SEAFOAM & RUST

Chapter XII

GODS OF GHOST RIVER

“… that inner glow, as of being taken up by something greater than himself,

which language could not express.”

- Jeff Vandermeer, Acceptance

I stare at it, my fingers weft between the tarnished threads of the chain link. Maybe, a sad thing for some, a slow motion bereavement taking the course of decades rather than a sudden end, as is the fate of us… the alive things. A dilapidated muscle car sits abandoned, left to succumb to the elements, rust consuming its once bright veneer, a minty tone obstructed by wear. As of today, this thing of beauty is mine. Confident that, with love, the old machine will roar to life again, bounding forth, resurrected from the dust of its untimely grave. Red Feather graciously lent the use of her garage as the setting of my mechanical rehabilitation. Pulling away from the fence, I check the time on my budget flip phone; she should be here any minute. Derek, a middle aged man with unruly muttonchops and sun-worn skin takes an impatient puff of his menthol cigarette.

“I always intended to fix her up,” he lectures me, maybe to deflect blame from himself, attempting to affirm that the awful state of the vehicle wasn’t by his neglect.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s off my hands now,” he grunts, interrupted by the flatbed rolling up to the property. The gasp of the air brakes silences the conversation, releasing me from any responsibility of carrying it.

“Hey Aria,” I call to the cabin of the truck, retreating to someone familiar.

“Riley, can you open the gate? Hopefully, if we play our cards right, we’ll make short work of this.”

“Sure thing.”

•••

Greasy strands of melted cheese roll off my chin, as I unsuccessfully shove a slice of overladen pizza into my mouth, that extra oiliness a hallmark of Pete’s Pies, Vermillion’s one and only pizzeria. Scooping up the viscous strings, I only pause to catch a can of cheap generic beer Red Feather playfully tosses across the break room. Bobbi snorts with laughter, nearly choking on a wad of mozzarella, sputtering with inane delight. The beer tastes akin to cold piss, but it doesn’t matter, the flavor bettered somehow with the company. A year and some change from being of legal drinking age, somehow this small celebration of camaraderie affirms, for the first time, being a man in this great wide unforgiving world.

“So how does it feel to own your first car,” Red Feather inquires, steeped with big sister vibes.

“Dunno yet, got to rebuild the damn thing first,” I beam with pride.

Recovering from his cheesy mishap, Bobbi washes it down with a swig of beer, “Oh you’ll get through it no time at all, considering you got all your parts and no overhead.”

“And I am always happy to help…” chimes in Red Feather, “You know I used to be a car mechanic before I took over the family business…”

“Yeah, yeah like you don’t tell us that every time a cool pickup pulls up to the gas station,” Bobbi playfully interjects.

“Well it’s been my passion since before you were born,” she laughs.

“You so old, your other vehicle is your walker.”

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“Ooooh… oooh,” Bobbi jumps onboard, “You so old, you built the first automobile on the assembly line.”

“Yoooou so old, your idea of a car is a horse!”

“BITCH I’M THIRTY SEVEN!” Aria barks indignantly, “Since I’m starting to feel myself rot from the inside out being around you children, I’m kicking you out for the evening.”

“Take all the leftovers with you… I won’t tell HR.,” she jests.

“Thanks Red Feather, you da best,” Bobbi grins, “Even if you so old, you were dug out with the oil we pump here at the Nautilus.”

“You hoodlums get out of my gas station,” she cracks up, playfully shaking her fist at the ceiling.

Peew-doo!

We exit into the fragrant desert evening, a hummingbird moth flits past my face as I struggle to balance the extra large pizza box. Bobbi takes custody of the remaining beer, discretely placing it in the trunk of his silver sedan.

“It’s hard to believe it’s been over two months,” Bobbi leans against Carl, wistfully contemplating the last feathers of twilight.

“Yeah, it feels like it’s been so fast but also an eon in the same moment.”

Time works differently out here, slowing and speeding up with an inconsistency that is hard to swallow. Soon after my follow up appointment, I was whisked away to work at the Nautilus, a job I would’ve once found monotonous had it not been for the constant shenanigans of Bobbi. Functionally akin to receiving a paycheck to hang with my bud all day, this is the primary flavor of employment at the gas station. The regulars I’m slowly acclimating to as the rhythm of the days carry a uniform cadence, one of my favorites being Old Al, a leathery withered gentleman that is all wrinkle and smile. He’s only seconded by Mary-Jane, for who’s name I’m suspicious is not her given one. Middle aged with teased out big blonde glam hair, she clearly still lives within her heyday of nineteen eighty-eight, adorned head to toe in studded biker leather. Claiming to have toured with top of the charts hair metal groups, she always has some wack story about cocaine parties or her bizarre and sometimes disturbing dealings with celebrities. For some reason, I’m inclined to believe what I’d normally dismiss as tall tales, her earnestness seems genuine, even overlaid with that slight mushy drawl in her speech, likely the result of minor drug-induced brain damage.

Bobbi too seems to be a local favorite, everyone appears to know him by name. Even our least socially inclined customers stop and shoot the shit with him. My old friend has an uncanny ability to draw out the deepest moments in people’s lives, even down to the uncomfortable pieces. But he receives the stories of every person he meets with compassion and patience that’s so foreign to me. It’s that rare sort of magic, that I imagine is relegated to some monks, priests, and medicine folk, although, I’ve yet to see it for myself. Rarely though, he’ll spot someone across the counter and that heaviness takes him, he retreats into a shell of his former self, limiting his interactions to scripted responses, his warmth leaving him for a time. It’s in one of these moments, in the shallow muttering under his breath as a young woman with winged eyeliner left his counter, I discern two haunting words, “alizarin thread.”

“I dunno why man, but I gotta good feeling about the future. Like, shit’s finally coming together, and it will always be better from here on out,” Bobbi prophesizes to the emerging stars.

“I feel that in my soul,” I nod in agreement, “Yeah, everything’s changing… or maybe, it’s just the beer talking.”

“It’s probably just the beer talking,” he agrees.

••••

It comes in waves now… sometimes I can barely hold my eyes open, that latent feeling that I might pass out. Just putting box upon box on the shelves, equivalent to lifting heavy weights. What if I just collapse into a heap on the tile floor? But, other times everything’s normal, just lulling back into the sameness of my life. Stop it… I gotta keep my shit together, so many people depend on me. I can’t let them down.

Anxiety’s slowly leeching into my mind, somehow I can’t shake that hair-raising thought… “Not again…”

••••

Motor oil splatters onto my nose… damn it… one of those “not my own brain” thoughts, but not from the usual suspects. Neither Mom nor the claustrophobic headcanon of Nico. At a loss at identifying the foreign source of the cognition, I resign myself to continuing on the undercarriage of my new muscle car. I’m not particularly good at this mechanic stuff, but I learn okay… performing the more intuitive tasks while Red Feather rebuilds the engine… “Rebuilds” is a stretch. She busies herself, tinkering with pieces of sparkling chrome, suggesting this one she’s built from scratch. I usually come in for an hour or two to work with Aria before I join up with Bobbi at the Nautilus for the final six hours of his shift. Leeway he’s granted me since I’d been helping him with clinic deliveries on his day off. With all of the work the two of us have been up to, I haven’t had a full day off in a long while.

It’s probably for the better…. a day off would leave me vulnerable to the beckoning wilderness, pulled by that silver path, more tether than thread.

Navan’yu, her inky frame haunting, silent against the gibbous moon, leering over the mangled corpse of what was once Nico.

Push it aside… those months ago I refrained from calling the psychiatrist, his card concealed under a mountain of carefully placed socks, a bad omen I hope stays buried. Man, if Nana were here, I can’t fathom the shame in her grandson etched upon her stoic face, my connection to the spirits so removed from her experience… but scrutinizing my recollection of her numerous stories, Prairie Mother never tore someone to pieces before her eyes. He Who Weaves Lies and Elk Woman, woven into her tales, stand purely as allegory, a nightmare you tell children to instill a realistic dose of darkness into their perception of the world. Allegory is safe, but Tui’li’roh is absolutely real, treacherous… as treacherous as the shadowy Great One herself, twisted into the corners of my mind.

Pulling the automotive creeper out from under the rusting boat of a vehicle I now call my own, I sit up just enough to lean softly against the tire well, just a quiet moment to contemplate my mistakes. No… I couldn’t ask Bobbi to drive me all the way to Providence, it’s too much to ask, and hey, once Baby Cakes has her engine in, I can look after myself… huh, seems like a stupid name for my muscle car, I’ll need to come up with something better. Fear, my primary deterrent, not just of imposing upon my old friend, but also of his raw disappointment, a hurt deeper than a gut punch if he found out I lied to him about the appointment… the one I never scheduled. It just about breaks me... After coming so far, I can’t let this shit trip me up, snaring me back into the cavity of dark thoughts, that warm glow in my chest slipping through my fingers until I’m swallowed by the void I’d kept mostly at bay since solstice.

That radiance locked in my ribcage is all that matters now. It will show me the path… but to where, I know not…