Pillar of Salt (and Other Stories): Short story collections, #2

By Cameron Gordon

Regrets. I've had a few… Maybe too few to mention. Or maybe too many to live with. Or maybe you get over them. This collection of six stories covers the gamut of these possibilities as expressed in ordinary lives that, in the end, are not so ordinary at all. The story titles are: Pillar of salt. They were so little when we got them. Ceaușescu. A wing off the family house. Up, up and away. Communin' w' gawd.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cameron Gordon
• Release date: Jul 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393583042

Cameron Gordon

I am creative fiction and nonfiction writer of plays, poetry and prose.  My themes are eclectic but the major ones include: the meaning and practice of daily spirituality; the human experience and how it is affected by an increasingly technocratic and technologized world; war and peace in the digital age; quirky narratives of quirky trips; and unusual bits of history.  I have training in a technical field and have had careers in government and academia.  I continue to practice as an independent scholar but have devoted the greater part of my time and energy to being an artist.

Book preview

Pillar of salt

I always had wondered what that strange story in the Old Testament really meant. You know, the one about the woman fleeing Sodom or Gomorrah – I can’t remember which one – who is warned not to look back. She does, of course, and turns into a pillar of salt.

It never made any sense to me. Why get punished just for looking back at where you came from? What had she done to be struck down in such a way?

It got me to thinking about this dream I had once, just after my wife told me that she was leaving me. We had been together for over two decades, having coupled when we were very young. One night she said that it was over for her, and had been for some time. I was a good man, she said, and had been good to her. But she had stopped having feelings for me a long, long time ago and she had to move on. In this lifetime, she said, for emphasis. She left that night to stay with friends and would be out of the house for a number of weeks while we both decided how to proceed with a divorce and property settlement.

Good God, I can’t tell you what that did to me. The shock was bad enough. But worse was the fact that I knew she was right. She had the courage to end something that needed ending. I, too, had stopped feeling anything about her or our marriage, except a comfortable weariness, sense of safety, and a terror of being alone. It wasn’t a bad marriage, I liked to think to myself. Not a good marriage either, but not bad. Wasn’t that enough?

Not really, but I couldn’t leave. I was just too afraid of starting over again, on my own, with all the uncertainty that entailed. My wife had shown me that she had the courage to jump into the abyss, and I didn’t have that courage. It had often been like that between us. She had her faults, but paralysis by fear was not one of them. I was the avoidant and scared partner in the relationship, while she always went ahead and did what needed doing. Now it was time to end our partnership and she was taking the lead once more.

Although excruciating, I was very grateful for her initiative, as I always was. I felt terror and anger and confusion but also relief. The effort needed to force a dead thing to keep moving was now unnecessary.

My energy instead went into grief. I wept so hard that first night that my body was physically sore in the morning. I continued to wail on and off for weeks, so often that my sinuses were raw and my muscles wracked. I could not get comfortable physically, emotionally or psychologically, and teetered back and forth between exhaustion and pain, with no break in between except for bodily collapse at night, if I was lucky.

A few months later I had settled down somewhat. The marriage was over for sure and we were filing the necessary papers to end it officially. But there were still a few months ahead of sorting out final agreements regarding splitting of property, adjusting bank account names and so forth. Fortunately there was nothing contentious to face, just the tedium of winding down the administrivia of a joint life now ending.

This one particular afternoon, I felt completely hollowed out and tired. I wasn’t feeling good, but