Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt

Author:Samantha Hunt [Hunt, Samantha]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-544-52672-3
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2016-01-04T16:00:00+00:00

HIGHWAYS ARE BAD PLACES TO HIDE, but I didn’t know we were hiding until Ruth started running. “Who is he?” Like a kind of torture, I keep asking her the same question. Ruth readjusts her headphones. I would think a person who doesn’t know what’s she’s running from can’t really be on the run, but that’s not true. Here I am.

A cop car coasts to a stop a few feet behind us. We keep walking. They turn on their lights so we stop. They sit in their car. We wait for them to get out, but the cops don’t get out, so I tell Ruth, “Fuck it. Let’s keep walking.” Then they hit us with the siren, which, that close, is a bolt of electricity from below, spine-clearing. It exits through my brain. They use their bullhorn. “Hold your position.”

When I worked in an office, it was the same thing, people using phrases that made no sense. “Action item,” they’d say, because our job was so dull we used mysterious phrases to make it seem more exciting, as if we were spies dealing with top-secret, pass-coded information. Only there was no way to break the code because none of the phrases meant anything: Bring it to the table. Deliverables. Go live. Leverage. With that said. Moving forward. Offline. Branded brain dump.

“What’d they say?” I ask Ruth. We lean against the guardrail and wait.

The cops finally climb out of their patrol car.

“Your car break down?” he asks me, as if Ruth’s become invisible. That’s fucked up but that’s what happens to women. We grow up into ghosts. No one wants to screw Ruth anymore so she’s invisible.

“Yeah. Her car.”

“Whose?”

“My aunt Ruth’s.”

“ID, please.”

“You want to see our driver’s licenses?”

“Correct.”

“But we’re not driving.”

“You’re trespassing. There’s no walking allowed on the highway.”

I look at them blankly. “Walking is against the law?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The cops give us a lift to the next exit, another town where the houses have lights in each window. Homesickness raises questions like, Why don’t I live in a house? Why am I punishing El? I don’t know the answers, but walking can untangle knots, spread things out, so at least I can see the strands: walking, mothering.

We pass Walmart, Walgreens, Starbucks. Everything is new in this town, even the trash barrels. A man mowing his lawn watches us as if he’s on patrol. The town playground has forts, tunnels, platforms, and a padded surface. A father and daughter are heading home for supper. The sun is sinking behind the trees. Three teenagers, a girl and two boys, are on the swings, pivoting on pointed toes. Each of them wears headphones. Each of their faces is illuminated by the glow of a smartphone.

El told me that she worries about kids today, about me. She said we’re screwed because we’ve never known life without the Internet. And then she told me a story about the first time she heard Linda Thompson sing, “I hand you my ball and chain.” “You know Linda Thompson?” she asked me.

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