A Man Without Shoes

by John Sanford

  “Miss Forrest,” Danny said, “why do you waste so much time on me?”

  “It isn’t wasted, Dan,” the teacher said.…

  * * *

  … Danny entered the subway-car, found a seat, and stared up at a cornice of ads.

  A voice said, “You win any fights lately?”

  Danny turned. “Dewey!” he said. “Dewey Meyers!”

  “The Battling Bulldog!” Dewey said.

  “Jesus, Dewey, how long has it been?”

  “God only knows. Years and years, I guess.”

  [Remember P. S. 10A? Remember Miss Morey and Mr. Burch? Remember Goggly Roger Lynch and them jawbreakers? Remember the Boy Pioneers? Remember the time you and me and Paul Stagg and Morty Peck …? Remember …? Remember …? ]

  Dewey almost missed his station, barely managing to force himself through the slamming door. “See you,” he said into a window sliding past.

  Danny waved, and Dewey’s face was gone, and then once more he stared up at the cornice of ads.…

  * * *

  …Miss Forrest said, “One night a few weeks ago, you asked me why I spend so much time on you.”

  “I said ‘waste.’”

  “Waste, then. What I want to know is, why do you waste so much time on me?”

  “Spend,” Danny said. “I like you, Miss Forrest.…”

  * * *

  “…TRAIN FOR PHILADELPHIA, WILMINGTON, WASHINGTON, AND POINTS SOUTH—ON TRACK NINE!”

  “That’s you, Tootsie,” Danny said.

  [An hour before, at seven in the morning, you and Pop had called for him in the Pierce-A, and sitting on his straw suitcase, he’d been waiting for you in front of the stoop. His father and mother and sister stood near him, you remembered, and a crowd of neighbors packed the doorway and the steps and spilled over onto the sidewalk, and there were black faces in many of the windows upstairs and across the street, and everybody looked happy because Tootsie was everybody’s son that day: every family on the block was sending a boy away to college. You remembered getting out to help with the suitcase, but a couple of kids beat you to it, and very carefully they picked it up, and very carefully they stowed it under the meter (no fare), and then Mrs. Powell kissed Tootsie goodbye, and she wasn’t the only woman who began to cry into an apron, and then he hugged his sister and shook hands with his father, and then the two of you climbed in, and Pop honked out a pair of longs, and you were off.]

  “That’s me, Danny,” Tootsie said.

  “Well, shoe-shine boy, you made it.”

  “All I made is a start.”

  “That’s all you ever needed, Tootsie.”

  “TRAIN FOR WASHINGTON—ON TRACK NINE!”

  “So long, Danny-boy.”

  “So long, partner. I only hope you get to be President.”

  They shook hands four-handed, and then Tootsie took up his suitcase and went through the gate, and at the head of the steps he turned to wave, and Danny waved back with a fist. The colored boy started down, and Danny watched a golden word on a red sticker (TUSKEGEE) until it was out of sight….

  * * *

  “… I’ve got to go to Boston, kid,” the Boss said. “My old lady’ll have my toothbrush packed by the time you reach the house. Get it to me at the Grand Central clock by four sharp. You’ve got an hour.”

  Danny put on his hat and headed for the door.

  “And pick up a toothbrush for yourself,” the Boss said. “You’re going along.”

  Danny broke into a run.

  [You saw three hours of New England before the sun went down—fields, woods, hills, rivers, and for a long way the Sound—and then in the dark a farm was a single light, and a town was many lights, and a steamer was a loop of lights, and sometimes all you could see outside was the inside of the car, and somewhere along the line you fell asleep and dreamed of delivering documents, of chasing around corners for coffee, of two faces, two lincoln-tired faces.…]

  “Doing anything this morning?” the Boss said.

  “Anything you tell me,” Danny said.

  “I want you to go over to Charlestown.”

  “Not to see Nick and Bart!”

  The Boss shook his head. “To see the prison,” he said. “To stand there for a while and look at it, that’s all.”

  [You stood there and looked, and you knew that never again would you be able to hear of the Mayflower Compact, or Plymouth Rock, or the First Thanksgiving, without thinking of a high and dirty stone wall, and never again, without being surrounded by that wall, would there be a Tea Party, or an Old South Church, or a Bunker Hill. They were all in jail, along with an Italian shoemaker and an Italian fish-peddler, and history belonged to them now, not to the Back Bay windbags who could still come and go.]

  “Did you have any important thoughts?” the Boss said.

  “Some,” Danny said, “but no walls fell down….”

  * * *

  … On the supper-table, propped against a sugar-bowl, stood a letter from Tootsie. Danny had read it, and phrases were still being played by his mind [“I’m here to learn one thing: how to be black.”]. “Pop,” Danny said, “do you ever feel badly about not being able to send me to college?”

  The hack-driver looked up from his plate. “Do you ever feel badly about not being sent?”

  “Well, to tell the truth, I sometimes say to myself, ‘Why couldn’t my old man’ve been rich?’ and then I say, ‘Tootsie got to college, and his old man’s a waiter on a table.’ I kind of switch back and forth. I think, ‘It’s up to a father to see that his children get a good education,’ and then I think, ‘How would you like to hear that from your own children?’”

  The hack-driver glanced at his wife for a moment, and then he said, “I know what you’re thinking—that I’m going to blow up—but I’m not, and I’ll tell you why. Our fine little boy ain’t said a thing that we didn’t say ourselves one morning about eighteen years ago. Remember that morning, Polly?”

  “What did you talk about?” Danny said.

  The hack-driver put a spoon into his coffee-cup and steered it through many circuits before saying, “It’s funny, but we talked about tonight.”

  “Talked about tonight eighteen years ago?”

  “I said, ‘The day’ll come when he chucks it up to me about being a poor stiff of a hack-driver,’ and Mom said, ‘I want to see how far he gets on nothing.’” The man’s eyes made a cruise of the room and returned to the coffee-cup. “I never meant for things to turn out like this—three rooms in a tenement, and no eats tomorrow if I croak tonight—but all in all, I’m glad that Mom’s had her way. You’d only be a stinker if we had money, and as things are, you’re an honest stinker. I’ve got no regrets.”

  [You’d never forget the way Mom looked at Pop when he said that: her expression was like a kiss on the mouth—and you knew that no matter what you ever did for her, no matter how far you went on nothing, you’d always and only run second to a man who called himself a poor stiff of a hack-driver.]

  “Dan,” the woman said, and she spoke to the father, not the son, “you’ve gone far on nothing too.…”

  * * *

  … Low slow clouds sailed among the reefs of the city and ripped their hulls, and the first rain of a long dry fall fell hard. Side by side at a window, Danny and the Boss watched the downpour streak the air and tuft the asphalt, and they watched people cower, as if rain struck only the erect, and they watched a truck turn the corner, tread water for a way, and then swerve, sideswiping a sedan parked at the curb.

  “Another lawsuit,” the Boss said.

  “I’m a witness,” Danny said. “I’m going down and give in my name.”

  “What did you witness, Mr. Witness?”

  “That woman started to cross in the middle of the street, and the truck-driver had to slam on his brakes so’s not to hit her.”

  “What else did you witness?”

  “His wheels locked, and he skidded into that sedan, but it was all the woman’s fault, and that�
��s what I’m going down and say.”

  “You’ll be wasting your time, kid. The truck-driver’s going to foot the bill.”

  “But he wasn’t responsible. It was an accident.”

  “You want the law on the subject?” the Boss said. “‘Accident is no excuse for trespass to property.’”

  “That’s a hell of a law!” Danny said. “If the guy hadn’t hit the floor with his brakes, he’d’ve killed the woman!”

  “That’s just what he should’ve done. He made a bum pick.”

  “Boss,” Danny said, “you’re crazy!”

  “I wish I was, because ‘Accident is full excuse for trespass to the person.’”

  Danny stared at him for a moment, and then he said, “You mean if something happens that you have no control over, and you have to make up your mind whether to run over a human being or a dog, you only have to pay damages for the dog?”

  “That’s a hundred per cent right.”

  “Well, I think it’s a hundred per cent wrong!”

  “So do I, and I’m a dog-lover—but that’s the law.”

  “Why don’t people do something about it?”

  “They’re doing the best they know how,” the Boss said. “They’re trying to be dogs.…”

  * * *

  … Danny wrote, “I don’t know why I’ve let such a long time go by without answering your letter, but it surely hasn’t been a case of out-of-sight out-of-mind, because I talk about you whenever I see the guys, especially Julie Pollard, and I think about you a lot, and last Sunday I looked in on your folks to find out what was new with you.…” [And you went on to tell him about how you put in your spare time at Billy Grupp’s gym, watching Julie work out, and you told him about Mig and what Mig was doing (even though the two of them had never met), and you told him about your second trip to Boston, when Thayer denied the Madeiros motion, and what you wound up with was so hard to explain that you didn’t explain it at all: you simply wrote it.] “… On the way back, somewhere around New London, I saw a track-crew heading for home on a handcar—up and down, up and down, two men up and two men down—and I thought to myself, ‘Christ, that kind of thing could go on forever! If I was aboard, I’d pull up when I ought to push down—just for the hell of it…!’”

  Tootsie wrote, “… Anarchist-stuff. All it’ll get you is a broken head….”

  Danny wrote, “…That’ll be all right, just so I break one on the other side….”

  Tootsie wrote, “… Grow up. The world never comes out even when it loses one good man and one bastard….”

  Danny wrote, “… Greetings of the season. I wonder what Christmas is like down there in hell….”

  Tootsie wrote, “… Same as up there in Heaven. The rich prayed and ate, and the poor prayed and watched….”

  Danny wrote, “… I never believed everybody ate down there. I just didn’t know anybody prayed….”

  Tootsie wrote, “…They pray all the time, boy, and most of’em wouldn’t stop if a nigger was being lynched on the bell-rope….”

  Danny wrote, “… I’m eighteen years old today. I think I’ll celebrate by socking a cop in the nose….”

  Tootsie wrote, “…You sound like Julie. Always wanting to bust somebody. Always wanting to get what you want by force….”

  Danny wrote, “…There’s no other way to get it. Life is a hand-car, and I wish I could run it into a ditch….”

  Tootsie wrote, “…Thayer should’ve sent you up instead of the Italians. He’d’ve had a lot more reason….”

  Danny wrote, “…Tomorrow’s a day of special importance. They come up for sentence….”

  A DAY OF SPECIAL IMPORTANCE: APRIL 9, 1927

  “Get the papers, kid,” the Boss said.

  [In the office that morning, the whole staff, from the Boss on down to you, had waited for one particular message (BOSTON CALLING NEW YORK!) and marked time with its heartbeat and blood. The call had come through just before noon, and when the Boss picked up the receiver, it was as if clocks and pulses had suddenly stopped, and in the dead moment you’d heard him say a single word—the word “Oh,” spoken very quietly—and the clocks had begun to tick again, and the hearts, and then after a long while he’d taken a coin from his pocket and spun it out over the glass top of his desk, where it dwindled to a waltz and ended in a curtsy]

  The people in the street seemed unreal, and the more customary their conduct, the more unreal they grew. They walked and spoke as usual, some idly and some with passion, and they gaped at merchandise and turned at will to catch the hang of passing clothes, and they whistled according to their ability, chewed gum and toothpicks, laughed when laughter seized them, and tapped cigarettes in fashionable fashion—actions with little purpose and no meaning, yet the boy observed them from a mood of exile, as if he were a mourner watching children at play. A man spat into the gutter, a woman held her skirts as she crossed a grating, a girl made a chalk-line on a shopwindow, and a policeman held an acrobatic club, but beings and behavior both were seen from another world.

  “Read to us, kid,” the Boss said.

  [You didn’t want to read. You wanted to walk a long long way, through the park and over to the Drive and then up along the river, watching the tugs and the ferries and the wind on the water and the smoke of trains against the Palisades. You didn’t want to hear the sound of voices, your own or any other]

  “Read about Nick and Bart, kid,” the Boss said.

  Danny said, “I’m not a very good reader.…”

  … Replying to the Clerk’s question, whether there was any reason why sentence should not be passed, the prisoner Sacco said: “…The sentence will be between two class, the oppressed class and the rich class, and there will be always collision between one and the other. We fraternize the people with the books, with the literature. You persecute the people, tyrannize over them and kill them. We try the education of the people always. You try to put a path between us and some other nationality that hates each other. That is why I am here today on this bench, for having been the oppressed class. Well, you are the oppressor. You know it, Judge Thayer. You know all my life, you know why I have been here, and after seven years that you have been persecuting me and my poor wife, and you still today sentence us to death. I would like to tell all my life, but what is the use? … I am never been guilty, never. Not yesterday, nor today, nor forever….”

  [More than ever now, you wished you were down there on the plank and broken-rock embankment, listening to the water suck at the gaps and slap the green-haired piles. Long freights would go by.…]

  … On being asked the same question, the prisoner Vanzetti said: “Yes. What I say is that I am innocent, not only of the Braintree crime, but also of the Bridgewater crime [Ed.: prisoner was referring to a prior conviction for holding up a truck belonging to the White Shoe Company].…That is what I want to say, and it is not all. Not only am I innocent of these two crimes, not only in all my life I have never stole, never killed, never spilled blood, but I have struggled all my life, since I began to reason, to eliminate crime from the earth.… Not only have I not been trying to steal in Bridgewater, not only have I not been in Braintree to steal and kill, and have never steal or kill or spilt blood in all my life, not only have I struggled hard against crimes, but I have refused myself the commodity or glory of life, the pride of life of a good position, because in my consideration it is not right to exploit man.…”

  [… The Katy, the $oo Line, the Seaboard, the Denver & Rio Grande, the Hocking Valley—long freights would go by, and you’d wonder what they contained and where they were going, and you’d say to yourself what Pop always said when he stared at his old marked-up map of the United States: that you’d see it all some day …!]

  “… Not even a dog that kills the chickens would have been found guilty by American jury with the evidence that the Commonwealth have produced against us. I say that not even a leprous dog would have his appeal refused two times by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts
—not even a leprous dog…. We have proved that there could not have been another Judge on the face of the earth more prejudiced and more cruel than you have been against us.… We know, and you know in your heart, that you have been against us from the very beginning, before you see us.…We know that you have spoke yourself, and have spoke your hostility against us, and your despisement against us, with friends of yours on the train, at the University Club of Boston, on the Golf Club of Worcester, Massachusetts. I am sure that if the people who know all what you say against us would have the civil courage to take the stand, maybe Your Honor—I am sorry to say this because you are an old man, and I have an old father—but maybe you would be beside us in good justice at this time.…”

  [… You had a father too, not yet old, but aging, and for another dozen or twenty years, he’d go on dreaming up shapes and colors for all the things he’d never see with his eyes—and then one day he’d die, and the dreams would end, and the only signs that they’d ever been dreamt would be a few smeared lines on a map ready to fall apart.…]

  “…The jury were hating us because we were against the war.… We believe more now than ever that the war was wrong, and we are against war more now than ever, and I am glad to be on the doomed scaffold if I can say to mankind, ‘Look out. You are in a catacomb of the flower of mankind. For what? All that they say to you, all that they have promised to you, it was a lie, it was an illusion, it was a cheat, it was a fraud, it was a crime. They promised you liberty. Where is liberty? They promised you prosperity. Where is prosperity? They have promised you elevation. Where is the elevation?’”

  [… They promised you liberty, Pop, but where is liberty? I’ll tell you, Pop, if you’d like to know: it’s in your hand, and your hand can make a fist, and it’s in your mouth, and your mouth can talk, and it’s in your feet, and your feet can walk you away. What keeps you, Pop? What holds you back …?]