A Man Without Shoes

by John Sanford

  [Late in the afternoon of that day, two old men sat at a window of a hospital in the Presidio. They were facing west, and beyond a cemetery, beyond the Fort Scott Reservation, beyond Mile Rocks Light, the sun was hull-down in the Pacific.

  [“I’m thinking,” one of the old men said.

  “What’re you thinking?” the other one said.

  [“I’m thinking: if Old Abe’d lived, he would’ve been an even hundred years old tomorrow.”

  [“Well, he didn’t live; he got killed.”

  [“Yes, but I was just thinking.”]

  Two hours before the day ended, a woman awoke in a cold-water flat near Bowling Green and groped in the darkness for her husband’s arm. “Dan,” she said. “Dan!”

  “You all right, Polly?” the man said.

  The woman’s grasp tightened as her child began to rip its way out of the nest of her body. “The doctor,” she said. “I’m…,” but the rest wandered away in a scream.

  Color

  Above the head of the bed, there were two gas-jets, and their light was a small show of hands in the night. The woman lay with one arm crooked, as if holding a bouquet, and on it a sleeping child was cradled. “He’s beautiful, Dan,” she said.

  The man, leaning over the footrail, peered down at the open end of the bundle. “Well, anyways,” he said, “he’s white.”

  [A white man began his first living day in a diaper and spent his dead last in a shroud, a cotton start and a cotton finish, but because no white could be whiter than white flesh, it was he who was white, not the cotton. Though provably less white than snow, clouds, calcimine, and porcelain, it was he who was white, and no other thing of the earth or the sky. Affected by the season and the velocity of the wind, by age and diet and so little as a blocked excretion of bile, he changed color almost from hour to hour: angered, he reddened to salmon; afraid, he paled to the shade of cooked pork; cold, he looked blue; and old, he was the ash of fire long extinguished. But it was he who was white.]

  “How can you talk like that?” the woman said.

  “Damned if I know,” the hack-driver said. “He ain’t really white at all.”

  Nationality

  “I never tried to trace my ancestors,” the hack-driver said, “but I’m mortal sure I had some.”

  [His son was an American.]

  Given Name

  The bed was in a leaning tower of morning sunlight, and the man and the woman lay facing each other, watching their child suck breakfast.

  “What’ll we call him?” the man said.

  A milk-wet mouth came away from a milky nipple and yawned, and then, drawing again, it began to eat air. Small legs kicked as if kicking off shoes, and the small mouth opened wide, now to protest. The woman fed her nipple back into the working face, and at once the movement of the child’s feet dwindled, and the pumping mouth settled into rhythm.

  “Let’s call him Daniel,” the woman said.

  The hack-driver jacked himself up on his elbow. “What the hell kind of a name is Daniel?” he said.

  “A good kind. It’s yours.”

  “But why saddle the kid with it? Daniel! Some day his friends’ll ask him who he’s named after, and he’ll say his old man, and they’ll want to know what his old man does for a living, and then the kid’ll have to say, ‘The poor slob, he rides around in a hack.’ The kid ain’t going to be a hack-driver. Why curse him with a hack-driver’s name?”

  “Anybody’s name could be Daniel—a judge’s, even.”

  “Call this piece of cheese Daniel, and all he’ll ever be able to do is read a meter. The name queered me, and it’ll queer him too. A moniker is a dangerous thing: it can make you or break you. Take Willie, for instance—if your name is Willie, you can stop struggling, because you’re going to be a jockey. Or Max—every lawyer in the world is Max this or Max that, and they’re all shysters. Or Mamie—did you ever know a Mamie that wasn’t a whoor?”

  “Fine language,” the woman said.

  “Hack-driver’s language.”

  “You’re not in a hack now, but you ought to be. It’s getting late.”

  “It’s only seven, and, besides, I like to watch.”

  “You’ve been watching all month,” the woman said. “There’s nothing you don’t know.”

  “That practicly goes for the kid too. Damn if he ain’t giving a good imitation of me.”

  “Keep your voice down. The window is open.”

  “Let it be open. The neighbors know we didn’t buy the kid at Greenhut’s.”

  “Go dress. You’re getting to be disgusting.”

  “Polly,” the man said, and the woman lowered her eyes to watch her son’s mouth run down in milk-made sleep.

  “What do you want?”

  “Did the doctor say when I could be really disgusting?” As the mouth worked its last slow contractions in space, the woman rose and placed the child in a crib near the window. “Did you ask him, Polly?”

  The woman drew a green shade through a leaning tower of sun-light.

  * * *

  “Well,” the hack-driver said, “what’ll we call him?”

  “I told you,” the woman said.

  The man savored the word. “Daniel,” he said. “Daniel.”

  “Daniel Johnson—a good name,” the woman said. “It’s good because it’s common. It doesn’t ask for favors, and it won’t get any. If the boy wants something special, he’ll have to be special.”

  “He mightn’t thank us. He might say we should’ve made it easier.”

  “What name would you make it easier with?”

  “I was thinking of Grover, maybe, or Theodore.”

  “Would Theodore get him what Daniel wouldn’t?”

  “Hard to say. It might.”

  “Then let’s not use it,” the woman said, and she moved closer to the man. “Let’s start the boy off with nothing and see how far he gets. I’ve got my heart set on that, Dan—seeing how far he gets on nothing.”

  The man looked at her for a moment. “I don’t get tired of you,” he said. “I get tired of lots of things, but I don’t get tired of you. There’s no meanness in you. I‘m mean, maybe, but not you.”

  “Dan,” the woman said, and the word and the words that followed were barely more than meaning given to exhaled air, “it didn’t hurt me before.”

  * * *

  “Do we call him Daniel?” the woman said.

  “The way I feel right now,” the man said, “you could call him Polly.”

  “Do we call him Daniel?”

  The man laughed, “We call him Daniel,” he said.

  Birthplace

  “ON YOUR LEFT, FOLKS, IN THE RIVER ON YOUR LEFT IS BEDLOE’S ISLAND, AND ON THE ISLAND STANDS THAT GRAND OLD LADY, THE STATUE OF LIBERTY. SHE TIPS THE BEAM AT TWO HUNDRED AND TWENNY-FIVE TONS, SHE’S A HUNDRED AND ELEVEN FOOT HIGH WITH HER SHOES OFF, AND EVERY POUND AND OUNCE OF HER IS FEMALE WOMAN. HER HAND, DID YOU SAY? HER HAND IS SIXTEEN FOOT FIVE INCHES LONG, AND HER POINTING-FINGER IS EIGHT FOOT EVEN. WHAT’S THAT, FOLKS—HER MOUTH? NOW, I KNEW YOU’D BE CURIOUS ABOUT THAT, SO I WENT AND MEASURED IT MYSELF. IT’S ONE SOLID YARD FROM CORNER to CORNER, AND A TRIFLE MORE WHEN SHE SMILES. THAT’S AN ALMIGHTY BIG KISSER, FOLKS! IT’LL TAKE A LOT OF MAN to BLOCK IT OFF.…” On the drop-seat between the steering-wheel and the meter of the Pope-Hartford sat Polly Johnson, and in her lap she held her sleeping son Daniel. The Johnson household was out for an airing. “Know what I’m doing?” the hack-driver said.

  “Yes,” the woman said. “You’re wasting a good Saturday afternoon.”

  “I’m pliking you’re a rube that wants to do the town in a couple of hours.”

  “What’s pliking?”

  “Mean to say you never heard of pliking? Pliking is playing like: it’s a mixture of the words. If I plike you’re a rube, for instance, that means I’m making believe you’re.… Ah, you’re kidding. You know about pliking.”

  “I don’t,” the woman said. “And the reason is, you probably mad
e up the word yourself.”

  “Suppose I did,” the hack-driver said. “What of it?”

  “Did you make it up when you were a kid, Dan?”

  “It was ’way back. I don’t remember any more.”

  “What did you use to plike?” the woman said.

  “Oh, everything, I guess.”

  “But especially what?”

  “Well, I used to plike whatever I wasn’t. Being poor, I’d plike I was rich, and being little, I’d plike I was grown up. I had one thing, though, that I’d plike all the time.” The cab was moving up lower Broadway now, and in the week-end suspension of sound, even the small voice of rubber on asphalt was alien. Buildings stared at each other over slender streets, and doorways now and then clucked their revolving tongues at trolley-cars. The wedges of sunlight in the crisscross cracks of the city were misty with settling dust. “You’ll think I was foolish: I used to plike I was a horse.”

  “What’s foolish about that?”

  “But I pliked I was a rider too—at the same time. I was a horse and rider, both. I rode, and I got rid. Don’t that sound foolish?”

  “Not to me,” the woman said.

  “ON YOUR RIGHT, FOLKS, IS WALL STREET, A LITTLE ALLEY AS CROOKED AS A DOG’S HIND LEG. FOR THE CONVENIENCE OF SUCKERS, IT RUNS FROM THE EAST RIVER to THE TRINITY CHURCH GRAVEYARD:YOU CAN PUT YOUR MONEY IN THE MIDDLE AND BE DEAD AT EITHER END. WALL STREET, FOLKS.…”

  “You very seldom talk about when you were a boy,” the woman said. “Why is that, Dan?”

  “I don’t know. Because I hate to get laughed at, I suppose.”

  “I don’t laugh at you.”

  The hack-driver glanced at her, and then, after a moment, he said, “That’s the truth, Polly, but I’ve never been able to figure

  why. BEYOND CITY HALL PARK, FOLKS, THE APPROACH to BROOKLYN BRIDGE, ONE OF THE WONDERS OF THE MODREN WORLD! ITSPANS A SWEET, CLEAR, MOUNTAIN STREAM ALIVE WITH RUBBER TROUT, AND ALONG THE WOODED BANKS ARE THE VINE-CLAD DWELLINGS OF AMERICA’S WORKING-CLASS, FREE FROM WORRY, FREE FROM CARE, FREE AS GOD’S AMERICAN AIR. BROOKLYN BRIDGE, FOLKS. YOU’RE FREE to WALK ACROSS IT ANY TIME OF THE DAY OR NIGHT, AND IF YOU DON’T LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, YOU’RE FREE to JUMP OFF. BROOKLYN BRIDGE, FOLKS.…”

  The woman said, “What did you want to do most when you were a boy?”

  “Just what I’m doing now,” the hack-driver said.

  “You wanted to be married, and have a child, and drive a hack? Tell that to Sweeney, Dan.”

  “I mean it.”

  “The map in the parlor says otherwise.”

  “A BLOCK DOWN FRANKLIN STREET, FOLKS, AND YOU’RE AT THE TOMBS. ONCE YOU GET IN, YOU NEVER GET OUT, SO KEEP YOUR NOSE to THE GRINDSTONE, TURN THE OTHER CHEEK, BOW YOUR HEAD, GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES, CRAWL ON YOUR BELLY, AND SAY ‘UNCLE.’ REMEMBER, FOLKS, ONCE YOU GET IN, YOU NEVER GET OUT!

  The map? I just keep that for fun.”

  “The best fun you ever had,” the woman said.

  “Wrong. The best fun I ever had was making this kid.”

  “Some day, you’ll have the whole country covered with red crayon.”

  “Polly,” the hack-driver said, “what kind of a tip do you think I’d get for driving a sport to Frisco?”

  “You should’ve been a traveling-salesman.”

  “Too much selling. With my itch, I should’ve studied for an engine-driver. That’s the life—riding a ten-wheeler’s ear at seventy on the outside rail! I used to plike it. I was engineer and engine. I stuck the corner of my eye out of the little window in the cab, and I yanked the cord and made two longs, a short, and a long for hicks chewing straw at the crossings (toooot-toooot! toot-toooot!), and I galloped like the side-rods, and I blew myself up and fussed like the steam-chests (ch-ch-ch! ch-ch-ch! ch-ch-ch!). Oh, I was some pliker when I was a kid! ON YOUR LEFT, FOLKS, THE BROADWAY CENTRAL HOTEL, WHERE NED STOKES SHOT JIM FISK OVER THAT HEART’S DESIRE—JOSIE MANSFIELD!”

  “You’re some pliker right now,” the woman said.

  “I’m a pliker from a long line of plikers.”

  “I wonder if your son’ll be a pliker too.”

  “If you get your wish,” the hack-driver said, “he’ll have to plike like all hell.”

  “If I get my wish?” the woman said.

  “Ain’t you the one that wants to see how far he’ll get on nothing? THE FLAT IRON BUILDING, FOLKS, THE FLAT IRON BUILDING AND WINDY CORNER, WHERE SPORTS WITH HIGH-BUTTON TWO-TONE SHOES GATHER to SEE THE SIGHTS—ABOVE THE KNEE. WATCH THE UNSUSPECTING LADIES, AND YOU’LL GET A FLASH OF THE THINGS THAT MAKE YOUNG MEN OLD AND OLD MEN YOUNG. PRAY FOR WIND, FOLKS, PRAY FOR WIND!”

  “What did you ever get married for, Dan?”

  “I got tired of standing on Windy Corner,” the hack-driver said, and he laughed until his laughter infected his wife, and now the cab was across Fifth Avenue and heading up Broadway, and it was hailed by a man standing on the curb, but the hack-driver cocked his cap, saying, “Walk, you fat son-of-a-bitch! WELL, FOLKS, HERE SHE IS—BROADWAY, THE BULLYVARD OF YOUR DREAMS, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS EDISON ALLEY! THIS MILE, FOLKS, THESE TWENNY COUNT-’EM BLOCKS, THIS IS THE GENUINE ARTICLE, THE REAL REAL THING! THE REST IS HAYSTACK, COWPATH, SEWER, AND SWAMP! I GIVE YOU BROADWAY, FOLKS, AND WITH IT I GIVE THE MET., MOUQUIN’S, AND LILY RUSSELL (AH, BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL!);I GIVE WHITE DIAMONDS AND BLACK LACE DRAWERS, I GIVE TERRAPIN AND CHAMPAGNE, I GIVE TOE FOUR-IN-HAND (o, to BE A HORSE AND HAVE A HANSOM BEHIND!) AND ROSEBEN RUNNING SEVEN FURLONGS IN 1:22 FLAT UNDER 126 POUNDS…BUT STAY, FOLKS, AND HEAR ME OUT. THERE’S ANOTHER SIDE to THE STREET, THE SHADY SIDE: THE SIDE FOR TOUTS, TARTS, DIPS, GULLS, GYPS, SHILLS, VAGS, HAMS, STOOLS, AND STIFFS; THE SIDE FOR HAS-BEENS AND NEVER-WILL-BES; THE SIDE FOR DISBARRED LAWYERS, TENORS WITH WHISKY WHISPERS, AND EX-PUGS PIMPING FOR COFFEE AND; THE SIDE FOR THE NICKEL-ODEON, THE FLEA-CIRCUS, THE HASH-HOUSE, AND THE NOSE-CANDIED GUNMAN; THE SIDE FOR BUTT-SNIPERS, RUMMIES, AND BUMS WITH OSTRICH-PLUMES AND THE CLAP. AH, BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL … ! You want to know how far this kid’ll get on nothing? Well, I’ll tell you—no place! I started out with nothing myself, and all the further I ever got was thirty bucks a week for driving sports to hell-and-gone and back, and being an ordinary guy, that’s all the further I’ll get if I live to be a hundred and drive four million miles! Four million miles! Why, Christ, it’s only a coupla hundred thousand to the moon! You think this kid’s any different? You think he’s any better? You think he’s another Abe Lincoln?”

  “Yes,” the woman said.

  * * *

  Near Grant’s Tomb, she asked the hack-driver to stop, and when he did so, she began to unbutton her shirtwaist. “While I nurse him,” she said, “you can look at the sights.”

  “I like this one,” the hack-driver said.

  “You’ve seen it before.”

  “You know something? Women are funny. The way they handle themselves.”

  “Have you studied many?”

  “Three—four thousand,” he said, “and they all act like there’s parts of their body that don’t belong to them. When you lift that thing to stick it in the kid’s mouth, it’s like it ain’t attached to you.”

  “It’s attached, all right,” the woman said. “You can take my word for it.”

  “Save some for me, honey.”

  “Turn around and look at the sights!”

  “I’ll put the flag down. The kid gets four bits worth, and no more.”

  The flat and flickering Hudson was brass in the sunlight and pewter in the shadow of the Palisades. Ferries dragged their petticoats from bank to bank, and tugs went by with the hidden energy of ducks, and the paddle-wheels of the Clermont trod water as she skidded in toward the Night Line docks. The sun was going down in a mackerel sky over the Schooley, and New Jersey was a palpitating dazzle. The afternoon was moving west.

  “Ah, Jesus!” the hack-driver said. “To see it all! to see it all some day!”

  Occupation

  For many months, the child ate, bubbled, dribbled, cheesed, puked, cried, sneez
ed, yawned, jabbed at nothing, smiled at little, urinated, stooled, slept, woke up famished, ate again, bashed a rattle on the ribs of his crib, sucked his thumb, played with his feet, frowned, and bloated himself with thought, and in the end he produced a sound that the hack-driver swore was “Cab!”

  Religion

  “Dan,” the woman said, “don’t you think he ought to be baptized?”

  “The hell with it,” the hack-driver said. “I bet he’s socking wet right now.”

  Prison Record, if Any

  “Not yet, Dan,” the woman said. “I don’t think he’s asleep.”

  “Ah, he’s been dead to the world for an hour.”

  “What if he’s just lying there? He’d see us.”

  “But, Polly, he’s only five months old.”

  “I’d feel the same way if he was a cat.”

  “Hang something on the crib, then.”

  The woman rose from the bed, took off her nightgown, and draped it over the railing of the crib. Then she lay down again, and when her husband touched her, she turned to him.

  In the faint light coming from the courtyard, a small hand rose, its fingers groping and striving, and silhouetted itself on the nightgown, but the man and woman did not see it, nor did they see the hand close finally on the flimsy screen, hold it tightly for a while, and relax—and then the hand fell, and the child was asleep.

  “I’d’ve felt as if somebody was watching us,” the woman whispered.

  Medical History

  From the darkened bedroom, a wavering wail drifted into the parlor. The woman looked up from a sewing-basket, listened, and said, “Dan, I think he’s sick.”