Samantha Hunt - Mr. Splitfoot

She shakes her head no. “What were you thinking about?”

“Ruth Sykes.”

She smiles at the ground. “Where are they?” She speaks quietly.

“Sagan’s dead.”

“No. Where are the Voyager s?”

“They left the solar system a while back. They’re still going.”

“Where?”

Mr. Bell leans back on his elbows. “Away from us. Away from each other.”

The record reaches its end. She draws a circle on the rug with her finger. “Can we listen again?”

“Of course.” Mr. Bell sets the needle at the start.

Ruth leans back on straight arms, makes two mountains of her legs. The record says, “I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet.” Mr. Bell, golden himself, kneels between Ruth’s knees. “We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship.” He takes her chin in his hand. Her eyes lift. “We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of the immense universe.” Mr. Bell kisses her, his wife, for the first time, for real. “It is with humility and hope that we take this step.” An orbit aligned, Ruth bends into him, returning his kiss, bouncing all she’s got back to him across the soft darkness of deep and distant space.

THERE IN THE DARK, DARK, DARK,the road looks like a silver-and-blue fish. Its scales glitter with bits of glass and tar. The fish/road is as large as a semi. It has the face of a beautiful boy, a man. It lifts its head. “I need water,” the fish says. “I’m dying.” Me too, I think. Someone smashed my head and knocked me out.

When I turn to get the fish a glass of water, I’m no longer on the road but back in the motel room. “One moment,” I tell the fish, stepping into the bathroom. I unseal the plastic off a fresh drinking glass, and I allow the water to run cool over my hand as an idea strikes. “Sir?” Is that how you address a fish? “There’s a large tub in here where you’d be more comfortable. Or the canal. The Erie’s right here. I could help you get back—” I peek my head into the bedroom. “Sir?” But the fish is gone.

“Hi.” It’s Ruth.

“Where’ve you been?”

“I needed to take care of something.”

“I was so worried. What’d you take care of?”

“A friend.”

“Who?”

“No one you know.”

“The bad guy?”

Ruth looks shiny herself. She smiles. “There are no good guys or bad guys. Not really.”

“Just don’t leave me again. Or at least let me know if you’re going to leave. OK? I didn’t know what to do — whether to wait or what. I didn’t know if you’d come back. Just tell me if you’re going to leave again, OK?”

“How could I do that when I can’t talk?”

She’s got a point.

“You should lie down, Cora. Get some rest. We’re leaving again in the morning.” Ruth leads me over to one of the beds. She pulls back the covers. “Did you have fun with Sheresa tonight?”

“Yeah.” I yawn and stretch. “She’s great. I really like Sheresa.”

“Me too. She told you about Nat, right?”

I lie down. “Yeah. Don’t leave without him. Got it.”

“Good, because that’s why we’re doing this.”

“OK.” I’m like a sleepwalker.

“Good night,” Ruth says, and douses the light. She runs her fingers through my hair, combing through it. “Get some rest.”

“Yeah. All right.” My eyes shut for one minute. “You’re not going to disappear again?”

“No.”

“OK. Thanks. Don’t leave where without him?”

“The End.” Like she’s finishing a bedtime story.

My eyes are closed and I feel peace like a coma, like a child being cared for by her mother. I’m so deep in sleep that I almost don’t hear it when a man speaks.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to hit her,” he says. “I thought it might be him.”

I’d like to sit up and ask this man some questions, but moving my jaws and tongue would be extracting motion from a chunk of ice. It would take forever to melt the moving parts.

“She’ll be OK,” Ruth says.

Though my eyes are closed in the darkness, I can make out their bodies. The guy is sitting in a chair, tipping a bag of nuts into his hand, shelling them. They’ve cleaned up the room. “Pistachio?” He offers some to Ruth. It’s the guy from the office earlier, the sexy bandito who speaks strangely and doesn’t want to be called Carl.

She takes a few from his palm, and he pulls Ruth into his lap. She cracks a nut, pops one into her mouth. He wraps his arms around her. Ruth’s Walkman’s headphones are looped around her neck. A tiny bit of music leaks out. “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” He sings with Elvis, repeating the words. “‘Shall I? Shall I? Shall I? Come back? Come back again? Again? Again?’” Ruth and the man and a quiet song.

“I’ll miss you,” he says. Beside the chair he’s got an old water-damaged suitcase as if he’s packed to go somewhere.

“We’ll be together again soon. I promise.”

He kisses her head. “My love,” the man says.

“You need this.”

The man opens his mouth, allowing Ruth to place a coin on his tongue. “My bell,” she calls him. “My bell,” and as she says it, the bell, so loud, starts to ring.

Ruth swats her hand on the motel’s alarm clock.

It’s still dark out. My brain hurts. Ruth comes to sit on the edge of my bed. She shakes my back.

“Where’ve you been?” I ask her.

She smiles.

“Hello?”

She smiles again because Ruth doesn’t talk.

“Whoa.” I hold my splitting head together. “I had a crazy dream.”

She nods.

“You could talk.”

She puts her hand on my forehead checking for fever. She puts another hand on my belly.

“Where’s the fish? Where’s your boyfriend? Bell?”

She lifts her eyebrows high, shrugs, and straps on her backpack. She nudges her chin toward the door.

I pull myself out of bed. “Hold on there, sister. Just slow down. You disappear for a day. Then you reappear and want me to just pop up, all ready like? Shit. I need a minute.” I waddle my big way to the bathroom. I peek my head back out the door. “Maybe you didn’t notice, but I’m about nine and a half months pregnant here.” I wash slowly. I pee and collect my toothbrush and toothpaste. “You have a boyfriend, Ruth?” She kicks the carpet. Ruth blushes and shakes her head no. She’s a solid wall again, but that doesn’t stop my dream from slipping away, right through her.

In the light of the bathroom, I find my things. I check the bed, the desk. I take one last look and turn to follow her, but at the end of the bed, something crunches under my foot. Ruth grabs my shoulder. The light is bad, but it sounds like the shell of something hard — say, a nut; say, a pistachio nut. Ruth pulls me out the door. We walk quickly away from the motel’s light. Ruth behind, pushing me on. One hundred yards into the darkness, she reaches for my wrist and leads me off the road, down the embankment. We cut through briars and into the black woods. Branches poke my face and belly. “Back off,” I tell them. Ruth digs through her backpack. Her flashlight creates a narrow, overexposed swath on the low branches of hemlock trees. She takes my hand again like I’m a prisoner. We walk into the woods.

I should count our steps or leave a trail so we can find our way out, but it’s already too late for me. Holding her hand, I shut my eyes, still half asleep. I stumble onto my ankle in a rut. I don’t even care. I’m tired. I’m pregnant. I’m exhausted. We go so far into the woods, I wonder if we are now on our way out of the woods. Where is the middle of the woods? Where’s the middle of this walk? Have we already passed that point? Do the woods ever end?