Mr. Splitfoot

~ ~ ~

RUTH SCREAMS LIKE A DONKEY. Her entire middle is on fire. Everything hurts.

“I will break you to the saddle! Lord Jesus enter in!” The Father prays over her. Nat crouches by the bed. The Father’s been praying for a day and a half to no effect. God will not ease her symptoms. The Father’s begun to curse. Ruth sweats through the night, biting Nat’s fingers when it hurts too much.

Finally the Father drives Ruth to a hospital forty minutes down the road instead of the closest one. A lower price had been negotiated for emergency room services. The Father says he was waiting for the state to call him back with instructions, as if she were a broken DVD player. He comforts her on the drive. “You’d be dead by now if the Lord thought you were ready.”

“Guess we’ll all be here a long time.”

The Father drops her off and leaves. The hospital keeps Ruth for a week. Her appendix had ruptured. She’s put in the children’s ward. The place is filled with parents taking care of their sick kids. All day Ruth hears the children call, “Mom” or “Dad.” And the reply, “Yes, dear? What do you need?”

Still. Ruth’s fingers come unclenched in the hospital. If someone wants the sheets or the poly gown she’s wearing, they can come and take them — indeed, an orderly does exactly that once a day. She’s never been so long without Nat, and it is interesting to feel the places where she expands, the places she contracts, without him.

She receives visits from candy stripers, nurses, doctors, and chaplains. A lady with art supplies shows up every other day so that Ruth doesn’t question a visit from a tall man who comes and sits beside her. He has damp blue eyes and long sideburns. For a moment he’s familiar. “Are you from CPS?”

“No.” He’s brought her a bouquet of wildflowers including the lowly, lovely dandelion among the stems.

“Thank you,” Ruth says.

“My pleasure.” He claps his hands the way a pediatrician might. “So. Where are you from?”

Ruth drinks up his attention. She tells him about Love of Christ! She tells him about Nat and the other children. She tells him about the Mother, the Father, the goats, the homemade yogurt.

“All of you are living there together?” He takes his time with her as if he doesn’t have other children to meet with in the pediatric wing.

“Yes.”

“How brotherly,” he says.

And that’s a new way of thinking about the home for Ruth. “What about you?” Ruth’s happy to have someone to talk to. “Where do you live?”

“Me?” he asks. “I own a self-storage center in Troy. I’m by myself now but hope to meet a nice woman, start a family, and settle down soon. That’s my plan.”

“Hmm,” says Ruth.

“I’ve had some trouble meeting women in the past.”

“Hmm,” she repeats again, unsure what to make of his revelations.

“Can I bring you something from the cafeteria?” he asks. “Jell-O? Ice cream?”

“Sure. I’d love that. Thank you.”

“No trouble at all.”

He returns a few minutes later with peach gelatin. “Here we are. That’ll do you good.” His pale eyes match his blue shirt. His hands look strong as a firefighter’s or someone’s dad.

“What’s your name?”

“Zeke.” The man steps up to the edge of her bed.

“Do you work at the hospital?”

“No,” he says. “The storage center. I told you.”

Ruth puts the Jell-O down on her bedside table, suddenly scared. “I’ve seen you somewhere before,” she says, but she can’t remember where.

“Yes. I get around.”

“What are you doing here?”

His cheekbones are high, leaving the area below sunk in shadow. His nose is long, comes to a definite balled point. “Visiting.”

“Who?”

“You.” He extends his hand to her. He lifts her wrist, and for a moment she thinks he’s going to kiss her palm. He reads her admission bracelet. “Ruth Sykes. Beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she whispers.

“Can I take a look at that?” he asks.

“What?” He moves his hands up to her face. Maybe he really is a doctor.

He doesn’t touch the skin but hovers over it. The man stares at her scar as if it is a glowing geode. Then he does touch her, tracing the lines of her scar with an index finger. He cups Ruth’s cheek. The curve of his palm is damp, hot as breath. “Yes.” He eyes her scar the way others might a sunset. “An entire cosmos.” He nods. “Do you feel it, child?”

Ruth feels something.

“There’s home between you and me.”

A nurse bangs through the door. The man steps away.

“Good news,” the nurse says. “Discharge day.” She stops. “Is this your father?” the nurse asks.

“No.” The man steps back from the bed. The nurse is fussing with a chart, checking levels. Ruth touches her scar as the man backs out the door and is gone.

Ruth lifts her dress to show the kids where she’s been stitched back up.

Ceph says, “Nothing special in you.” The pits of his eyes are vicious.

“What’s a Ceph?” Ruth asks. “Ceph? That’s nothing.”

Nat smiles to watch her spar, relieved to have her back. A week in the home without her felt like death. He and Ceph had gotten into trouble, hanging the crosses in the barn upside down.

“Fine with me,” the Father had said in a voice calm and chilly. “Since them hogs need castrating.” He sent Ceph and Nat to the pen with one pair of snips and two flat rocks so the meat wouldn’t give off boar odor when cooked. Five boy piglets. Nat and Ceph took turns in the easier job of leg restraint at first until Ceph developed a passion for smashing pig scrotum.

“Have you seen Mr. Bell?” Ruth asks.

“Yeah. I told him you were in the hospital. He says we need practice, get the jitters out.” Nat turns to Ceph. “You want to play Mr. Splitfoot?”

“What, a game? Like with a knife?”

Ceph is the opposite of Mr. Bell. No charm, no intrigue. “Not Ceph,” she says. “And it’s not a game.”

“He’s perfect. Tough customer.” Nat turns. “No, Ceph. There’s no knives involved.”

Ceph’s presence brings out the actor in Ruth. She draws a creepy circle with charcoal in the basement. She makes him sit inside it as punishment. “Shh,” she spits. “Total silence,” though he’d said nothing. “What,” she asks him, “are the rules? What makes the dead come back?”

“How the fu—”

“I’m not asking you. I’m telling. First. No perfume ever. The dead don’t go in for unnatural scents.”

“I don’t wear—”

“Second and most important, you have to pay attention. You have to notice them. Be quiet. Listen. Try to learn their names. If you don’t know their names, you probably won’t be able to see them.”

Ceph laughs like he knows better.

“And the last rule.” Ruth looks at Ceph. “Comb your damn hair. The dead hate your messy hair. So do I.”

“That it?”

“That’s it.”

Nat’s head begins to loll, sweeping across his chest from left to right. He draws in one very loud breath that alters his voice like a gulp of helium. When Nat opens his eyes, there are no eyes to be seen, only the whites. Ceph’s bottom lip cranks into a posture of disgust.

“Butter. Butter.” Nat sounds ditzy, far away. The original owner of his ribbed undershirt sweated yellow crescents. Nat sniffs the air tilting in toward Ceph. “Black walnut. Yeast scum.”

Ruth rocks forward and back, forward and back.

Ceph hollows out his chest. “Hell—”

She sinks her nails into the bulge of muscle above his bent knee to shut him up.

Nat’s head, caught again in a loop, moves from side to side.

“Please, Mr. Splitfoot,” she says. “Continue.” She keeps her nails buried in Ceph’s skin, rubbing the smallest patch of his thigh with her thumb.

Coal shifts in the bin but not enough for any of them to actually believe that a dead thing’s in there. Nat’s silent.

“Dammit,” Ruth says. “You messed it up, Ceph.”

But her words are a trigger. Nat lifts his head. “Hi.” Pure Lana Turner. “How are you? Name’s Tina.”

“Tina?” Ceph asks.

“Tell him,” Nat goes on. “No! No! No! That’s an old song, Teenie Weenie.” He snaps his left hand, keeping time to music Ruth and Ceph can’t hear. “Tell him, bye-bye. Tell him, bye-bye, Tina. Tell him.”

Ceph’s mouth opens.

“I’d be with you if I could.”

Ceph swallows hard. “Where’re you going?” he asks the voice. “Don’t leave me.”

Upstairs there’s a knock loud as a wake-up call. The air changes and Nat’s eyes open. More pounding. Someone’s at the front door. “Anybody home?” The faraway question leaks through the basement windows.

“Huh?” Nat acts surprised to find himself coming to in the coal bin.

“Tina?” Ruth asks him.

Nat shrugs. “Tina?”

“You don’t remember?”

Nat shakes his head. He pulls his legs into his chest. “Who?”

“Tina!” Ceph shouts.

“Who’s Tina?” Nat scratches the back of his head.

“My mom.”

Ruth lifts slowly. “Your mother’s name is really Tina?”

Ceph nods.

Ruth grabs his wrist. The threat of her nails rears again. “Did you tell him that was her name?”

“No.”

More pounding from above.

Nat stands. “He never said.”

“Did you tell anyone your mom’s name? I’ll rip your teeth out if you lie.”

“No.”

So she turns against a cold front behind her, something buried a long time ago. Ruth heads for the stairs. Ceph and Nat follow swiftly. The wood of the banister feels less solid because when Nat delivers something beyond the miseries at Love of Christ! Ruth’s world gets pocked with holes, flooded with light, so much brightness and possibility.

Upstairs the sun makes them squint. The knocking continues. Ceph growls through his awful breath. Ceph’s a mad dog, an exposed nerve without his mom.

The front door opens. “Anybody home?” the knocker asks.

Nat barely looks at the man standing there. Nat walks out, ignoring the visitor, trying to get some distance from Ceph, who is crying after Nat like it’s his fault his mom is gone. “Where she at?” Ceph’s vicious. “Bring her back!”

But Ruth is stopped by the visitor. “Hi,” he says.

The guy from the hospital is standing on the doorstep. Did she forget something? She didn’t have anything. “Zeke?”

“I’m happy to see you,” he says.

“Me?”

“I missed you.” He steps closer.

“It’s only been one day.” She looks down. She’s not wearing any shoes. He brings his chin in line with her ear. His breath makes a humid patch Ruth feels in her stomach, lower. Her swallow’s loud as a gulp. “What are you doing here?”

Zeke steps back. “I’ve come to talk to your foster father. Is he here?”

“Him?”

“Yes. Please.”

“You know him?”

“Not yet.” Zeke smiles.

Ruth sees more holes. She backs into the house as Nat disappears down the drive.

“The girl’s not for sale.” The Father squints at the strange offer.

“Not sale. No, but maybe there’s some sort of trade we could make.” Zeke chews his lips.

The Father wouldn’t mind figuring out a way to strike a deal. He remembers how Ruth’s sister, El, turned eighteen, crying, animal sounds, moaning and thrashing. Awful. She’d clung to his truck, grabbing onto the gearshift. He had to shove her off the seat with his boot, out the door, and quickly lock the truck. He’d tried not to look back as he pulled away from the mall parking lot, but couldn’t stop himself, Lot’s wife in the rearview. A child he’d cared for, now tiny and alone and frightened in the world. Awful, awful business.

Plus the Father likes for things to multiply. Once he even had a job working on an assembly line and it pleased him.

He stares out at the land, considers this man’s offer. The bottoms behind the house run down to a tiny creek. If he could place Ruth in someone else’s care before she ages out, he’d avoid the nastiness of moving her along at eighteen. Ruth’s been with him for so many years. In the past he’s made arrangements for the young women no longer in his care. A number of senior members from his congregation met their wives this way. Brother Warren. Brother Brett.

The Father looks out at the land, feels like Moses. He’ll look for the virtue. This seems a decent fellow, has his own storage business. He’ll take care of Ruth.

The Father balances the ball of his hand on top of the porch newel post. He strikes it once. “The girl earns me around eighty dollars a month, and she will until she turns eighteen.” Practiced at husbandry.

“How old is she now?”

“Just seventeen. Not sure I can replace her. My thought is perhaps you make a small gift to me. Eight hundred dollars? In exchange, you’ll get my blessing and consent to marry her. It’s legal at fourteen when you’ve got parental consent.”

“Eight hundred.” Zeke considers the price.

“You and Ruth have discussed this?”

“Some. You’ll take eight hundred dollars for the girl?”

Father Arthur shudders to deal so plainly in humans.

The man sees his unease and tries to demonstrate the righteousness of the plan. “The universe brought me here, brother. The universe is right.”

The Father queers his eyebrows, unable to use the word “right” in conjunction with whatever this man has in mind for Ruth.