A Man Without Shoes

by John Sanford

  A man came from the car, one of his hands rolling open a lapel. Light from the lamps glinted on two pieces of metal: a six-point badge and the frame of a revolver in a shoulder-holster.

  “Why in Christ don’t you just say so?” Dan said.

  The hand sprang from the lapel in a wiping sweep that ended in a backslap on Dan’s mouth. “Don’t have to,” the man said.

  “This is Florida.”

  A split lip ran red, and Dan spat. He said, “Don’t slug me again, you dirty bast…,” but the rest was smeared by another back-hander.

  The man said, “A real radical.” He put his left thumb against the left wing of his nose and blew out, and then, grinning, he put his right thumb against the right wing. Dan hammered it home with a hard overhand pitch.

  The grin remained, but not as a grin: drained of its humor, it seemed to be a spasm. The man moved nothing, neither his arms, nor his feet, nor his tongue to savor his blood: it was as if he were waiting for an emotion to form, expand, and explode, and as if, until it did, he could do no more than stand still and stare. A bubble of saliva glistened for a moment in his half-open mouth, and then it burst. Twice he drove Dan down to the sand, and twice Dan rose, but flogged flat a third time, he lay loose, like a flung dummy, with his head on the hardpan at the waterline and his starting eyes gaping upslope at his numb and alien legs. The toe of a wave touched his hair and withdrew.

  “Corbin,” the man said, and another figure came from the darkness into the light-cone. “Make the sonabitch stand.”

  Corbin took Dan by the armpits and hauled him partly upright, but his knee-joints wobbled when the man released him, and he fell. “Cold-cocked him, Ash,” Corbin said.

  “Sit him, then,” Ash said, and he drew a pair of gloves from a hip-pocket.

  “Doubt if I can,” Corbin said. “A cold-cock, or I never seen one.”

  “Sonabitch hadn’t ought to hit me,” Ash said. “Prop him up while I grow him a beard.” He kneeled, and rubbing his leather-covered fists on the wet sand, he ground the grains into Dan’s face. Again and again he did this, until chin, cheeks, lips, and jaw were a salted and seeping sore, a raw red rash.” Bet he don’t shave tomorrow,” Ash said, taking off the blood-dyed gloves. “Chuck him in, and let’s go.”

  * * *

  Dan awoke in sunlight that seemed to be running down a wall in five parallel streams. He closed his eyes again, but the running ran on under his lids, and once more he raised them, and this time the stripes, made by a four-barred window against the sky, were still. He stood up and steadied himself, and mounting a stool under the window, he tried to chin the sill.

  A voice behind him said, “Them bars ain’t much for pretty, but they’re sure hell for stout.”

  The stool tottered and tipped over, and Dan let himself drop, but his legs gave as if soft-stuffed when they touched the floor, and he went to his knees. In the doorway stood a boy carrying a pail in one hand and a coffeepot in the other.

  From the next cell, someone said, “What’s in the gut-bucket today, Two-time?”

  “Broiled pompano, Poinciana style,” Two-time said over his shoulder, and he watched Dan crawl back to the cot. “How’s for some, kid?”

  “What time is it?” Dan said.

  “Seven a. m.,” Two-time said. “It’s only sowbelly and beans, but y’ ought to eat.” Shrugging when Dan shook his head, he backed out of the cell. “Don’t you want to know the date?” Dan’s mouth opened, but it made no sound. “Well, it’s a day later than you think.” The iron door banged shut.

  During the afternoon, Ash came in, and with him came the voice from the next cell, saying, “Tell him you didn’t do it!”

  Dan lay with a wet rag on his face, and the sheriff waited briefly for him to remove it. Then he snatched it away and slung it toward the toilet in the corner. “I brung you a paper to sign,” he said.

  “Tell him to wipe his brown with it!”

  The sheriff said, “Shut it, Buff, or I’ll come in and break your jaw.”

  “You couldn’t break wind in a bathtub!” “What time is it?” Dan said.

  The sheriff said, “Sign this paper, and you get out in thirty days—just long enough to unswell your face.” He poked Dan’s hand with a pencil. “Going to sign, or not?”

  “What time is it?” Dan said.

  “Ask on your way out,” Ash said. “Sixty days from now.” He paused in front of the adjoining cell. “Lay off me, Buff, or I’ll knock you loose from your trotters.”

  “Igphray ouyay,” Buff said.

  “Ain’t kidding you.”

  Buff flushed his toilet. “So long, Ash,” he said.

  Dan took a penny from his pocket, and on the wall above his head he scored two short vertical lines. Then he fell asleep.

  At sundown, Two-time entered the corridor, saying, “Wild duck, Everglades style.…”

  [That night, sleep came slowly, and you lay in wait for it a long time, looking up at jailed stars in a barred world. A breeze made a hard-collar sound among the palms, a fast train passed, a dog barked, and now and then you heard a bird call and a bird reply—and then the threads of a thought fed themselves into the loom of your mind, and you tried to cut them, knowing that there would be no other end to the meave but death, but it was too late. The thought was this: you were afraid of the cars.

  [There were forty-eight of them, drawn by a Pacific and driven by an Atlantic, and they were a century behind time on the Main Line. The tracks were solid gold, the ties were bones, and the ballast was cannon-balls, chewing-gum, and tin cans. A hundred million passengers were aboard, ninety-nine million on the rods and the roofs and the rest on plush with dollar cigars. It was the Forty-Eighter from Decatur; it was the Big Train with the Pullman-fancy names—Quonecktacut, De la Warr, Mishigamaw, and Ouiskensing; it was the United States Express, the hot-shot varnish running without lights, without orders, and without a crew. Look out for the cars, the private cars! They were going nowhere with drivers pounding and pistons punching, and they stopped for nobody, neither God, Christ, nor Old Scratch: if you wanted to travel, you caught hold on the fly, and a one-way ticket cost you your life, with no rebates given and no beefs allowed. Look out for the cars, the private cars, the public-guarded cars, the private, private, private cars … !]

  The next time Dan saw Ash, there were eighteen vertical lines above the head of the cot. “You can still get out in thirty days if you sign,” Ash said.

  “What time is it?” Dan said.

  “No use being stubbren. We can be just as.”

  “Pull the chain on him, kid!” Buff said.

  “Butt out, Buff,” Ash said.

  “Drop dead!”

  “Getting sick of your jaw. Some day I’ll crock you.”

  “You’re sucking that out of your thumb!” Buff said. “You don’t have the jizzum to crock a nit!”

  “I ever get to working you, they’ll pick you out of the same sewer you was born in,” the sheriff said, and again he turned to Dan. “You going to sign?”

  “What time is it?” Dan said, and the sheriff walked away.

  Buff laughed. “They don’t have sewers where I was born,” he said.

  “Where was that, Buff?” Dan said.

  “On the ground. On the ground in a tar-paper shack fifteen miles out of Blanca, Colorado.”

  “Is that where you come from? I wondered.”

  “One room, one door, one window, one mattress, no sink, no icebox, no water, no can, not even out in the tules. Used to have to go off in the scrub and do it in the open. When the snow went out in the spring, there’d be a circle of wet newspaper around the joint. Couple of years of that, and we’d move and start our circle some place else. Christ, even the sidewinders stayed away.”

  “What do you look like, Buff? How old are you? What’s your real name …?”

  Two-time slam-banged to a stop. “Flamingo,” he said. “Gulf Stream style.…”

  [The cars, you thought, the public-guarded privat
e cars: the system under which the rich were protected against the poor by the poor themselves—by the Ashes, the Corbins, the company-finks, the flimflammed stiff’s that clung to the Big Train with their abscessed teeth, their broken nails, and their vain desires. None would ever reach the plush, but all would kill to keep the symbol of their hopes alive: the poor would kill the poor for kneeling-room to kiss the feet of the rich.…]

  “… Buff,” Dan said, “how would you fix things if you had your way?”

  “I’d swap places with Ash,” Buff said.

  “That wouldn’t fix anything, would it?”

  “It’d sure as hell fix Ash.”

  “I mean, there’d still be a guy in jail.”

  “You bet,” Buff said, “but look who.”

  “How about fixing things so nobody’s in jail?”

  “Not with Ash around and eating regular.”

  “Ash,” Dan said. “Why is it always the Ashes we have to fight?”

  “You ought to know. He’s the one that filed down your mug.”

  “But why stop at Ash? There’s somebody over Ash, isn’t there?”

  “Maybe, but only Ash is over me. It’s like a guy stepping on your foot in a crowd. You don’t ask if he got pushed by somebody else: you lug him.”

  “But if we don’t lug the one that does the pushing, won’t we always get stepped on?”

  “It’s a big crowd, kid,” Buff said. “There’s pushers back of the pushers, and you can’t take care of’em all.”

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor, and Ash opened the door, saying, “Up, you, and screw.”

  Before rising from the cot, Dan counted the vertical lines on the wall: there were sixty-five of them. “Sixty-five, Buff,” he said, and passing through the doorway, he turned toward his friend’s cell.

  The sheriff grasped his arm and shoved him in the opposite direction. “The other way, you sonabitch!”

  “I wanted to see you for once,” Dan said, “but he won’t let me!”

  “Just as well!” Buff said. “He worked me over last night, and I ain’t much to look at!”

  From the end of the corridor, Dan said, “G’bye, Buff, and the best!”

  “Remember what I told you, kid!” Buff said. “Get the Ashes!”

  At the gate, Ash said, “Going to talk to me before you go?”

  Dan said, “What time is it?” and he turned away.

  MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA

  A Voice said, “Hi.”

  Dan looked up from the corduroy road, and observing a boy seated on a pine-stump, he said, “Hi, yourself.”

  “What’re you doing?” the boy said.

  “I’m stomping the highroad.”

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then why you stomping? Why don’t you stay here?”

  “I have to see what I can see.”

  “Might be nothing.”

  “Might be, but I have to find out.”

  “Why do you have to find out?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  “You don’t know much, do you?”

  “I guess not,” Dan said.

  “Well, I know what’s up the road.”

  “I wish you’d tell me, then.”

  “Do you wish hard and hope to die?”

  “As hard as I can,” Dan said, “and I hope to die.”

  “Then I’ll tell you,” the boy said. “There’s nothing up the road, only more road.”

  “But doesn’t the road go anywhere?”

  “Big folks say, but I’ve watched and watched, and it stays where it is.”

  “You know a lot, don’t you?” Dan said.

  “People go, but not the road.”

  “I hate to say goodbye to you. We could be friends.”

  “The road never moves.”

  BOB ANDERSON, MY BEAU BOB

  THE CONFEDERACY to P. G. T. BEAUREGARD:

  If you have no doubt of the intention of the Washington Government to supply Fort Sumter by force, you will at once demand its evacuation, and, if this is refused, proceed, in such manner as you may determine, to reduce it.

  P. G. T. BEAUREGARD to R. ANDERSON:

  I am ordered by the Government of the Confederate States to demand the evacuation of Fort Sumter. All proper facilities will be afforded, etc. The flag which you have upheld so long, etc. I am, sir, very respectfully, etc.

  R. ANDERSON to P. G. T. BEAUREGARD:

  I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your communication, etc. It is a demand with which I regret that my sense of honor, and of my obligations to my Government, prevent my compliance. Thanking you, etc.

  P. G. T. BEAUREGARD to R. ANDERSON:

  Useless effusion of blood, etc.

  R. ANDERSON to P. G. T. BEAUREGARD:

  I will not open fire on your forces unless compelled to do so by some hostile act against this fort or the flag of my Government, etc.

  P. G. T. BEAUREGARD to R. ANDERSON’.

  Honor to notify you, etc. Will open fire on Fort Sumter in one hour, etc.

  R. ANDERSON to A SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN.

  If we do not meet again on earth, I hope we may meet in Heaven.”

  The hour ended at 4:20 in the morning, and at 4:20 and some seconds, the lanyard of a ten-inch smoothbore Columbiad was offered to Mr. Roger Pryor in reward for his hot tongue: “Not only is the Union gone,” he had said, “but gone forever.” But, strangely, Mr. Pryor shook his head, nor was this all of him shaken, and now he said, “I could not fire the first gun of the war,” and the honor—like the hour, but not yet the Union—was gone forever. It passed to Mr. Edmund Ruffin, another daredevil with his face, and this one, sixty-seven years old, played with fire for the last time in his life. His eighteenth-century hand made a fist around a clean cord that led to a clean gun that led to anguish and a dirty end—and the gun (elevation 5 degrees, range 1,200 yards) spoke.

  Four years before Lincoln fell (four to the day) fell Sumter. Four years before that finish came this start, and here, on The Battery, they remembered both, they still remembered. They remembered Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (“Old Bory”), and the Hills, and the two Johnstons (Albert Sidney and Joe), and Jackson (“Blue Light” to some, “Stonewall” to all), and Jim Longstreet (known as “Pete”), and Baldy Ewell, and “Beaut” Stuart, and Jubilee Early, and Earl Van Dorn, and Hood, and Huger, and Turner Ashby, and the butcher Forrest, and Dorsey Pender, and McLaws and McClellan (because he too served them well), and Marse Robert. They still remembered. They remembered winning at the beginning and losing in the end—and then winning again!, for the sons of slaves they never lost were still bossed and still slaves.…

  FIRST LADY

  BORN: At Roanoke Island, North Carolina, 18 August 1587,

  to Eleanor, wife of Ananias Dare, Esq.,

  a daughter, Virginia.

  Nine days later, Governor John White, grandfather of the first English child delivered on American soil, sailed for home for the present and speedy supply of certain known and apparent lacks and needs, most requisite and necessary. It took him three years and three hundred and fifty-five days to return, and he found the houses taken down and the place very strongly enclosed with a highpalisade of trees, with curtains and flankers, very fortlike; and one of the chief trees or posts at the right side of the entrance had the bar taken off, and five feet from the ground, in fair capital letters weregraven CROTOAN, without any sign or cross of distress.

  He searched for some time, this grandfather of Virginia Dare, but of the one hundred and sixteen human beings he had left behind on the dunes, he found no wind-grayed bone, no salt-faded rag, no blurred or bottled word, no word at all save the word CRO-TOAN; he found no stiff scalp with stiffened hair, no coshed-in skull, no scaled pot, no rotten pone, no written word save the word CROTOAN; he found no telltale ash, no mildewed trash or unstrung beads, no wax tears spilt by some sprung-for candle, no hound on a grave, no grave on stilts, nothing but the lone and
graven word CROTOAN.

  There were voices on the sand and in the air, but they spoke no tongue that White could understand. There were clouds of heron crying as if an army of men had shouted together; there were parrots, falcons, and merlinbaws; there were clam-birds, there were wrens in the cattail, there were plover and willet and clapper-rail—but their cries made no sense in English ears, and the search, begun at that right-hand gatepost, ended there. Gazing at the still strange word, White spelled it once aloud, as if charging it to make its own meaning known, but CROTOAN it was and only CROTOAN, and then he reboarded ship and sailed away forever.

  Had he stayed longer, would he have found the fact of the matter: would he have found, in some Indian town, one hundred and sixteen mummied heads on poles; would he have found their teeth slung on Indian necks and their skin on drums; would he have found their pots in use, the rusted wrecks of tools, the torn Bibles, and the clothes again but now wrongly worn …?

  DIED: On or near Roanoke Island, North Carolina,

  Virginia Dare, daughter of Ananias and Eleanor Dare,

  on an unknown day between 1587 and 1591.

  THIS WILL HAVE A VERY HAPPY EFFECT

  They still had a gun or two, a blanket here and there (or rather a weave of cotton and air), some raveling flags, like old bandages, a handful of corn (for those with hands), damn few rounds of ammunition, but many pounds of spunk per man, and a Lee to lead them, and if he’d let them, they’d’ve kept on thrashing like a shot horse till they sank in seventeen miles south of hell: they were still sucking around for a fight.

  But he couldn’t tell them to try some more when on their rank and punken feet they caved like rained-on wheat; he couldn’t cry “Never say die, boys!” because they’d been dying to that tune for four years, and they were all through dying except for the lying down; he didn’t have the heart to start another sump to hold thin blood (“Useless effusion, etc.”), he didn’t have the cheek to speak the expected word, he didn’t have the face to face such blue murder as the gray was spoiling for: they were beaten, and that was the bitter verb for the bitter end.