All the Land to Hold Us (7 page)

The breath of salt kept rising, pulsing to the surface, salt being milked upward by every ounce of fresh water that happened to fall within the dish of the lake; and all that water then evaporated almost immediately, beneath the brain-searing heat (a heat that was magnified by the walls of pure white sand dunes that surrounded the lake, building in times of high wind to crests in excess of fifty feet tall; and the heat was magnified too by the gleaming-bone radiance of the salt flats)—so that what was left behind was a residue of pure salt, oozing slowly, steadily, from the salt mountain so far below, as if from some wound that would never heal.

The lakebed became saltier each day—the thing that would have diluted it, rainfall, ended up only contributing to the increasing salinity, luring or summoning ever more salt upward—and any lost traveler staggering across those dunes who might have happened to take the maddened trouble to climb, for some random and inexplicable reason, any of those fifty-foot hills that helped form the high wall around the lake, would have been confused at first, believing that an unknown inland passage might have just been discovered; and in the blazing, brilliant heat, the thirsting traveler might have wondered whether the ocean below belonged to the Atlantic, or the Pacific, or to some other and perhaps newer ocean, entirely uncharted, running narrow and sinuous through the country's center.

The sun-blistered traveler would be able to sit on the cornice of the giant sand dune and taste the spray of salt that the drying winds hurled, so that if the traveler stared long enough, there would soon be a thin mask of rime in the shape of his or her face, gritty but clean, and the traveler would be able to wet his or her lips and taste the brine of the grains of salt.

The traveler's eyes would sting and tear from the spray, and with the sides of a thumb, the salt would be wiped away, and the traveler might then turn, without venturing down that last perilous slope to visit the great and seemingly useless lake of salt—he or she frightened, for some unknowable reason, and like a balky animal unwilling to go that last short distance.

There would however be other travelers who, after wiping away that glistening salt-mask, would forge ahead; who would push on over the edge and run cascading in ankle-deep heated sand down the front wave of the dune, and out onto the salty floating sludge of whitened crystal, their skin baking as if they had wandered into an oven.

There, at lifeless shore's edge, they would behold the detritus of generations of despoliation and meaninglessness. It might seem to any of them that they had been led here by accursed destiny; but thinking back on their journey, some of them would remember there had been signs and clues all along that they were bound for this place.

All cultures of man had been coming to the lake, determined to find use in the abundance, the excess, of that most basic and mundane of elements, salt (had it been a lake of shit, they would have mined it and carted it away for fertilizer); and in their remembering, the travelers would recall that there had been footpaths worn deep in the desert hardpan, seemingly all ascatter but actually lying upon the desert like the widening spokes of a wagon wheel, radiating from some unknown hub.

The paths of the old salt traders were scored with the labored cuttings of wagon wheels, and lined on either side with the bleached bones of man and animal alike, the skulls looking at first like so many stones or boulders, so that even on a lightless night the traveler would have been able to continue along the trail, navigating by those pale markers alone.

 

Some days the density of the floating sludge, the bog of it, was such that a man or woman could walk gingerly across it, testing and retesting with each footstep, avoiding the weaker or soupy places and stepping only on the firmer patches—the traveler's footsteps sinking nonetheless a few inches into the salt crust, so that his or her tracks would be clearly visible for the return trip; though most insidious of all, the localized densities were in constant flux, and never with any discernible physical differences, so that on the traveler's return trip, the route would have to be changed completely.

Patches of salt crust that had been dutifully firm only moments before, which still bore the glistening proof in the form of the traveler's own footprint, were now no longer trustworthy—were less than trustworthy, in fact, treacherous and beckoning—and the traveler would have to pick and choose, step by cautious step, a new route back to where he or she had come from.

Sometimes such a route could not be found, and the traveler would fall suddenly through a crevasse or abyss, a soup hole, vanishing from sight and history. Other times the traveler would simply become mired, as the sun baked to a thin salt crust certain sections of the lake while melting the sparkling, glistening glaze of others: and in those spots, the traveler would perish, baking in the brilliant heat long before he or she died from a lack of water.

Sometimes the traveler would, in the repose of death, slump forward, in those final moments, dying on all fours; and the wind-whipped sprays of salt that had so tortured him or her for a day or two would continue to lash at the unfeeling carcass, coating the kneeling form with a shining rime until finally, after a few months, nothing remained visible of the traveler save for that anomalous humped mound far out on the lake's surface; a shining salt mound which, if someone on the shore squinted their eyes, might be perceived as possessing the rough outline of a kneeling person, as one is able to see in the drifting rearrangements of towering cumulus clouds similarly fantastic shapes: seeing the shapes of whatever it is one desires to see.

Other times, the traveler would expire while still standing, having breathed his or her last panting breath—the traveler's burnt heart having leapt wildly, but in ever-shortening leaps, caught there in the sagging cage of its own rib bones. (He or she might last a full day, upright, and might know then the fevered respite of a short summer evening—but when the sun rose again the next morning, the dawn reflection illuminating the frying pan of salt glaze so that it looked like lava, the traveler's will would break, and by noon he or she would have succumbed, cooked to a crisp.)

Rather than crumple forward, to be baked like a roasting oven-chicken, the traveler might fall backward in those final moments, arms flung outward as if upon some shortened crucifix; and when this happened, the traveler would disappear quickly beneath the salt.

There were times too however when the salt's grip around the traveler's knees would result in him or her falling back into a leaning, forty-five-degree position; and such would be the traveler's weakness, in these instances, that no clench or contraction of leg or stomach muscles could effect a movement back into an upright position, so that for a while the backward-leaning traveler would flail and paddle his or her arms, trying to claw his or her way back up by clutching nothing but air. Such efforts were rarely successful, however, and eventually the traveler would succumb, leaning back as far as those sun-slackened muscles would allow.

The pressure on the protesting joints and ligaments, unaccustomed to such positioning, was excruciating, but the muscles required to remedy the problem simply had no fire, no powers of resiliency left, and the traveler would die quickly now, caterwauling, once he or she fell backward, or halfway backward.

And after the last cries had been uttered, and the last twitch of complaining arm had stilled—the traveler's mouth gaping open as if in song—the windblown salt would begin to shroud these carcasses, too, creating gruesome statues.

Sometimes the salt shrouded first one side of such a monument, before shifting direction and encrusting the other side. The result was that the sculptures grew in size daily, salt ghosts, as each new layer of salt accrued in roughly the same shape as that which had first been deposited upon the form; and not until some mass had been reached that exceeded the physical laws governing such accumulation would slabs of that vertical salt begin to fall from the still-upright traveler, so that again to a viewer on the shore it would now seem that the monstrous sentinel in the center of the lake was shedding one overcoat after another; and as if emerging from a cyst or cocoon, the man or woman would reappear, out in the salt flat's center.

Sometimes the gritty wind would have stripped from the traveler every article of cloth and every ounce of flesh, so that as the wind whistled through the latticework of open ribs it would make a music, punctuated by the keening that oscillated through the grinning skull, and the vacant orbitals of nostrils and eyes—a sound like the music of bagpipes, and all the more eerie for the sound's provenance, which was indisputably coming from that one lone upright skeleton, stranded just beyond reach.

Other times the salt and wind did not destroy the cloth and flesh, but cured and preserved it, so that once those salt husks were shed, it might appear that no harm had befallen the traveler.

The shirt the traveler wore would still be a brilliant blue, and the traveler's black hair might still be fluttering in the breeze. The muscle tone on the outstretched arms would still be taut and firm, and it would appear, from the distant perspective of shore, that the figure was only resting, but that his or her intent and resolve were still strong.

On the rarest of occasions, the traveler would indeed survive, and be set free, later that same day, or in the middle of the night, or in the next day's rise of the orange sun. Ever so rarely, the salt would miraculously release its grip, and after hours of the traveler's futile struggling, a swirl of water might pool up around his or her mired legs, loosening the salt's cast; and with no more effort than wading a shallow creek, the traveler would suddenly be able to lift one foot, and then another; and cautiously, he or she could resume the perilous journey toward shore—alternating the route to account for the constantly changing patches of firmness, and the constantly changing patches of treachery.

Other times, when the travelers succumbed, they acted as lures or attractants for other victims. A man might ride up to the lake and see a person stranded out there, seemingly alive and thus savable, and hurry out with a lariat, intending to get as close as he could, hoping to toss a rope to the stranded person and reel him in.

The cowboy might throw a loop over the ensnared (the traveler's back facing the cowboy, perhaps), only to find out, upon pulling, that the person had ceased moving a hundred years ago, or longer; and at the rescuer's tug the skeleton might snap in half, as brittle as the desert-bleached keel of the skeleton of some tiny shorebird.

The rescuer might end up saving only a sun-withered, mummified arm, a bushel basket of ribs, or nothing at all. Other times the rescuer would end up with less than nothing, and would become mired himself—sometimes afoot, other times on top of a spirited horse—so that there would now be a new addition to the slowly evolving diorama; and a few weeks later, a new glittering statue of salt crystals would have been erected.

Nor were rescuers, or would-be rescuers, the only ones lured out to join the other motionless travelers on the salt plain. Scalp hunters, perceiving easy pickings, sometimes could not resist; and in their greed, they were stopped well short of their quarry. Buffalo wolves, down from the north, and little red wolves and Mexican wolves, and black bears and grizzlies, also attempted to creep out onto the bog of floating salt, to nibble at the delicacies that summoned them, as did the little coyotes, after the wolves and bears had gone extinct; and sometimes they were successful, while other times they too were captured by the hungry sucking maw of the salt, so that always a menagerie or carnival was appearing out in that dangerous, glittering amphitheater, and the story remaining always the same—desire, failure, rescue, longing, foolhardiness, prudence, fortune, misfortune—with only the array of alternating characters, man and beast alike, changing across time.

Alone among the lake's visitors, only the birds were safe. The vultures and ravens were free to perch on the heads and shoulders of the stranded and sinking travelers, pecking at whatever desiccated scraps they desired, and the warblers, vireos, and flycatchers were free to ferry straw and sticks out to the carriage-bone houses and build nests upon the scoops of clavicles and in the hearts of the pelvises, raising their young in these nooks and crevices.

Violet-and-green swallows were free to dab mud nests beneath the grinning skulls, up tight against the vertebrae of the neck; so that again, when the eggs hatched and the nestlings were first attempting to fledge, the chittering, plaintive cries they sent out to the desert sounded yet again as if the skeleton had resumed singing; as if the voice of that traveler could never be stilled: and whether in lamentation or celebration, a listener would not have been able to gauge, but would only have been able to marvel at the unparalleled tenacity of life, the unstoppable longing of it.

And in this vein, it would have struck an observer how the salt plain was always on the move. It was as if the mechanical model for life were so well designed that it would continue to run by itself for some indefinite time afterward, even in the absence of life.

The vultures would shift their weight from one skeleton to another, and the skull or arm of one of the skeletons would fall off, giving the brief and sudden impression that some residue of life or energy had bestirred.

Or the final meniscus of cartilage would wither and stretch, within the skeletons' knee joints or hips, allowing them to pivot in the wind like weathervanes; and sometimes the winds would gust, spinning the sentinels as if they were all partners at some select cotillion: and for those that were still robed in tattered garments, or whose sun-dried skin had been pecked and peeled away to curl like cowhide, so that from a distance it looked as if they were wearing leather coats and vests, the jackets would flap, as the weathervanes spun, adding to an unsettling image of gaiety.