Samantha Hunt - Mr. Splitfoot

“When?”

“Soon.”

“It’s almost winter.”

“I know. I need money.”

She thinks a moment. “You’ll be eighteen. What about a wife?”

“What about it?”

“You could take me with you. We could get married.”

“You?”

“I need to get out of here. Then you won’t be alone.”

Ceph looks at the bills, considers his options. “You know how to do it?”

“Leave the Father?”

“No. Fuck.”

She thinks of the question about fractions. She thinks about intact. “No.”

Ceph winces. “Pay me, let me do it with you, and maybe I’ll take you when I go.”

She doesn’t think long. It doesn’t mean anything to her. It’s her body and she’ll use it. She grabs some of the money and puts it in Ceph’s hand. “Fine.” She shuts the door, trying to think of Ceph as an opportunity, like government-provided job training.

“Take off your panties,” Ceph tells her.

She moves slowly, folding her underwear before depositing them in a laundry bag hung on the back of her door. Ruth keeps her dress on. Ceph lifts it up, uses it to cover her scar. He tucks his head into her neck, carefully opening her left leg and then her right. “Hold steady,” as if he is performing a precise surgical maneuver.

With Ceph moving on top of her, one thought fully jams her mind. “This is it?” It’s nothing. It’s nothing. It’s nothing, she says to herself, and moments later it’s over. She can’t reconstruct how it felt or what happened or what the big deal is. Words from the Father present themselves as still unsolved mysteries: membranes, fluids, cavities. “Can you do it again?” she asks, still under cover.

“Hold on.” He kneads her boobs for a minute or two.

The gray world. From under her dress, Ceph could be almost anyone.

“OK.”

This time Ruth pays attention. She peeks, watching Ceph’s chest and hips. She sees the shadow of someone’s feet arrive just outside the door, a person listening from the hall. She presses her lips to Ceph’s ear. She lets her breath come heavy, and Ceph responds in kind, grunting loudly.

When Ceph’s done, he sees three drops of blood on the blanket. He looks from the door to the blood, from the door to the blood. All the years Nat and Ruth slept in this bed not doing anything. Ceph feels strong as a criminal. “You’re mine.”

She tilts her head quickly, once. “You’re eighteen soon?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m yours if you get Nat and me out of here.”

Ruth sits on the edge of the bed, her legs still open to the room. Ceph slides the lock back, opens the door. “Mine,” Ceph says, marking his claim in front of Nat.

Nat looks in, past Ruth’s dark hair.

This is a test. She keeps her legs open, asking, Do you really feel nothing?

No.

Thought so.

“Get your coat on,” Nat tells her. “Mr. Bell’s here.”

THE OBESE WOMANis no longer on her porch. I bang once on her door, but Ruth doesn’t wait for permission to enter. We step into the foyer of the woman’s house uninvited and out of breath.

All manner of thrift store furniture clutters the space, chintzes and striped velvets. It’s as if the ocean rose and receded, rose and receded, a flood of unloved junk right here in this drowning woman’s living room. The walls are crowded with paintings of children and animals, photos of the mountains at sunset, posters advertising California vineyards, international craft festivals, tulip parades in Holland. One couch is given over to an arc of stuffed animals arrayed for a tea party. A patio lounger is covered with pillows printed with dogs, pillows made from madras, pillows with cross-stitched Christmas wreaths on their fronts. There are shelves of jigsaw puzzles. The room’s as fattened as her body.

Ruth’s strange book is still in my hand. I lift it to my face, my only shield. I enter the parlor as though preparing to swat a fly. “Hello?” Our other option, being chased by a man with a cane who scares Ruth, seems a worse choice.

The woman’s voice is high, squeaky. “I’m here,” she says. Not the bassoon I anticipated from that rain barrel. She’s crammed into a double-wide wheelchair. “What’s your question today?” Like a tinkling bell. “Or more insults?”

“I’m sorry. Those children were very rude.” The book is still raised. “I’m sorry to bust into your house, but there was a man,” I explain.

The woman sees the book in my hand. Her eyes squint as if the book is a too bright light, shining in her eyes. “Oh. Him.” She belches as if she’s just gulped a large swallow of water.

I check behind us. Who?

“Are you with him?”

“Who? There’s just us. Cora and Ruth.”

She braces for battle. “Where’d you get that ugly little book?”

I lower the volume to read the cover again. “ The Book of Ether ?” I shake my head.

Upping the helium in her voice. “‘127 Woe unto them which are with child, for they shall be heavy and cannot flee.’ Right?” She smiles, wicked. “Right? ‘Therefore, they shall be trodden down and left to perish.’ He wrote that one about me. I’m his real wife, the legal one, and when he’s gone, that house’ll be mine.”

“What house? What?”

“You’re one of the new wives? That his kid?”

I look to Ruth. “I’m nobody’s wife.”

“But you came to hear about Mardellion?”

“No.” I’m ready to take our chances with the man and his cane, but there’s Ruth beside me, nodding crazy, yes, yes, yes.

“She did.” The woman’s wheelchair engages, its engine chugging under the load. “I try not to think about him anymore.”

“What’s a Mardalon?”

“Mardellion is a man. A bad man. My husband. Head of the Etherists.”

“What’s that?”

“Cult.” She gestures outside, swirling her hands, scissoring her sausage fingers, ticking off qualities. “Same old story. Charismatic leader collects damaged souls, tithes all their money, shares their kids, promises a better life.” Her wrists twist like a flamenco dancer’s. “But power poisons his mind. He isolates his followers, sticks it in as many holes as he can, then realizes he’s collected a bunch of fuckups he can’t take care of. His only way out is to distract them with an apocalypse while he scoots off with cash. The End. It’s an old story.”

“What?”

“Sit. Down,” she tells us, equal emphasis on each word.

I inspect the stuffed-animal couch. Elephants, hedgehogs, zebras, bears. Ruth parts the front curtain a sliver, looking out to the street. She locks the door and joins me on the couch. The woman lowers her arms. Her chair cruises toward the hi-fi. Jan and Dean spin a song about a car crash. “Mardellion, or whatever his real name was, grew up in Utah. Mormon.” The woman opens her hands on her lap, tuning a receiver in her palms for the whole story. “The twisted, back-desert, Fundamentalist kind of Mormon. Where one man, a prophet, controlled everything by sowing ignorance and fear. Right?” She powers her wheelchair closer to me, nearly running over an empty, unlatched box, made for storing 45s. “It’s easy to be scared.”

I look to the door.

“Once that baby’s born, you’re going to have a million more reasons to be terrified.” She eyes my stomach, but Ruth pats the woman’s knee with impatience. She doesn’t want to talk about the baby just now. Ruth’s never impatient.

“Mardellion. All right, girleen. Utah. So no contact with the outside world. No education. The prophet ran the place like a ranch. Only guess what animal they were breeding?”