Two women who work in the Lyttelton supermarket were standing outside it, looking at the pavement. The younger one said they were trying to find the salt. I asked what salt, and they said the salt that someone had been pouring out in little heaps all along the street. I looked about. ``I see no salt,’’ I said. ``No,’’ they said, ``it must have been kicked away or something.’’ I continued along London St, scanning the footpath. ``You looking for the salt?’’ asked a woman whom I know to say hello to, but whose name I have never learned and it is now too late to ask. She was drinking coffee at an outside table. I asked if she’d seen the salt, and she said no but apparently it had been all along London St and then down Oxford St towards the wharf. Lots of little piles of salt. ``Why? Who put it there?’’ ``Search me,’’ she said. On the short walk to Oxford St I met Bill, who’s about my age, and who has become extraordinarily cheerful of late. He has always been good-natured, but it’s as if he’s now bubbling with some private discovery that affords him undiminishing joy. I’ve wondered whether to say as much, but am afraid that pointing out his cheerfulness might somehow burst the balloon. So I’ve said nothing. But I remain curious. I asked him if he’d seen the salt and he said what salt, and I explained, and he said why would anyone pour salt on a footpath, and I said possibly slugs. ``Slugs?’’ he said and I told him how my mother, who hadn’t a mean bone in her body, used to salt slugs. She’d tour the veggie garden in the evening -- slugs are terrible ravagers of lettuce -- and when she spotted one she would pounce with a little squeal of triumph and make with the Cerebos. She also, I added, used to lay out saucers of beer into which the slugs would crawl and drink themselves to death. Bill said he had a few friends like that. But the big question was why anyone should go slugging outside the supermarket on London St, and I said I didn’t know and had he got any better ideas, and then we ran into Dayle. Dayle spends a lot of time on London St busking so I asked him if he’d seen anyone pouring salt. ``Salt?’’ said Dayle. ``Yes, salt,’’ I said. ``Apparently someone’s been pouring little piles of salt on the pavement.’’ ``Why?’’ ``Cleansing,’’ said Bill before I could say slugging. ``It could be some sort of ritual cleansing.’’ I asked Bill why anyone would want to ritually cleanse London St, and he said there were some strange people about these days, and I said yes there were, but even so. Oxford St has less foot traffic than London St so there seemed a better chance of finding an intact salt pile to inspect. We went slowly down one side looking about our feet and slowly back up the other side. ``Have you lost something?’’ asked a woman towing an old-fashioned shopping basket on wheels. ``Several little piles of salt,’’ said Bill, and the woman looked at him and you could sense her thinking it over and deciding that she had heard what she had heard and it wasn’t likely there was much to be gained from pursuing it. ``Good luck,’’ she said ever so politely and went on her way. We found no sign of salt whatsoever. ``Do you think there ever was any salt?’’ I said as we walked back along London St. ``Everyone believed there was,’’said Bill. ``That’s not the point.’’ ``Isn’t it?’’ said Bill. ``You believed it. I believed it. Neither of us questioned it. We wanted it to have happened and we wanted to find out why it had happened. True or false doesn’t come into it. The mystery and the oddity appealed to us. It’s a story and we’re all suckers for stories. You should write about it.’’ ``Don’t be silly,’’ I said. ``No one would read it.’’ ``You’d be surprised,’’ he said. Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer. No slugs were harmed in the writing of this week’s column. Possibly.
