Mr. Splitfoot

~ ~ ~

THEY STOP UNDER AN OVERPASS. Mr. Bell does Ruth’s makeup in the headlights of passing cars. “Short vacation?”

Things had not gone well at El’s house. Ruth doesn’t want to talk about it.

“I’m glad you’re home.” Mr. Bell pulls one side of Ruth’s hair back and pins it there with a purple orchid as if he’s escorting her to prom. Mr. Bell’s breath is close. He paints her lips to match the flower. He touches them with a tissue.

“You stole that makeup from the other house.”

“You make me sound like a thief.”

“Thank you,” she says when he’s done.

He starts the car again. “What sort of job is this?”

Nat had arranged everything except transportation. “I don’t know. They got in touch with me.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know.”

Mr. Bell alters the angle of the rearview.

“They have a question for us,” Nat says.

“What question?”

“Hold on. I love this song.” Nat leans into the front, putting his arm in between them. He turns up the radio, hums along a little.

“Where’d you meet them?” Ruth asks.

Nat draws one hand up to his ear. “I didn’t.”

“You don’t know them? Did you check them out at all?”

“They called me,” Nat says again.

Mr. Bell looks put out. “Is this the place?”

Nat checks the address. “Yeah.”

The house is a low ranch, lit, warm, glowing as if it’s still Christmas. All three bend their necks to check it out from the safety of the car.

“I’ll wait here in case you’re not out in, what, an hour? I’ll come get you.”

“Why?”

“Because you didn’t check these people out, and while I know you think I do nothing to earn my share, that isn’t true. I always ensured your safety.” Mr. Bell draws one thumb down his sideburn, smoothing it.

Nat looks at the door mechanism. “What could be dangerous about dead people?”

“Ruth?” Mr. Bell clears this with her. “Are you sure you want to go?”

He’s making her feel more like a stripper. “It’s a job.”

“OK. But be out in an hour.”

“Ready?” Nat asks.

The car door shuts. Ruth follows Nat to the house.

“So they’re not looking for a person,” Nat tells her. “They lost a box.”

“Like a jewelry box?”

“No. Cardboard.”

“Cardboard is going to talk to you tonight?”

“The box is filled with cash.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know.”

“A box of cash?” Ruth stops ten feet from the house.

“Yeah.” Nat knocks.

The door opens.

The woman who greets Nat has silver hair. Her skin is encased in powder; she has coral lipstick, brown smoker’s teeth. She wears a tailored coat, a pencil skirt.

“Good evening.”

“Evening.” Nat steps inside.

The woman looks at Ruth, standing ten feet away in the darkness. “Hello.”

“Hello.”

“Cold out.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to come inside?”

The living room is decorated in an American idea of Scandinavian simplicity: blond wood, graceful lighting, two prim couches upholstered in cream. The house smells of an Asian spice rack. Someone trying to improve herself by purchasing air fresheners.

There’s a round man in the living room. He’s wearing a long beige duster with taupe cowboy boots that are really just shoes, shorties. A counterfeit cowboy. “Nat,” the cowboy says. “Right?”

“Yes.”

The woman smiles quickly, limiting the glimpse of her teeth. “Please,” inviting them in. “Have a seat.”

A small tabletop fountain trickles in one corner. Ruth saw the same model for sale at a hardware store in town, had even considered a purchase.

“Make yourselves comfortable.” The woman smiles.

Ruth sits on one couch with Nat beside her. The walls are brain-colored.

Nat clears his throat, his voice rigid. “What can we help you with?”

“Both of you are mediums?”

Nat nods.

The woman sits opposite them, arraying her limbs on the sofa as a Hollywood starlet might. “Both of you are touched with the sight? How unusual.”

“It’s less sight. More listening.”

The woman turns toward the cowboy, throwing out an elbow. “I told you. Highly recommended. He knew there was something special about her.”

“Who?”

“Are you alone?”

“We are together.”

“Of course. We won’t take much of your time. I understand you’re in demand.” The woman claps a call to order.

“Thank you.” Nat drags his nails across the couch’s fabric.

“Hold hands?” Ruth asks, unsteady. “We need to do that, right?” Her speech is slow.

“Of course we do,” the woman says. “Of course.”

The four of them scoot in close. Ruth holds the cowboy’s hand while Nat begins to sizzle, saliva pooling at the top of his throat. His eyes shut and Ruth follows him, down or back or up, wherever it is he goes when he goes.

Ruth lifts her arms — and consequently one of the cowboy’s and one of Nat’s — to address the universe. She speaks like a hungry child reciting grace, rushed and reductive. “Great spirit, gather here with us today. Help these good people.” She’s hopeful. “Great spirit, finder of the lost, engage our souls in your work so that we may in turn serve the realm where you dwell.”

Then the room is silent for a minute, two minutes.

“Please,” she adds to her entreaty, a little late.

Nat grunts. His head rolls like a bowl ready to spill, swinging from four o’clock to seven, stopping at five. He opens his eyes.

“Ask your question,” Ruth instructs.

Nat growls.

“Slowly,” Ruth cautions as if they are approaching a wild creature.

The woman slides forward on the couch. She looks left and right. She closes her eyes, opens her sternum and arms. “Where is the vessel containing the trust?”

“Vessel?” Ruth looks for some clarity. “Trust?”

The woman lowers her arms, her chin. “What happened to the funds?”

“Money?” Ruth tries to confirm again.

“Yes. The trust.”

Nat raises their clasped hands to his brow for a moment, then down to his mouth, inhaling, dribbling spit on Ruth’s thumb. When he lets go, he gives a sour look. The room is still. Nat blinks, remains quiet until — Ruth hears it first — there’s a sound like dice. Nat’s jaws are shivering. His teeth click against each other, bones. “Unearth,” Nat says. “Catechism. Cataclysm. Really now.” Nat chuckles as if in response to an unheard dirty joke. His head swivels, lifting his left ear to the sky, then his right. His eyes are white. “What’s the matter? I thought you were going to dive. You thought I was going to dive? There’s no water in the pool.”

They’d seen it a couple weeks ago. Burt Lancaster’s navy-blue swim trunks in The Swimmer. Ruth allows a moment to wonder why the supernatural comes to Nat as old movies.

Nat shuts his eyes lightly, lowers his torso into his lap, draws his knees together, shaking. “You see, if you make-believe hard enough that something is true, then it’s true for you.”

The moment passes.

“I see an empty swimming pool,” Nat says.

“The money is in an empty pool? Are you sure? It’s been gone a long time.” But the woman’s words are lost as a rush of people file into the room from the back of the house. The trance is broken. Nat looks up, awake. Fifteen people, twenty, all of them dressed in the brightest colors like a rainbow choir. They move silently. They are all white. Many of them are young, in their twenties. Their smiles are cemented. Their eyes are as glazed as a drug addict’s.

Ruth thinks this is not right.

The people find seats on the ground. None of them sit on furniture. They cram in together, unaware of borders and personal space, the way insects crawl over other insects. They say nothing. Once they’re seated, a tall, slim man follows them in. The colorful people look to him, and their smiles take on a fresh electricity. He’s the candy man.

Ruth’s ribs fold in an act of protection.

The man enters mid-song. “‘I’m not the man they think I am at home. Oh. No. No.’” His singing stops. “Oh”—suddenly aware of Nat, of Ruth. “You began without me.”

It takes Ruth a moment to understand what she’s looking at. The man’s arms are open to receive, though Ruth wants to flee because the man’s face has an awful flatness, ragged with dried blood. The man does not have a nose, but rather two cavities, two crusted holes. “Brothers,” he says. “Sisters.” He wears a magenta tunic and turquoise slacks like a hippie, a noseless hippie. He lights a stick of incense. Ruth thinks of a lion’s sliced nostrils, a camel’s open beak. It is horrible to see a man without a nose.

“Yes. Sorry. Just getting started.” The woman stands. “May I introduce you to Nat.”

Nat stands.

“And this is—”

“Ruth.” The man provides her name. He extends both hands for a double shake. “Congratulations, Ruth. I hear you recently married. What happy news. To some.”

The room unravels. Zeke. The carpeting becomes cold, damp sand. The rough stucco walls crest and trough, a cream-colored ocean. He used to have a nose. Ruth dips her chin into her neck, wonders if she might get sick. Where is his nose? Last time she saw Zeke he had a nose.

Zeke takes a seat on the arm of the couch across from them. He nods to Nat. He smiles again, but it is hard to see a smile on the face of a man who has lost his nose. “Happy to meet you finally, Nat. Ruth has spoken to me of your closeness.”

“You know one another?”

Ruth stammers. “I met him at the hospital. My appendix.”

“You never mentioned me to Nat?” Zeke asks her.

“No.”

“You also never told me you could talk to the dead.”

“It’s more Nat than me. He’s the one.”

“Is that right?” Zeke smiles at her. “Is Nat also the lucky young man, your husband?”

“No,” she says. “No. No. No.” Ruth sickens.

“Come on,” Zeke says. “I’m happy for you. We’re friends, Ruth. I mean it was my idea, but we’re friends. Right?”

A large dog, Saint Bernard, emerges out of the back room.

“Right. Friends.”

“You like dogs?” he asks.

Ruth nods, noncommittally.

Zeke snuggles the dog in a particularly intimate way, allowing the holes of his nose to be licked. The dog finds a seat near Zeke’s feet. “Yes,” he says. “Dogs don’t attempt to deceive. Who wouldn’t like that?”

The woman smiles at Zeke, lifts a hand to her neck and further up to her freakishly white ear, cupping it, catching sound waves.

“Green tea?” the cowboy offers around. “It’s no trouble. I’m making one for myself.”

“Lovely,” Zeke says, and the cowboy, after picking his way over the seated, silent people, disappears through the same doorway.

Ruth’s horror is fully unveiled. Zeke leans into it, into her. “You can’t look away, can you? I know. Neither could I at first. Go ahead. Take a good look.” He leans in even closer, so close she can smell what a man with a rotten hole in his face smells like. He’s right, she can’t look away. He rocks forward as if he’ll kiss her. Instead Zeke stands, singing again. “‘And I’m going to be high as a kite by then.’”

The people watch him, anticipating a sermon or speech. He does a back bend, some dance move. Finally he delivers what they’re waiting for. “In a town upstate — long time ago — there were three sisters, Kate, Margaret, and Leah. There are always three sisters, right? These three heard voices. Or at least Kate and Maggie did. Leah was older, wiser. Still, she went along for the ride. The sisters claimed the voices belonged to dead people. Much like yourselves, they could speak to the dead.” Zeke twists, cognizant of his entire audience. “And thousands of people believed them. It’s incredible how many people believe this, right? Incredible how much people will pay, right? If they’re desperate enough, yeah? Say a mom who lost her kid. I bet you get a lot of those. I bet that’s a real moneymaker for you.”

Ruth stiffens.

“Or people don’t even have to believe it. Doesn’t affect your business. Everybody’s got dead people. You probably even have non-believers lining up to pay you. Right? Genius! Wish I’d thought it.” The more excited Zeke gets, the damper his nasal cavity becomes. “But these sisters heard rappings at night. How they knew it was dead people instead of, say, a tree branch or a squirrel or their own ankles cracking, I don’t know. Same way you know, I guess.”

Nat stays low to his lap.

“So the sisters decide that there’d been a murder.” Zeke brushes the knuckles of one hand lightly. “They say the voices told them.”

Ruth’s back becomes brittle. “A murder.”

“The rappings told the girls, and the girls told their parents. Said that there’d been a murder right in their house. And the parents believe the children, so the family digs out the whole basement looking for the bones. And they found them. Tibia, humerus, et cetera. Could have belonged to anything, cow, coyote. Or maybe there was a murder.” Zeke bends low.

Ruth worries that he will bring his noseless wet hole of a face closer to her. His hair is shoulder length and greasy. He stretches back again, hands on his butt. His tunic lifts to show his hip girdle. He straightens, takes one step closer.

“The girls fingered a guy, a stranger, a traveling merchant. Three young girls accused a grown man on account of some late-night rappings and a cow bone. And still, the whole town believes them, whole town shunned this man, drove him away. Why?”

Zeke looks around to the group gathered. They smile and nod as if they already know the answer but will let him deliver the punch line. “Because belief is easier. Belief is fun, right? An entire religion was born from these girls, hundreds of people to this day, unshakable in their belief, even after the girls admitted making it all up.” Zeke wraps his arms together like some sort of snake yogi, this way, then that. “Because it’s not untrue to the people who believe it. That’s what I think I hear you saying, Brother Nat? Yes. This bit about the pool?”

Zeke isn’t really talking to Nat. He isn’t talking to anyone besides Ruth. Zeke laughs. First just a heaving of the shoulders, then a hack. He cackles. He reaches up to the sky before wiping his eyes. “I love that story.” Knee slapping. “I love that G.D. story!”

The people begin to twitter, colorful birds who forgot how to fly. They also love that story. Zeke claps his hands for silence.

“Faith is beautiful.” Zeke smiles gently. “For example, what if I told you, Ruth, that you were meant for me? That you and I, together, were supposed to alter life as we know it on Earth? What would you think if I told you that?”

“I think you need help.”

“I needed your help, but you went and married somebody else.”

The twittering of the peanut gallery starts up again. “Who are these people?” Ruth asks.

Zeke turns to gather them. He smiles. “These,” he says, “are the faithful. The believers. At least some of them. Am I right, Sister Sylvia?”

The woman in white nods.

The cowboy returns just then bearing a tray of steaming ceramic cups, the sort with no handles. And on the tray beside the tea set is a paper cylinder of Comet, the cleaning powder.

“Thank you, Confucius.” Zeke again takes his seat. Confucius is not a cowboy nor is he Chinese. He looks Bronx Italian, stuffed into his clothes. He serves Zeke tea.

Zeke lifts his mug to his chin. He breathes like a horse, inhaling the fragrance from the brew. The caked darkness of his sinuses turns his entire face into a respiratory apparatus, fleshy nodules flare with each exhalation.

Confucius sprinkles a pile of the pale aquamarine powder on the low table. He claims a seat, rocks onto one hip in order to pull a small slim box from his coat pocket, a cigarette case. He pops the clasp and, using the hard edge of a credit card, cuts and divides the cleaning powder into rows and rows of fine lines. Zeke selects a small section of straw from the case and, inserting its plastic into one open flap of his sinus cavity, he uses his hand to close off any other opening. Zeke inhales deeply, snorting Comet, loud as a slurp.

Ruth has to, finally, look away.

He lifts his head, cracks into a broad smile. “Light of the world. Want to try it?” He extends the damp straw to Ruth. His nostrils are splattered-speckled blue now that the pale powder has dampened.

The Saint Bernard quite suddenly has a desperate itch, windmilling his leg to scratch the spot.

Ruth voices an obvious truth. “You are not supposed to snort that. It’s toilet bowl cleaner.”

“It”—Zeke lifts the canister up to his cheek—“has been a heavenly deliverance from the betrayal you dealt me.”

“Me?”

He lifts his mug to his chin, breathes like a horse, inhaling the fragrance of the tea. He wipes his sinus cavities clean with a sleeve. “You were the catalyst, Ruth. You were going to lead these people where they are supposed to go. Now they’ve got no mother.”

Cowboy has his chin in his palm.

“Why me?”

“It’s printed clear as day across your face. You’re a map. You were my wife, and I was your husband, your true husband!” He screams it loud enough for the neighbors to hear.

Nat and Ruth stare openly at each other. “What? No.”

“You don’t have to be scared of me,” Zeke tells Ruth.

“I’m not scared. I’m leaving.”

A faint trickle of creamy blue oozes from his non-nose. Again he wipes. “Hold on. Just hold on. I didn’t mean to scare you. What about the box? That’s why we’re here, right? Sylvia, Confucius? That’s our purpose tonight, right? Money?”

“Yes,” the woman says. “Tonight that is our purpose.”

“Sylvia wants proof I’m no thief. Right?”

The woman doesn’t answer. Her chin ticks back and forth.

“See, years back, we lost a whole lot of money, and we really need that money just now. Sister Sylvia needs it so much she’s starting to suspect that maybe I was the one who stole the money. Right?” he asks Sylvia.

“Right.”

“So if we find the money, then all’s well, right?”

“Right,” Sylvia whispers again.

“But if we don’t find the money, if bad things happen to good people, then why bother believing anything at all? Right again?” Zeke chuckles.

Sylvia takes her face into her hands. “Right.”

He turns to Ruth. “I think we can kill two birds with one stone. Find the money and finish my story, the three sisters, OK? Because what I’m wondering, what I really want to ask you”—he puts both index fingers up to his temples like two guns—“is where’s your third sister? You’re missing one. Where is he, Ruth?”

“What?”

“Where’s that guy you married? I’ve got a hunch he can solve this whole mystery.”

“No. He’s not like us.”

“No? I’ve got a strong feeling Carl knows exactly where to find our money. And he doesn’t even have to talk mumbo-jumbo to find it. No, ma’am.” Zeke is laughing again but silently. His shirt gapes. Ruth can see the top of his chest. “Is he waiting outside, or did you sneak off without him tonight?”

Zeke looks to her for a reaction. Ruth says nothing. How does he know Mr. Bell?

“Thinking of cutting him out eventually? More profit for you two, right? Smart. I see you got your own apartment without him. Cute place above the vet clinic, right?” Zeke slaps his thighs. “But, woo-hoo! I’d be careful messing with Carl. He was trained by the best. He’s ruthless, I tell you. Ruthless.” Realizing his pun, Zeke queers his face. “Oh.” He smiles. “Not you, dear.” Zeke turns his back on her. “So, while we wait for Carl to show up”—he faces his congregation—“who wants to see some stars?”

Shouts of delight are raised. Confucius pours a huge pile of Comet onto his tea tray, a heaping mound. He empties the container. He plucks a fresh straw from his cigarette holder and, holding the tray with one hand like a cocktail waitress, offers the straw to the first of the colorful congregants. The man dives into the pile with relish, delivering himself from the mess of his life, from this moment in time with a toot of toilet bowl cleaner named for an astronomical uncertainty.

Zeke starts to sizzle. Confucius makes his way down the line of people. Zeke moves his hips, grooving. “Yeah!” he calls out. “That’s it!” A coach on the sidelines. He claps. He moves over to the stereo, finds the song he’s looking for, and lifts the volume to a deafening level. The song tells the story of a spaceman devoid of his earthly comforts, floating through the ether. He misses his wife and children. He misses home. The spaceman tries to play it cool, saying, “I don’t understand” and “It’s just my job,” but the truth is something that holds him there in space, floating in the darkness, free from gravity.

Zeke falls into the song. His eyes close. His face twitches from smile to grimace and back. Comet coursing through his thoughts. Sky shot and soaring. His body rocks. His hands try to grip the song, hold it, and all the while, over the volume, the tray of powder gets passed from congregant to congregant, each individually going wild for his or her communion with the stuff, snuffing and huffing, star-nosed moles in a tunnel, smiling and rejoicing at the sacrament. It is sexual. It is scientific. Some see stars. Some start to sway and drool, modern flowing movements, snorting a bleach cleanser. They do not dance with each other. It is a singular journey. A rocket man. A rocket woman. Eyes more glazed, more drugged. Futures and furniture get hazy. Zeke claps his hands. He screams to be heard. “I love this song! Don’t you love this song!” No one is listening. He dips and whirls, swirling. “‘All this science, I don’t understand.’” A storm drawn of chaos and chemicals, and no one is paying attention to Nat and Ruth. She takes his hand. Slowly, slowly, they stand. She does not breathe. Slowly, they slink from the table, from the couch, through the drugged dancers. Moving without motion, slowly, slowly, to stay invisible. The rear hallway shines bright, an escape pod back to planet Earth or at least a window set low enough for a jump. The music is so loud. Up here alone. Zeke’s eyes are still shut, and Nat and Ruth move like plants. No one sees them grow toward their escape. The others dance, sway. The others stumble, smile, blissful in happy catatonia. Nat and Ruth are nearly there, nearly clear.

And then the record comes to a trance-breaking, drug-haze-shaking skip.

The plants sprout legs. Nat and Ruth sprint out the back hallway. Nat finds an exit for them, a porch door that leads back to the world. He pushes Ruth through the jamb. He pushes Ruth back out into the night. Darkness cracks, an explosion — or else it’s just the sound of the screen door slamming shut behind them as they run for Mr. Bell’s waiting car.