Free Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt Page B

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?”
     
     



 
    S HE AND I FOLLOW A PATH through a field single file. We are trespassing. Yellow grass reaches as high as my waist. If someone came along, we could duck into this grass and be hidden. So far this morning we’ve seen no one.
    The path gives way onto the road. Ruth turns left as if she knows where she’s going. Mostly it seems we’re following the Erie Canal. We’ll lose it for an afternoon sometimes but wind up not too far from the canal later on. We step over a garter snake hard-packed back to two dimensions. She walks and I follow. She hangs a left down someone’s driveway so I think we’ve arrived, but she passes behind the house and out into another empty field. I tuck my neck into my clothes in case someone’s home. Trespassing in upstate New York where gun shops litter the back roads. I pick freeloading burrs from my jeans as if they are spies.
    Ruth bobs her head in time to the music playing on her Walkman. I didn’t know they still made Walkmans. “No one’s got cassettes anymore, Ruth.” But cassettes are what she has, three or four homemade ones, flip and repeat, flip and repeat. We see a sign for a sauerkraut festival. We pass a man mowing a lawn that doesn’t need it.
    “When are we going to get there?”
    But Ruth doesn’t answer because Ruth doesn’t talk.
     
    That afternoon, when we don’t arrive wherever we’re going, we check into an awful motel. I dial El on my cell. She’s called me five times already in two days. I haven’t answered yet. The insurance company has called only twice. But I’ve walked far enough now. I’ve had a good adventure, and it’s time to go home. When I’m back home, I’ll post something about the crazy walk I took with my strange aunt. That will be cool. I snap a selfie in the motel. Ruth is sitting on the curb outside, bobbing her head to the music on her earphones. I snap a picture of her too, but the sunlight reflecting off the window turns her into a blur of light.
    The motel room stinks of mildew as if it’s under water. There’s something wrong with Ruth. Where are we going? Nothing. How long will it take us to get there? Not a word.
    I lift my phone to my ear.
    El answers, “Cora? Thank God. I was so worried.”
     
    When I was little, El would hold me, curl my body over one breast, a crescent light around the moon. We’d shower together, and before diving under the spray, she’d yell, “Don’t let go!” I’d claw into her, pretending we were Annie Edson Taylor, who, at sixty-three, became the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel. El knows everything about Niagara Falls. She’s worked as a groundskeeper there