Samantha Hunt - Mr. Splitfoot

“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.