‘Strewn across the Bentonite Hills like the remains of a dead god, ‘The Slumberjack’ eats dirt and crawls with artists, poets, and recreational drug users. Its hinged jaw is jammed open, gobbling up a stripe of red dirt on one side of the Sleepy Valley. The tips of its boots have sunk into the earth on the side opposite. Its axe has broken, the head lying in the sand nearly a mile south. Nobody knows what felled ‘The Slumberjack.’ Nobody knows why ‘The Slumberjack’ once stood where it stood. Nobody knows who made it. There are no businesses for miles around. There are no trees.’
“Maybe he just got tired,” I say. The woman behind me shrugs. “From, uh, cutting down all the trees.”
“There aren’t any trees here.”
“Exactly.”
The woman shrugs again.
With all of the hitchhiking I’ve been doing, I saw this woman, Eliza, hitching to ‘The Slumberjack’ and thought I’d pay into the pot a little. I’m not sure which of us regrets it more. I’ve fallen out of the habit of making good conversation and have been trying too hard. She smells like sweat and is sweating onto me, shoved up against my back by Hector’s kennel. Given the choice between a few hours walking and the ride, I wonder if she’d ask for a do-over.
‘The Slumberjack’ comes into view again. It’s stripped white like a Greek statue, almost blinding in the sun. A haphazard rope and pulley system towers above it, anchored at the heels. Anchors have been placed along ‘The Slumberjack’s’ back- one faction’s attempt at restoring it to standing. The chains hang loosely, now, rattling in the wind. The neck is split from the weight of the body. A dark spiderweb fracture crawls down the spine. Something moves in that darkness- an arm. It reaches out of the back and tosses a can out into the desert.
“Cool commune,” I tell her.
Eliza sniffs. “People used to care more.”
“There are a lot of cans below that one.”
“Used to as in a long time ago,” she says and then, like I wouldn’t here her, she mumbles: “That’s about to change.”
I pull over.
“What’s going on?” She asks.
“Why’d you just sound like a revolutionary or, like, a disgraced king?”
Eliza blushes beneath the grime. “I just said that was a long time ago.”
Hector shifts uneasily in his kennel.
“Sure you didn’t say anything else?”
Eliza touches the handgun in her jacket. I’d noticed it after I stopped and after it seemed like a good idea to change my mind about picking her up. She thinks better of it. Doesn’t know that I know. Not that it helps me. Killing people is just messy, no matter how you go about it.
“I’ve got a job to finish,” she says, as though the weighty tone makes up for the vague nonsense she’s spouting.
I try to find a reason to get closer to her, in case my survival depends on knocking the gun out of her hands. She backs up as casually as I step forward- not as oblivious as I thought. I circle back to the bike, instead, thinking that at least it will make for a quick getaway. I dig for my travel mug as though running were the last thing on my mind. “You’re one of the ones trying to lift him?”
“I’m the one,” she says. “I was there at the fall.”
‘No, ‘the fall’ rarely refers to whatever happened to ‘The Slumberjack’ that took it from its presumed original position to the face-first dirt nap it holds now. The fall occurred in 2017 when ‘Slumberjack’ residents banded together to right the statue with the enthusiasm and engineering knowledge one might expect from such a group. It rose just far enough from the ground that the eventual buckling of the spine and collapse of the crane caused a great deal of structural damage, leaving ‘The Slumberjack’ in far worse shape than it ever had been and making the idea of raising it even more farfetched. Infighting followed, needless to say, and ‘The Slumberjack’ community slipped neatly from peace and love to the tense, cult-like militarism of late-stage communes. The early expulsion of their leader, a nineteen year-old woman from-’
“Oh, you’re her.” I grimace, remembering the passage now.
Eliza touches her jacket, again, reassuring herself with the presence of the gun. She’s turned halfway to ‘The Slumberjack,’ surveying it like she’s already won it back.
My own gun, the one I took from ‘The Dakota Obelisk,’ the one I soaked in ‘The Shiver Pool,’ sits heavy at the very bottom of my bag. It’s loaded, only because I’m afraid I’d lose the bullets if they weren’t with the gun. It’s clean, because I keep wrapped in plastic, away from all the crumbs that accumulate in my bag. I peel that plastic back, now, making sure to keep it out of sight. Eliza looks over and then turns fully away, her attention on activity around ‘The Slumberjack.’ The sound of the crinkling plastic is reassuring to her. She thinks I’m digging out a sandwich. A granola bar.
The metal is cold. The gun is heavy. I have it in my hands, have it pointed at her back, long enough that my arms get tired. I try to think of a way to get her attention. I wonder if I couldn’t have just driven away but the sound of the engine, the kick into gear- it would have given her plenty of time to draw on me. Too much of a risk.
“Hey.” I say, and she kicks the dirt. Turns. It still hasn’t dawned on her. She thinks I’m ready to go. She freezes when she sees the gun. “Just put your hands in the air and-”
Eliza doesn’t seem to hear me. She ducks into the dirt and covers her head. She begins begging for her life- tells me I can take anything I want. It’s ugly. When I do finally get words through to her she pulls the pistol from her jacket and tosses it away like I ask, dripping snot into the red dust off the side of the highway. I kick it a little ways down the incline and keep my aim on her long enough to get back to the bike.
“I didn’t plan on doing this,” I tell her and she nods. She’s beyond conversation. Bowled over by fear. She agrees to everything I say, unthinkingly, even when I try to apologize. To contextualize. To accuse her of starting this by having a gun as well.
It doesn’t feel good. It makes me feel so bad, in fact, that I stupidly offer to drive her the rest of the way, which starts her weeping, again. Like I might be kidnapping her. It’s hard to say ‘no’ to anything when you’re held at gunpoint. I take the implied ‘no’ and tell her to stay on the ground at least until I’m out of sight.
To her credit, she does.
-traveler
