A Long, Slow Decline

I can not provide a sufficient preface for this anecdote, I just can't. If I did, it would be a novella. In fact it is one - at least in length - though it's scattered and sloppy. My dad is strange and brilliant and frightening. He has been "followed by spirits", great rings of scintillating distortion in the air. He knows a place in the desert, decayed foundations of forgotten structures scattered across the canyon floor, where NOTHING can be heard. No wind, birds, bugs. A silence so absolute it will prickle your skin and you'll have to gulp for air despite yourself. Once we stayed at some abandoned campground. Run down, unused. Dad was gold panning, I was a little kid. My sister, ten years older, grabbed my hand and started to run. To scream. I didn't understand. Still don't. Someone is watching me, she kept saying. Dad didn't buy it. Someone is out there. He looked for a while. I couldn't sleep. Dad was having nightmares. It was them real old indians, you know. Anasazi, Moqi, Fremont and them. They met up in this place, and there was some real rub between 'em. Oh they had all kinds of things. Squash and smoked meat and fish and dumb shit too, like farming tools and stuff to dig with. And that corn god, he was someone real.... like he had... status, you know. Well, his daugter was kidnapped and he was looking for her and thought Kimberly was his little girl. I just remember, that can't be right. Pale skin and blond hair.

Just after dad's birthday I came home through wyoming. Liz noticed that our map listed a profusion of ghost towns so we stopped at one just off the highway. It's a junkyard now. Are there any ghost towns near Clear Creek Canyon, I asked. That's dad's haunt. Yes, she replied... there is one named after your sister.

So I looked it up. Kimberly utah was a hard drinking, whoring town. Had the strongest jail in 12 countys. It was full of murder and whiskey and gold. Untill it fell apart. Here I am, on the internet reading about this place. This place where the grandfather I never knew worked in the mines. Where his brother, Melvin, held the record for staying down in the mines longer than anyone. Here I am. I do another google search. By accident - wild, breathless accident - what comes up besides Kimberly, UT?... Me. Kelton Utah is stuck between the stink of the great salt lake and the government testing grounds in the desert. It used to be full of chinese immigrants. It has the record for being held up more than any town in history. For almost a month it was held up every day. People talk about the money buried in the hills around the place. Outlaws who buried treasure there and were caught or killed before they could collect it. The town? Well it died down when the railroad left. Got smaller. Then, and I am quoting wikipedia here, "Kelton was hit by the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Utah. Great fissures and holes opened in the earth, muddy water gushing from them. Houses and other buildings were severely shaken, and the Kelton schoolhouse was left leaning at such a precarious angle that it had to be abandoned." All that is left is one foundation and a graveyard.


Last thing: three of the four sources in the Wikipedia article are published by Western Epics, a company owned and operated by Sam Weller's books, where I work. I used to be in charge of those books. I shipped them out. Collected checks.