The Salt Woman, Part I

Thought I would post the first part of this story before I head out for this holiday of gluttony and tryptophan saturation. Part II will be readable in a week or so.

             Growing up, I remember the caravans would come through the town four times a year, twice in each direction. They came once in the middle of summer and once at the end, and they carried salt and nothing else. They would come in the pinelands out of the east with their bags empty and return loaded up with the stuff, stopping in the high country towns before returning to the pinelands. They say that without salt the body leaks out through the skin until it deflates and shrivels up. This is why, my father explained to me, we depended on the salt caravan.

                They got their salt from a woman who lived in the badlands, who extracted it all by herself from the earth, and on one occasion when I was fifteen, burned half the town to the ground in what can only be described as a supernatural occurrence.

                A trip to the salt flats took her three days down the course of the river, a journey she would make with her mule as many times as she could during the summer when the salt flats were dry, and in the fall when there were still patches of salt that weren’t underwater. She knew where to find the purest veins; since she had only one mule to load it was only worth her time to bring back the stuff that was free of impurities. As she dug her hands would crack, and her face would crack, weathered by the salt blowing in her face. And after a day of digging she would fall asleep on the salty ground lying on her back, spread eagle and looking at the stars, sometimes recalling that she had once heard that there are as many stars in the sky as there are grains of salt, her mule tied to stake she had planted in the ground. She stayed until she had filled her mule’s packs, as well as two woven wicker baskets she would load up with as much as her frame could carry, and then make her way back.

                Upon returning to her dugout she would leave the salt in huge piles in an enclosure she had made, the roof sealed with pine tar from the mountains and the floor covered with lizard hides to keep the salt from being ruined by rainfall. And then she would bathe in the river, its icy force breaking over her naked wiry frame, although it was the river who thought it could break her. She would pinch clumps of hair between her thumb and forefinger, then pull outward away from her scalp, squeezing the salt out from between her follicles until every last bit of it was gone, then sit naked on a rock watching the river flow until she had shivered herself warm.

                She lived on the provisions the caravaners would trade for the salt, along with whatever she got from the traps she kept in the foothills and the berries and wild roots she gathered. The river, it seemed, was too alkaline for any fish. That was fine, the salt it bore was what fed her, ultimately.

                They say she would grind the salt herself by crushing the rocks in her hands, that she could simply hold it up, squeeze, and the whole thing would turn into fine grains to be packet into the caravaners’ bags. When they showed up she could feel them coming, feel the vibrations of the ground as their pack animals approached, and would have the bags of salt lying in the open, ready to be loaded. They regarded her with respect and uneasiness, always paying her up front in tools, sacks of rice and potatoes, sometimes a can of anchovies all the way from the sea. As they loaded up the salt she would watch them idly, picking at her teeth with a shard of bone. They would wave to her as they departed but she never waved back. She only stared at them until their thin line of mules vanished over the pass, when she would go inside and carry on whatever it was she did with her life. Probably cracking her own neck, repeatedly, with a grimace of mixed pleasure and pain.

                Except on this occasion she approached the leader of the caravan and told him she was coming with them.

                “I’ll take my own mule,” she had said to him, “I’ll even have him carry salt, he does it already anyways.” She stood almost a head shorter than him, and for the first time he noticed there was nothing in her frame that suggested such a strength as she was reputed to have. “I think it’s been five years since I been in town,” she continued, not to justify herself, just to explain, “so I’m going with you.”

                The leader of the caravan had no reason to object, although he had heard stories about her. He heard that before she came out to work the salt flats she would wear a necklace made from molars she had knocked out in bar fights, that making eye contact with her for too long would give her power to paralyze you, that she turned into a dog at night and could summon the dead spirits of her people, whoever they were, to do her bidding. That she kept a jar with a human heart underneath her hammock. All apocryphal at best, but all who knew about the Salt Woman also knew some sort of story about her. None agreed. Some said it was a necklace of shrunken skulls, that it was an ibex that she turned into, that she in fact was possessed by dead spirits against her will. But they all agreed that there was a jar. In some stories she slept clutching it.

                “You can come with us,” he said, “but you’ll have to camp separate. Some of the men wouldn’t find it” he paused “proper.”

                “They’ve heard the stories, haven’t they?” she said.

                His eyes momentarily widened and he said nothing, but then a smile crossed her face.
                “I’ve heard a lot of them too, and I can assure you there’s not much to them.”

                “Not much?”

                “Well there has to be something, else I wouldn’t be out here, right?” She picked at something between two molars with her shard of bone. “We’ve done good business for years. You trust me, don’t you?”

                “Of course,” he said. “Load up your mule and let’s get moving.”

                They stood for a moment regarding each other, his beard encrusted with salt and her hair bleached by it, a thin layer that she could never get out, even in the river. She cracked a smile and he could have sworn her cheeks were going to split as she moved them.

                “I think I’ll enjoy this trip,” she said, “I think I’ll take a lot of enjoyment in it.”

To be continued...