Mr. Splitfoot

~ ~ ~

IN THE MORNING Ruth hears a rusty rhythmic duck squawk. Sounds like bedsprings or a trampoline. The sound’s coming from outside, where, somehow, it is still snowing. Drifts have blown as high as the second story.

Dressed again in winter gear, moving through new snow, Ruth feels like a spaceman stumbling in anti-gravity. She circles the house, looking for the noise, and sees Mr. Bell’s head clear a drift then disappear, clear a drift then disappear again. He’s on a trampoline. Up and down, up and down goes his head. Ruth makes her slow way toward him. Mr. Bell is jumping on a diving board. Below him an empty pool is filling with snow.

“Hola.” He’s wearing only his combat boots and a trench coat against the storm.

“A pool,” Ruth says.

“Bit cold for a swim.”

She reaches the edge and looks down. The wind’s cleared snow from one side of the pool, collected it in the other. Where it’s clear, she sees rotting leaves and chunks of ice. The blue paint is chalky and chipped. Just below the diving board, as if it jumped, is something not pool-shaped, a snow-covered tumor in the deep end. “What’s that?”

Mr. Bell keeps on jumping, shrugs.

Ruth pops out of her snowshoes and climbs an ancient, curved, and rattling ladder down into the pool. At the last rung, she drops into the snow, sinking up to her hips in the deep end, below the synchronized swims that once took place above, the underwater trysts. On her knees, Ruth shuffles to the lump and grabs hold of it, dusting new snow from its top. SCOTTIES it says. Ruth carries the box to the shelter of the diving board.

“Carl?” she says. The plank overhead shields her from the falling snow.

“Don’t call me that.”

“I can’t call you Mister anymore.”

“Then just Bell. OK?”

“What’s wrong with Carl?” The board above continues to bounce close, ping back, close, and back again.

“It came from Mardellion.”

“He was that bad?”

“Yes.”

“OK. Bell.” Ruth rips the weathered packing tape off the box. The flaps open, and there inside, safe from the storm, are many, many hundred-dollar bills bundled together, massed into a snug pile. Ruth would never imagine that a box this size could hold half a million dollars, but what has Ruth ever known about the shape of money before?

Mr. Bell stops jumping. He lies down on the board, dangling one ungloved hand over the side, a white bird out of reach, stretching, making slow signs. The hand tenses then calms, conducting the blizzard.

“Bell?”

The board creaks against the cold. “I’m here.”

“There’s a box of money in the bottom of the pool.”

“Just like Nat said there’d be.”

“I didn’t believe him.”

“What’s the harm in believing?”

“You put this money here.”

“Why would I do something like that?”

“I don’t know. Why would you?”

With a box of money under one arm, Ruth climbs back out of the pool.

Nat is making his slow way toward them now through the deep snow, looking like an Arctic explorer. “What’s up?” he asks.

“Well.” Ruth has a seat on the diving board. Nat sits beside her. The box of money is between them like their messed-up newborn child.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

She opens the flaps of the box. Both of them look inside, and it takes a moment for Nat to understand what he’s looking at. They stare and wait for the box’s contents to do something, to breathe or mew, sneeze or explode.

“Where’d that come from?”

“I found it in the pool.”

Mr. Bell rolls onto his back, facing up into the falling snow.

“Why’d you say there was a box of money in an empty pool, and then there was a box of money in an empty pool?” Ruth asks.

“I was lying.”

“That’s what I thought. We saw that movie, and you made up a story to match it.”

“Right.”

“So then how’d you know the names of the kids’ moms?”

“Jesus, Ruth. There was a list, a Xerox from the State, in the kitchen drawer every week. Everyone’s mom, some dads, names, numbers. It was easy.”

Ruth remembers the list now, can even picture her mom’s name on it.

“They let me lie,” Nat says.

“Paid you to lie.”

“They paid you too.”

“So just to be clear, there are no dead people?”

“There are dead people, but they don’t talk to me. And they don’t talk to you either.” Nat opens the box flaps. “But this is real.” Again they stare down into the box. “Mr. Bell?”

“Yes?”

“Is this yours?”

“You found it. It belongs to you now.” He sits up. “But you better hide it somewhere. Not in the house.”

“Why?”

“Besides kidnapping moms and raping underage girls, Mardellion wants a meteorite, big as an atomic bomb, to strike this house. He’s been talking about it for years. He can’t take care of his followers anymore, so a meteorite to blow the Etherists sky-high, a million bits of love and light.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“No, it’s not, which is why he’s making his own meteorite.”

“How?”

“He’s stockpiled a mining explosive called ANFO. The stuff that was left behind here. Says he’s got enough to make a comet.”

Ruth looks at Nat. “Comet?” she asks.

“Another kind of space rock. Bigger than a meteorite.”

“That’s how Zeke lost his nose.”

“A comet hit his nose?”

“No. He was snorting the toilet bowl cleaner.”

Just as Nat, the box, Ruth, and Mr. Bell are lined up on the diving board, ducks in a row, things that hadn’t made sense before fall into order: a box of money, a comet, and a cult. Linked points on a map.

“We need to leave. Soon as this storm stops, we’re out of here.” Mr. Bell bangs his hands together.

“How? We’re stuck,” Ruth says.

“Why did you bring us here?” Nat asks.

“You don’t want the money? It was here. I had to come get it before he destroys the place.”

Nat and Ruth look back to the box.

“Calm down.” Mr. Bell smiles. “There’s no reason to panic. If we can’t get out of here, no one can get in. Soon as the snow stops, we’ll leave. We’ll dig out tomorrow and be on our way. It’s going to be fine.”

They have no other choice, so they believe him.

Mr. Bell and Ruth make lunch. He chops. She opens cans. He puts his hand on Ruth’s waist, sliding past her at the sink. They work together in the kitchen, rubbed smooth by friction. They make buttered rye toast, sardines, garbanzo beans, and beets. The three of them eat frozen blueberries with condensed milk in front of the living room fireplace.

Mr. Bell returns to the kitchen to clean up.

Ruth flicks a bit of hangnail off her tongue. “Remember the night the Mother came to a séance?”

“Yeah.”

“I told her I was making it up, and she said that my being a liar didn’t stop ghosts from talking. She said there were things in the world, not of the world.”

“She’s a drug addict.”

“I’m just saying, unexplainable things happen even when you don’t believe in them.”

“Like what?”

“Eyeballs.”

“I believe in eyeballs.”

“But if you’d never seen them before, you’d think they were supernatural.”

“How could I see them if I didn’t have eyeballs?”

“Nat.” She means, Fuck you. “What about tides? Goats? Yogurt?” She twists toward him.

“That’s science.”

“Snowflakes? Lungs? Premonitions?”

Nat nods. “I believe in snowflakes and lungs.”

“But how do they happen? What makes ice form crystals?”

“I don’t know. Go to college. Become a scientist. Use some of the money for that.”

“What about people who know when they’re being stared at? Things you can’t explain. Phantom limbs. Pigeons finding their way home. What about a freaking box of money appearing in the bottom of the pool?” She slaps the side of the cardboard.

“Mr. Bell put it there.”

“Why would he give us a half-million dollars? That’s nuts.”

“Maybe he owes us something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I’m just telling you what I can observe, an essential skill of scientists and con men alike.”

“And you don’t believe what you can’t observe?”

“Hell nope.” Nat’s lips slice into an ungenerous line. “Humans are so good at imagining things, they invent gods who feel so real, they then betray us by not existing.”

“God saved you when your own mom wouldn’t.”

“If the Father is the best God can do, that’s not good enough.”

“So you don’t believe anything you can’t see?”

Nat thinks a moment. “Remember Miss Karen?”

“Barely.” Miss Karen had been Nat’s caseworker for seven years. She’d gone to grad school. She brought Nat to a tree museum once.

“Miss Karen took a vacation to Arizona, and when I saw her again at my next appointment, I told her the Father had been withholding dinner for three days because someone stuffed a sweatshirt down the toilet. Remember?”

“Ceph.”

“Miss Karen said, ‘When I was in the desert, a golden column of light appeared in front of me.’ A UFO. She said, ‘Don’t worry about Arthur. The aliens are here, and they’re going to take care of us.’” Nat squints. “Miss Karen wouldn’t tell a lie, but I don’t believe in UFOs.”

“But you believe her so—”

“I did. I still do, but I can’t get past thinking that if the aliens are here, how come they never rescued us, Ruth? Never. No aliens. And no God. And we could have used both.”

Ruth sets her chin. “Forget God. Or don’t call it that. I’m talking about mystery, unsolvable mystery. Maybe it’s as simple as love. I say it exists, and here’s how we’re going to settle it. Ready?”

“Sure.”

“OK. Whoever dies first, come back and tell the other.”

“What if it doesn’t work that way?”

“You’re smart. Figure something out. Leave me a note. Dump a box of cereal on the floor. I’ll know it’s you.”

“Or you’ll convince yourself that the wind blowing through the house is me.” Nat picks at his socks. “Don’t do it, Ruth. You set yourself up for disappointment when you dabble with the supernatural. My mom used to sing, ‘Fall on your knees, hear the angel voices,’ and it was easy to believe that the universe made sense when my mom was kind and good, but then she left. So if you want to convince me that there’s something bigger going on here, some sort of grand plan or map or order in the universe, you’re going to have to first explain why God makes bad moms.”

Ruth shrugs. “I don’t know why.”

“Well, I do and it’s because he doesn’t exist.”