unwelcomeness

This is a “cave” in Joshua Tree National Park, near the boundary, that, according to my book of hikes, was built in the 40’s as a waystation of sorts between a certain area of the exterior of the park and Barker Dam inside, where there is a small lake. Over the years the boulder cave has been stocked to varying degrees and log-booked. We got there the hard way, from within the park, through, among other things, a “challenging” boulder-filled canyon which turned out ot be rather dangerous. Known as “Oh-Bay-Yo-Yo,” the shelter is not on the topo map, and we found it through luck more than anything. The above-mentioned book has what we found to be a cursory description of the route to the cave, but when you’re out there (in the Wonderland of Rocks area, also a Bighorn Sheep preserve) everything looks exactly the same: massive piles of car-sized boulders separated by washes and yucca plants. I’ve read that you can obtain the UTM coordinates from friendly rangers. Inside we found a fire pit, some logs for sitting, battered kitchen utensils, greeting cards (blank), a hardened suitcase containing various paper items, pens, a can opener, some dead lighters, and a spiral-bound logbook.

In a cloud. I’d say it’s fog, but there’s never fog here. More like a probable malignant mist, damp and smelly, a non-corporeal wet dog. Our eyes are peeled for flying polyps. A never-ending night. The moisture is in the air as fat gobs of fluid, swirling around underneath the orange streetlights like a swarm of drunk moths. We bivouac in a depression in a field, underneath some plywood and found tarps. Dwarf and I chat in lowered voices about tomorrow. There’s a flashlight next to us pointing up, a quarter-twelver nearby. We have gained items and power. Bog Man shoulder-tapped at a liquor store and got us the twelver for free by using his ghastly appearance and brain-controlling skills. We’re still excited about his being a member of our team, it’s sort of like hanging with your hugest hero, someone you thought you’d never actually meet.

Cranberry’s for some reason getting mushy. It’s a little awkward since no one gives much of a fuck about him. Listen to that cricket, he says. I love that cricket. We all look at each other. Who invited him? Did he eat something poisonous? No one knows. I break out a deck of cards and start to shuffle them, Pingpong lights a Newport. Cranberry’s crying, he crawls out of the hideout, on his hands and knees, looking for the cricket. You’ll never find it, says Dwarf. Nobody ever finds any crickets. People are defaulting into sleep because of fatigue, habit. Bog Man has materialized next to where Pingpong’s curled up, is spooning him, and Pingpong’s whimpering and clearly terrified. He can’t get a boner, I tell him. Don’t worry, just roll with it.

As the sun rises I’m out in the damp grass. Several of our number have disappeared in the night, I’ve noticed, either back to Scout House, or who knows. Dwarf’s still here. The plywood’s sort of settled down overnight and it looks like there’s no way humans could fit under it, an excellent hidden fortress. Pingpong emerges from the ground and informs me, and by extension, Dwarf, who is squatting right next to me, that he’s going to quit, because he can’t handle the living dead trying to fuck him while he’s minding his own business. His actual words are something less coherent, more impassioned. And my response is: Well, we each had different upbringings, didn’t we? Besides, I tell him. I’m out next. At least not last.

Bog Man’s a pile of crap, can hardly animate himself, which is a further depression in the wet morning. The ultimate anticlimax. No one got to explode, or be annihilated by his terrible telekenetic power. He was modest with his second try at things, I think he mostly blew his reanimated do-over. Maybe he was all talk. I bump his scapula with my toe. Nothing. Something might have moved. I grab his leather skullcap and try it on. It’s a bit stiff and has a horrifying odor. Ancient skin is weird, I don’t recommend it. Then, a movement. I look down, and Bog Man’s trying to do a sit-up, but he can’t get it together. One arm is stuck out like a zombie, the other apparently powerless, and his abs are jittering, which makes his neck vibrate, which makes his hardened brain bang around inside his skull like a grapefruit, which makes his head jerk forwards and back again, which makes his movement plan disturbing and arbitrary. His sad algae-slime face is proof that the universe is the opposite of warm and friendly. I try to remember what it was like when being a Scout was new and exciting, and I can, but it’s a further compounding of the bum-out, because my remembered exuberance is now revealed to have been shamefully stupid. Dwarf helps me scoop Bog Man and dump him into someone’s backpack. He’s like a few armloads of bony kelp; the fronts of our shirts are wet and brown. He needs to keep moving, says Dwarf, maybe if we can get him back to the bog- but he doesn’t finish the sentence. My guess is he’ll mostly leak out of the bottom before we get very far in any direction.

I read it and then look up at everyone’s personal expectant face-muscle arrangements, and I say What’s written here is some ass-kicking druidic or older unholy incantatory kind of instruction-list, probably, in a language strange to us, and it’s going to take a while, hanging with Bog Man, him slowly teaching us what these characters mean, etc., for us to understand it, but maybe it’s actually better if we never do, because who knows what kind of shit we’d be summoning if we were to learn how to pronounce this stuff. I look at Bog Man and he seems to be checked out, looking into the middle distance, in the direction of a tire store and an ampm.

Let’s see it, says Dwarf. I hand it over. His face gets confused, then solemn, then scared. He’s right, says Dwarf, handing it back to me, whereupon I shove it in my back pocket. Later we can examine, translate this, I say. The joke’s on them. On the piece of paper the Bog Man drew what looks like two stick-figures, one butt-fucking the other. Under this he’s written the words: DESERT LOVE.

We destroy some townspeople, burn their dwellings. We are like the Super Friends, but evil, and some of us stink, eat carrion, are dead, etc. For instance, Cranberry, so named because of his dark red complexion, is pretty much completely intolerable. He seems to be hanging with us for selfish reasons, or because he’s been told to by Dwarf’s dad, or like maybe because he expects to reap a lot of booty, like he thinks that it’s going to make him a better person or something. But it’s like, Hey, fucker, that’s a naïve expectation, because if you knew anything you’d know that the horrors of plundering are a double-edged sword, and those of us who are unlucky enough to destroy as a vocation lose our rosy outlook after the first five minutes. But no one says this to him because it’d be an admission of thinking about what he feels like in the first place, which would be uninteresting. There’s not much to plunder anyhow. Some Cherry Cokes, a cat, one lady had a couple of granola bars. Cats are edible but tricky to field-dress. We eat the granola bars and share the Cokes, since there’s five of us and only three Cokes.

Bog Man expresses zero interest in our granola bars and instead pokes his blackening fingers into a crusty pouch tied to his waist with a cord of braided leather, or hair. From this he fishes out what looks like a scrap of soggy tree fungus, which he holds with the tips of all his fingers, like the atoms are slippery and might disperse at any time. He tries to bite it but can’t, sticks it in his mouth hole, it falls out. He bends his neck in the direction of his lap but it only goes halfway, and makes alarming creaking sounds. I nod to Dwarf and he picks up the fungus and tears it up into tiny pieces and puts each into the Bog Man’s mouth one at a time, washing them down with Coke. The bog man’s neck is stretched out, his mouth pointing at the sky. At this point it’s hard to tell what’s really all that different about Bog Man and say, the mud he’s sitting in. The hazy air’s obviously deteriorating him.