Mr. Splitfoot (8 page)

“Very well done.”

“What are you doing here?” Nat stands.

“Forgive my intrusion. I’m a traveler, trying to earn a living best I can, and you see this month I’ve come up a hair short. These are not the dwellings I’m accustomed to, but, we, I, make do.”

Nat and Ruth wait for a further explanation.

“An opportunity presented itself. You folks have this large basement, and I needed a place to sleep. I’ll ask you please not to reveal my pallet to your father. In the morning I will be gone.”

“He’s not our father.”

“Forgive me. I misunderstood the nature of your relationship. Is there a mother? I haven’t seen a mother.”

“You snuck down here?”

“Sneaked. Yes. A mother?”

“Hiding?” Nat wants to know.

“Only to secure a night’s rest. The air outside had a chill, and the good city of Troy impounded my chariot until she’s made more homogenously legal.”

The match burns out. Ruth hears him breathe. “What?”

“Car got towed.” He lights another match and extends it into the back of the coal bin. The tight space resembles a coffin. His sleeping bag is a sack of orange nylon. Cowboys and Indians whoop across its flannel lining. “I was asleep until you two scared the fleas off me.”

One good scream would wake someone overhead. “What’s in that case? What do you sell?” Nat asks.

The man rubs his hands together. “I’d like to tell you, I would, but I’m wondering who you were talking to five minutes back.” He stops the hand rub, chuckling as if he’s got Nat trapped.

He doesn’t have Nat. “Dead people. What’s in your case?”

“Ah, the dead. Just as I thought, but you’re doing it wrong. Too much gibberish. People like their supernatural to make a little more sense.”

“What do you know?”

“Some things. I know some things about talking to the dead. And one of the things I know is that if you’re going to con people, a little gibberish goes a long, long way.”

“He’s not conning anyone.”

“Beg pardon?”

“He can really talk to the dead.”

Mr. Bell draws his chin back. “Then he’s even more clever than I thought.”

“What’s in the case?” Nat asks.

“What’s in the case.” The match goes out. “I’ll show you and perhaps you’ll allow me to teach you something about talking to dead people. Tomorrow? I haven’t got the case here with me. Trapped in my transport. But tomorrow. You know Van Schaick Island, in the river? A place between, yes? Start of the Erie Canal. Or its end. Meet me there? Follow Park Avenue along the shores of the Mohawk. Sometime after four. Yes?”

Ruth doesn’t wait for Nat’s answer. “Yes.”

She wakes before dawn. Their bedroom is a narrow closet at the top of the stairs, where the house’s heart would be if it had one. They have one yellow blanket and a door that’s so old, so glommed up with paint, it sticks in the summer and makes Ruth wonder about all those painters, about the people who were here before her. There’s a stubby pencil on the bedside table sharpened so the letters embossed on the side now spell
MERICAN
. Ruth hasn’t slept much. All night she imagined Mr. Bell in the basement, a strange person in an ordinary sleeping bag. Though probably he’d fled after being discovered.

Nat’s still asleep. Their hips touch. Ruth turns to Nat’s feet, acrid pale fishes. A few hairs sprout from his insteps. “Sleep is to ready us for death,” the Father says, but that doesn’t seem true of the way she sleeps with Nat.

A door slams down the hall. The Mother taking a predawn shower. Soon the house will wake but not yet. Ruth can lie with Nat under their yellow blanket, stewing and melting together.

Morning comes on slowly through the transom. “It’s real, right?”

He stretches, his toes reaching past her head, pressing flat feet against the wall. Nat jumps out of bed and stretches again. He rattles off a dry report of farts, neither answer nor confirmation.

Ruth and Nat walk to Van Schaick. It’s not easy to get there. Industry has kept access to the Hudson restricted, Homeland Security. The banks are often lined with trash. There are fuel tanks where Haymakers Field, a major league baseball diamond, used to be. The cars on the bridges overhead zoom like spaceships lifting off. Rushes growing by the river sound like snakes when the wind is in them. Ruth is wary of snakes. Fourteen or fifteen snow geese have landed on the bank. She calculates the omens. Spaceships plus snakes minus snow geese. She moves forward. “It’s real, right?” she asks again.

Nat spits to one side.

In a forgotten part of the floodplain, between the Mohawk and the Hudson Rivers, Mr. Bell sits on his case still wearing his burgundy suit. Yellow weeds are flattened and dried by the tides. He’s tossing rocks into the river. “Amigos.” He stands to greet them. “A powerful confluence here.” He jerks his chin out to the water. “Though the power isn’t necessarily visible to the naked eye, this land looks forgotten, but I assure you, we’re standing at a most important place. You know the history of this great canal?”

Ruth shakes her head no.

“This is where north and south meet east and west. From here”—he points one way—“New York City and the Atlantic. And there”—his finger follows the curve of the river up—“the rest of the country. A passage through antiquity: Utica, Rome, and Syracuse. Tonawanda by way of Crescent, Tribes Hill, Canajoharie, May’s Point, Lyons, Palmyra, Macedon, to Buffalo. Each lock is a miracle of engineering built with nary an engineer. The excavated dirt formed a towpath beside the canal beaten flat by the mules who built New York State. These days, though, the canal doesn’t get much use.”

Ruth, Nat, and Mr. Bell stare down the Mohawk. “‘Low bridge,’” Mr. Bell sings out, but he is met with blank looks. He has to explain. “That’s where you sing, ‘Everybody down.’ Don’t you know that song?”

“No,” Ruth says. “Sorry.”

“‘Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal’?”

“Sorry.”

Nat jerks his chin. “What’s in the case?” He’s almost rude. Perhaps he’s worried that Ruth likes Mr. Bell too much. The three of them stand around the suitcase, hands clasped like farmers admiring a prized pumpkin. Finally Mr. Bell flops the case open.

“There’s nothing in there,” Ruth says. It is empty save for its soiled pink taffeta lining.

“No, there’s not.”

“What was in there? What were you selling?”

“There’s never been anything in there. I carry an empty case.”

“Why?”

“It gives me a reason to knock on people’s doors, ask them questions. You already understand the potential in empty space and curious customers. Empty space made you two agree to meet me, a strange man in an abandoned location. Why would you do that?”

No one, besides an outraged bird, makes a sound.

“Empty space lures your customers into a dark and dreary basement. Why?”

“What kind of questions do you ask?”

“Whatever I need to know.” Mr. Bell claps his hands, smiles.

“Like?”

Mr. Bell squats as a catcher. He rubs his hands over his face, preparing his snake oil for presentation. “Do you have life insurance? Do you have a son? Do you own any property in Florida?” He straightens. “Just as examples.”

“Why do you want to know those things?”

“Information enables me to shape my con, to make something from nothing.”

“Pardon?”

“I am a con man.” He offers himself to them without a filter, opening arms. “This is how I make my living, separating fools from their money.”

“But we don’t have any money.”

“And I am not conning you.”

“Did you con Father Arthur?”

Mr. Bell snickers. “As a man of faith, he’s already familiar with my tricks.”

“So why’d you want to talk to us?”

“For you, in my suitcase, I have a proposition.”

Nat and Ruth bend closer to the empty case, peering inside again.

“No,” Mr. Bell says. “I’m speaking metaphorically.”

They stand.

“I should like to become your manager.”

“That’s what’s in the case?”

Ruth sees a small path to the river, a muddy slide down to the water. “What will you manage?”

“Your careers as seers, mediums, psychics. I’ll collect an audience. I’ll be a barker of sorts. You’re familiar with the term?”

No. “Yes.”

“I meet a lot of people.” Mr. Bell doesn’t have to convince them. Up close, in the light of day, he’s pocked with experience and some rough-looking tattoos. Mr. Bell still hasn’t told them his first name. “Many of these people would be interested in your services.”

“What are those?”

“Contacting the dead. Or putting on a good show.”

“You don’t believe in ghosts?” she asks.

“No.”

“You will once you sit with him.”

“I doubt it.”

“Why would we let you manage us after you’ve admitted to being a con man?”

“Like likes like.” When he smiles, his teeth are strong.

“You mean we’re con men also?”

“Yes.”

“Nat’s for real.”

“To you.”

“So you don’t believe in anything?”

Mr. Bell grins. “My beliefs are of a fossilized nature. Petrified. Luckily, my beliefs matter little. I’m a businessman, and if you say so, we’re in business.”

The river currents churn like something thicker: oil, booze, or blood.

“You must be rich.”

“No.”

“You went to college?” She’s looking for any advantage he might have over her.

“No. Why?”

“There are no atheists in foxholes.”

He smiles at her turn of phrase. “Not so, young lady. I can see the stars from this trench. Regardless of its extraordinary depths. Why? What do you believe?”

“Birds. Jesus.” She leaves Nat’s name off the list for now.

“A Christian.”

“No. I just like the man.”

“The man Jesus?”

“That’s the one.”

Mr. Bell smiles as if she’s a cute kid, as if he’s far older than he is. “Do we have a deal?” he asks Nat, but Nat looks to Ruth.

She studies the river. It’s hard to read. “OK,” she tells them. “A manager. Why not? We’ve got nothing to lose.”

Mr. Bell lets loose a small whoop. He swings the empty case, orbiting himself before letting go of its handle. It lands in the river with a sucking splash, floating downstream on its way to a new life in the big city.

Mr. Bell buys milk at a pharmacy in Colonie. Nat and Ruth wait in the car. His strength already lifts them. He drives them to a fish fry. He leaves the milk in the warm car. The restaurant is decorated in a horseracing theme. The booths are made to look like paddocks, each one crowned with a portrait, a thoroughbred in his prime: Black Susan, King’s Ransom, Secretariat. The restaurant is dark. A person could take his lunch here and avoid the sunshine.

“On this spot”—Mr. Bell drives a fingertip onto the table—“Mother Ann shook her thing.”

“What are you talking about?” Ruth intends the question in the broadest sense, like, Where did you come from? Why do you talk so funny? How did you find us?

“Mother Ann, aka Ann Lee, led the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. You know them by their nickname, the Shakers?”

“Shakers?”

“Christians like yourself.”

“I told you, we’re not Christians. Father Arthur is.”

“Right. So the Shakers were into ecstatic dancing, hand-built furniture, gender equality, round barns, celibacy in preparation for the kingdom. ’Tis a gift to be simple.”

“You’re a Shaker?”

“No.” The waitress appears. “Three orders of cod. Tartar sauce.” Mr. Bell orders for all of them. “My treat.”

“Fries?” the waitress asks.

“Fries”—Mr. Bell rolls the word back to her—“are for kids.” And because they are not kids, except in the eyes of the state, Nat and Ruth quickly refuse similar offers of French fries.

A man enters the restaurant. He brushes off the hostess, scanning the room for the choicest table. He takes a seat at the counter, slowly spinning his stool. On each revolution, he stares at Ruth. Her clothes, her scar. She’s used to it.

“You need some instruction,” Mr. Bell says.

“In what?”

“Deceit. I can provide this. You lovelies do your basement reckoning for an audience. Top dollar for a sit with you and your spooks. And let’s bring it out of the basement.”

“Interesting.” Nat steals a word from Mr. Bell.

“It’s not deceit,” Ruth reminds him.

The man on the stool has stopped spinning. He now stares at Ruth openly, directly, smiling bright. She notices his sideburns.

Mr. Bell winks at her quickly. “Doesn’t matter, dear. People are desperate for their dead. Even they don’t have to believe in it.”

She likes being called dear.

The man on the stool strolls past their table on his way to the restroom. His attention is still caught on Ruth. He twists his neck as an owl might, nearly all the way around to not break his gaze. He passes so close, she can see the hairs on his hands, feel his stare. She hides her face with her palm, making a blinder.

“What do we do?” Nat asks.

“I’m glad you asked.” Mr. Bell waits for the man to pass out of earshot. “First of all, just listen.” Mr. Bell cups his ear. “They’ll tell you what they want you to say. Listen, then feed it back to them. You’ve heard of psychoanalysis? Maybe you haven’t, but it’s like that. And if you have nothing to go on, keep it general. Keep it far in the past. No one’s going to recognize their great-great-grandfather.” Mr. Bell shakes a small pile of salt onto his fingertip and rubs it on his gums. “When all else fails, memorize a few old movies. Those’ll do in a pinch.”

“Someone’s going to think we’re criminals and lock us up.”

Mr. Bell hunkers in close, protecting a featherless newborn bird. He looks Ruth up and down. “But you already are locked up. Aren’t you, dear?”