Mr. Splitfoot

~ ~ ~

THERE’S MONEY TO BE MADE talking to the dead. Tonya brings her boyfriend, a kid who aged out a few years back. He lives in a shelter. No more Medicaid and the kid is sick, sick. At the periphery of the basement’s coal bin, the boyfriend stands with his legs spread slightly, his arms crossed over his chest to display his muscles. He coughs like a buffalo every five minutes.

Tonya, Nat, and Ruth find seats on the cold ground. The basement creaks against the soil outside. Minerals grow. “Hello?” Ruth asks the dark basement. “Hello? Hello? Who is there?” But it’s hard to get the dead’s attention under the boyfriend’s scowl. “Can you sit down?” Ruth offers her hand.

“No.” He doesn’t move.

Her arm remains extended.

“I said no.”

Ruth buries her lips.

“This is bullshit,” the boyfriend says. His posture is rigid, eyes straight ahead. “You’re wasting your money, Ton.”

“Uh-uh, babe. He’s for real. He talks to our parents all the time.”

“Oh yeah?” the boyfriend asks, though he doesn’t mean it. “He’s making it up.”

“He knows their names, Trey. He knows things no one ever told him.”

It’s true. Children from the home pay five dollars, a fortune, and Nat talks to their parents. He knows their names. He says what they would say. I love you. I miss you. I’d be with you if I could.

“Bullshit.”

“Well.” Ruth lifts up to her knees, ready to adjourn. “If you don’t believe it, let’s skip it.”

“No,” Tonya says. “We’ve got nothing else to do.”

That is true.

Nat looks to the boyfriend. “You don’t have to believe it. It doesn’t matter. I don’t believe it, but that doesn’t stop it from happening.”

The boyfriend stays standing. “You don’t believe your own shit?”

Ruth sits again, takes Tonya’s hand.

“No.”

“Well, I do.” Ruth calls again into the dark to the ranks of dead people waiting to chat. “Who’s there?”

Nat starts to shimmy. His shoulders twitch. Ruth sways slightly, a humming groupie. Nat feels Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry. “Calamine. Calamine. Calamine. Mine.” He moves his tongue and body, whispering, lashed from side to side. He borrows heavily from the Father’s playbook. Rolling his eyes back, his jaw gets ready to deliver, huffing an exorcism of their boredom. Nat thumbs back and forth over a word that sounds like “prick.” Nat tells Tonya that her mom would be with her if she could be. He tells her that her mom’s name was Cleopatra.

“No. Her name was—”

“Eunice,” Nat fills in.

“Yeah.”

“Nah,” he says. “That’s just what the kids in school used to call her.”

Tonya nods. “Is that right?” and lifts her chin like the daughter of a queen.

Even the prick’s mom makes an appearance. Nat says her name. “Ursula.” So the boyfriend drops to his knees and cries like a hungry calf until Ruth puts her arm across his shoulders and tells him that really, everything is going to be OK, everything’s going to be just fine.

After Tonya, Shauna and Lisa take a turn, the sisters.

Nat’s a bull ready to toss its rider, foaming like a terrifying moron.

“I see your mom roasting a chicken in her pajamas.”

“That’s her.”

“She’s brushing her teeth while talking on the phone.”

“Oh my God. How do you know?”

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

Nat doesn’t even say hello to some of these kids upstairs, but down in the cellar their mothers’ words are in his mouth. “Miss you” and “Still” and “Soon, love,” and “Remember when.”

Ruth carries a box of tissues into the basement each time they go. She also works security when necessary. The first time Nat contacted Tika’s mom, Tika went ballistic. “Dirty whore! Let me at her!” In his trance Nat kept saying, “I love you. I love you, honey. I’m sorry.” Tika charged Nat, knocking his head back against the concrete floor, scratching at his cheeks. Ruth pulled her off, told her she wasn’t allowed to come back to the basement anymore.

A few days after the sisters, the tiny, quiet Raffaella has her turn, and this is how they move through the months.

Ruth holds one of Raffaella’s hands. It looks and feels like a flipper. Nat takes her other hand. “Yaawwchappa chappa chappa,” Nat yammers in the murk.

Raffaella’s flipper grips Ruth’s hand tighter. It’s the girl’s first time. She thought Jesus wouldn’t like her talking to dead people until Ruth pointed out that Jesus himself is a dead person who came back, talking.

“Choo chug choo chug.” Nat’s pupils are vacant. “Hello?”

Ruth opens her eyes a slit. Raffaella watches Nat, so hungry she’d eat him.

“Jumper. Juniper. Jennifer. Jennifer. Jennifer.” Finding the right ghost is like selecting an entrée off a menu.

Raffaella’s mouth opens. She straightens her spine. “That’s her.”

“Remember that lightning storm? We sat and watched it.”

Raffaella nods, whispers, “I remember, Mommy.”

“I’d be with you if I could.” Every mother says that every time.

Raffaella asks, “What’s stopping you?”

Ruth tilts her head. “The veil between the worlds is hard to pass over.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s hard to come back from the dead.”

“My mom’s not dead. She’s in Miami.”

Ruth’s eyes open. “Miami?”

“It’s like she’s dead.”

“Like she’s dead?”

Nat comes to. He rubs his forehead and stretches.

“It’s over,” Ruth tells her.

“OK,” the little girl says. “Well. Thanks.” Raffaella releases their hands. She doesn’t press it. She wants to believe. She pays them to not admit it’s fake. Her footsteps are light on the stairs as she goes. The basement door shuts.

“Her mom’s not dead.”

Nat shrugs.

“I guess there are even more mysteries than I thought,” Ruth says.

“I guess so.” They climb out of the cellar. Nat lets Ruth hold the money.

Breakfast was seven hours ago. Ruth had a half bowl of Crispy Hexagons. Food supplies are low until the State makes its next payment. Ruth drinks water and a dandelion tea the Father brews when food runs out. Hunger’s slowing her down, eating her brain. Hunger darkens her eyes on a young man speaking with the Father on the front porch. His hair’s long as a gypsy’s. His fingers are covered with thick metal rings, stones and skulls, some sort of fancy pirate. There’s a suitcase beside the man, but he’s too old to be a new charge. His pinkie nails are painted black. The Father won’t like that one bit. Homosexual, he will say. The Father doesn’t know anything. Ruth sucks her thumb, wondering if her hunger invented the man.

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.

“Very well done.”

“What are you doing here?” Nat stands.

“Forgive my intrusion. I’m a traveler, trying to earn a living best I can, and you see this month I’ve come up a hair short. These are not the dwellings I’m accustomed to, but, we, I, make do.”

Nat and Ruth wait for a further explanation.

“An opportunity presented itself. You folks have this large basement, and I needed a place to sleep. I’ll ask you please not to reveal my pallet to your father. In the morning I will be gone.”

“He’s not our father.”

“Forgive me. I misunderstood the nature of your relationship. Is there a mother? I haven’t seen a mother.”

“You snuck down here?”

“Sneaked. Yes. A mother?”

“Hiding?” Nat wants to know.

“Only to secure a night’s rest. The air outside had a chill, and the good city of Troy impounded my chariot until she’s made more homogenously legal.”

The match burns out. Ruth hears him breathe. “What?”

“Car got towed.” He lights another match and extends it into the back of the coal bin. The tight space resembles a coffin. His sleeping bag is a sack of orange nylon. Cowboys and Indians whoop across its flannel lining. “I was asleep until you two scared the fleas off me.”

One good scream would wake someone overhead. “What’s in that case? What do you sell?” Nat asks.

The man rubs his hands together. “I’d like to tell you, I would, but I’m wondering who you were talking to five minutes back.” He stops the hand rub, chuckling as if he’s got Nat trapped.

He doesn’t have Nat. “Dead people. What’s in your case?”

“Ah, the dead. Just as I thought, but you’re doing it wrong. Too much gibberish. People like their supernatural to make a little more sense.”

“What do you know?”

“Some things. I know some things about talking to the dead. And one of the things I know is that if you’re going to con people, a little gibberish goes a long, long way.”

“He’s not conning anyone.”

“Beg pardon?”

“He can really talk to the dead.”

Mr. Bell draws his chin back. “Then he’s even more clever than I thought.”

“What’s in the case?” Nat asks.

“What’s in the case.” The match goes out. “I’ll show you and perhaps you’ll allow me to teach you something about talking to dead people. Tomorrow? I haven’t got the case here with me. Trapped in my transport. But tomorrow. You know Van Schaick Island, in the river? A place between, yes? Start of the Erie Canal. Or its end. Meet me there? Follow Park Avenue along the shores of the Mohawk. Sometime after four. Yes?”

Ruth doesn’t wait for Nat’s answer. “Yes.”

She wakes before dawn. Their bedroom is a narrow closet at the top of the stairs, where the house’s heart would be if it had one. They have one yellow blanket and a door that’s so old, so glommed up with paint, it sticks in the summer and makes Ruth wonder about all those painters, about the people who were here before her. There’s a stubby pencil on the bedside table sharpened so the letters embossed on the side now spell MERICAN. Ruth hasn’t slept much. All night she imagined Mr. Bell in the basement, a strange person in an ordinary sleeping bag. Though probably he’d fled after being discovered.

Nat’s still asleep. Their hips touch. Ruth turns to Nat’s feet, acrid pale fishes. A few hairs sprout from his insteps. “Sleep is to ready us for death,” the Father says, but that doesn’t seem true of the way she sleeps with Nat.

A door slams down the hall. The Mother taking a predawn shower. Soon the house will wake but not yet. Ruth can lie with Nat under their yellow blanket, stewing and melting together.

Morning comes on slowly through the transom. “It’s real, right?”

He stretches, his toes reaching past her head, pressing flat feet against the wall. Nat jumps out of bed and stretches again. He rattles off a dry report of farts, neither answer nor confirmation.

Ruth and Nat walk to Van Schaick. It’s not easy to get there. Industry has kept access to the Hudson restricted, Homeland Security. The banks are often lined with trash. There are fuel tanks where Haymakers Field, a major league baseball diamond, used to be. The cars on the bridges overhead zoom like spaceships lifting off. Rushes growing by the river sound like snakes when the wind is in them. Ruth is wary of snakes. Fourteen or fifteen snow geese have landed on the bank. She calculates the omens. Spaceships plus snakes minus snow geese. She moves forward. “It’s real, right?” she asks again.

Nat spits to one side.

In a forgotten part of the floodplain, between the Mohawk and the Hudson Rivers, Mr. Bell sits on his case still wearing his burgundy suit. Yellow weeds are flattened and dried by the tides. He’s tossing rocks into the river. “Amigos.” He stands to greet them. “A powerful confluence here.” He jerks his chin out to the water. “Though the power isn’t necessarily visible to the naked eye, this land looks forgotten, but I assure you, we’re standing at a most important place. You know the history of this great canal?”

Ruth shakes her head no.

“This is where north and south meet east and west. From here”—he points one way—“New York City and the Atlantic. And there”—his finger follows the curve of the river up—“the rest of the country. A passage through antiquity: Utica, Rome, and Syracuse. Tonawanda by way of Crescent, Tribes Hill, Canajoharie, May’s Point, Lyons, Palmyra, Macedon, to Buffalo. Each lock is a miracle of engineering built with nary an engineer. The excavated dirt formed a towpath beside the canal beaten flat by the mules who built New York State. These days, though, the canal doesn’t get much use.”

Ruth, Nat, and Mr. Bell stare down the Mohawk. “‘Low bridge,’” Mr. Bell sings out, but he is met with blank looks. He has to explain. “That’s where you sing, ‘Everybody down.’ Don’t you know that song?”

“No,” Ruth says. “Sorry.”

“‘Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal’?”

“Sorry.”

Nat jerks his chin. “What’s in the case?” He’s almost rude. Perhaps he’s worried that Ruth likes Mr. Bell too much. The three of them stand around the suitcase, hands clasped like farmers admiring a prized pumpkin. Finally Mr. Bell flops the case open.

“There’s nothing in there,” Ruth says. It is empty save for its soiled pink taffeta lining.

“No, there’s not.”

“What was in there? What were you selling?”

“There’s never been anything in there. I carry an empty case.”

“Why?”

“It gives me a reason to knock on people’s doors, ask them questions. You already understand the potential in empty space and curious customers. Empty space made you two agree to meet me, a strange man in an abandoned location. Why would you do that?”

No one, besides an outraged bird, makes a sound.

“Empty space lures your customers into a dark and dreary basement. Why?”

“What kind of questions do you ask?”

“Whatever I need to know.” Mr. Bell claps his hands, smiles.

“Like?”

Mr. Bell squats as a catcher. He rubs his hands over his face, preparing his snake oil for presentation. “Do you have life insurance? Do you have a son? Do you own any property in Florida?” He straightens. “Just as examples.”

“Why do you want to know those things?”

“Information enables me to shape my con, to make something from nothing.”

“Pardon?”

“I am a con man.” He offers himself to them without a filter, opening arms. “This is how I make my living, separating fools from their money.”

“But we don’t have any money.”

“And I am not conning you.”

“Did you con Father Arthur?”

Mr. Bell snickers. “As a man of faith, he’s already familiar with my tricks.”

“So why’d you want to talk to us?”

“For you, in my suitcase, I have a proposition.”

Nat and Ruth bend closer to the empty case, peering inside again.

“No,” Mr. Bell says. “I’m speaking metaphorically.”

They stand.

“I should like to become your manager.”

“That’s what’s in the case?”

Ruth sees a small path to the river, a muddy slide down to the water. “What will you manage?”

“Your careers as seers, mediums, psychics. I’ll collect an audience. I’ll be a barker of sorts. You’re familiar with the term?”

No. “Yes.”

“I meet a lot of people.” Mr. Bell doesn’t have to convince them. Up close, in the light of day, he’s pocked with experience and some rough-looking tattoos. Mr. Bell still hasn’t told them his first name. “Many of these people would be interested in your services.”

“What are those?”

“Contacting the dead. Or putting on a good show.”

“You don’t believe in ghosts?” she asks.

“No.”

“You will once you sit with him.”

“I doubt it.”

“Why would we let you manage us after you’ve admitted to being a con man?”

“Like likes like.” When he smiles, his teeth are strong.

“You mean we’re con men also?”

“Yes.”

“Nat’s for real.”

“To you.”

“So you don’t believe in anything?”

Mr. Bell grins. “My beliefs are of a fossilized nature. Petrified. Luckily, my beliefs matter little. I’m a businessman, and if you say so, we’re in business.”

The river currents churn like something thicker: oil, booze, or blood.

“You must be rich.”

“No.”

“You went to college?” She’s looking for any advantage he might have over her.

“No. Why?”

“There are no atheists in foxholes.”

He smiles at her turn of phrase. “Not so, young lady. I can see the stars from this trench. Regardless of its extraordinary depths. Why? What do you believe?”

“Birds. Jesus.” She leaves Nat’s name off the list for now.

“A Christian.”

“No. I just like the man.”

“The man Jesus?”

“That’s the one.”

Mr. Bell smiles as if she’s a cute kid, as if he’s far older than he is. “Do we have a deal?” he asks Nat, but Nat looks to Ruth.

She studies the river. It’s hard to read. “OK,” she tells them. “A manager. Why not? We’ve got nothing to lose.”

Mr. Bell lets loose a small whoop. He swings the empty case, orbiting himself before letting go of its handle. It lands in the river with a sucking splash, floating downstream on its way to a new life in the big city.

Mr. Bell buys milk at a pharmacy in Colonie. Nat and Ruth wait in the car. His strength already lifts them. He drives them to a fish fry. He leaves the milk in the warm car. The restaurant is decorated in a horseracing theme. The booths are made to look like paddocks, each one crowned with a portrait, a thoroughbred in his prime: Black Susan, King’s Ransom, Secretariat. The restaurant is dark. A person could take his lunch here and avoid the sunshine.

“On this spot”—Mr. Bell drives a fingertip onto the table—“Mother Ann shook her thing.”

“What are you talking about?” Ruth intends the question in the broadest sense, like, Where did you come from? Why do you talk so funny? How did you find us?

“Mother Ann, aka Ann Lee, led the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. You know them by their nickname, the Shakers?”

“Shakers?”

“Christians like yourself.”

“I told you, we’re not Christians. Father Arthur is.”

“Right. So the Shakers were into ecstatic dancing, hand-built furniture, gender equality, round barns, celibacy in preparation for the kingdom. ’Tis a gift to be simple.”

“You’re a Shaker?”

“No.” The waitress appears. “Three orders of cod. Tartar sauce.” Mr. Bell orders for all of them. “My treat.”

“Fries?” the waitress asks.

“Fries”—Mr. Bell rolls the word back to her—“are for kids.” And because they are not kids, except in the eyes of the state, Nat and Ruth quickly refuse similar offers of French fries.

A man enters the restaurant. He brushes off the hostess, scanning the room for the choicest table. He takes a seat at the counter, slowly spinning his stool. On each revolution, he stares at Ruth. Her clothes, her scar. She’s used to it.

“You need some instruction,” Mr. Bell says.

“In what?”

“Deceit. I can provide this. You lovelies do your basement reckoning for an audience. Top dollar for a sit with you and your spooks. And let’s bring it out of the basement.”

“Interesting.” Nat steals a word from Mr. Bell.

“It’s not deceit,” Ruth reminds him.

The man on the stool has stopped spinning. He now stares at Ruth openly, directly, smiling bright. She notices his sideburns.

Mr. Bell winks at her quickly. “Doesn’t matter, dear. People are desperate for their dead. Even they don’t have to believe in it.”

She likes being called dear.

The man on the stool strolls past their table on his way to the restroom. His attention is still caught on Ruth. He twists his neck as an owl might, nearly all the way around to not break his gaze. He passes so close, she can see the hairs on his hands, feel his stare. She hides her face with her palm, making a blinder.

“What do we do?” Nat asks.

“I’m glad you asked.” Mr. Bell waits for the man to pass out of earshot. “First of all, just listen.” Mr. Bell cups his ear. “They’ll tell you what they want you to say. Listen, then feed it back to them. You’ve heard of psychoanalysis? Maybe you haven’t, but it’s like that. And if you have nothing to go on, keep it general. Keep it far in the past. No one’s going to recognize their great-great-grandfather.” Mr. Bell shakes a small pile of salt onto his fingertip and rubs it on his gums. “When all else fails, memorize a few old movies. Those’ll do in a pinch.”

“Someone’s going to think we’re criminals and lock us up.”

Mr. Bell hunkers in close, protecting a featherless newborn bird. He looks Ruth up and down. “But you already are locked up. Aren’t you, dear?”