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“I thought maybe you had always been right — when you drain my body of tears you also drain it of salt and dust so that you can shrink me down two sizes smaller and I can fit neatly into your life without taking up too much space, so that you can carry me with you wherever you go, to cities and mountains and valleys and all the oceans you’ve never explored. Tell me, please, if you find something. Tell me if you need me to search, too.” – Marla Miniano, Sea Salt
—
When dad leaves the motel to go on a hunt alone one of the most important things, second only to keeping an eye on Sammy, is to draw the salt line across the door and protect it at all costs. Dean guards that line like it’s the Western Front, no enemy dares step over.
He pinches it and perfects it daily as they step over it to venture outside the blessed walls of the motel that sits just off the northern terminus of US 71.
Against dad’s orders, Dean and Sam play in the lightly wooded areas nearby as trucks pass them. By the time the sun goes down, they’re sweaty and loose-limbed and ready for bed.
Dean knows from the map his father was looking at last week that they are pretty close to one of the Great Lakes. It’s not the ocean but it looks like it could be with the size of it and all.
Dean thinks they could be safe if they just went to an actual ocean, all the salt water and salty air and sunshine. That night he dreams they live in a house surrounded on all sides by seawater and the demons and ghosts miles away are yelling but they cannot pass the impenetrable moat.
Years later, Dean would figure out how to disassemble a shotgun shell and fill it with rock salt. When you’re scared you’ll think of anything.
—
In the Book of Common Prayer, God is asked to bless the salt before it is added to the holy water.
Years ago when Sam was sick and they didn’t have any money to buy medicine, Dean had boiled water and added lots of salt to it for Sam to swish around in his throat. It was the only thing that made him feel better, much to Dean’s relief.
On the Seder plate, among the matzah and roasted shank bone, is a bowl of salt water that the karpas is dipped into to represent tears and pain.
—
It only takes a few years for Sam to grow tired of the salt lines everywhere. He tells Dean this in no shortage of words. He’s tired of the chore of placing salt around the door and along the window sill. If Sam’s tired of it what does he think Dean is?
“It’s just useless, I mean how do you even know it’s keeping the bad things out?” Sam tries to argue with him.
There’s a superstition that spilling salt is bad luck. As an invitation for evil. To rectify this, they say to throw the spilled salt over your left shoulder to incapacitate the devil that sits there. Sam would not learn about this for years.
“Put the damn salt down and just be quiet would’ja,” Dean argues back, tired. Tired from the long drive and the even longer argument between Sam and John on the way there. It didn’t even go anywhere. Just arguing to argue. And it ended with John slamming the door right after saying he’d be back in a few days and to stay put. Dean has no idea where they’re at this time because he was too busy staring at the back of his eyelids pretending to be asleep instead of memorizing road signs.
“It’s just salt, Dean! Not magic! D’you think demons are afraid to go into a diner in case someone spills the table salt?” Sam continues, throwing down the box, the girl on the cover in a yellow dress now upside-down. He storms off to the other side of the room and picks up one of his school textbooks and buries his head inside, hair flopping down. He looks even younger all hunched over and Dean thinks it's not fair that Sammy doesn't get to have a normal life like he deserves.
Dean remembers when, just a few years ago, Sam didn’t even know that anything evil was real.
But Sam called the salt useless like he doesn’t know that centuries ago wars were fought in the name of salt. That homes were pillaged and people were paid their worth in salt on the battlefield. That there was a time when the price of salt went ounce for ounce with gold. Dean thinks they would be rich if salt was still worth that much.
To Dean it still is. To Dean it’s safety. A thickly laid line before going to bed meant he could sleep at night. All through the night. Not waking up every few hours to keep watch. He could breathe a little easier knowing that Sammy would be safe. That what got their mother in the dead of night would not reach them.
The wind outside whips around. A thin whistle of it can be heard beneath a small crack in the bottom of the door where the seal isn’t quite right. It blows a thin layer of salt off the line that Dean has just built up. He grabs a towel from the bathroom and rolls it up tight to stuff under the door. It’s going to be a long night, Dean thinks.
The motto for Morton Salt is “when it rains, it pours.”
—
When Sam leaves for Stanford it freezes Dean in time. He cannot go back but he quite possibly cannot seek to go forward. Dean doesn’t know then that there will come a time when years will have passed since they last spoke.
After Sammy’s gone the whole structure breaks down. Now that it’s just Dean and John hunting. John pretty much figures they’re better off spreading out often to cover more ground. They do a few hunts together but John leaves Dean bruised and stitching himself up more often than not. Dean used to believe John was the greatest hunter there was, but now he’s not sure why John seems more careless when Dean is involved.
Salt has many medicinal benefits. Dean is no stranger to its use in IV drips and the cleansing of wounds to prevent infection.
He doesn’t think he’s ever known a loneliness like the one where days can go by before anyone seems to acknowledge Dean is a person by talking to him directly and the tethered sensation of being outside his body is dragged back in.
He spends the in-between pulling parts of his car apart to see if he can fill the empty spaces with salt.
In Ancient Egypt, salt from dry lake beds was used to preserve the bodies of those that had passed away. Internal organs were removed and the body was covered in natron. The heart, however, was left in place.
Dean wishes he could go back to when he was 4 years old and preserve his mother and father and brother in salt. A prehistoric relic for many to wonder and gaze at centuries from now and say see that right there, that’s a family.
Alone in the Impala, late at night, Dean sheds tears which he knows are full of salt ions. Salt is an effective preservative for food because salt draws out and reduces the amount of water present. There’s not enough salt in the world that would draw out all of the tears Dean feels full of tonight.
—
Dean’s not even 10 years old when Bobby takes him hunting for the first time. He is shocked to find out that Bobby means actual hunting like the normal kind. Dean has held a gun before, shot them even, but he has never killed a living thing save the spiders in the motel bathrooms. And that’s just for Sam’s sake anyway.
They trample through the woods beyond Bobby’s junkyard with gear in hand, the boots Dean is wearing are just a bit too big but he’s not going to say anything. They get to a blind in the woods that looks tattered and old. They’re sitting inside, Dean shivering, when he spots a pole several yards out with something white sticking out on top. His curiosity gets the better of him and even though he’s supposed to be quiet, he whispers what’s that to Bobby while pointing.
Bobby explains in a hushed whisper that it’s a salt lick. That wildlife need the nutrients from the salt to survive and so it attracts them to it. Makes for an easy shot.
Dean gulps, stomach uneasy, and thinks about what he needs to survive. About what attracts him to things. Usually hunger. Thinks about the time he almost got caught stealing a candy bar at the gas station last month because he wanted it so badly. And it’s not his fault that they place them right at his level at the counter where his Dad is paying for a quarter of a tank's worth of gas. He was led there like a deer to a salt lick, wanting so badly to take in the delights of what it brings.
At the end of the day, no deer worth a shot comes and Dean is secretly grateful. When Bobby asks if he wants to go again tomorrow Dean says he’d rather stay back. Thinks that maybe the deer are smart and only go to the salt lick at night when no one else is around. Thinks maybe they aren’t scared of what’s lurking out there in the woods at night.
—
Dean drives the salt roads across America.
Sometimes alone and more often now with Sam. But right now Sam decided he needs to take a break from hunting and is off somewhere pretending like he didn’t just jumpstart the apocalypse. So Dean is with Castiel.
They drive the dusty two-lane highways that beat out across the nation and Dean wonders why cities decided that water and salt were the most important thing to build next to. But then he remembers what it’s like driving across states in the southwest like Arizona where the dry desert heat makes a man remember how nice a cold shower can feel.
Dean is with Castiel and things feel great, better than things have felt in a long time. And it’s fun. He’s having fun.
The world is ending and nothing feels real, but in that moment he thinks there’s no place he’d rather be right now than in this salt blessed car with Cas in the passenger seat.
In the texts, Lot is urged to give up the angels in his house to the people of Sodom and after his refusal, he is told by the angels to leave the city before it gets destroyed. Lot’s wife looks back at the city as brimstone and fire rain down and for that, she was turned into a pillar of salt.
Dean thinks if Castiel told Dean to run from him and never look back lest he is turned into a pillar of salt as well, Dean would listen. Would hope he could.
But then Dean remembers that Vonnegut wrote in Slaughterhouse-Five that he loved how Lot’s wife looked back because it was so human of her to do so.
And it would be so human of Dean to do the same.
—
Then there comes a day when Dean no longer wakes up at 3:00 am to check the salt lines to make sure it's still there. The only salt in the house is common table salt kept in the kitchen cupboard. Dean pulls it down to add a pinch to the soup he’s been cooking. He goes to call Cas inside because he knows Sam and the rest of them are gonna show up any minute.
If his family enjoys the soup then the salt was worth everything.