A Man Without Shoes

by John Sanford

  “The Boy Pioneers. But I don’t belong any more.”

  “It isn’t every day I meet somebody that’s not so very, so I’m going to give you two bucks.”

  “Keep your money.”

  The man said, “You know, there’s a limit to what being not so very is worth.”

  “I don’t think it’s worth a cent,” Danny said.

  “Over here now, it’s worth three bucks.”

  “Buy yourself a new cane.”

  The man shook the wallet. “Do you know how much folding money I have in this? Take a guess.”

  “What for? I’m not out for a reward, so I wouldn’t care if you had a million.”

  “I never heard of anybody refusing a reward.”

  “Why should anybody get one?”

  “For being honest. Like you.”

  “I’m not so very.”

  The man studied Danny for a moment. “What makes you say that, kid?”

  “Do you know where you dropped that wallet?” Danny said. “Two miles back, on The Green.”

  The man chalked the tip of his cane and executed a massé, and then, overhead, he shifted a counter on a wire. “So that’s why you say you’re not so very,” he said.

  “Yes,” the boy said.

  “Well, I say you’re very very—and I’m going to give you five bucks!” The man riffled his money and brought five singles from the wallet. “Now, what the hell do you think of that?”

  “I think I’m not going to take the money,” Danny said, and he walked away.

  He walked quite rapidly at first, and then only rapidly, and then not a bit rapidly, and then rather slowly, and then almost lingeringly, and finally not at all. He looked back. The man was watching him, bills in hand and smiling.

  “What do you think now, kid?” the man said.

  “Now I’m not so sure.”

  The man made a wad of the bills and tossed it. [Do you, or don’t you? Do you, or don’t you?] Danny caught the money on the fly.

  “Thanks, mister,” the boy said.

  “You’re welcome,” the man said. “And remember what I told you: you’re very very.”

  Approaching the gate, Danny saw an old woman sitting on a camp-chair near the wall. On her lap was a basket loaded with pretzels.

  “Pretzels, two cents,” she said.

  [You never should’ve taken the money, and now that you had it, you didn’t want it. You ought to give it away, all of it.]

  “Pretzels, two cents,” the old woman said.

  Danny dropped something into her basket and marched off up Fifth Avenue. The old woman stared after him and then stared down at the basket. She picked up the something and smoothed it out: it was a one-dollar-bill. She stared after Danny again. He was marching uptown, whistling Yankee Doodle.

  Harriet Must be Home by Six O’Clock

  From the front window of their flat, Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Johnson watched their son, who had just appeared on the sidewalk below in the company of Miss Harriet Bryant, and from the front window of a flat in the adjoining building, Mr. and Mrs. Howard Bryant watched their daughter. Harriet and Danny started off up the street, turned a corner, and were gone: it was 1:01 o’clock on a spring Sunday afternoon, and they were having their first date.

  The itinerary that Danny had planned included: a ride across town on the 125th Street trolley (ten cents); a ride on the Broadway subway to Van Cortlandt Park (ten cents); a walk in the park for Nature-study and the witnessing of sporting-exhibitions of any kind (free); a ride back to 125th Street on the Broadway subway (ten cents); a walk across 125th Street for sodas at Huyler’s (twenty cents); and, lastly, a walk home (free). For the realization of this plan, Mr. and Mrs. Howard Bryant had agreed on a time-limit of five hours.

  At 1:10, hardly a moment after boarding the trolley and making his first expenditure of the day, Danny felt a minor but persistent physical discomfort somewhere between his navel and his backbone. He tried to subdue it in conversation with Harriet. “I always look at the ads,” he said, “but they’re all pretty foolish.”

  “I like the pictures,” Harriet said.

  “‘My thing is the best thing,’ they say.”

  “My favorite is the one where a man is smoking, and the smoke goes up and makes a lady’s face.”

  “Take the ads for tires,” Danny said. “They all say, ‘This is the best tire in the whole world.’ But they can’t all be the best. One of them is got to be the worst.”

  “My next favorite is the kind that shows people before and after they take things. In the ‘before’ part, the person is always fat or old or sick or tired. In the ‘after’ part, he runs around with lightning coming out of him.”

  “The dumbest of all is where men’re having a tug-of-war with a pair of pants instead of a rope.”

  “In the ads about silverware,” Harriet said, “there’s always a bride and groon. I like that.”

  “Either the men can’t pull very hard,” Danny said, “or else the pants’re made out of iron.”

  The trolley crossed St. Nicholas Avenue at 1:22, and Danny was reminded of the slight discomfort by the discomfort itself. It did not seem to have grown worse since first noticed, but it had grown no better, and Danny wondered briefly whether it would come or go.

  “All out for Broadway!” the conductor said.

  At 1:36, Danny and Harriet caught a train for Van Cortlandt Park, and at 1:40, he realized that the pain had come to stay—indeed, to increase.

  “I’m never going to get married,” Harriet said, “but if I ever get married, my husband is going to smoke a cigar like the man in the ad.”

  “Why aren’t you going to get married?” Danny said.

  “Because all men’re beasts.”

  “What’s that mean—all men’re beasts?”

  “I don’t know. I heard my mother say it.”

  By the time 168th Street was reached, the pain had revealed itself to be a pressure, and by Dyckman Street, the pressure had become traceable to two definite centers: two small balloons seemed to have found their way into the boy’s body, and while not yet full, clearly they were being inflated. It was 1:59.

  “Are you ever going to get married?” Harriet said.

  “I never thought about it,” Danny said.

  “Well, think now.”

  Danny began to think at 2:06, and he thought until 2:12, at which time the train crossed Spuyten Duyvil Creek, but during those six minutes his thoughts had been concerned only with the two balloons that he contained: they were growing, they were growing!

  “Did you think yet?” Harriet said.

  “I been thinking all the time, but I can’t make up my mind.”

  “What takes you so long?”

  “I can’t remember if all ladies are beasts too.”

  As the train drew out of 238th Street, which it did at 2.21, Danny put his hand behind him as if to straighten his jacket. His real purpose, however, was to verify with his fingers what his mind had imagined: that the balloons had begun to bulge from his back. They had not.

  “My mother never said anything about that,” Harriet said.

  “Van Cortn Park!” the conductor said. “All out!”

  It was 2:26 when they left the train. At 2:27, they passed a door near the ticket-seller’s window: on the door hung a blue and white sign reading MEN. At 2:29, they were in the park and walking across the grass toward the Parade Ground, and walking with them, uninvited, was a small brown dog. A tree changed the dog’s course as a leash would have changed it, and after making a thorough reconnaissance with its nose, it set itself up alongside the trunk and hosed it down. But Danny and Harriet had gone by, and it was 2:32, and the boy was thinking of home. [ You’d bust before you got there!]

  “Of course,” Harriet said, “if I ever met anybody that wasn’t a beast.…”

  “I’m not a beast,” Danny said, “but sometimes I wish I was.” [What did you say that for? Were you crazy?]

  At 2:41, they crossed the ou
tfield of a pick-up ball-game just as a long fly was driven over a diamond marked off with folded coats. There were basemen, but no fielders, and the ball, falling safe far behind short, rolled among some bushes.

  [If you got it, you’d be in the bushes too!] Danny started to run, saying, “I’ll get it!”

  “I’ll help!” Harriet said, and she ran too.

  Danny stopped. “Ah, they’ll find it themselves.”

  Harriet stopped. “I don’t like baseball.”

  [It was worse now. You shouldn’t’ve run.]

  Between 2:50 and 3:35, Danny and Harriet wandered through the wooded park—over knolls and rock, along the bank of a lake, on trails among the shrubbery—and Harriet identified nine trees (linden, ash, maple, elm, birch, beech, walnut, sycamore, and poplar), eight birds (sparrow, starling, pigeon, robin, warbler, shrike, jay, and flicker), and four animals (dog, horse, squirrel, and chipmunk). [What were you going to do? What were you going to DO?] From 3.35 to 4:15, Danny and Harriet watched a ball-game between the Edgecomb Rockets (colored) and the Mosholu Giants (white). The score in the fourth inning, when they first came upon the scene, had been 27—5 in favor of the Giants; when they left, at the end of the sixth inning, the score was 39—31 in favor of the Rockets, and a boy near Danny was singsonging, “The sky is pink. The Giants stink.” [You couldn’t wait a minute, not another single minute!] At 4:24, they passed the clock over the ticket-seller’s window at the Van Cortlandt Park station, and two seconds later, they passed a blue and white sign reading MEN. At 4:26, their train pulled out for downtown. [A terrible thing was going to happen, and the more you thought about it, the more terrible it was going to be—and the sooner it was going to happen. You had to talk. You had to move your feet. You had to swallow, blink, bite your nails, curl your toes, and count the chung-gum squashes on the floor. You had to read the ads, everyword, every letter, every number. You can teach a parrot to say children cry for it (225th Street) everybody drives a used railway mail-clerk in payments (207th Street) not even your best four out of five get that schoolgirl toasted amazement in the big blue package marked Jesus Saves (181st Street) for heartburn headache hernia colds cornsrectal soreness morning-mouth periodic pain look for this signature(168th Street) the sky is pink the Giants stink all men are pink beasts strrrike shrike shriek shroke clupeco-shrunk (145th Street) tooth-decay tattletale gray buy this buy that buy mine buy the best (125th Street) THE BEST!]

  It was 5:16 on a spring Sunday afternoon.

  “Let’s take the car!” Danny said.

  “I thought we were going to walk,” Harriet said.

  “The car’s faster!”

  “We’ve still got lots of time.”

  “Maybe Huyler’s’ll be closed!”

  “We could go to a druk-store.”

  “Druk-store sodas are no good!”

  “We could get ice-cream combs.”

  “Sodas are better! Let’s take the car!”

  They took the car, reaching Huyler’s at 5:31.

  “What’ll it be?” the soda-clerk said.

  “Chocolate soda, chocolate cream,” Harriet said.

  “Two!” Danny said.

  “Two what?” the clerk said.

  “Two chocolate sodas!”

  “What kind of cream you want?”

  “Chocolate!”

  “Why’n’t you say so?”

  “I did say so! I said, ‘Two!’”

  “How should I know what ‘two’ means?”

  “Two means two! It don’t mean six!”

  “You’re kind of fresh, ain’t you?”

  “I ain’t stale!”

  “Lucky for you this is Huyler’s.”

  “If it’s Huyler’s, jerk two sodas!”

  “Take your time, cull. Take your time.”

  [What’ll people say? What’ll Mr. Huyler do?]

  Harriet had barely penetrated the foam of her soda when Danny finished his, and blobs of unmelted ice-cream were cold-burning the lining of his stomach. He pressed his legs together and jigged his revolving chair, and as Harriet big-eyed him over a spoonful, he gave her a spasm of a smile and began to beat a rhythm with his fingers and feet.

  They left Huyler’s at 5:51 and drew up before Harriet’s house at 5:59.

  “G’bye!” Danny said, and he fled.

  Traveling at high speed, he passed through the parlor of the Johnson flat at 6:00. His father and mother looked at each other and then at the banged-shut door of the bathroom, and faintly through the panels they heard a long sighed-out “Ooooooooh!” When Danny emerged, it was 6:05.

  “Why did you wait so long?” his mother said.

  “I had to be polite,” the boy said. “What’ve we got for supper?”

  That’s Telling him, Kid

  “You’ll know the truth if you listen to me,” Doc Knox had said during the first lecture in Political Science, and now, during the last, he was saying, “A slew of you numbskulls are wondering, after twenty weeks of this course, what it’s had to do with The Star-Spangled Banner. Most of you won’t ever know, because most of you came here without brains, and after sitting here without imagination, you’re about to leave here without names. Not yet old enough to vote, you’ve already been forgotten, as if you’d lived for seventy years with no more to your credit than wearing a hole in the top of a chiffonier with a gold-plated collar button. With three exceptions, you’re the people who’ll some day be retired, after fifty years of service as night-watchmen, with a testimonial and a brass clock that won’t run. You’re the people whose contributions to Truth will be such astounding feats as balancing thirty thousand matches on the neck of a bottle, rolling six hundred miles of string into a ball, and saving two tons of cigar store coupons to win a vacuum-cleaner. You’re the streetcar-con ductors of tomorrow, the waiters, the clerks, the hack-drivers, the barbers—the people who grow old without having aged, the people who eat everything and taste nothing, who look without seeing, who talk without words, who live without rhyme and die without reason. It was not to hear my own voice that I said at the beginning, ‘I don’t like people.’”

  [What was so terrible about being a hack-driver?]

  “I like the truth, though,” Doc Knox was saying, “and therefore all year I’ve spoken only to the three of you who will some day know what it is: William Eliot, Saul Benjamin, and Martin Kennedy. The other thirty-five I now gratefully face for the last time are the dummies of The Great Ventriloquist. The words that seem to come from your mouths are those of The Eternal Faker whose hand is under your suit, and you move, but your motion is wired. Is it speech when a conductor says, ‘Fares, please?’ Is it action to drive a hack from Murray Hill to Washington Arch…?”

  Danny raised his hand.

  “What do you want?” Doc Knox said.

  “My father is a hack-driver.”

  “Well, what about it?”

  “You have no right to talk about him.”

  “I’m not talking about your father. I never met the gentleman.”

  “You were being sneering about hack-drivers.”

  “I was talking about hack-drivers in general.”

  “I don’t know about general hack-drivers. I only know about my father.”

  Doc Knox addressed the class. “Is there anybody here whose father is a clerk?” Three boys showed hands. “Is there anybody whose father is a barber?” One hand went up. “A streetcar-conductor?” One. “Now, is there anybody who thought I meant his father in particular?” Danny’s hand was alone. “That makes you the only one the shoe fits.”

  “I don’t care what the class thinks,” Danny said. “I don’t even care what you think. I only care what I think, and I think it isn’t right for teachers to go around insulting people and calling them dummies and telling them they’ll wind up being a hack-driver, as if that was the worst thing in the world for anybody to be. It isn’t the best—I know that as good as you do—but no matter what, it isn’t a person’s fault if that’s all he can do for a living
. My father never went to college like you did, so he turned out to be a hack driver, but that’s no reason to make fun of him. Maybe if he’d’ve went to college, he’d’ve turned out to be a better teacher than you did. At least, maybe he wouldn’t go around saying, ‘I don’t like people. I like the truth.’ The truth, the truth—that’s all you ever talk about, but you didn’t really teach us the truth. We found out about the Consatution is built up on property, not democracy, and the Spanish-American War was on account of the sugar-plantations, not the starved Cubans, but that isn’t what anybody means by the truth. It don’t do any good to know about the sugar-plantations if you don’t like the starved Cubans.…”

  The Growing Pain

  “Danny carried no books home today: there were no books to be carried. The last examination of his freshman year had been taken, the last sundae had been downed at Ward’s Drug Store, and the next to the last summer goodbye had been said, and he walked east on 59th Street, lugging nothing in his hands but his hands: he traveled light, and he was all spring and sponge, flight and feather, push and piston, and there seemed to be no resistance in the air. He crossed to the parkside beyond Columbus Circle, but he scaled the wall only with his eyes. Hair hung down over the faces of trees, and now and then a breeze came to comb it.

  [The sound a forest makes is forest, forest.]

  He remembered the cup of tea and the biscuits, the window and the rain, the teacher’s voice and the teacher’s words, and the darkness of the room, and he remembered a sound that he had heard only in his mind, the brushing of hair, and he thought he could hear the name Juno Forrest, Juno Forrest. The iron-framed doors were open, and the dim hall grew dimmer as it deepened, and standing before the gilt grille, the boy listened to the elevator wobble down its slots, and he breathed the cool stale air of the shaft, but when the car neared the ground-floor, he turned suddenly to the stairway and walked up to the seventh landing. He rang the bell of Apartment 8F. [The sound a forest makes is forest!] There was no answer. He seated himself on the steps leading to the roof, and in the silent gloom, in the windowless room, he closed his eyes, and then he was in a room within a room, and there to think was to feel thoughts grow, and they grew, and he desired the growth to be without end.