Thanatos
LJ Pemberton
When you drive on 178 out of Bakersfied towards Lake Isabella, California, just before the road dips between two hills into Kern Canyon, a sign warns that 307 lives have been lost on the Kern River since 1968. THINK SAFETY, it says, which I suppose is more hopeful than saying THINK DEATH. Dusty used to point and make fun of that sign when we drove out on long weekends, already tired from being on the road since rush hour in Los Angeles. Our bellies full of Wendy’s and whatever country-pop trash was on the radio, we’d hit the canyon after sundown and pull out on the gravel turns to listen to the quiet and rushing water as we surveyed the boulder and tree studded cliffsides. In the dark, the light and shadow looked alien, like the surface of Mars or some other near planet that robots have surveyed. Locals rode close on our tail pipe, eager for us to go faster or get off the road, but we didn’t mind. We had all night, it seemed, and we pulled over as many times at it took to keep the road open and free and as much like a portal to our broke down haven as it could be.
Look, most folks don’t go to a dead resort town next to a dried-up lake on the weekends, and we knew that, and why, but we kept coming back because we could see the stars and Dollar General was right next to our favorite cheap motel. Down the road past what was left of town proper was a wildlife refuge, too, and in the waning dusk, we had more than once spotted coyotes and black tailed deer. Even saw a few teenagers driving by in their big-wheeled trucks to spin circles in the damp mud, but mostly we saw cows, and heard their lowing, as the moon rose. I can’t tell you why one place or another ever became special to me and Dusty, except more often than not it wasn’t a place like Universal Studios or Disneyland that did it for us. I guess we both felt like there was nothing to be surprised by there, or discover, and most of all, I think we wanted to feel like we had secrets between us, and barring any left to disclose from our pasts, we looked for secret places to share.
Of course Lake Isabella wasn’t and isn’t a secret to the people who call it home, nor is Mountain Mesa down the same road, but to the people we knew in Los Angeles, it might as well have been Ohio. Sure, they’d heard of Kern River, and that road all the Instagrammers take pictures of, standing on the yellow line to get a wide shot of desert valley, but Lake Isabella and Mountain Mesa were the kinds of places that most city people shake their heads at, wondering why anyone would live so far out unless they were fools or crazy. And sure, maybe the residents were both, but if we were being honest, so were we.
When we parked at the wildlife refuge and walked in the sandy dirt with our dog, we usually didn’t bring much with us except maybe some water and snacks and some nights, my camera, but I remember this one afternoon, after we’d already been in town a night and a day, we drove out with nothing but our boots and clothes on. The motel wasn’t far, we figured, anyway. Even left the dog back in our room so we wouldn’t spook whatever was out there that we didn’t know we were looking for. I parked on the graded road by the cattle fence and we got out and headed towards the treeline. Not fast, but not meandering either. Past the trees was a bit of old shore, or what used to be shore, before the lake receded, and it was here we saw the usual shot up beer cans and bread bags and other trash that didn’t surprise us much. We kicked it around and decided to keep walking. At a beach point, beside the grove’s edge, Dusty stopped first. I didn’t notice anything until he gestured with his chin, hands in pockets, for me to look behind the mass of washed up logs and other wood trash that had gather there in a rush of water long past. When I first looked I didn’t see what he was pointing at—I was never wearing my glasses when I should be, anyway—but then I put on my specs and squinted at the mass of treelimbs and grass and realized I was looking at what was left of a body, a small one, and dead well before that season. I won’t go into much detail; but trust, we shivered. There’s a striking terror, different than spooking yourself, that accompanies stumbling on a dead person when it’s not what you were expecting.
He nudged one of the small shoes sticking through the tangle and it fell.
I guess we oughtta report this, he said, and I said, probably so.
Neither of us were real call-the-cops kind of people, but we figured their records would be more likely to match the dead than our random googling. We stared at it a beat, and then turned together to return to the car. We didn’t take anything from the scene or speak on the walk back, but once I got settled behind the wheel and he rolled down his window, the heaviness of the discovery sat between us.
Don’t guess it’s one of the 307, he said, and I said it was probably one of the uncounted Lake Isabella lost, and by era of clothes, as recent as the last time the water was high enough to beach the wood.
Five years? he asked.
Ago? I said.
Old, he said.
If I was guessing, I agreed.
Too young, without having to say too young. The moon rose behind us in half crescent, beaming above the mountain ridges to the northwest. In the dark we listened for creatures and ghosts but heard only the zooming approach and pass of cars on their way to somewhere else. I pulled out on 178 in a big break between the intermittent traffic and we got back to our rooms before we were hungry again. The dog rubbed his head on the hem of Dusty’s pants, dousing himself in whatever dead scent had stuck to his clothes. I leashed him and walked him along the roadway, kicking at the gravel and wondering when we should call and say what we saw.
Back in the room Dusty was already showering when I got in and then he put on his pajamas and laid down on the bed early and sure of his choice.
Didn’t wanna smell like dead kid, he said, and I laughed a little and said that was as good a reason to shower as any. I stripped down and showered off too, soaping up slowly in the hard and steady water stream. That tiny shoe, falling down, just a skeleton foot now. A thing that had been a part of a child. We all became things when we died. A thing that had been a person that had lived amidst us and watched and played with other things.
I pulled on my flannel night shirt and tucked in under the covers. He turned the wall heater down and we both poked around on our phones, side by side, as the night deepened. No dinner; no appetite. The dog settled at the foot of the bed, and then played with his toys until he was tired and settled again. Outside our room, other couples and families arrived and parked. Doors closed, voices murmuring. The wind whistled in the eaves and the pipes squealed from a bathroom yards away. As I recall, we didn’t talk about it again that night, and in the morning, when we could have called, I said I was hungry, and he went and got us microwavable breakfast sandwiches from the dollar store. We ate in silence, and without having to discuss it, got ready to leave. The dog was anxious from seeing our bags out, but we finished up quick and before eleven a.m., we left that place behind.
I’ll call when we get home,I told him, and he said that made sense, and we drove through the canyon again, backwards, past the rushing river and twisting, thirsty trees. In Bakersfield, we got stuck in traffic, and then we were free again until Santa Clarita, where we ran into a jam from the weekend travelers to Six Flags. By the time we got home, the sun was slanting sideways across the buildings and sidewalk and we unloaded the car in two trips before flopping on the couch and trying to decide if we should make dinner or order something. Our apartment echoed the noise of horns and trucks backing up and our houseless neighbors were arguing about something we couldn’t quite make out. Los Angeles could feel like the funhouse mirror of America sometimes, and the nearness of it, into the very threshold of our apartment, kept us vigilant and alert.
I didn’t call that day. Neither did he. We went back to work and then a week passed, and then a month. At the 99 cent store we saw a kid wearing sneakers like the shoes on that dead body in the brush and Dusty nodded. I looked, and then we met eyes, and then we finished loading up the conveyor belt for check out. He knew without me saying that I recognized them. In the car, we were quiet again, until we got home and unloaded the car and then we talked about the cookies and what we should throw out from the refrigerator to make room for the soda we’d just bought.
A year passed.
We stopped going up to Lake Isabella and instead took to driving down old Route 66 through Pasadena and out east. Some days we even drove past the smog, into the empty Mojave, and bumped along on dirt roads cut into the land between Joshua Trees. At dusk we would see coyotes, sometimes a rabbit. Never people. Once we found a corral, empty. The towns out there were odd patchworks of windstruck buildings, strip malls, and Tesla charging stations. Empty storefronts and fast food chains. Gas and tires. A church, now and again. It felt precarious, to even be passing through. Nothing about the people or settlements said thrive. Vegas in one direction, Los Angeles in the other. We inevitably turned back home.
It had been long enough that we almost forgot and then one night we were fooling around and Dusty joked and said THINK SAFETYwhile he was putting on a condom. He entered me and I pulled him down against my skin and he bit my collar bone and then, without stopping, asked me: what was that even from?
That sign on the way out to Lake Isabella, I said, and he pulled up and hovered over me and we stared at each other and remembered that dead kid. You never called the cops, he said, and I thrust my hips against him and said neither did you.
We never did. Either one.
Best secret we ever had.
Don’t go in LJ’s murder basement.