A Man Without Shoes

by John Sanford

  “That was a beautiful thing to say,” Danny said, “but it would’ve been even more so if John Brown’d said it and lived. People always say fine things about the rotten things that happen to them, but the rotten things go right on happening.”

  “This isn’t Heaven, kid,” the Boss said, “and in case you don’t know it, those’re people out there in the street, not Christs walking on water. That’s all you’ll meet in a long lifetime, is people. They don’t know everything yet, but if they ever do, they’ll learn it from words—and they’re learning all the time, whenever somebody gets beat over the head, or tarred and feathered, or castrated, or castor-oiled, and I say to you, kid, God help those with a rope or a blackjack or a gun in their hands on the day when they know enough!” He shook Danny’s manuscript. “But they’ll never learn anything from this. What were you trying to show—that Sacco and Vanzetti’re only supported by assassins? How does it sound when I read it out loud?”

  Joe Scarlatti says: “I been in ice-business all time after I come to this contry in 1913. In this contry is much enjustice for Italiani, hitting by police, shooting, deportating, framming up, putting in jails for nothings. And now the two peoples Sacco Vanzetti in jails same way, and now it is sure thing all Italiani be kill or push out of his home if they not at once get pistol and defend themself from capitlist-imperalist brutalism. We must march to the jails and liberate all the politicals.”

  “And how do you like this?”

  Wladek Gajda says: “States of America is land of big chance for poor man, no? Well, me, I am poor man with big chance live in cellar of apartsment-house, a janater. I am open up the mouth to this, I am been told why you no go back where you come? But I am been citisen States of America, pay good money for papers, and I am have right to be on land of big chance, and now I am see I will always live in cellar without I am fight and kill to live right. This why I am say all people must fight and kill to get Mr. Sacco Vanzetti out of cellar which is jail.”

  “What did you do, kid—write all these yourself? Where are the teachers you were talking about, and the waiters, and the lawyers, and the letter-carriers? All you’ve got here is a gang of coal-heavers that want to see the color of Wall Street blood this afternoon. This stuff is hot enough to cook on. The opening is okay, and the hat-passing at the end is okay, but everything in between has to come out, every last one of these crank-letters, because that’s what they are. In their place, I want what you promised me. I want a letter from a sensible shoemaker. I want a letter from a careful lawyer.…”

  “I get you, Boss!” Danny said.

  [A week later, you handed him another batch of manuscript, and he made you wait at his desk while he read it.]

  “The letters,” the Boss said. “That’s all I care a damn about.”

  Juno Forrest says: “I have been a member of the faculty of DeWitt Clinton High School for several years, and as such I feel that I have been entrusted with a share in the development of American youth. I do not take my responsibility lightly, for I believe that educators, along with parents and the clergy, are bound to do everything in their power to promote good citizenship. All their efforts, however, will be fruitless if those in their charge lack one basic requirement: respect for the law. There can be no such respect if the ordinary rules of justice are not observed by our courts, and it is for this reason, and not because I am morally certain that Sacco and Vanzetti are innocent, that I believe the defendants are entitled to a new trial, a trial conducted in the traditional American way, impartially, fairly, and in an atmosphere free from all suspicion of prejudice and hysteria.”

  Raymond Powell says: “My grandfather was born a slave in Georgia, and he stayed there when he was freed after the war, thinking he would get his forty acres and a mule. Instead, he got hung. My father was only nine or ten at the time, but he knew enough not to want to die like that, so he came up north to die more slowly, and he did. He was married at twenty, he had six children by the time he was thirty, and he died of consumption before reaching forty. I am the only member of that family still alive. I have a family of my own now, and I don’t want it to die by lynching, or consumption, or rheumatic fever, or syphilis. I want it to have a home and food and decent work and a good education. I want it to live, because people have that right just by being people, not only by being white. And more than anything else, I want it to feel that it has the right to be on earth—and that is why I am heart and soul against the conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti. I am against it above all because they are innocent, but as a Negro, I am also against it because they are poor. The Negro will only win his rights by siding with the oppressed, and the oppressed are the poor, who are all colors.”

  Francis X. Russell says: “I’m a building-contractor, and I don’t use nothing but ginny-labor. In my book, they’re real nice people, steady, moddest, argue a lot but never go hog-wild like the micks. I wouldn’t hire a mick on a bet. Only ginnies, and I make it a rule to treat them square, full pay, no kickbacks, and time-and-a-half for overtime—and if they want a union, that’s all right by me too, what’s it my business? I found out long ago if you treat people good they’ll do the same by you, like my ginnies. I never stood over them with a clock and a whip, but I always got a good day’s work out of them, and that’s all I expect. But this Sacco-Vanzetti thing is starting to bollix up the works. The way I figure, my ginnies kind of hold me partially rasponsible for two of their people being in jail, and maybe I am, who can say? I feel lousy enough about it to always chip in for lawyer-fees and the like, and twice I got up off my butt and spoke at Sacco-Vanzetti meetings, but things are only getting worse, and my ginnies don’t like me so much any more. Do I think them two guys are guilty? Well, it’s hard to say, not knowing them personally or seen them in action in the court. Man is full of sin and shame, but I think I’d string along with the poor devils, and I’ll tell you why. First, I know ginnies, and they’re good-hearted people, talking murder but gentle as Jesus. Second, I also know people like this Judge Thayer, and they don’t have enough milk in them to change the color of tea. And third, aside from me and the ginnies in Boston being Catholic, I just don’t believe the evidence against them.”

  Daniel Johnson says: “When Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested in 1920, I was only a kid halfway through public school. I never even heard of their names till four years later, and if it wasn’t for meeting an Italian boy, I might’ve gone along all my life without knowing about their great struggle for justice in a country that’s supposed to stand for justice ahead of everything else. I can’t vote yet, being only seventeen, but I’m as much of a citizen as I’ll ever be, and that means I’m as much of a citizen as any American ever was. I’m no Lincoln, or Jackson, or Jefferson, but sometimes I get to thinking that we come from the same family, like they were my uncles or grandfathers, and I couldn’t be prouder of the fine things they did if we really were related by blood, just like I couldn’t be more ashamed of the cheap things that Hamilton did, and Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson, and Grant. The way this country started out, everybody thought it was going to be the greatest place on earth, with liberty and justice for all, but we got less and less fine things and more and more cheap things—the Mexican War, the Dred Scott decision, the whole Reconstruction, the Indian Wars, the Pullman Strike—and I feel that every time one of them happened, a white star in our flag turned black. We’ve got a lot of black stars now, and it can’t go on much longer, or we’ll run out of white ones, and then it won’t be a flag any more, but a rag so dirty that no decent man will wipe his feet on it, let alone take his hat off to it or die for it. It’ll belong to the Hamiltons and the Roger Taneys and the Webster Thayers and the rich, and they can uncover for it, and they can die for the red-black-and-blue, but no decent man will weep when it comes down for the last time—and it must come down, because only traitors will be left to defend it.”

  [They’re still only words, you thought, and then you had to say it, and you said it.] “They’re still only words,”
he said.

  “Maybe,” the Boss said, “but, by Christ, they’re made out of iron this time!”

  [You felt as if you’d won a medal.]

  GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME

  In February, at the beginning of his eighth term, Danny applied to the head of the Department for permission to surrender his study-periods and schedule a repeat of English 6. The request was granted, but on working out a program, Danny found that only one course in the subject matched his spare time—the one given by Mr. Holloway.

  [You boned up on English like you meant to teach it some day, but weeks went by, and Holloway never called on you once, and you took to volunteering, and still he ignored you, and then finally it dawned on you what the dirty louse was up to: he was going to let you ride the course without a single mark for or against, and you’d pass or flunk on the basis of your showing in the final exam, so that no matter how tough he made it, you’d have no comeback. Ah, the miserable bastard! You tried a few times to trick him into letting you recite, sliding down low in your seat and making believe you’d just as soon be forgotten, all the while hoping he’d think you were unprepared and jump you with, “Johnson, get up and make an ass of yourself,” but he was too cagey to fall for that, and then you just gave up and sat it out.]

  Exam-week, and four years of high school with it, would soon be over. The State Regents had been taken earlier, and of the school-finals, only a few moments of the last—English 6—remained. Danny had completed his paper, and while he read it for errors, the master clock in the Principal’s office began to run off the closing quarter-hour.

  [You went through your booklet from cover to cover, and except for putting in a comma here and there, you found nothing that you knew enough to change. It’d been one bugger of an exam, harder and sneakier than English 8, and a lot of guys were going to bust it that could’ve passed any other exam in the Department—and all on account of you. Holloway had taken aim at little ole D.J. and bagged a bunch of poor innocent slobs, and you felt sorry for them—and in a way you felt sorry for that sad son-of-a-bitch of a teacher too, because he hadn’t hit the one thing he gave a damn about hitting: you.]

  The bell had not yet rung, but there was no need for Danny to wait for it, and he rose, handed in his booklet, and started for the door.

  “Just a minute, Johnson!” Holloway said. “What’s your hurry?”

  “I’m finished,” Danny said, “and I’m taking myself for a walk.”

  “First, open your coat,” Holloway said.

  Pens paused, even those held by the time-torn and the desperate.

  “Open my coat!” Danny said. “What for?”

  “So that you can empty your pockets onto my desk.”

  “That’s searching me! What right’ve you got to do that?”

  “None. That’s why you’re going to search yourself.”

  “You let other guys go without showing what they had in their pockets. Why not me?”

  “They didn’t cheat last year. You did.”

  “That don’t mean I cheated this year! Did you see me cheat?”

  “The question is, did you cheat without my seeing you? And you’re going to answer it by emptying your pockets.”

  “I’m not supposed to prove I’m innocent! You’re supposed to prove I’m guilty!”

  “If you’re innocent, you ought to be only too glad to prove it yourself.”

  “That’s not how it is in the law,” Danny said. “I cheated last year, and you punished me by giving me a flunk, but you can’t go on punishing me for the same thing year after year. It isn’t fair to say I’ll always be a cheat because I cheated once, and it isn’t fair to make small of me like this in front of the whole class. If you saw me with a pony this afternoon, you have a right to say so straight out, but you have no right to just sit there and be suspicious!”

  “I have a right to flunk you again, though.”

  “Not for cheating—only for writing a poor paper!” Danny said. “And you’ll have to bust your back to make this one out to be poor. I know what I got in there.”

  Holloway picked up Danny’s booklet, and weighing it gravely, he said, “It feels pretty poor, Johnson.”

  “But, God damn it, you haven’t even read it!”

  “It’ll be poor when I get to it,” Holloway said. “Unless you empty your pockets.…”

  [You turned yourself inside-out. From your chest-pocket, you took the pen-and-pencil set you’d gotten from Pop and Mom on your seventeenth birthday. From your outside pocket on the left came a box of jujubes, two Sweet Caps, and a blotter advertising the Corn Exchange Bank. In the one on the right, you had about a dollar in small change and a book of matches. You looked at Holloway, but he still wasn’t satisfied. From the label-pocket of your coat, you brought a pin-seal wallet, the one Gil Spence had given you for teaching him the Charleston, and from the watch-pocket of your pants an Ingersoll Yankee on a fob of foreign coins. There was a red-and-white bandana in your left hip-pocket, and your right was empty except for a little wad of worn newspaper that fell apart when you tried to spread it (the face of a man, it might’ve been, maybe two men). In the left pocket of your pants, there were a few paper clips, and then you stuck your hand into the right one, the last pocket of all, and for a few seconds you let it stay there. Holloway came up slowly from his chair (“Teachers aren’t quite as stupid as you kids seem to think.”), and you did your best to smile away the jigging water on your eyes, but it was too late, and they were windows in the rain.]

  “What’s in that pocket, Johnson?”

  Danny’s hand came forth, and it came with the lining. A pinch of dust fell to the floor, a few crumbs and nameless grains, a skein of lint, a match-head, and that was all.

  And then the last bell rang.

  * * *

  “… I should’ve said, ‘You can go plumb to hell, you old bastard! I wouldn’t empty my pockets for you to save your life, and if you flunk me for standing up for my rights, I’ll come back and bat your ears off with a piece of pipe!’ Instead, I practically got undressed for him! Jesus Christ, why did I do it? Why was I such a yellow dog? I should’ve said, ‘You mean old devil, you’re not sore because you caught me cheating last year; you’re sore because you didn’t catch me this year!’ I should’ve said, ‘You’re like Webster Thayer, another dried-up pimp for the rich! He didn’t try Sacco and Vanzetti for murder; he tried them for being Italian radicals!’ I should’ve spit in his face! I should’ve backed him against the wall and cuffed his plates out! I should’ve, I should’ve, but I didn’t: I showed him my wallet, my rotten little box of candy, my snotty handkerchief, my guts! Nick and Bart’ve been in jail for years now, and they’ve lost everything but their lives, but they’re still fighting back, and they’ll always be fighting back, even after they’re dead—but not me, not Danny Johnson! I let a mutt like Holloway bulldoze me into zipping open my heart! I feel sick! Honest to God, I feel sick! I’m no damn good for anything in the world …!”

  “Please, Danny,” Miss Forrest said. “Please …!”

  THE SPOKEN WORD, THE WRITTEN WORD

  “When I left that building a week ago,” Danny said, “I swore I’d never set foot in it again.”

  “You said that before, son,” his mother said, “but what we’re trying to find out is why.”

  “I’ve got my reasons.”

  “I think, in all fairness, that Pop and I have a right to know them. We gave up something to send you to high school for four years, and in return, the least you can do is tell us why you refuse to go to your own graduation.”

  A far-off mumble of Pullman trucks grew uptown into the Commodore Vanderbilt doing a glissando over a keyboard of ties. “I have important reasons,” Danny said. “Important to me.”

  “Important enough to prevent your parents from enjoying a moment they’ve looked forward to for such a long time? We have no other sons to wait for, Danny. If we don’t see you on that platform tonight, we’ll never see anyone.”

 
; “Let him alone, Polly,” the hack-driver said, and he put a hand on his son’s arm. “It’s all right, kid.”

  “When I left that building,” Danny said, “I went across the street and looked back, and I said right out loud, ‘So help me God, I’ll never go through those doors again!’ And I never will.”

  “But why?” his mother said. “That’s what I can’t understand.”

  “Let him alone,” the hack-driver said. “Let the kid alone.…”

  * * *

  … Danny stopped in a dark hallway and knocked on a dark door framed in fine lines of gold. The door opened, and Mig DeLuca was a black form on a block of light.

  “Mr. Lovejoy!” Mig said. “Come on in, kid!”

  “I thought maybe we’d go for a walk.”

  “I’ll walk you. I’ll walk your feet off. But first come in and say hello to my people.”

  On the wall opposite the door hung two photographs, their corners furled over the thumbtacks that held them in place.…

  * * *

  … It was a warm and motionless evening, and the smoke of cigarettes rose a long straight way before blooming. A tug broke the slick Hudson water, shaking the stripes of light laid down by Jersey, and the river, in the tug’s wake, was a rippling flag.