Hummingbird Salamander(98)
If I could visit just once, bust in a window, I could take more things for barter. Maybe even have a yard sale, if the neighborhood was safe. If no one had already broken in.
Maybe, though, I just yearned for something other than what I had. Which was nothing. Maybe I believed a purpose waited for me out there. Or some thread I’d lost would come back to me. Because with the way the world kept cracking open I recognized something delusional in words like “yard sale” or “mortgage.” As if, soon, some words would be extinct.
But I couldn’t shake the memory of the photos of my daughter over the fireplace. Which might still be hung with dusty stockings. In all my repurposing of Shovel Pig, I’d lost my only photos of her. I had begun to find it hard to see her face.
[104]
But I didn’t make it to the house. The jeep ran fine. The world did not. Even stopped short, I would have to become fluent in new languages, discard old ones. Languages of the dead and languages of the new. Curfews and lockdowns took unusual new forms. The National Guard had been called out to deal with an unspecified disaster. There was gridlock and confusion surrounding the city, early that summer. There was, too, old friend, the intensifying green-gray tint to the sky, tinged with gold from the distant glow of uncontrollable fires from a natural gas explosion. Or so they said. A general advisory to use a mask, to avoid breathing unfiltered air. With little explanation.
Even as the rain kept coming. Ever-present and meaningless, like thought.
“Landscape isn’t fragile. It’s what we impose upon it that’s fragile. We must be ruthless about the foreground. We must trust the backdrop. Do you know how to do that? Can we trust in that?”
Funny how even then, as systems failed, flickered out, institutions revealed as paper thin, that so many couldn’t bring themselves to believe in anything. That it helped if you didn’t. Better to observe the rituals, use the catchphrases. Share your concern.
Express enthusiasm for reliquaries that some still held a mirror to, claiming to see breath form.
* * *
On a little-known stretch of state road about a hundred miles from the city, I came to a barricade with slogans on banners that canceled one another out. Didn’t hesitate. Gunned the engine and smashed through the wooden fencing, firing from the open window for maximum discouragement. Some people believe in nothing.
Some people just want to kill other people, because they can. Maybe it was a joke or some form of performance art, but I didn’t have the temperament to stop and find out.
I stopped for a deer a mile later, my pulse humming bad in my ears. Too irregular. Almost abandoned the jeep and followed the deer’s silhouette into deep forest.
Continued on. But I knew I wouldn’t make it to the city.
So I tried to find a different homecoming.
[105]
Noon of a day pretending to be ordinary, the rain a memory that would return transformed, as memory does. A moment like all the other forgotten moments in history. Silvina, did you know I’d keep returning? Did you count on me, relentless to the end? I can’t see how.
The storage palace had three burnt-out husks of cars, tireless, in front. Not a soul in evidence, living or otherwise. Grass grew thick and tangled at the margins. Smell of tar and chemicals from no visible source.
The front door had been smashed off its hinges, and the outer walls grafittied with tags in green, orange, and white. It was like the rest of the country, no better, no worse.
The electricity had gone out, so I took my flashlight with me along with trusty Fusk and Shovel Pig. The cane more out of habit than necessity. Entered that hollowed-out place to the forensic evidence of earlier looting. Any junk had been dropped in the antechamber, a spree of plastic garbage and twisted bicycle wheels, broken glass and torn kiddie pools. Corridors had much the same debris, storage unit doors forced open, a few no doubt more politely opened with keys. The security counter had a firebombed quality to it, stripped of anything valuable, including copper.
Nothing much surprised me, the farther I went. More burn marks. Even the remains of a campfire with logs. Everything covered in a stillness so utter that my footsteps sounded like sacrilege. The amplified skitter of a mouse or rat in the shadows conjured up monsters.
I barely remembered the way in that transformed landscape. Pathetic enough. Nostalgic enough.
Storage Unit 7.
The door was closed, but unlocked, swung open easily.
I stared a moment, began to laugh. Unit 7 was empty as ever. Lit by the flickering fluorescent light above.
Out of habit, or established ritual, I searched the shadowy corners one more time. Tested the walls for hollow sounds. Tapped discolored parts of the floor with my boots. Nothing. Just the sound of dripping water from down the hall.
The outer areas were warm, but Unit 7 felt cool. I lingered a moment, wrestling with whether I should walk up the mountain for old times’ sake or head back, defeated, to the King Range.
The mountain, I decided. Once I left, how could I be sure I would ever be able to return?
I came out into the murk of corridor. Then stopped. Something nagged at me. A ringing in my ears. Some detail I’d missed. When I realized what it was, I felt faint, remote from my body.
I looked back into Unit 7.
The ceiling light flickered at me. Taunted me. Told me I was stupid.
The entire complex was dark. No electricity. Not a single exception. Except for this one light.