A Man Without Shoes

by John Sanford

  “I’ve still got some boy-power,” John said. “Now, if I only had some man-power to help me, I could fall that tree yet.”

  Paul teetered back and forth, looking up at the sky. “There’s quite a few men around,” he said. “Pick out a good one.”

  “How about you, Mr. Bunyan?” the boy said.

  “Shake, Mr. Henry!” Paul said, and they shook.

  At that, they joined hands around the tree, with Paul saying, “Count off, somebody. At three, we pluck this stick like it’s a straw in a broom.”

  I hadn’t counted that high in a long time, but I took a chance.

  “One …,” I said, and they closed in tight.

  “Two …,” I said, and they got set.

  “Three … !” I said, and they spread muscle.

  They spread it till it broke out of their arms and boiled away like rising sourdough. Kinks in their tendons straightened out with the snap of a mule-skinner’s whip, and they put so much pressure on their kneecaps that their calves touched the ground. They took in air so fast that they had to breathe in and out at the same time, and that set up enough friction in their throats to play a tune—John Brown’s Body, it was—and on the line “His truth goes marching on,” that tree began to give.

  There was a scraping, gnashing, cracking, grating, rasping noise—and thunk! out came that fir like a cork. We felt a draft and looked down at our feet: there was a hole straight smack through the earth! It was like Paul to go and pick the one tree planted upside-down in China, and it sure put the kibosh on him.

  Or didn’t it?

  THE STATE OF WASHINGTON

  Sirs: I take my penn in hand to correct some Misapprehentions which have come into being since my death 129 yrs. ago, & persisted untill the present time. I am not concern’d with these erronious Beliefs insofar as they touch only upon Events, for Events, under the form of Gov’t, known as a Republick, are susceptible of as many Interpretations as there are men to make them; but I begg leave to say that I am most deeply concern’d with such Beliefs where they relate to Character. My owne Character, Sirs, has been most grieviously misunderstood.

  [The report come in by messeger. George Washington was alerted to the first president of the Untied States]

  Whether willfully or otherwise, this Misunderstanding has been foster’d by some of the very best People, to such an extent that I now find some of the very worst speaking my name in the same connexion as Thos. Paine, Andw. Jackson, & A. Lincoln, Esqs., to cite but three Instances of the Mingling & Confusion which I have reference to. It cannot fail to be noted that I do not include the Hon. Thos. Jefferson, nor can my reason for the Omission be obscure: Mr. Jefferson was at least a Gentleman. The others, whatever their Accomplishments may have been, & however great their Contributions to the power and independency of the United States, were members of the Mobility.

  [He won by a big majorinty, so I went to see him]

  To put the matter flatly, Sirs, I deplor’d the notion of Equality all my Life, even such a fictitious Equality as the Constitution guarantees, & similarly, all my Death (especially since being join’d here by Mr. Hamilton) I have deplor’d the constant encroachment of that fiction upon the reality. If this trend should continue without Lett or Hindrance, I make free to say that the evil day cannot be far remov’d when the Tresspass will have been compleated, & the Squatter become the Soveraigne.

  [There was a man in a three corner hat with a determine face]

  Sirs, this must not come to pass. It was toward no such dismal End that I spent my 67 yrs. on earth. It was not for this that I accompanied the lobster Genl. Braddock among the Savvages in the wilderness of Penn’s Sylvania, that I serv’d 6 yrs. without remuneration as Commdr-in-Chf. of the Continental Army, or that I accepted the office of the Presidency to the Negleckt of my Affairs & my family. It is humiliating in the extream to find it necessary to point to a Career which one might suppose would speak for itself. That I deign to call attention to it should prove the Depths of my Anxiety. I do strongly believe, Sirs, that if what was fought for & won in my time should be lost without a fight in yours, it were far better for our Interests that we should still be under the dominion of the Crowne.

  [I knew right away who it was.]

  This correspondence, I venture to remind you, is for your Private perusal only, & once read & assimilated, it were prudent to Destroy it. Trusting to your Discretion, then, I should like to animadvert upon what I feel is the cardinal Sinn of the 19th and 20th centuries: the Spirrit of Doubt. Persons of Substance & quality have suffer’d their minds to become poyson’d with the fear that, after all’s said, they do hold their Tenure by the will of the Mob, & that the course of wisdom is to placate, to truckle, to trimm, in the hope that the Mob, pacify’d by such outward Deference, will live & lett live. Nothing, Sirs, could be further from the Truth. Indeed, the reverse is true, for the only limit to the demands of Inferiors is the sum-total possess’d by their Betters, their Bloode included. Who, Sirs, can deny that Shays’ Rebellyon might well have ended as the French Revolution began—with the Knife?

  [He said “Why did you come here in the liberry?”]

  It was with no such intention that our owne War of Independency was fomented: we who had a tangible Stake in the Collonys did not propose to break the shackles of King George only to bend the knee to King Tom, Dick, or Harry. It is no Secret among ourselves that we purpos’d to rule the new World. In order to achieve that aime, Sirs, it was indispensable to assure that while our battels would be fought by the Many, the profitts there from would inure to the benefitt of the Few. In the raising of slogans to rally support from an apathetic Yeomanry & a hostile Artizan-class, great risks had to be runn in the respeckt that words seeming at the time to promiss Everything might later be constrew’d to yield Nothing, nor were we invariably successful in this due to the Ranting of such plebeians as Paine, Benj. Franklin, S. Adams, & others. But that which was possible to us, we did do: item) we officer’d the army with Gentlemen; item) we establish’d a Continental Congress of Gentlemen; item) a Gentleman wrote the Declaration, & 56 Gentlemen sign’d it, but not one Artizan nor one Farmer that work’d with his Hands; item) through the genius of Mr. Hamilton, we funded all certificates of Debt issyued to soldiers during the War, & despite Mr. Madison’s unreasonable opposition, we manag’d to conceal that Gentlemen bought up those certificates from needy Veterans at 5 cents on the dollar and cash’d them at Par; and lastly, item) we show’d the proper hostility to a certain Event in France, the excesses of which bore too close a relation to our owne popular Temper.

  [I said swiftly “I come here in the liberry to congradualate you for being such a good president.”]

  It was but natural, therefore, that the Constitution would emboddy the Principles for which we had sacrific’d so much Money and time, & suffer’d so much Irritation between 1776—1781. That Document, I rejoise to say, has a noble ring to it even now, & none of the Amendments—aye, not even the 13th—injures the Tone given it by the Signers, all of whom, here beside me as I write, are satisfy’d with their Work. Structurally, the Country is much as it was when we confided it to your Care, & from a legalistic point-of-view, not with standing an Extention here & an Elaboration there, what you have is on the Whole what we fashion’d for you, to wit: a Nation with a strong and unrepresentative central Gov’t.; a spate of Tradition & Language render’d harmless by misconstruction; & a two-party System of succession & perpetuation immutable enough to assure the ascendancy of Property; to say naught of a People now long tutor’d to contemn Revolt as degrading.

  [He said “Then my butler will open the door when you go out.”]

  With so much in your favour, nevertheless you have wrought so poorly, Sirs, as to fill us with Apprehention & Dismaye. You are haunted (to change a figure of Speech coin’d in the middle of the last Century) by the Spectre of Democracy—and well you may be. But the way in which to lay that Ghoast is not to temporize with it, but to oppose it by Force, to put it down w
ith cold Steele and hott Ledd, as Genl. Wayne did with his mutineers. But mark you, Sirs—if you wait for the Ghoast with hatt in hand, by God, you will find yourself with Alms in it! With Mr. Hamilton and the rest, Sirs, I say put this Brute the People down!

  [“Good by Mr. Washington” I called.]

  Be assur’d that I am, Sirs, with most unfeign’d Regard, your ever obed’t serv’t.

  [When the butler opened the door I saw with amazment that he was a slave.]

  ON THE LITTLE BIG HORN

  From the creek-bottom to the low ridge, the rise of ground was mound and hollow, like the smooth and rounded folds of a rumpled rug, and in the late fall wind, its nap of short brown grass made a sound like a sweeping broom. Along the spine and flanks of this hogback, a string of granite tablets was scattered, singly here and there in the flowing grass, huddled in pairs and trios, and clustered at Dan’s feet in a herd of many dozen. There were carved words on each of these stones (Lieut. Jas. Calhoun 7 U. S. Cav.; Luther Reed civilian; U. S. Soldier 7 U. S. Cav.), but however arranged, the words made the same story: that here, on a June afternoon in 1876, a living man had become a corpse.

  The guide said, “… They have told you that the Sioux scalped every man but Custer that day. They have told you that the Indians, fearing his bravery even in death, permitted him alone to wear his hair to the end. But truth runs from such tongues as the deer from the arrow, for this Custer of yours was not at any time a man of greatness to us as an Indian-fighter (Crook, yes, but not Custer), and if, as some said, he once had taken the field against the Cheyennes and Arapahoes on the Ouachita, few here on the Big Horn knew his name, and of those none trembled when our scouts brought it in at dawn: he was only a white soldier, to be met, to be fought, and to be killed. He died with fine bravery, for there was much of it in his body, and therefore we desired it, but there was much also of false pride, and it was for this, not the other, that we refrained from eating his heart and taking his hair: we refused to taint ourselves with the rashness, the disdain, that had made him attack four thousand with six hundred. Always and under any conditions, we had attacked man for man, and so often as to make us despair, we had attacked one for two, but we knew that one sent against seven must die, and we thought this Custer very bold in the mind, very proud, to offend Death as he did that afternoon: he must have known that Death would be displeased. Not only were the Sioux before him in great force, but also they were laden with ammunition and repeating-rifles of a good pattern, and more than this, they were weary of being run like game from whatever country the whites thought good for Gold; they wished ardently for one place from which they would be harried no more, for one place in all this land that did not promise to hold the Yellow Powder the whites so deeply cared for and killed so much to obtain.”

  The guide looked out over the groundswell toward the Rosebud Mountains, saying, “From my father, I have heard that this place on the Little Big Horn was such a one as our people had longed for. It was a lost country then, as it is now, and there was much game in it, of which little is left but wolves. It was far from the reservation in the Black Hills, but the whites themselves had forced my people out when the Yellow Powder was found there, and they thought that it would serve them well to go once and forever to where they would not again be compelled to move their houses while the whites dug up the floor for buried bones. When the Dakota earth lay dead, with many holes in it, the whites invited my people to return, but they were unwilling, for they could not live where they had been defamed—and Custer was sent out to bring them in.”

  The guide squatted on his heels alongside a lone stone in the waving grass, and uprooting a few stalks that brushed its graven face (U. S. Soldier 7 U. S. Cav.), he said, “He did not know that eight days earlier, Crazy Horse and twelve hundred Sioux had fallen on the Gray Fox, as Crook was called, and defeated fifteen troops of cavalry, five companies of mounted infantry, and two hundred and fifty Crow and Shoshone scouts. Nor did he deem it necessary to wait for Gibbon’s column to come up with its battery of Gatling guns before throwing himself on the largest Indian village since the days of Montezuma, although he was warned of it by his half-breed, Mitch Bouyer. And finally, he did not think that my people would fight hard enough to hurt him if he divided his command. He detached Benteen with three troops of cavalry to flush the hills on the left, and they were gone from the field; he sent Reno and three more troops against the center, where twenty-five hundred Sioux under Gall and Two Moon cut them to pieces as soon as they deployed; and with five troops for himself, Custer rode off to the right, or straight toward us along this ridge. Every man that rode behind him died within an hour, one for each of these stones. They fought bravely, and they drew much Indian blood before they fell, but they had come to kill us with guns, and having guns ourselves, we killed them, and they died.…

  PIKE’S PEAK OR BUST

  The door opened, and a man put his face to a four-inch crack.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  [It was the street with the double row of locusts and the double row of matching houses (little old men, Julia had called them), and waiting on the porch of one of them, you’d heard a bare branch scrape a tin gutter along the eaves, and dry leaves had crawled like crabs before the wind, and strung-out smoke had turned the gray day blue].

  “I’d like to see Julia,” Dan said.

  “Who are you?”

  “A friend of hers. My name is Dan Johnson.”

  “What’re you after?”

  “Do I have to be after something because I want to talk to a person?”

  “If the person is Julia,” the man said.

  “Are you her father?”

  “I suppose so. How does anybody know?”

  “How can you talk like that to a stranger?”

  “I just open my mouth.”

  “Well, God damn it,” Dan said, “you ought to open it wider and stick a plunger in! I didn’t come around here to get treated as if I had my fly unbuttoned! I heard plenty about you from Julia, and by Jesus, all of it was true! You’re a hater, only you never hated the right thing in your life. Go back inside and hate some more. I’ll find Julia myself.” He turned away, but he stopped on the stoop and looked back; the man was still standing at the four-inch crack.

  “Julia isn’t home,” the man said.

  “I’m sorry I spoke that way, Mr. Davis,” Dan said. “Will she be back soon?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “I wonder if I could wait.”

  “I wonder too,” the man said. “You might be waiting a long time.”

  Dan felt a sudden sag within him that left a cold cavity under his ribs. “Isn’t she in the city?” he said.

  The man seemed not to hear. “But you’re young,” he said, “and you’ve got time to burn,” and then there was no face in the crack, but the crack remained, and Dan followed the man through the dark hallway. “I’m due at the yards soon. Excuse me if I finish eating.” After a few mouthfuls from a plate on the kitchen-table, he looked up at Dan and said, “Are you one of the ones she used to sneak into her room?”

  “Yes,” Dan said. “I’m one of the ones.”

  “A barrel-house, this was. She didn’t think I knew.”

  “When did she go away, Mr. Davis?”

  “Couple of months ago.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “I didn’t ask, and she didn’t tell me. She went off with some guy in a car. It looked like it was only another hot trip.”

  “Did she ever mention my name?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Johnson? Dan Johnson …?”

  “I might’ve heard it, but I don’t remember.”

  “I was hoping she left a message.”

  “She did, but it wasn’t specially for you. She said if anybody asked for her to tell him it was too late for his birthday-present.”

  “She meant me!” Dan said.

  “She said it like she meant anybody that ex
pected anything for nothing.”

  “I tried to be good to her, Mr. Davis, I tried my best, but she didn’t want people to be that way. The nicer you were, the harder she worked to make you mean. She couldn’t do that with me, because I’m not a mean one, and I never will be. I’m a lot of other things I’m not too proud of, but not that, and she kept after me all the time, as if it was her one ambition to make me change. I think if I’d stayed a little longer, she’d’ve changed herself.”

  “You didn’t start her off,” the man said. “She’s a runaround, and she came by it naturally: her mother was the same. She’ll always go from mouth to mouth, like a tin dipper, and if for once she picked a mouth that wasn’t dirty, I suppose I ought to feel glad.” He pushed the plate away and turned his face to the wall. “I ought to,” he said, “but I don’t. That was my flesh and blood you rode to hell, you as much as the others. I don’t have to shoot you for it (what good would that do?), but, Christ, I don’t have to shake your hand!”

  “All the same, Mr. Davis, I wish you would.”

  “It’d be better if I shot myself, like my wife did, and like Julia will too some day. Good Jesus, the things that happen to some lives! They didn’t look like this from the other end. I didn’t see a wife with her brains plastered on the ceiling, and I didn’t see a daughter running around the country getting her wagon fixed in every ditch, and I didn’t see me sitting here in my own house talking to one of the mechanics! But I won’t kill myself—not me. If I ever use my gun, it’ll be on some poor devil trying to swipe a keg of nails out of a tool-shed. ChristoChrist!”

  “Please, pop,” Dan said. “Please don’t hate me like you hate the rest.”

  The man faced him again, and he took many seconds to say, “I don’t, son.…”

  FATHER OF WATERS

  The fluid ash of America moved past his feet in the grand national open drain: the brown sap and syrup, the skim, the scum, and the slag, and with it crumbled counties slowly tumbling the blanketed bones of DeSoto toward the sewer of the Gulf. Snags turned over and came to rest for another year, and on the Milk in Montana a shelf caved in to become submarine sand and mud, along with turds of fish and fowl, flakes of gold, and cigar-butts—all this was part of the river, and rain too, and rust, and a two-masted shingle once launched by a boy on the Cumberland. Engine-oil rode the ripples, and feathers and leaves spun in the eddies among potato-peels tossed from a stern-wheeler, and in the main stream lay odd letters from a press baptized at Alton, a chunk of bark leaned against by LaSalle, and the salt of tears shed for dead Ann in the Sangamon. The spew and rubble of cities drifted by, the polished bones of Ojibways, the knees and noses of Nez Perces, a piece of the True Cross and other splinters, solid shot from Donelson, still thinning Shiloh blood, Copperhead gall, Jesuit wafers, and wampum—all this went to make the undrinkable drink, the Mississippi.