Mr. Splitfoot (7 page)

Nat and three of the other children watch a Father-approved television program in the living room, something about a boy and his monkey. TV is a luxury allowed during the lean times. Ruth tries to glean a word from the porch. The Father keeps his voice low, but the young man, a bright penny, can be heard plainly.

“My own household has been kindly increased in the arms of this product, sir. My solemn word.” A salesman in graveyard boots. He’s young to be a salesman. “I’ll have you know, this product is held in surplus by not only the residents of the White House but their cabinet members as well.”

“I don’t much care for the government.”

“No. I’m only saying—”

“What is it? Let me see what you’re hawking.”

“Indeed.” The man eyes his case. “But is there perhaps a lady of the house I might converse with? A mother to these lovely children? She might better understand what I have to offer.”

From just inside a living room window, Ruth buries her eyes in the young man’s burgundy suit. He could be snapping baby photos at Sears in that suit. He could be pumping formaldehyde at a funeral parlor or even heading off to prom. Ruth falls away from the sway of Nat to a place of swords and sticks where it’s every man for herself.

“Let me ask you something. Have you invited our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into your heart?” That old saw. The Father tries it on everyone.

The man eyes the Father, his soft hands. “Invited him in, sir. He didn’t care for the decor.”

“A wise-ass, huh?”

The man blinks.

“What is it you believe, son?”

“You really want to know?”

“I’m curious.”

The young man clears his throat, surrenders his sale. “Heaven is a dream of Disneyland for those unable to act here on Earth.”

“That so?”

Ruth is surprised by the Father’s calm.

“That’s what I believe.” The young man winks.

“Then I have one question left. How many orphaned children have you sheltered, fed, and educated? Two questions. How are you helping your fellow humans?”

The young man lifts a hand to his chin to think, which is unlike most people the Father engages. Most can’t listen because they’re already certain they’re right. The man chews his top lip. “I beg pardon, sir. You’re absolutely correct. I have done next to nothing to better my fellow man. That’s the truth. God’s honest.”

But the Father’s not done with this soul. “Christ forbid you should ever become guardian of a child who uses feces as paint; drools for his mother; screams profanities in your face for hours; refuses to bathe, speak, eat; kicks you in the kidneys at bedtime; breaks your nose at breakfast—because in those situations, if you’ve got no God to ask, ‘Why Lord, why?’ you’re going to have take all your questions out on that child’s flesh.” The Father concludes business. “We don’t want whatever you’re selling.” He shuts the front door, leaving the young man alone on the porch, hands open and empty.

Ruth’s nearly proud of the Father, nearly buying his bull, until he breezes past her and she smells food coming from the Father’s pores: scrambled eggs, meat, cheese. The Father’s been eating bacon and not sharing it. Ruth is starving.

The young man palms his suitcase. Ruth steps into sight, clears her throat. “Hello, little sister,” he says. Something new in town after so long living with old things. “That’s some gorgeous explosion on your face, huh?” Ruth lifts a hand to her cheek. “Yes, it is,” he answers for her. The young man takes his leave, throwing an arm up in farewell, whistling as he walks away. Ruth can’t tell if he’s a boy or a man. Closer to a man, she thinks. The shadow of a bird crosses his back. He doesn’t even see it, doesn’t know how lucky he is, free as that bird. Or maybe good things just happen to him all the time.

Her hunger burns worse when the young man is gone. “Apples?” she asks Nat. The farm has a number of hoary trees. Each fruit is good for two bites before a hard blue spot crops up. There are tons of them because the other kids won’t eat what the worms left behind.

“Not today.”

Troy is a tipsy municipality built on top of three powerful confluences: Panhooseck and Paanpack, the old peoples; shirt collars and steel, the old industries; Hudson and Erie, the old waterways.

People with cars pass Nat and Ruth on their walk into the city. The drivers pretend to focus really hard on their driving so that they won’t have to, all Christian-like, stop to offer them a ride.

But as previously reported, he isn’t a Christian. The young salesman’s car is stopped up the road, a quarter mile from the home. He’s attempting to turn the engine over again and again, but the engine won’t fire. Nat slides past the car, but Ruth stops at his window. She touches the pane. The man turns the key one last time and the engine engages.

“Look at that.” He rolls the window down. “You fixed my car.”

Ruth smiles.

“My name’s Mr. Bell. You’re in need of transportation? Perhaps I could be of assistance. If you can trust a vehicle as wobbly as mine.”

“Mister?” Ruth asks. She hears his funny way of talking, using more words than necessary as if he enjoys them. Maybe he went to college. Maybe he’s Canadian. Ruth nods. He’s too young to be a mister. Twenty-four tops. His car and clothes are clean. He wears his seat belt. There’s no sign of his case. “Nat.” Ruth calls Nat back quickly like a well-trained dog.

They press their faces against the back window to see what such an unusual young man has inside his car: a seasonally premature ice scraper, a well-used road map. They climb in the back as if riding in a taxi.

“Where to?”

“Downtown.”

“Downtown.” Mr. Bell laughs. Something about town is funny. They drive in silence, stealing glimpses. They pass the Roxy Laundromat. Ruth can see the side of the man’s shaven neck, his suit and collar, the sloppy cut of his long hair, the length of his sideburns. She sees his hands on the wheel and the chunky skull rings. His fingers have sprouted dark down on each knuckle.

“Suppose you all heard about Pluto?” The man makes conversation.

Of course, they’ve heard of Pluto. They nod slowly, and he catches the nod in the rearview mirror.

“Glad old Tombaugh was already dead when they announced it.”

More slow nodding.

Mr. Bell looks at them quickly. “They decided it’s no longer a planet?”

“Right.”

“Right.”

Nat and Ruth begin to wonder whether or not they will be getting out of this car alive. Pluto not a planet? This man is clearly deranged.

“Pistachio?” Mr. Bell offers, raising a bag over into the back seat.

“No, thank you,” Nat says, but Ruth decides to try one. She’s starving.

The city of Troy, New York—after a brief shining role at the center of the steel industry—fell off the map of the modern world. Head of the now more-or-less dead Erie Canal, a number of buildings still display versions of Troy’s once-bright future. Frear’s Troy Cash Bazaar. Marty Burke’s South End Tavern, with its separate entrance for ladies. The Castle, the Gurley, the Rice, and the Ilium. Burden Iron Works and Proctor’s Theater. Some of the buildings have been emptied, some just collapsed. There are a number of 99¢ Shops and opportunities for mugging RPI students after dark. There’s Pfeil Hardware and DeFazio’s. There are quiet people making things in secret. And the mighty Hudson.

Fulton Street arrives quickly. Mr. Bell pulls to the curb. Nat and Ruth step to the sidewalk in front of the Jamaican Restaurant. They want to ask the question that will reveal why this young man is so unlike other people. Nat holds the car door open for a moment, but a person like Mr. Bell has places to go. “Be seeing you,” he says, and his car pulls away past the Uncle Sam Parking Garage. Mr. Bell, who is not really yet a mister, is gone. After one truck carrying bananas and another carrying dry-cleaning supplies have passed, what’s regular and dusty creeps back in.

A Jamaican couple waiting for take-out go haywire at their Love of Christ! clothes.

“Ku pon dis. A fuckery frock.” The critics use high dialect to speak freely, coded, in front of Nat and Ruth.

“Dos dutty jackets dem from up de hill yaad. Tall hairs. Dem get salt. No madda, no fambly. Zeen.”

“A pyur suffereation.”

At the Stewart’s Shop, Nat shoves two sodas, a tin of Pringles, and a chocolate bar down his pants. No one suspects a boy from the nineteenth century of shoplifting. They eat the loot on the library steps, enjoying each toxic bite.

“What’s up with that?” There is no peace for Nat and Ruth in Troy. A trio of curious men from the Italian ranks of South Central approach. One Mets fan, one Buffalo Bills enthusiast, and one whose T-shirt boasts a mysterious message:
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT
.

“You got a costume party?” one man asks Nat.

“No. No. They’re, what’s it? Hamish people.”

“Amish?” Ruth asks slowly.

“Aww, shit! She talk!” Two of the men high-five.

“No.” Not Amish. “Yes.” She talks.

People in their Corollas slow for a moment to observe Ruth in her long dress, Nat in his plain clothes. There’s no recognition of fellowship or shared humanity. The people shudder or chuckle in their cars. They make a nervous radio adjustment, relieved that they have not been raised by religious weirdoes.

The walk back uphill is hot. Ruth has parceled out her soda to make it last. Nat asks for a sip, having polished off his own. By the time they reach Frear Park, he’s finished hers as well.

That night, Ruth wakes. She pinches the fold of Nat’s underarm. Artificial yellow light flows through the transom of their room. Where is her mom? Where is her other sister? On a map of the world, on a map of New York State, where are they? It wakes Ruth. If Nat can talk to Raffaella’s living mother, why doesn’t he tell her where her mom is?

She puts her hand on his calf.

“What?”

The room is silent.

“What about my mom?”

He pretends he’s still asleep. Ruth cuffs her fingers with his. She digs her nails into his proximal phalanges.

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“Why don’t you ever talk to my mom?” Ruth forces her tongue up against the roof of her mouth, making garbled, devil sounds. “Cooowla trappa waneenee.”

“The dead speak English.”

“Well, what does my mom say? In English?”

“She says she’d be with you, you know, if she could.”

“Same thing the rest of the moms say?”

Nat wakes up fully. “No. Sorry. Come on.”

The basement is dark as fur. Ruth scratches her fingers across the
Stachybotrys chartarum
mold growing on the stone walls, raising bits of the fungal growth under her nails.

She walks behind Nat; his bottom touches her belly. One bare bulb back at the staircase is the only light. The air smells of bad breath. Nat pats the darkness, arms outstretched, until he finds the corner coal bin. “You first.” He pushes her in. They sit cross-legged. She sees bursts of color behind shut eyes.

“Want a bite?” Nat holds something under her nose.

“No.”

He takes a bite. A sweet odor spreads thicker than it would in the light of day. Candy, taffy from Troy. He puts the rest of it in his mouth. “Call him.” Nat chews. “He likes girls.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Splitfoot.”

She leans in. “But I want to talk to my mom.”

“You’ve got to go through him first.”

“Oh.” So she tries, “Mr. Splitfoot? Hello?”

Doesn’t take Nat but a moment to make contact with the dead. “Konk.”

“Are you talking to me?”

“No. Shh.” He bobs his head from side to side, clearing the air of her question. Mid-bob, he freezes. Their grip tightens. The house groans. A disturbed and breathy voice comes from Nat’s mouth. “Got any more candy?” Mr. Splitfoot sounds sexy.

“Who are you?”

Nat leans into her, inhaling like an animal. She feels the brush of his soft stubble on her cheek. Then quickly, in her ear, “Who do you think, you filthy?”

She can just make Nat out in the dark. “That’s my mother?” His chin is twisted, his neck hard-cranked to the left. His eyes bob in their sockets. “Nat?” She tilts her chin up.

Dirty water rushes through a pipe overhead.

Like an electric shock, his arms go rigid. His chin tracks right before resetting as an electronic typewriter might. A bit of drool forms in the corner of his mouth and dribbles out. “Say. Say.” The voice does not fit in Nat’s mouth.

“Who are you?”

“Let me check.” Nat’s eyes dip back into his head, white with fine strands of blood.

Ruth pokes Nat in the chest.

“Tirzah. Kateri Tekakwitha. Yaaa-deee!” He lifts up to his knees, a man begging his wife for one more chance. “Ruthie. Ruthie. Ru. The mangled and the mauled.” And a whisper, “Starlight. Star bright. First pair of shoes we’ve seen tonight. Ha.”

Nat’s head sways. His eyes are glazed. There are the sounds of the house. Then, “Kateri.” Then, “Claustrophobia. A little slice can feel so nice.” The room is charged with a fresh dampness. Nat wheezes, air passing through the stretched lips of a balloon. “Sorry, Ruth.” The voice is an old record in a deep well. “Oh, Ruth. Oh, Ruth.”

“Nat?”

The voice grows softer, kittenish. “She wish she may, I wish I might, get those lungs back, bitch, tonight.”

“My lungs?”

“Uh-huh. And heart.”

“Nat?”

“No. Not Nat.”

“Mom?”

“Yeah.”

“Go to hell.”

“It’s lovely down here.”

When it’s over, he reaches for Ruth’s hand, squeezing her fingertips separately, like release valves. “That was her?” she asks.

But it’s not Nat who answers. Another voice, positioned behind Ruth’s head, cuts in. “Bravo. Bravo. Good style, young ones.”

Ruth screams.

A hand swiftly covers her mouth and nose.

“Shh. Shh. Shh. Quiet there, girl. I beg you.” His words are so close, they move her hair.

“Who’s that?” Nat asks as Nat again.

“Hold your tongue. Tranquility.”

They know his way of speaking. Mr. Bell draws the rest of himself up behind her. “Remember me?”

She nods yes.

“Can I uncover your mouth?”

Yes, again.

He releases her. He fumbles in his pocket for a match, a needle to prick the iris. She looks away from the light, sees his pants, his knees. He squats on the coal bin floor beside them.