Mr. Splitfoot (29 page)

“I was an Etherist.”

Ruth and Nat draw blanks.

“It was a religious organization.”

“A charity?”

“A cult.” Mr. Bell smiles. He shakes his head. “Etherists, though more properly the Eternal Ether House of Mardellion.”

“What’s Mardellion?”

“Our fearless prophet. He was the psychotic who introduced me to music and the solar system. He knew everything about rocks.”

“What’re Etherists?”

“Etherism. Meteors and multiple wives. A mashup of Mormons and Carl Sagan. You know Mormons?”

Ruth glances back to Father Arthur’s lessons. “Not really.”

“You know Sagan?”

“No.”

“He was an astronomer.”

“That’s the meteorites?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Right. Mardellion thought one big meteor was going to land on this house and smash us into particles of free light.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“No. He wasn’t a nice man at all. Isn’t.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” Nat asks.

Mr. Bell sets his jaw at an uncomfortable angle. “He used to take me to mineral shows. He hated people who sold meteorites. He thought that was like selling slivers of the cross. So we’d go to gem shows, and Mardellion would set up a booth—this was years before IMCA—”

“What?”

“The International Meteorite Collectors Association. There were no regulations in place. He said he was an expert, so he was. He kept a picture of Sagan at the booth as if he was somehow endorsed by the man. People would line up to talk to Mardellion, show him their rocks. He didn’t charge anything and sometimes even did a little recruiting at the shows. ‘Chondrite,’ he’d say or ‘Stony iron. Looks like a desert landing.’ Or ‘Antarctica. Without a doubt.’ Eventually, I’d file into the line, dressed like an urchin, hauling a huge rock with me, barely able to lift the thing. Most often it was some junk rock we’d pulled out of the motel’s landscaping the night before. Schist or sandstone. Nothing special. I’d kick it, roll it, pitiful, making a scene, and then after waiting ten, fifteen minutes, I’d tell a guy in line, ‘Mister, I really have to go the restroom. Do you mind watching this for me?’ Never did the guy say no. I was a kid. But I wouldn’t go to the john; I’d hide where I could spy. The closer the guy got to Mardellion, the more worried he’d look, wondering what happened to the kid who left behind the big rock. Finally, the guy would reach Mardellion, who’d look down. ‘My wonder!’ he’d shout out, starting to salivate. ‘I’ve never seen such a perfect specimen of a pallasite! Do you realize how rare this is? I’ll give you five thousand for it, right here—’ ‘It’s not mine,’ the guy would have to say. ‘It’s some kid’s.’ At which point Mardellion would say, ‘Oh, I’m very sorry to hear that. When the kid returns, please give him my number as I have an appointment I cannot miss.’ Mardellion would scratch some made-up phone number on a scrap of paper and quickly close up shop, apologizing to those in line. He’d pack it out of there in a jiffy. Once he was gone, I’d slink back over ‘Darn,’ I’d say, ‘I missed him.’ Ten times out of ten, the guy’d say, ‘That’s a cool rock. I don’t know much, but I’ll give you a thousand bucks for it.’ ‘In cash?’ I’d ask.

“Mardellion would have the car waiting out front.”

“Nice,” Nat says.

“Yes. A handsome con and righteous according to Mardellion because the notion that one rock should be worth more than any other was cruel to him. He thought of rocks like people. Should dolomite be unloved? Should drug addicts? No, they should not.” Mr. Bell thumbs his chin and nods. “We worked that gig for years until a show in Concord. Mardellion’s doing his thing and I’m lugging my junk rock into place, making sure all the guys on line see me struggle, when we’re recognized. The pool of New England mineral show enthusiasts is somewhat limited, and one of the guys we’d rolled a few years back saw me, saw Mardellion, and the whole con clicked. Boy, did he ever make a fuss. Hollering for security, calling for the cops. All the while he’s got a viper grip around my arm. I saw Mardellion ducking out of the show and that was it. I don’t know what happened to him after that. Prison, I heard.”

“What about you?”

“I was arrested, taken straightaway, which was unfortunate. There were things I’d left behind here, things from my mom I really wanted to keep.”

“You can get them now, yes?”

“If they’re still here. Yes.”

“So you went to jail?”

“I was only fourteen, under the sway of a con man. I had no birth certificate, no idea what my mother’s real name was. I went to the state.”

“Foster kid?” This makes Ruth smile.

“Yes, dear. Just like you.” He doesn’t look away from Ruth.

“So that was the last time you saw him?” Nat asks.

“Well,” Mr. Bell says, and then nothing.

R
UTH’S KNAPSACK DOES NOTHING.
It sits between the beds without blinking. I unpack it like I’m cataloging evidence from a crime, like I’ve overlooked some essential clue. A flannel. Seven books of matches and some newspapers to start fires. A pair of socks, five pairs of plain underwear.
The Book of Ether.
Chocolate bars, nuts, pepperoni. The tarp. A compass. A flashlight. Two water bottles.

I turn on the TV. When the Wizard of Oz sends Dorothy off to get the witch’s broomstick, he’s sending Dorothy to her death in order to preserve his lie-based life. I lock the door from the inside. I think that’s awful. I can’t believe we’re supposed to forgive the Wizard at the end.

There’s a knock just after eight. The young woman from the office is wearing a mechanic’s coat with the word
Mike
embroidered in red. “I’m Sheresa. Ready?”

I put Ruth’s pack on my back. “I’m Cora. Yeah.”

Sheresa drives a Crown Victoria with brown velvet seats. She’s too short for such a car, so she has duct-taped hunks of two-by-fours to both the brake and gas pedals. She’s even rigged an extension on the radio tuner, placing it within easy reach. On the dashboard there’s a bumper sticker for an amusement park called House of Stairs and the odd slogan below, “It’s Vertiginous!” The car turns over, and the radio announces the theft of a rare early American bill from the Museum of Coin and Currency.

“So. Where are you heading?” Sheresa asks.

“My aunt’s trying to take me somewhere, a place she knows.”

“Trying?”

“We’re on foot.”

“I noticed. No car. You’re walking there? Aren’t you pregnant?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you religious or something?”

“No. Nothing against cars. We just don’t have one anymore.”

Sheresa’s eyes get very wide. “Strange!” A compliment coming from her. “You must get tired.”

“I did at first. But we take it easy. No more than five or six miles a day. Sometimes less. Not walking makes me more tired. I don’t like to stop now that I’ve gotten used to it.”

“Looks like you’re going to have to stop pretty soon.”

“I guess so. Maybe not.” Maybe the baby will be a walker too. It’s getting darker, but I can still see the landscape. St. Eugene is in a valley. The houses we pass are from a fairy tale. Deep in the woods, yellow lights in the windows. “Where are we going?”

“It’s an event.” Sheresa smiles.

“An event?”

“Yeah.”

The air in the car is warm. The brown velvet seats of a big American sedan and someone else who doesn’t want to tell me where we’re going.

Sheresa parks. There are a number of other cars, odd rigs culled together from a post-apocalyptic junkyard. She checks her lipstick and hair in the rearview. “Ready?”

“For what?” There’s a forest in front of us.

Her eyebrows lift twice, and she starts down a path into the woods. “Mind your step. Trees poison the ground so that nothing else can grow near them. Not even their own children.”

“I’m not a tree.”

“Right.”

The other day a stranger in a grocery store told me that my baby has fingernails and, if it’s a girl, the eggs that will be my grandchildren.

I have to move quickly to follow Sheresa. The path is amniotic, dark, humid, and inviting. I lose up and down, left and right. I navigate by listening to her feet. I break the back of a twig underfoot. Up ahead there’s light. Safe haven. Sheresa’s spreading a blanket beneath a weeping tree on the shore of a river. It’s a wide stretch of the canal. Torches, lanterns, and candles glow, lights float on the water. It’s a very quiet party. Everyone assembled keeps his voice low. I worry I’ve stumbled into some witches’ coven.

“It’s just begun.”

Four vessels float on the Erie Canal, at the edge of the light. Each boat is more festive than the next. One has sails cut from a fur coat. One has sails made from a bridal gown. One is an assemblage of logs powered by paddle wheels. The last boat is two fiberglass tubs hinged into a pod. A periscope guides its small crew.

“What is it?”

Sheresa pulls a quart of malt liquor from her bag. “Captain Ahab and Huck Finn versus Lord Nelson and some sort of German U-boat.” She takes a bite from a sandwich. “Last month Amerigo Vespucci beat the Rime of the Ancient Mariner in record time. A real upset since fiction always wins. Not to mention, I was the Mariner.”

“You?”

“We’re the Society for Confusing Literature and the Real Lies, aka TLA, History.”

“TLA?”

“True Love Always. Dominic!” Dominic passes with a wave.

“What is it?”

“Oh,” she says. “It’s art. Sandwich?” She passes me a submarine of hummus, vegetables, and mustard. The crowd on the beach looks like a nomadic Ren Fair troupe from the year 2200. Every last part of the beast has been used for their dress. Sandals made of bald tires, lots of knickers and lacy thrift store blouses. Old leather, an aviator’s cap and goggles, a hoop skirt, facial hair, suspenders, straw hats. Picnic hampers. Young people. Old people. Children and everyone so cool they must be freezing.

“Where’d you meet these people?”

“College.”

“Not the college I went to.”

The ships, rafts, and miniature frigates have made their way a bit closer to shore. A series of lanterns rigged on tall branches driven into the dirt reveal a crew of gypsies on the deck of each vessel. Sailors aboard the
Pequod
are already frantically bailing.

“They’re not always seaworthy.”

“I guess I don’t know much about art.”

Sheresa thinks that’s funny. “Oh, that’s funny,” she says.

It doesn’t take long for Huck Finn to win. The
Pequod
sinks of its own shoddiness while Huck’s raft, simply constructed, goes on to triumph over history. Lord Nelson waves his one arm as his boat sinks. The Germans curse,
“Scheisse! Scheisse!”
Most of the people on the shore charge into the water to make sure history does not surface again. Huck Finn’s raft is dragged onto the beach and added to a bonfire that the man Dominic starts with a canister of lighter fluid, shooting streams of flame high overhead. Fire falls and ignites the wood. Music begins to play. Three drummers, a trumpet, a trombone, tin whistles, and a violin. People dance. Sheresa takes my hand. Someone takes my other hand. We run up to the fire and back again, up to the fire and back again. There’s singing, chanties loud and obscene. One made up on the spot: “Finn! Finn! The mightiest win! Down on your knees, Krauts, a blowjob for Jim!” The Jim from the raft, played by a young woman in overalls, accepts her pantomimed fellatio from one of the Germans dressed in a Boy Scout uniform.

My clothes stick to me on the ride home, sweat from dancing by the fire. I was a popular partner. Everyone wanted to dance with the pregnant lady, my belly a totem of good fortune. Sheresa is still making up songs that are vaguely about the ocean, vaguely about screwing. “So. What’d you think?”

“Fun.”

“‘Fun’? I say nuf
to fun, Cora. People call some really messed-up shit ‘fun.’ Right?” She takes a deep breath. “I suppose it comes down, as it always does, to the question, Is it art? Right?”

That wasn’t the question I had.

“Then, logically, what are the perimeters of art? And what purpose does this serve our lives?”

I confuse perimeter with protractor, which brings to mind my elementary school pencil box. Scissors, erasers, crayons, and pens. The pencil box smelled good. It smelled of beauty and art. It’d be nice to have friends like Sheresa.

“You need to remember artifice,” she says. “Art isn’t a hawk making lazy circles in the sky. Beauty doesn’t equal art, and it can’t just be the world in a package. It’s got to take the world and mess it up some. Add the artifice as a lens, right?”

“It might seem like art to the hawk.”

“True. True. But then everyone would be an artist, and I don’t think that’s right. Are you an artist?”

“I walk. A lot.”

She misunderstands. “A walking artist. OK. I like that. That’s good. Walking can definitely create things. Thoughts. Footsteps. Lines that intersect. Lines that connect us historically. Ley lines, right? You could connect every place in New York where daisies grow. Or the places where girls named Lisa live. Or sites where meteorites crash-landed. Right? What would that map look like and how would you read it? What message is that map trying to tell us?”