Dear Readers,
I continued on the salvaging trip with Mr. Salvi.
He was telling me another story on how he saved Longest Night. I asked him if he ever told his kids and he said no, that it'd spoil the magic. I asked him about his neck scar and if the cops ever caught the guy. He said he was still out there but not coming back anytime soon. Must've been a good ol' yarn :)
I had to shine the light on more bats. He said "Thanks kid" and I told him I was 20 like I do with many other adults, but he said at his age that was kid enough.
Another island! I asked him how many there were down here and he said he didn't count them, he kept finding new ones and losing old ones. This was our third island! This tunnel is ridiculously big!
On this new island there was an old trolley car here. I couldn't imagine this place still running and he talked about this particular car being from France or something.
I looked around and found a couple of sports things, one of which was from American football. I decided to take that, thinking it was kinda functional. I took this football helmet back to Mr. Salvi and he was seemingly unimpressed with it, but it sounded like he wanted it so we were over and back trying to get each other to take it! This led to us yelling at each other to take the effing helmet! Then we stopped and we apologised to each other for yelling. I took the helmet.
Back in the boat. No more bats to spook this time. We got talking about how this place flooded and he was glad he wasn't down here when it did. It was like some freak accident with the river and possibly the reservoir and everything. I said it was weird to think of rivers moving, but of course I meant moving in more than one direction!
We got to the next island, the big one. I said it looked like something I dreamed! Mr. Salvi said they thought the trolleys would resist the flooding water, but they bobbed away and crashed into big piles like this. He then said nobody would bother to fix this place with all the time and money and everything else it would take to do it. I said this place was like somewhere you go when you die and he said some people actually did die down here.
Even though he said there probably wasn't much down here, I found an old lock & key and some kind of muddy horn. I went for the latter! I showed it to him and he said it was possibly a pack horn. I said I was gonna clean the mud off it and see if it still worked.
Next up was the platform. There was a mural here like the other one back in town but not as big and impressive. It was a lot more faint and like it was fading away. I mused that maybe in 500 years some archaeologists will find it and wonder what it meant :) Mr. Salvi said he sometimes thinks in 50 years no one will know what it meant. I said that places can't choose how they're remembered, that they just hang out and fall apart. I paused for a moment. Mr Salvi asked if I was ok. I was okay but... I was musing in my own sad little way.
When we got back to the start of the tunnel I doodled us in his boat in my journal, shining the light on the bats. It had "JUNEBUG" on the side.
He thanked me for joining him and I said it was great and I would totally do this as a job! "Oh no! A competitor!" he said jokingly and I said I was gonna get a boat, find some trash and sell it to rich dorks! He said that was the spirit and told me to take care. I told him so too and good luck.
Mae would be an awesome Tomb Raider :) I think I'd prefer her narration as well!
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