all in, I’d refrain from giving a caress.
Beneath the touch of my crystal hands, and as Her Word poured off my tongue, I sliced, with precision, the faces of all my people. They bore Her mark on their cheeks, on their chin, and on their forehead. They were The People of the Salton Sea, and they were chosen. She made it so, and so I marked them. As the crystals snaked up my forearms, so too did the Sea and I crystalize those people’s spirits. We made them shine. Jacob, Curtis, Jasmine, Angela, and Marcy. Now Marcy’s child, too, whom the Sea had said was mine, not Marcus’s after all.
One night, like so many others, She woke me from my sleep with Her murmurs. I nudged Curtis’s arm aside, pushed Angela’s leg from my middle, and crawled over Jacob. I grabbed my robe from beside the bed and made my way out of the camper and across the glass-strewn land until I was at Her edge. It was then, as I stood there on the bone-white beach, that She informed me that the child had been mine all along. When I asked why She let me go all that time thinking Marcy bore Marcus’s son, she said it was to teach me a lesson.
This is what She said: While Her voice must be heard, my group, my little circle of loved ones, could grow no larger. It had been decided. No one but them could ever be close to me, not in the way my people were. No matter how bright the Light in others that may one day come, it was my people, and my people only, that would ever be allowed to truly know me. I should never let another in, and Marcus was that lesson.
And that was when She told me that I should have my one-and-onlys go out and spread Her Word. It was them, and not I, that should bring others to Her. And when they had succeeded in that divine task, it was them that would provide Her tutelage. It was them that would be responsible for the others. This would ensure I would never have to let those others into my heart, but it was me, and only me, that would provide Her Word, like food from my own mouth. I would give that food to my exclusive inner circle and they would be responsible for nourishing any new believers. The Sea said that it was their time. She said they should bring others, but not those that would bring with them The Great Eye. And She assured me that I would not drown. I would not be lost in the Light. That I would never be forgotten. I would remain Her sole interpreter. Her soul-interpreter. It would only and always be me.
I could not argue with Her, for She is the Sea.
Instead, I went straight back to our little home in The Slabs. The place with that luxurious bed where all my friends slept. I walked past dogs just waking, sniffing the dirt for something of note, finding nothing but glass in their nose. I walked past cardboard shacks with tarp roofs, buzzing with both flies and electric fans. I walked past the sunrise. I walked by East Jesus and Salvation Mountain. I walked up the aluminum steps into the camper and told all my friends that their destiny is to prosper. I grabbed them by their faces and kissed them full on their mouths so that they may taste Her meaning on my breath. I thanked them. I told them they are deliverers of Her Word now and that they should bring them, whomever they can find, no matter how many or few, to the water’s edge. I told them it was time for a mass baptizing.
They were excited beyond words. They only cried. Or laughed. They worried they’d not know what to say out there in the world, away from Her. Away from me. I told them not to worry, they’d have my book soon, even if it was just a work-in-progress. I also told them that they bore The Mark and The Mark would show the others who they were. That they were my people. I assured them just as the Sea assured me: there won’t be many. Only the pure are free.
nine
So they left me. And at first their absence was exhilarating. I could feel all the space around me. My time was my own, having been relieved of a great deal of my responsibilities. It was just me and Her, and I relished Her attention. I relished being Her only patron. I relished the physical freedom. I relished the lack of expectations. I relished, for a moment, not having to please anyone but Her, and She would always be pleased, for I am Her vessel. All I do is done through Her.
So I lounged around the camper, strolled along Her shores. I mingled with the other Slabbers, petted all the Slabradores. I’d look into all their eyes. The Light, it was growing. Especially at night. You’d hook your arm around the neck of one of those dogs and you’d wrestle it into the dirt and you’d watch them fight and bark and growl and you’d see a Light unlike any other Light. Not on any other plane of existence. It’s only found near the shores of the Salton Sea.
While my people were away on their mission, I sat down with others in The Slabs, like I said. I allowed myself the rare pleasure of socialization. I would find them around a card table set outside their cardboard shack or lounging in lawn chairs beneath beach umbrellas in the front yard of their campers. As always, electric fans blew hot air around them. I’d find them at East Jesus making sculpture from trash. I’d find them at The Range, making music from the stage, and it’d sadden me because it only reminded me of that nylon-strung guitar, and my people, who were not with me.
Those people, those Slabbers, they didn’t spend as much time at the Sea as me and mine. They bathed in showers made from water-filled buckets, those buckets poked full of tiny holes. Some of them climbed into nearby hot springs, the surfaces of them like the skin on pudding. Others risked a dip in the canals that fed the hungry fields of the surrounding Imperial Valley, growing foods for the pure and impure alike. When a drifter dipped into a canal, ignorant of its ways, they sometimes ended up sucked into a syphon, one of the canal’s underground tunnels. And they’d never come back. I almost thought it was Her doing, whenever we’d hear of such a drowning, but those canals weren’t connected to Her. They weren’t Her arteries.
But the Slabbers, my neighbors, were good people. After all, we had what’s important in common: freedom. They too sought it and found it not far from Her waters. Unfortunately, they thought only of their own volition. They knew not that She was the reason they found salvation. She was the one that drove away The Great Eye decades ago so that we may rest in obscurity, which was the only way one could find true peace in those days.
You see, I once lived in a city. I lived in a city where buildings huddled together to block out the sky. There were bridges over waters not nearly as giving as She. There were people everywhere and how it saddens me to think of the dying Light in all their eyes, not knowing my own Light was dimming. We drove cars, went to work, spent our lives behind the closed walls of cubicles or shops.
Some of us had families. Families that made demands. Demands of material fulfillment. Security. Those demands had nothing to do with the Light in our souls. So when I left my family, left their mouths open, shocked, and empty of the real Light, they could not understand. There was nothing inside their hearts that could grasp at my reason. That’s why I didn’t attempt to bring them with me. I knew that my family was built from the wrong foundation. There was nothing to do but tear it down, start over again. I didn’t tell this to them. What would have been the point? Impure as they were, there was no pathway there. No roadmap to
the soul. Only impasse. And, yet, I forgave them, for they were a first test. A test from some distant, as yet unknown Sea.
So while my people were away, I tempered the loneliness by passing out Xeroxed copies of my book-in-progress. And, as I’ve said, the Slabbers were good people. Nothing like those false believers in Niland that tried to drag me down with them. The Slabbers, I’d sit with them, some slack-jawed, some missing limbs, some blind from too many days in the desert sun. Some toothless and wordless from too many drugs. All bore leathery skin, maintained slow movements, and a welcoming demeanor. I’d sit with them and share Her Word and they’d nod and listen. Truly listen. I couldn’t claim to have dipped into the waters of their souls, but they heard me, and they were thirsty for more. They told me, each to a one, that I should keep at it and when I had my book complete, share with them again. Most told me they knew that they were all there because of Her. It was clear to me that some took this as mere symbol, but symbols are a beginning. Symbols are the gateway to belief. For what is the soul but the symbol of our love everlasting? In the end, we, our whole selves, are symbols, for what becomes of us once we no longer walk this earthly plane? We become stories in other’s mouths. While we live eternally in Her Light, finally fulfilled, those we leave behind symbolize us with language.
As She has told through me, many times, there would be few. And during the absence of my friends, the Light grew inside only a few of those Slabbers upon deliverance of Her Word. It was those people that I told to wait for my friends to come back, for I could help no further. My friends would take them under their wing, guide them toward Her love and help them remain free. Eternally free. Some argued that they couldn’t be freer than they were right then in that moment. And I explained to them that it was only because of Her that they felt that way, but it would be fleeting without devotion. That they risked being dragged under by false prophets decrying the death of the Sea.
Ah, the death of the Salton Sea. This only piqued their curiosity, for, as I’ve said, the human condition is to be hellbent on self-destruction, and to be a Great God Destroyer. So, they’d ask me what I planned to do about the sale of Her land. The very land we all lived on. I explained to them that it would never happen. They’d say, But what about the government? I’d hold their hands, look deep into their eyes, and tell them that She would never let Law back in. Believe with me, I’d tell them, and She would not let the Law back in.
The poison, they’d say.
No, no poison, I’d tell them. Only a humid wall of fragrance, the bone-dust of Law to breathe in, breathe out. These things they call harmful are only harmful to nonbelievers. These are Her tools which She employs to drive away The Great Eye and the Law that it always brings. Those awful Soul Managers. Trust in Her and there is no end. No poison, no toxic land. She was not shrinking. She was not drying up. We would replenish Her with our own souls, our everpresent love and obedience.
And most would nod and place a hand on my shoulder and thank me. They’d pass me the bottle of whatever it was they were drinking (though I shouldn’t have accepted), the pipe of whatever it was they were smoking, the pills they were swallowing, whatever they had to give me in return, and then they’d truly thank me. They enjoyed my company, and I theirs, though I missed my people desperately. We’d while away the hours under the Milky Way and they’d tell me I was doing a good thing. That I should always do my good thing. As free people, they understood the basics: that freedom first comes from within. It’s there where you first must dive to reap the rewards of eternal life, eternal freedom. It starts with the reigniting of the soul. That’s freedom. Those people, though they may never have believed entirely, would never pin me down and tell me how wrong I was.
They understood that all I asked of them, of anyone, is that they listen.
And I’m asking you to listen, too. Can you hear me? Do you hear Her? Do you hear the hum of the Sea in this little book?
ten
My friends were away for much longer than I had anticipated. The sheen on my personal freedom quickly dulled. In their absence, I was adrift, vulnerable. Despite Her everpresent song and love, despite Her miracles, both great and small, I longed for my people. I wanted to spend my evenings around a fire listening to the nylon-strung guitar and their soothing singing voices.
I wanted to lay with Jasmine, watch her dark skin goosebump beneath my caresses, let her remove crystals from my skin and consume me. Drink from me. Jasmine was a vessel to be filled. She said so herself. She said she did not exist before Her love filled her soul. Before meeting me and learning of Her Word. She said she was birthed into existence here, next to the Salton Sea, under the unforgiving desert sun, whole and pure. There was no her before, and now she is only of the Sea. Jasmine asks to be filled each day with love. Me and mine and the Sea offer that freely. She has told us many times that she has nothing to give but her willingness, her openness to being taken.
I missed Angela, who was the caretaker of our little family. She sewed and cooked and listened. She didn’t speak much. She was a giver, too, like Jasmine. And she had money. Able to provide us with anything that might be an inconvenience otherwise. Things we couldn’t provide for ourselves, or things which the land could not, though that was few and far between, of course. It was Angela that was able to rent cars for everyone to go off in their separate directions to deliver Her Word. Angela had credit cards. Where the money came from, she never said. She moved here from Virginia when she was seventeen and she let us know she would never talk much about that time again, much like Jasmine. That was the time of another life, she’d say. That was another me, she’d tell us. In fact, she didn’t even go by Angela during that life. She chose the name shortly after calling Slab City her home, and the Salton Sea her savior.
Of course I also missed Jacob, watching him cook up something on the stove for us to smoke, or gently picking the right parts of desert plants apart so that we may safely ingest them. I missed his conversation and the warmth of his sleeping breath that comforted me as we all lay together, them sleeping, me always listening, listening, listening. Jacob was more of a talker than Angela, but still a good listener. He was the only one that was born here, next to the Salton Sea. He’s known nothing else, and longs for nothing else. When I’ve asked him what happened to his parents, his family, since I’ve never met them, he said he could not remember. He said that the Sea’s voice had replaced that void and he no longer wondered about it.
Curtis was even more of a talker. Sometimes he would stay up with me when my insomnia and insatiable need to hear Her song kept me up at night. He’d keep me company with soft whispers, asking what I heard. I’d tell him and he’d discuss the meaning of Her Word with me. Curtis was inquisitive and always bright and energetic. He told me once that he ran from nothing. He’d never had anything to run from. Like Angela, he too had money, able to assist when that kind of assistance was absolutely necessary. He told me he came from parents who were still together. He had a sister and a brother, and they were good people, he had told me, though they would never be a part of something as large as what he had given himself over to. But he grew up wanting for nothing. He was nineteen, about to go off to Harvard, Yale, or some other hallowed hall of education, when he realized that wanting for nothing did not fulfill him. Something was missing. He didn’t understand at the time that what he was missing was Her love, and the freedom it offered. But after wandering the roadsides of America, or hiking the entirety of the Pacific Crest Trail, he knew collars and walls were not a part of his destiny.
And of course I missed my Marcy, her careful caresses. Her calming voice that could ease even the most determined person back from the ledge and into her arms. Sometimes I would think Marcy was even more capable of accepting the Sea’s love in its entirety than I could. Of course the notion was ridiculous, but it was how I felt. Marcy came to the Salton Sea, to The Slabs, when she was very young. Fourteen or so. She couldn’t remember her exact age, for it was all a blur to her and she had
already been there for several years before she met me and mine. She was resourceful, though, and built her own shack and found that the other Slabbers were generous with their help and their possessions. She found them to be her true family until she came to be a part of me and mine where she could experience fulfillment in its purest sense. That faith and understanding that the Sea bestowed upon us.
It was the acceptance of Marcy which proved to be the most formidable test of our union as The People of the Salton Sea. For it was Marcy’s adopted family who were at first not happy about her abandonment of them. At the time, her family was a group of Slabbers that all lived together in a decrepit little school bus. One day, several of them found us frolicking at the water’s edge, our naked skins peeling under the sun, shining from the salt deposited there. The Sea was belching large amounts of gas into the sky that day. So much so that people one-hundred-and-seventy miles away in Los Angeles were able to feel the weight of Her meaning in their lungs. That weight, that supposed burden, was too much for some.
So, Marcy’s family stormed the beach where we only played and loved, wearing their shirts up over their noses and mouths. They told Marcy to stay away from me. We laughed because it was comical, these dirty men and women talking at us through their t-shirts. We traipsed through the water, terns turning and scurrying from our play. We told her old family to get away. We hissed and spit and laughed and ran, naked, into the waters. Jacob bent over and spread his butt cheeks, made farting noises at them. We all laughed and splashed in Her waters. When Marcy dropped to her knees in those waters and took me into her mouth, one of the men came at me. Came at us. In my moment of ecstasy, I didn’t see Curtis pick up a floating piece of wood and swing it like a baseball bat against the man’s head. Upon the thick thud of contact, Curtis hooted, hollered, and jumped atop the man, shoving his face into the mud beneath the cool waters. As Marcy continued to suck the Sea from me, two other men trudged into the waters to save their friend. Jasmine jumped on one of their backs and Jacob broke the other’s nose, dropping him in the water. Once Curtis had finished baptizing the first intruder, he stuck a broken bottle in the ribcage of the man Jasmine was screaming and scratching at. The others that stood on the beach, aghast, watched only for a few more moments before running, terrified, in the opposite direction.
The God of Salt & Light Page 3