Mr. Splitfoot (17 page)

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?”

I know by her look I won’t like the answer.

“Adolescent girls. A steady crop of teen breeders to keep the old men flush with young pussy. Each old guy had twenty, thirty wives. So consider what happens to the boy babies on such a ranch. Take lambs as your example.”

“Meat.”

“Indeed, girleen. Indeed. Mardellion didn’t get eaten, but he did get run off that place soon as he turned thirteen. Too handsome to keep around those fertile young things. He was taken out of his home, snatched from his seventeen moms, and dropped off in Provo. He had nothing except what his prophet told him. ‘You,’ the guy had said.” She draws it out. “‘Look like a young Joseph Smith.’”

“Who’s that?”

“Smith started the Mormon church. He was a treasure hunter. Murdered by forty.”

“A pirate?”

The room and all she says are starting to swirl, a flood of hoarded words along with the other junk. Open the floodgates.

“No. A real treasure hunter. He dug in the dirt, looking for buried stuff.” The woman’s face doesn’t move much when she speaks, hidden in her jowls. “Smith’s from around here. He found golden tablets in the ground in Palmyra. You know Palmyra?”

“No.”

“Lock on the old canal, up by the holy land of Rochester. Kodachrome. Silver plates.” She smiles. “But Smith’s golden plates told a history of ancient American people. Smith couldn’t read the language printed on the damn things, so he tossed a couple rocks in the bottom of a stovepipe hat.” The woman pantomimes his actions with her chubby hands. “Put the hat over his face.” She frames her cheeks. “That cleared things up just fine. He translated
The Book of Mormon
by staring into the bottom of a dark hat. Took thirty brides.”

“I heard about that. Where are the golden plates now?”

“Oh.” She smiles. “I think I have them somewhere.” She looks around briefly, picking up a quilt, checking underneath it. “Oh, wait. No. Smith had to give them back to the angel Moroni. Shame.” She slaps her hands on her mighty thighs, laughing. “But you want Mardellion, not his prophet, not Smith.”

Ruth nods.

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. A hundred-odd years after Smith, in the seventies, Mardellion’s thirteen years old and on the streets. All he’s got is this idea that he looks like Smith. He receives some social services back in Utah among actual Mormons. They help him enroll him in high school. He lives in a house with other boys who’d been cast off by Fundamentalist sects. He learns to play football. They even send him on a mission to Mexico, but then his twenties roll in and he’s misfiring. He’s got no family to steer him. He’s working as a cashier in a pharmacy. He’s unmarried. Not much of much and he wants it all. So again his prophet’s words come to him, ‘spitting image of Smith.’ And Mardellion gets an idea.

“Every summer in Palmyra, the Mormons put on a big show up on the hill where Smith found those golden plates. People from all over the world travel to perform. Mardellion decides he’s going to play Joseph Smith, a stop on his sure way to Hollywood. Riches, fame, power, et cetera, revenge on all his parents.” She motors closer to our stuffed-animal couch. Ruth listens hard, a living room jam-packed with stories.

“His car makes it from Utah to Palmyra but barely. Mardellion’s convinced that it’s running on faith, so toward the end he tries not to blink or breathe too much. He’s chugging with this idea of himself as Smith, imagining a steed, brushing back his hair, triumphant. Despite other shortcomings, Mardellion’s a fine-looking man.” The woman levitates some thinking about his looks. From the stack of 45s piled high on the center post, the record player drops the next one, starts its spinning. “‘I Want My Baby Back.’ By Jimmy Cross. Know it?”

Never heard of it.

“Guy digs up the grave of his dead girl in doo-wop. One of my favorites.”

Ruth pats the woman’s leg.

“Right. So Mardellion’s driving east, imagining everyone will love him.” She brushes her broad belly. “Case in point. He cut my heart out. Cut it out, killed me dead.”

“How?”

She freezes momentarily, a hand on her neck, a hand on her sternum. “I’m getting ahead of myself.” She digs into a box of Nilla Wafers and pops one in her mouth. “Cookie?” she offers.

I grab a handful from the wax-lined box.

“So Mardellion gets to Palmyra and tells them he’s going to play Smith in the pageant, and while the directors acknowledge a real likeness, they say the cast’s been in place and practicing since December, and anyway it’s a ten-story stage, so no one can see what your face looks like. Probably they sniff out the Fundamentalist on him. It sticks with a person, odor of death. You know that, right, dear? ‘Please,’ Mardellion begs. ‘You can be a Lamanite,’ they tell him. He’s too late for greatness, and he can’t even get that mad because he’s dealing with Mormons. Christians.” Words rushing out of her now, a heavy tide. “But he is mad.” She smiles to say it. “He’s never been so mad, and with all that blood in his head, he gets another idea. A better one. He never wanted to play Smith in some dumb show. He wants to be Smith, wants people to believe him, follow him to extreme lengths. He’s going to start his own religion. Get the wives and worshippers.”

“He starts a religion?”

“Just like that.” She braces her chin with one hand. “Frankly, though, Mardellion’s a little late again. Smith was brewing up his religion back when people thought solar eclipses were signs from an angry god. Back when people’d believe anything to stave off the grave. In Smith’s time, in New York State alone, you had the Mormons, the Spiritualists, the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. There were Bible Communists in the Oneida Community, post-menopausal women mixing it up with teenage boys and vice versa. There were Millerites, on and on. It was easy to find believers then because people were terrified. I heard of one religion based on wearing overalls. And Jemima Wilkinson, who woke up from a fever, announcing that her body was inhabited by something called the Publik Universal Friend.” The woman tilts her head. “Hello, friend.”

I’m having trouble following so many different names and stories swirling in an eddy.

“But in Mardellion’s time? There’re TVs and billboards advertising Fresca, babies born from test tubes, and Mardellion’s thinking, I’m never going to get anyone to believe me, but he’s driving around upstate. All those mountains and rivers and lakes. He’s thinking, he’s thinking, he’s thinking. Mardellion the honeybee.” The woman’s eyes follow some unseen movement through the parlor. “He thinks, I need a book. Yes, I need a book, something to give people, teach them of my righteousness. He’s not smart enough to write his own book, so he steals from Smith again. Takes a little bit of this, a little of that, adds some free love, some communal living, a little polygamy ’cause that felt right, home-like to him.” She lifts her eyebrows. “Then some Jesus stuff, sandals. The Bible. He throws it together with some rock-and-roll songs he’d heard on his cross-country drive and comes up with the Etherists. That little book you’ve got there.”

“People follow him?”

“The heart wants what the heart wants.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s your real question. The heart wants someone to take away the fear. The heart wants answers even if they’re made up. So here comes Mardellion with a whole bunch of answers. You don’t even have to pay rent anymore with him. Mardellion will take care of you, love you always.” The woman pushes back in her chair. “Yes, people follow him.”

“How many?”

“Forty? Fifty? Something like that.”

“You’re an Etherist?”

The record drops again. She takes a peek. “‘Two Hour Honeymoon.’ Paul Hampton. I was an Etherist. It started with twelve of us, young people with energy, ready to work, happy to build something beautiful. I was gorgeous. You don’t believe me but I was. Tan and healthy, a real beauty. We all were. We pooled our money and efforts, so there was time to spend reading or making things, gardening, taking advantage of the free-love principles. We were hippies living in a commune run by a beneficent dictator. It wasn’t bad at the start. We’d eat meals together, snuggle, screw, hike in the woods. And Mardellion had a power. Knack, charisma. You know. He was all glue and charm. Slim and strong as an ox. We wanted to please him.” She smooths a blanket across her knees. “Then September 28, 1980,
Cosmos,
Carl Sagan’s TV program about the universe premiered. Mardellion knew nothing about outer space before that. All he knew was heaven. I don’t think he even knew they’d landed people on the moon. So
Cosmos
comes along and he’s hooked. He’s crazy about Sagan and the
Voyager
missions. It was everything he’d been missing. Sagan and Smith. That night, watching TV, it clicked. Outer space is Heaven.”

Ruth’s hanging on every word.

The woman looks toward the kitchen as if she’s got something cooking there. “The
Challenger
hadn’t exploded yet, and the US was deep in the Cold War. So if outer space belonged to us, it meant we were safe from nukes. We could find a new planet if we destroyed this one. And that idea of safety was Heaven.”

“How long did the Etherists last?”

“I was gone before the end. He started on worse delusions, drugs. He said the end was coming, but then it didn’t come and it didn’t come, and people, especially me, wondered why. So Mardellion decides the women are talking too much. He says women can only speak after the sun sets. I organized a coup against him. I stole what he’d stockpiled, what all his followers had given him, and I stashed it with the only person up there I could trust. But my coup failed, and Mardellion had me booted out in the dark of night. He put tape on my mouth and a trash bag over my head. I was blindfolded, spun ’round and ’round, and dropped off here.” She waits for the next record to start, holding us there, a little lost in the vinyl’s spin. “‘Last Kiss.’ The Cavaliers.”

“When did he die?” I ask.

“I don’t think he did, but you don't have to be dead to haunt. Parents, songs, exes.”

“Are you making this up?” Babies.

She moves even slower. “No.”

“It sounds crazy.”

She thumbs her chin. “Years later Mardellion got arrested, some underage mess. I went to the trial hoping to see my son.”

“You have a kid?”

Her voice loses its tinny ring. “He kicked me out and kept my boy.”

“What?”

“I’ve tried to find him, but I have no proof. I gave birth up on that mountain, so there’s no record. I don’t even know where the mountain is.”