Mr. Splitfoot

~ ~ ~

I WALK LIKE A COWBOY. Ruth waddles, making fun. “I need to sit down.” My belly’s more bomb than baby. I’m splitting in two. One way or another it’s going to tear me up. We find a seat across the road from the canal. The ground’s cold. “We should have gone someplace sunny.” She tilts her face up to the sun, milking any warmth from the pale disk behind a flat cloud. A corner of Ruth’s flannel blooms red. “What’s that?” She touches the ground beneath her. Her palm opens, wet and red. “Blood.”

We look up to see if it came from the sky. We look down and around. Ruth stands for a better view. I don’t know how we missed him, five or six feet away in the grass, his face turned into the dirt, and behind him — down a small embankment, through a path of broken pines and laurels — is the car that spit him out. The vehicle rests on its back like an insect. A pair of feet in tube socks are stuck out the upside-down window.

“Jesus.” I lift myself up.

Ruth runs to him, touches the man’s foot, spine, neck. She rolls the body onto its back. He’s an old man. His face lifts to the sun as well. His skin runs with blood and bits of road. Ruth touches his forehead.

The tube socks move. Someone’s alive in the car wreck, whispering. Ruth points me down toward the vehicle.

“Hello?”

The whispering stops.

“Do you need help?”

The legs pull back inside the window like a turtle’s neck. Whispering begins again as if this thing hiding inside the car isn’t a victim of the crash but the demon that caused it. I crouch for a look inside. “Do you need help?”

The tube socks belong to a middle-aged woman, the man’s daughter perhaps. “Yes.” She’s crouched on the ceiling beside the overhead light. She wears a man’s windbreaker over a light summer dress. “I need a ride home. My mother will be worried.”

She’s my age, maybe even older. “We don’t have a car.”

“No car.”

“No. We’ve been walking.”

“OK.” She climbs out the window feet first. “OK.”

The woman has lost her shoes. I just say it. “Your father’s dead.”

The woman walks slowly over to the body. “He’s not my father.” She kneels carefully beside him in the blood. Like Ruth, she touches his forehead.

“Who is he?”

“Just a kind man who gave me a ride home.” There’s silence for as long as it would take a pot of water to boil. She touches his cheek, wipes blood from his chin. “OK. Let’s go.” The woman scrambles up the embankment to the road. “It’s not far.” She’s oddly accustomed to death.

“To the hospital?”

She stares at my belly. “For you?”

“No. You.”

She looks down at her arms and legs. All are still attached. “I don’t need a hospital.”

“But we should get some help for him.”

“It’s too late to help him.” She sets off moving a good deal faster than Ruth’s and my customary gait. “I need to get home. My mother will be worried,” she says again. So we leave the guy there. We follow the woman.

I’ve never seen a dead body before.

After a mile or so, I ask, “Can we rest a moment?”

“Of course.” The woman stands on the shoulder. Ruth helps me to the ground. “You’re going to have a baby?”

I nod. In the gutter there’s a running shoe that’s sprouted some grass. The woman chews on her fingers. Ruth throws pebbles up in arcs. We watch them fall. “I’m sorry. About your friend.”

“Yes. You said.” Our rest doesn’t last long. “It’s not far.” She lifts under my armpits. Ruth takes one of my elbows. My joints are rubbery, and at times it seems a thigh could slip from my hip. I’d teeter on one leg until my belly tipped me forward. Ruth waits without complaining. She’d have to speak to complain.

“There it is,” the woman says after a bit.

“What?”

“End of the line.”

It’s a motor lodge. On the sign there’s a bosomy woman dressed in a hula skirt, shaking it underneath a limbo bar, though there’s nothing tropical about the place. It looks like one big plain cinder block.

“Thanks,” she says. “I’m OK from here.” The woman pulls a key from her pocket and lets herself in to one of the motel’s rooms, turning once to wave goodbye. “The office is right over there,” she says, directing us with her chin.

Ruth and I don’t discuss other options. We check into the motor lodge.

When I tell the young woman at reception about the accident, she nods. She already knows. “It’s happened before. It happens all the time.”

“It does?”

“Yeah. That road can be bad in the rain. Dead Man’s Curve. So. You guys staying the night?”

The paperwork is an old-fashioned index card. The young woman gives us a room key attached to a wooden spoon: #4. Ruth pays her, making exact change. I purchase a beer from her and drink it in our parking spot since we don’t have a car to put there. I’m sorry, baby, for drinking, but I need a small something after seeing that man’s face.

There are two double beds with polyester covers, darkly patterned and abstract in design. There are two metal luggage racks, a television, and a small table between the beds. There’s a framed print on the wall of a woman walking beside a river. In the picture the banks are covered with red and orange flowers. In the picture the sun is shining.

I draw a warm bath and climb in. A few curly hairs skim the surface. They are not mine. Gross. Who do they belong to? I fish them out aboard the paper soap wrapper.

I hear Ruth flick through the TV channels, stopping on a music program. I dip both hand towels into the bathwater, draping one over the baby and one over my eyes.

I don’t feel her. I don’t hear her, but in a few minutes when I lift the towel from my eyes to wet it again, Ruth is sitting on the toilet tank staring at me.

“Damn, you sc—”

She shoves a rough hand over my mouth. She tucks her chin, shuts her eyes until I relax. Only then does she remove her hand, shaking her head no, no. And she listens. She points outside.

I listen too. An ad on the TV claims, “Grandma would be proud.”

Ruth sits back on the toilet lid, wrapping her elbows around her middle.

“What?” I mouth. “The man?” But she turns her eyes into sharp death. We sit in silence listening hard.

It takes an hour for the water to lose every bit of its heat. We still don’t move. I have pruned up in unimaginable places, my ankles, my knees. My rear end is turning into cement. I don’t know what she imagines outside our door. There’s one small frosted window in the room. Through it, the sun dies. Still Ruth doesn’t move. We sit in the dark. The water’s freezing. My bones ache, and hours — I think hours — pass this way. I’m shivering. I’m dissolving. The evening news gives way to a crime drama in the bedroom. I rest my head on a bathmat on the edge of the tub. I pee in the water. Eventually I fall asleep, and when I wake, it sounds like one of the late shows.

Ruth is gone.

My knees have little interest in holding me up. I’m wobbly. I turn on the hot shower full blast to burn away the cold.

Ruth isn’t in the bedroom either. I dress, pull on my socks and sneakers, then climb into the far bed, pulling the covers up and over my head.

I wake twice in the night to pee. It’s dark. Still no Ruth. It gets so quiet, I can hear the trickle of water outside, the canal.

A person just entering this situation, a person who hasn’t been on the road for weeks, would call the police or at least call El. But I’m not just entering this situation. Calling the police to find Ruth is like using a bulldozer to needlepoint.

When the sun rises, there’s still no Ruth, and I’m not sure what to do. Some eggs, I guess. A cup of coffee. There’s a diner a short hike from the motel. There’s a squished squirrel on the shoulder, its furry tail lifts with the wind of every passing car. Maybe this is the end. Maybe we’ve arrived wherever it is we’re heading. I don’t know though. This doesn’t feel like the end.

My place mat is a state map marking presidential birth sites, national monuments, the state flower. Rose. Bluebird. Before my eggs arrive, I fold the map and tuck it into my pocket in case I’m alone now. At least I’ll be able to find my way to Martin Van Buren’s house.

Back in the room, I lie stiffly on the bed, a pillow between my legs. I don’t know how to get where we’re heading. I don’t know how to get back to where we came from. I don’t know why or if there’s danger. I lie on the motel bed, a pregnant nothing, having no idea what is going to happen to me.

Before I was pregnant, I thought carrying a baby meant knowing a baby. That’s not true. I don’t know anything about this child. Pregnancy is a locked door in my stomach, all the weight of life and death and still no way to know it. The baby gives me a small kick, taking what’s delicate — lung tissue, tiny see-through fingers, hair fine enough to spin webs — and hardens it into a tough thing, a thing that likes it rough. It’ll grow and I will be the only one who remembers when it was unmarked and delicate as a moth.

Ruth left her bag behind, pinning me here. What if she came back and I was gone? Do I take the bag or leave it? What if something happened to her, if she’s hurt, fallen into a hole? What about bad guys? The bad guy? Then I realize that it’s not just me following Ruth blindly. She needs me. She can’t talk.

The TV feels like heart cancer and homesickness. I switch it off. I poke through Ruth’s things. I find her hairbrush and use it to brush out the knots the road has given me. When I’m done, hair combed, I pull out that Book of Ether.

16 The universe is revealed by science.

The universe or nothing.

The universe is rich in mystery.

No shit.

Someone knocks at the door. I’m still for a moment, but loneliness overrides fear. I open the lock.

The young woman from reception is there. She’s small. Her dark hair is loose and curly, parts have been streaked blue. She wears a tight swath of muslin around her hips and, underneath that, layers and layers of burlap like a down-and-out pioneer. She wears red pantyhose, and she’s painted a line across the bridge of her nose joining together the eyeliner on either side. She’s chronologically messed up, some sort of time traveler. She’s only as high as my chin. Her motorcycle boots appear to be hand-me-downs from an older brother. “You’ve got a phone call.” She flicks her hairstyle in the direction of the office.

The motor lodge is L-shaped with an office at the far end. The canal runs along the backside of the motel, though nowadays the canal’s so still, running isn’t the right word. The office awning is scaffolded by spider webs. There’s no neon or kitsch, none of the good stuff one looks for in old motels. It more closely resembles a publicly funded housing unit. Plain, sturdy, and functional. Its plainness explains the extraordinary efforts the young woman has gone through to look different.

A bell tied to the office door handle rings as the girl throws it open. I follow her in. Five old desk phones, each with a heavy handset, are lined up on a low shelf. That’s four more phones than a motel this broken down requires. One phone rests off the hook. I lift the receiver. “Ruth?” No damn answer. Of course. “Ruth. Quit it. Tell me where you are.”

And then the person on the other line does make a sound. He clears his throat. He.

“Hello?” I try, quietly. The young woman tilts her head.

“You’re mine?” he asks.

“What?”

“You’re mine.” And the line goes dead.

The woman licks and seals an envelope; her tongue makes a timid point.

I’m so scared, I start to lie. “You’re breaking up,” I say into the dial tone. “I’m sorry,” I pretend, too unnerved to admit I’d been careless, that I might have put us in more danger. “I can’t hear you,” I say, replacing the handset and taking a shaky seat on an outdoor bench that’s been moved inside. “I lost whoever it was,” I tell the girl. “Maybe they’ll call back.” I can’t return to the room by myself. I’m too scared. You’re mine? Maybe Lord found me. It didn’t sound like Lord. Plus Lord would never call me his.

I sit with a magazine, and the words there — some new theory for building safer tunnels — crumble. I don’t want to understand Ruth’s life. There might be a really good reason she doesn’t talk.

A small transistor radio is up on a high shelf above the woman, set to a station that’s not seen much change in stock or personnel since 1943. “Midnight blue was the color of her eyes, the sorrow of her sighs.”

I bite one thumb. It’s hard to stop walking once you start because stopping gives the bad things a chance to catch up.

The woman checks her makeup and hair. She taps the eraser of her pencil. “So,” she says. My feet swing just above the ground. “Will you be staying another night?”

“What’s the name of this town again? Byron? Scriba?”

Dead boredom lifts from the woman’s face. She perks up. “St. Eugene. After Gene Boniface, not a saint at all. During the Civil War, he sold parcels of land that never existed. This land was gold then, back in the glory days of the canal. Can you imagine? The canal cut transportation costs by ninety, ninety-five percent. Anything was possible. You want to move that there? Fine. I want to move these things over here. No problem. Transportation is human. Transportation is life, and Gene was a master con man back when it was easier to work a con, back when nobody knew anything. Information was polite. No newscasters’ colonoscopies. No satellite images of the North Pole melting. Anything was possible. Know what I mean? Gene swindled soldiers, sold fake land to men who thought they’d be dead soon. It’s so easy to roll the fearful. Right? Piece of cake. After Gene, this place became a sort of haven for con men.”

“Are you related to him?”

“I wish.”

“You know a lot about him.”

“I’m old-fashioned. I read books.” She swoops her lopsided hair from her face. “I can’t help myself. I love books. Even though I get enraged at the tyranny of text.”

“What’s that?”

“You know. Left to right. Punctuation. Page 1, page 2, page 3. Text has a lot of rules. Kind of like getting born, living your life, dying. You know. Text only has one direction. Frustrates me.”

“I see.”

“Plus, I talk to a lot of people. Still.”

Considering the company I’ve been keeping, this does seem a banner of marked difference. “What about the tyranny of talking?” I ask.

“Don’t even get me started.”

“My aunt doesn’t talk.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. I mean she can. I think. She just chooses not to.”

“Wow. Why?”

“I don’t know. She won’t say.”

“Right. Exactly. Cool. And you’re just left with this pounding hammer: Why? Why? Why? There’s truth for you. Where’s she at? I’d like to not-talk with her.”

“She should be back soon.” Changing the topic. “So are you a con man?”

“I’m more like a con man’s assistant. Or nurse. Or Gal Friday.”

“Do you live at the motel?”

“Lord Jesus, no, and no offense if you’re planning on moving in, but only dead people live here.”

“Huh?”

“This place is like a waiting room for dead people. You know, people with unfinished business.”

“I kind of like motels.”

“They’re great for a short visit.”

“Why would the dead come here?”

“Why come back at all is a better question.”

“Yeah. Why?”

“From what I understand, there’s three kinds who come back. All of them are people who get stuck, like some bad pop song, when you were a kid, that track you couldn’t stop listening to over and over and over? Of the three, mothers are the worst. They never let go. Especially, say, a mother who lost her kid. Forget it. She’s going to stick around forever ’cause first she’s got to find her kid, then she’s got to make it right. Not always easy. What if the kid’s dead himself, right? How are you going to find him?”

I squint at her, wondering if she might have been somehow sent by El. Or is on drugs.

“Next there’s the angry dead,” she says. “You know, looking for revenge. I don’t care for them one bit. They always seem desperate. Mouth breathers, I call them.”

“Huh?”

“You know.” She makes a Darth Vader sound. “Desperate. And last, you’ve got the lovers. Here it gets even stickier. Say someone’s hanging around to take care of his little sister. Then his wife ends up hanging around to take care of him. Then the wife’s daughter is worried about the mom. On and on, right? Pretty soon this place is filled up with people who didn’t get quite enough love in while they were alive, and — shudder to think — what if a living person ends up falling in love with a dead one? Love gets messy when you’re dead.” She nods at me. “I’ve got plenty of messes around here just keeping the sheets and towels clean.”

“How would a living person fall in love with a dead one?”

“Please. James Dean? Come on.”

“No, I mean, how would a living person see a dead person?”

“Thankfully most can’t, but sometimes a situation arises, say, a person who’s alive but maybe also not totally alive, right? Like a halfway-alive thing. You know?”

“I mean how would you know they’re dead?”

“The dead tend to carry around some sort of empty box.”

“Like a coffin.”

“Could be. Could be. But really any size. Sometimes tiny, say, a jewelry box. Sometimes huge, maybe a whole mansion. All that matters is the emptiness.”

“You’re speaking metaphorically, right?”

“Oh, sure. Of course. Metaphorically. Transubstantially. Cryogenically. Whatever you need. Whatever gets you through the night.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about. “How’d you end up here?”

“I’ll tell you.” She runs her tongue hard against her front teeth. “I’ll tell you. It’s like this. In college everyone chose a niche, a microscopic subset of the human race they wanted to fight for, lay down on the tracks for. You know, poets with AIDS, Ethiopians with cholera. Remember this? We’d organize a conference, and my friends would ask, ‘OK, did we invite a Lithuanian butch communist? Or have we represented the voice of African American cowboy storytellers who believe in UFOs?’” She twists her lips. “All interesting demographics to hear from, for sure, but it started to seem like so much rooting for the home team, and the home team only. I didn’t want to choose one small group. I wanted to understand real diversity, so I turned my scholarly attentions to the greatest population.”

“The poor?”

“Not even close. Dead people.”

“Right.”

“A totally underrepresented population. The people underground. No one’s looking out for dead people’s rights. Right?” She slams her fist on the counter. “No one’s making sure dead people are invited to speak at conferences on semiotics or the effect of polar vortexes on the Gulf of Mexico. I became a ghost activist. I’d start arguments with my classmates and professors as to why they always privilege being over non-being. Why they behave as if the only words people hear are spoken ones. Makes my blood boil. What about the unsaid? Right? What about the dead?”

A man with well-greased trousers enters the lobby. “How’s it hanging, Sherry darling? Loose?”

“Sure. Loose.” Then she turns back to me. “Ask Carl. He can tell you.”

“What?” He blushes. “And, please, don’t call me that.”

“Sorry. I was just telling her only dead people live here. Right?”

“Not exclusively.” The guy definitely looks like someone who lives in an upstate motel, a sexy bandito with a messed-up past. Lots of silver loot on his hands, bracelets on wrists. The man smiles and shakes one ringed finger at the young woman, scolding with a smile. “You’re a funny one, Sherry. Any caffeinated beverages at the ready?” he asks. “I can’t seem to stay conscious.”

She looks at the brewing coffeepot. “Almost.”

“Right. I’ll be back in a jiff.”

“Sure. Hey, Carl, you have that money you owe me?” she asks him.

“I’m working on it. Working on it.” He swings out through the door. “My great pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he says, though we barely met.

The woman lifts a brow after he’s gone. “So you guys staying another night?”

I look toward the phone, nearly believing my own fabrication of moments earlier. That it had been Ruth, that she’d said something to explain why the plan had changed. Why I was stopped here, waiting for her, holding the knapsack. “Yeah. Another night.”

“Got any plans?”

“Nope.”

“Cool. I get off at eight. I’ll be round to get you. If you’re interested.”

I don’t ask in what. I’m interested. “I’ll look for you then.”