Mr. Splitfoot Read online

  The children make a human chain from van to kitchen, hefting bags of groceries into the house. It’s hard to be the light of the world.

  The Mother calmly praises their work. “Such strength. Such cooperation.” She sings, “‘Ride on, ride on, in Majesty!’” clapping the rhythm. She sings, “‘Mama, Mama, I’m coming home,’” an insensitive choice from Ozzy Osbourne but one of her favorites. The children unpack supplies into the pantry, so happy to have food in the house again. Not many American children get to know how lucky they are on such a regular basis.

  The Father supervises from the doorjamb, nodding, praising the Mother in turn. “The very spirit of love, sister.” They’ll be getting it on later.

  Raffaella hefts a twenty-pound bag of rice. Her arthritis is not bad today. “The Father and I prayed hard last night. God took away the pain.” Sometimes God takes away the pain, sometimes God sticks it back in, twisting the knife tang.

  The Mother points at the kitchen crucifix, an emaciated thing. “Magnificent.”

  Ruth takes a long peek down her nose. “Yeah. Jesus is a hottie.” Ruth does love Jesus, same way she loves Lincoln, Robin Hood, Martin Luther King, and Nat. Handsome men who fight for justice.

  After morning chores comes school. The Father walks with the children out to the barn, a pied piper fantasy of the little children coming unto the Lord—if the Lord looked like a pale electronics department clerk. The Father wears natural-fiber clothing that he scrubs and starches before re-ruffling in an approximation of ancient Jerusalem chic. Every morning the Father braids his long hair, smoothing the split ends with beeswax. He coats his skin with a homebrewed sunscreen. He takes a spoonful of ground flaxseed and a spoonful of turmeric powder in his nightly goat’s milk. He self-administers a coffee colonic on the fifteenth of each month. On the sixteenth, he reports any visions experienced during the purge. And every now and then, he loses control, drinking nothing but Canadian whiskey for three days. The visions he receives when drunk are a different sort of sight.

  On a steely cherry tree, Ruth keeps a feeder she made from a pie tin. Birds hop in the grass below, eating rejected seeds. A couple of sparrows, a few starlings, but every now and again a goldfinch or cardinal in his brilliant red coat. Hello, Mom.

  Sarge opens the barn door, a huge thing on wheels and runners. There’s no heat inside. A number of plain benches rule the wooden floor. The goats are penned in the northern corner. The rafters reach high as a cathedral. Cobwebs too dusty for spiders drape the gables. The loft is filled with onion racks, devices of torture, traces of hay, urine, and hide. “Cold in here.”

  “And Christ suffered.” The Father smiles. They enter the sanctuary, where he thrills his small congregation with vitriolic sermons each Saturday, the real Sabbath, so says the Father, so says the mission. The Father nods at the cross. “Yes, indeed. The Lord is reigning from the tree.” Ruth hears, The Lord is raining, leaving her with a kindly, catholic idea of God. God is the tree. God is the light. God is the rain that falls on everyone, even girls with ugly scars.

  If you ask the Father what denomination, his answer is, “I follow the Bible. Heard of it?” Father Arthur takes from the Baptists, the Episcopalians, and the Evangelists. Ruth trusts Nat’s assessment of their caretaker best: “Part hippie, part psychopath.”

  Public schools, zoning boards, and outsiders terrify him. They hide the devil and a bottle of booze. Before he was the Father, he was a drunk in Buffalo on the jam band circuit. That’s where he met the Mother. They’d drink and drug until the Lord saw fit to save their souls again. The hill is steep, but the Lord is full of forgiveness.

  The Father rests one butt cheek on a stool set beside the lectern, like a folksinger in a coffeehouse. “Now. Where were we? The Jews? Yes, the Jews.”

  Ruth speaks out of turn. “Jews invented eyeglasses.”

  The Father is astonished. “Children, do we speak without being called on?”

  No one answers.

  “We do not. And where in God’s glorious kingdom did you get that idea?”

  She’s not sure. It was just there in her head. She’s never even met a Jew, but she wanted to give them something, a weapon, eyeglasses, before the Father tears them down. Ruth shrugs.

  “Let me ask again, the Jews?”

  A number of hands shoot into the air; the children are anxious to placate the Father, to keep him at simmer.

  “Yes, Tonya.”

  The girl contorts her face in thought. She stands, hands clasped in front of her womb, the way the Father told her ladies stand. “Umm.”

  “Begin again. No hesitation.”

  “Right.” Tonya steadies her eyes. “Jews murder their children through abortion and Christ rejection.”

  “Good.”

  Tonya blushes in the blessing of correctness.

  “And let’s not forget—slayers of Christ. Now, the Catholics?” The Father scans for volunteers, Price Is Right style. “Colly?”

  Colly stands, the only black kid at Love of Christ! The Father keeps Colly around to defend against charges of racism. Or to have a whipping post.

  “Posture.”

  Colly fluffs his sternum. “Mary was a sinner who masturbated in public.”

  “Indeed. And what does God have in store for brothers and sisters who are selfish with their pleasures?”

  “Fires of hell.” Like a platter of toothpicked cold cuts.

  The Father steers the children from eternal death. “Undeniably. Watch for the cloven toe.” He eyes Colly. “I’ve told you of my profligate uncle and the night we dragged his drunken body from a charred mobile home up in Mooers?”

  “Yes, sir. Last week. And the week before.”

  “Flesh bubbled, burnt blacker than you even.” The Father looks up thoughtfully. “And oddly yellow in places where the pus fat had boiled to bursting. I can’t help but think of him when I see you, son.”

  “Yes. You’ve told me, sir.”

  “Burnt,” the Father repeats. “Slave to intoxicants.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “Just checking. Because it’s important to Christ. He wants to forgive you. He wants to forgive all of us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Father nods, smiles, moves on. “Good. So, Nat. Mormons.”

  “Mormons are just like you and me.”

  The other children hold their breath.

  The Father sounds a dull buzz. “Just like us?” Slowly, chuckling. “We kidnap blond children and sodomize them while wearing magic underpants?” A number of the students snicker. The Father joins them in this laugh. Ruth looks to Nat. Ruth’s hair is brown. “I’ve always appreciated your vivid imagination, Nat, but this is our history, and history asks us for facts, not fiction. Take a seat, son.”

  The Father mopes, staring at his shoes. “Ruth? How can I sleep at night when your soul will roast in perdition?” He’s overcome by his sorrow. “Tell me how you love Jesus. Tell me how you adore his flesh and spirit.” When the Father speaks of Jesus, it’s so intimate it embarrasses Ruth, like he’s talking about his penis or a case of hemorrhoids. Other days, better days, the Father mentions grace, mercy, and the majestic beauty of God’s promised kingdom. Once Ruth even heard him say, “Christians glory in the well-being of others.” But not today.

  “I don’t know, Father Arthur. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “Correct.” He blooms into a smile. “Tomorrow,” he announces, “Muslims!”

  Ruth takes a seat, and the Father begins the day’s lesson on the chalkboard, geometric proofs detailing how the three branches of American government—executive, legislative, and judicial—are a false trinity. The lesson is long. The Father includes stops along the way at the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation (big smiles to Colly) and Roe v. Wade. The Father knows the story of history and manages to actually educate the children by teaching them to think and ask questions, to not accept the rubbish they hear, especially his rubbish.


  Every day the lesson winds up at the Apocalypse. Total financial collapse, hurricane, earthquake, or nuclear war—it makes no difference to him. The Father used to prepare to survive the Apocalypse, spending the State’s money on rations and rifles. He taught the children skills to live through the devastation: farming, engineering, dowsing, husbandry, canning, intermediate nursing, and marksmanship to destroy the hungry hordes moving north from the city. Then one morning, coming off a binge, John 2:15 came to him. “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” At breakfast he told the children, “I don’t want us to survive.” He looked around the room. “What was I thinking, children? Trying to forestall the time when we will dwell with Heavenly Father in paradise? I must have been nuts.” Which, of course, he was.

  When the Father’s done, he asks, “Ruth? You ready?” Once a week, as a senior student in his school, she’s allowed to teach the other children about birds.

  Ruth straightens her dress. “Thank you.” In a quiet voice she tells the others, “This week, you might be interested in the Red-Eyed Vireo.” She flips through her Peterson Field Guide, a present from the Father last Christmas, her only present and a generous one, as most books are not allowed at Love of Christ! “These birds build cup-shaped nests in the forks of trees and fall victim to brood parasitism at the hands of the cowbird. Does anyone know what that means?”

  No volunteers.

  “That’s when cowbirds slip their eggs into the vireo’s nest so they won’t have to raise their own babies.” Ruth moves through mating habits, habitat, diet, and migration patterns. “The good news is vireos spend their winters in South America.”

  After class, more chores. The Father retires to his private quarters, bolting his door. Rumors say he’s got his liquor, an Internet connection, and the only phone in the house in there.

  Outside the barn there’s a plastic playhouse partially melted by vandals with a roofing torch. The Father keeps it around as a metaphor. Ruth thinks of her melted face, her endangered soul.

  Nat and Ruth wash clothes in the laundry room. She handles undershirts; he pairs the piles of socks. Alone with Nat, a perfect place can exist, their own terrarium. “Nat.” She lifts a clean shirt. He smiles. Her nose detects the alkylbenzene sulfonate surfactant in the laundry soap. She twitches. A sneeze mounts in her lower meatus. She swallows it.

  They carry the damp bedclothes out to the drying line, the light of the long afternoon sun. In the yard behind the house, they hang blankets and sheets to dry. Nat makes a hidden place for them in the linens, away from the other kids. Ruth sweeps some dried leaves into a nest. He grabs her arm. “Pretend you’re my wife. Lie underneath me.”

  She lies down. He takes his place on top of her. Two flat, straight, clothed bodies. Nat pins her to the earth, and Ruth doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even brush a hard stem or stick from her neck. They feel one another through their clothes, all the systems of their bodies—circulatory, respiratory, others whose names they can’t remember just then. They don’t kiss or grope. They’re sisters. Some time passes, some birds overhead. Nat stands, dust his knees, and returns to hanging laundry.

  “Wait,” Ruth says. “Pretend I’m your wife still, but pretend I cheated on you with your boss. You have to punish me.”

  “All right.”

  Nat lashes her to the clothing line with imagined ropes. He lifts her dress over her head. He beats her bare back with a real stripped branch, gently at first. “Jezebel. Judas.” When he strikes, rainbows are released from her skin. Three, four, five. She feels it. He lets in the air. Nine, ten lashes until finally she says, “That’s good. Thanks.”

  Six damp sheets make a house. The afternoon sun warms the small room. If this were a Father-approved Christian teen movie, Chastity and Adam or In the Sheaves, this would be the moment where the young sweethearts feel God’s love burning into them and the righteousness of their lives, imagining their wedding day. But Nat and Ruth—having just finished a tidy whipping—are not a Christian movie. “Sinners,” he says.

  “Jesus doesn’t mind. He’s like us. He is us.”

  “You’re Jesus?”

  “Sure. And you. Your mom. Telephone poles, flowers.”

  “Fried chicken?”

  “Sure.”

  They return to the house more twisted into one another than they’d been the day before.

  After chores, the Mother, and thus dinner, cannot be found. This is not unusual.

  The Father doles out three dollars and sixty-five cents per child. They pile into the pickup. He drives to town. The Father says, “Heavenly Deity, we are grateful for these gifts we are about to receive.” The Father waits while the children get supper at Hook’s Diner. Hamburgers cost two twenty-five. The waitresses scowl at the non-tipping orphans. The other diners stare at the children’s clothing, wondering if they are involved with a historical reenactment museum.

  Nat and Ruth pool their funds for an open-faced roast turkey sandwich with gravy. Roberta eats a slice of apple pie, pocketing the rest of her cash so she’s got some savings. It’s risky. Things get stolen in the home. Underwear, food, toothbrushes, money, of course, photos of strangers. Many of these stolen items end up in Nat’s dresser drawers.

  The Father storms through room check. “I will plow your fallow ground! I will plant the seeds of understanding! I will cut off the ugly head of self-centeredness in you like a venomous viper in a baby’s crib. Draw into a quiet shell and obey!” Spit flies. The Father crushes his fists together, wondering what Trojan den of iniquity his wife disappeared into today. He imagines her dancing on tabletops. He falls down to his knees and back up again, amazing feats of strength powered by jealousy. “Now let me hear you sing praises to God!” which confuses a number of the children. Draw into a quiet shell or sing? The Father passes out state-mandated anti-psychotics to some, Adderall to most. The Father starts a hymn. “And if the devil doesn’t like it, he can sit on a tack!” He claps his hands while Ruth, Nat, and the other children join in. A blessed day at Love of Christ! comes to an end.

  INDEMNITY IS A SUM PAID from A to B by way of compensation for a particular loss suffered by B. From eight-thirty until nine in the morning, I skim through claims. Three house fires. Seven no-fault car accidents. A flood. One act of vandalism. Who is responsible? That depends. I gulp cooling coffee. I don’t handle business claims or life insurance. I make phone calls. After lunch I have an inspection in the field. I check the battery on my camera. By nine-thirty I need a break. I fire up my computer and run a search on Lord’s wife, Janine. Nothing new. No obituary or anything. A couple of old records she broke in high school track and a picture from when she worked in real estate. Two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Hair on her head. There’s nothing special about Lord’s wife.

  I click a link to a house in Budapest where the carpeting cost four hundred seven dollars a square foot. My coworker Monique comes by. I show her the carpeting. “What’s the big deal?” she asks, squeezing the bridge of her nose. Monique settles into her cubicle, sniffling mucus down her throat. “I’m oozing like a slug.” From a blister pack, Monique pops a capsule brewed with such lovely stuff as guaifenesin, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, sodium carboxymethyl, and magnesium stearate. A little something to get the chemical day started.

  I compare prices on a couple pair of shoes, break off the corner of a nut-’n’-strawberry-flavored fruit breakfast bar. Overhead a fluorescent flickers. I order the more expensive pair and experience a feeling of euphoria. Having made the correct shoe choice, I now understand the nature of mystery in the universe. I now belong to a tribe of shod people. Waves of enthusiasm and moral righteousness inflate me straight up to heaven.

  I click to check the weather. I read some news about Hollywood. The actor we thought was gay is gay, and this warms me, being part of a human crisis, tucked in with the rest of you who also knew he was gay, and Look! We were right. I search for a rice pudding recipe, my favorite. I cultivate a public persona based on my love of
rice pudding. The girls in my college dormitory knew me as such, and now the people I work with share the same truth. I no longer wrestle with the challenges of identity. I am the woman who likes rice pudding, who wears fantastic shoes.

  At ten I visit the ladies’ room, hoping it will be empty. It’s not. Denise is there. Denise handles life insurance, all the fraud and fun. Denise self-tans. She dabs her lipstick and glares at me. “Cora. Kind of rhymes with whore.” She smiles at herself in the mirror, tossing the brown paper towel with her purple lip impression into the trash before leaving. The door shuts.

  “Denise,” I mutter. “Kind of rhymes with fucking twat.”

  Back at my computer, I e-mail Kendra in sales: “Denise eats donkey dick.” I e-mail Joe in security: “Just saw Denise Clint stealing toilet paper from the ladies’ room. Again.”

  Her boyfriend, Mike the claims inspector, flirts with me. B.F.D. We had lunch once, and he spent the whole time talking about her. He told me Denise likes it rough, as if that were something really special, as if she’s an angel come down from heaven because she likes her heinie paddled. Mike went starry-eyed thinking about slapping her orange thighs. “She likes it rough? Who doesn’t?” I asked. “Who, for Pete’s sake, doesn’t?”

  I do a search for my name. Same as yesterday. Some flight attendant who got fired for throwing hot tea on a passenger; the mug shot of a woman arrested for obstructing justice; some teenage Mormon girl’s blog; an adjunct professor of environmental science; then me, insurance adjuster, one-time Daisy girl, one-time honor student, dean’s list, et cetera. I live far from the top of the search engine results. This is my cross to bear.