A Man Without Shoes

by John Sanford

  FEBRUARY 10, 1937

  “I’m glad you looked in, Pete,” Dan said.“I wanted to talk to you.” Peterson sat down. “That’s kind of a piano opening for a hot-box like you,” he said. “What’s on your excuse-the-expression mind?”

  “I’m putting the bee on you.”

  “Not for a raise, I hope, because if that’s what you’re after, you can grab your rubbers and penwiper and stand not upon the order of your going. A raise! What do you need a raise for? You’d only renew your subscription to the New Myasses or take another course in Diabolical Mysterialism. You know too much right now. Go to the movies and be happy.”

  “Change your oil. I’m not out for a raise.”

  “A good thing, because I came in here to hit you for lunch.”

  Dan laughed. “Go around in back,” he said. “The grass is longer.”

  “A laugh with rocks in it. I’ll bet if I came to you broke, you wouldn’t give me your nose-gum.”

  “I’d say, ‘Pete, this is heartbreaking, you mooching in the street.

  Why don’t you go up that alley—Peterson’s Alley?’”

  “It’s odds-on you’d help me up it with a kick. That’s the trouble with you inhumanitarians—always of the people, by the people, and for yourself.”

  “I want a hundred bucks from you, Pete—for Spain.”

  “Where’s Spain?” Peterson said. “If you mean the country that treacherously invaded its own soil in 1898, you haven’t got a chance. I’m still sore about the dastardly way they let us kill their soldiers and sink their fleets. Barbaric. Besides, it takes me a month to exploit you out of a hundred bucks. Why should I give it up to the greasers?”

  “Because I ask you to,” Dan said. “I always put on an act when you’re around. I make out like I hate the sight of you, but you know damn well I don’t really feel that way, or I wouldn’t lower myself to put the tap on you. If you kept up with what was going on over there, you’d say, ‘A hundred! Why only a hundred?’ Those guys are stopping slugs aimed at us; the least we can do is keep them in chocolate-bars and soap. What do you say, Pete?”

  “I say this,” Peterson said. “They’re getting all they need from Hitler, and if they run short, they can always draw on the Vatican.”

  Dan stood up slowly. “Get out of here before I cold-cock you with this telephone!” he said.

  Peterson sat where he was. “A c-note for the Loyalists!” he said.

  “Why, kid, they’re papa’s enemies!”

  * * *

  When Dan let himself into the flat that evening, he found Mary waiting for him with her hands behind her back. “Out with the present, baby,” he said.

  “Present?” she said. “What makes you entitled to a present?”

  “On my way home, I had a thought. I said to myself, ‘Danny-boy, in another twenty-eight years, you’ll be fifty-six.’ I damn near floored myself. Fifty-six! That’s kind of ripe—over ripe.”

  “Well, you still have twenty-eight years—but from tomorrow.”

  “What’re you holding onto back there—or is that where I give you the pain?”

  “Not this time.”

  “If there’s a present around, I won’t sleep a wink. Of course, if there isn’t any present….”

  “I can’t honestly say there is, and I can’t honestly say there isn’t.”

  “What you mean is, you can’t be honest.”

  “The trouble with this present is that it isn’t exactly the kind you’re looking for.”

  “You better let me see it,” Dan said. “Otherwise, I’ll take it by force—and I just might do the same to you.”

  “Will you promise me something?”

  “I promise! I promise!”

  “That you won’t get upset,” she said.

  “Why should I get upset? It must be a hell of a present.”

  “It’s really two presents,” Mary said, and bringing a hand into view, she offered him a letter bearing a foreign stamp.

  “Tootsie!” he said. “Tootsie-boy!” He held the envelope up to the light and began to tear it open along the shadow of the enclosure.

  “Wait, Dan,” Mary said, and now she revealed her other hand. It held a second letter.

  Dan raised his eyes to Mary’s, saying, “It’s Mig! It’s Mig, Mary! Mig’s in Spain too!”

  “Remember your promise,” she said.

  He sat down, saying, “I’m not upset,” and then he rose, staring at the letters. “I’m not upset at all.” He sat down again, staring now at nothing. “Why should I be upset?”

  “Would you like to read me what they say?”

  “Mig and Tootsie are in Spain,” he said, “and I’m in the Eighties between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues, north side of the street, second floor front. I wonder what my friends think of me.” He fumbled the envelopes, and at length he set one aside to complete the tear in the other. “From Tootsie, at a place called Albacete, on the 20th of January.”

  My first letter ought to be about my experiences coming over, the kind of people I found myself thrown together with, my thoughts on arriving, and so on, but all that will have to wait for another occasion, Dan, because there’s something else that has a deeper claim on me. I’d give all I ever hope to own to be free of it, but I’ll not be free even after I tell it, nor will you. This is a sad moment, Dan, and as your old-time partner, I share it with you….

  Dan let his hand fall, saying, “I’m afraid to read any more.”

  Mary’s voice was quiet. “Would you want me to read it for you, Dan?” she said.

  “I know what’s coming,” he said. “I feel it in my bones.”

  This is bad news, and I ask you to forgive me for writing it badly. Your friend Mig DeLuca was killed this afternoon in an air-attack on his training-base at (scratched out). Only a few bombers came over, and they dropped their loads without doing much damage, but a fighter from the escort dropped down for a reconnaissance and shot up an orchard and a barnyard, and one of the very few casualties was Mig. A bullet hit him in the head.

  There’s more, Danny, and it’s just as full of anguish. It has to do with how Mig and I finally met after so many years of hearing about each other through you. We were in different camps, and it so happened that today we were both detailed to go into Albacete for the mail. I didn’t know him by sight, of course, and he didn’t know me, but we got our sacks at about the same time, and on our way out of the building, we swapped a few words. All we had to do was introduce ourselves, and we were on the wing.

  It was a wonderful meeting, Dan. It lasted only half an hour, but it couldn’t have been more wonderful if it had lasted half our lives. It’s hard to remember all we said, because we seemed to say so much; it was as if we were trying to make up for lost time—but mostly we talked about you. I’d always believed I had as warm a feeling for you as anyone outside of Mary, but Mig, even in that little half-hour, outdid me. A brother couldn’t have spoken of you with more love.

  A half-hour, that’s all we had together, but it’s fair to say that all you told me about him was true. He knew what he was fighting here better than I’ll ever know it, he was a better Party-man than I ever expect to be, and he was a better any-kind-of-man. I say that because he came to Spain knowing that he’d never live to leave it. I gathered that from one little slip he made while he was showing me some pictures of his wife. He said, “Danny would’ve liked her.” I let it pass, and when we parted, we made arrangements to keep in touch with each other. He was killed on his way back to camp.

  They’re going to bury him tomorrow, and I’ve gotten leave to attend. I’ll be thinking of you, Danny. I’ll say goodbye for you….

  For a while, he sat still, holding the pages before him as if reading them once more to himself, but what he saw through a mesh of ink was a face that he knew he now would always have to see with the mind alone, a face that he would never again be able to touch, to watch in action, a face that was forever finished with such words as Mr. Lovejoy.… And sudd
enly the middle third of his body, from his chest to his groin, seemed to cramp, to clench like a hand, and doubled over, he began to weep in immitigable grief.

  Mary knelt near him, and forcing him to look at her, she said, “Mig’s letter, Dan, and then Mig’s people.”

  “You’re crying too,” he said.

  “I know what he meant to you. One of the reasons I love you is that other people count.”

  “None more than you,” he said, “but Mig is one it’ll be hard to do without.” He took up the second letter and opened it. “Don’t let me cry again, will you, Mary?”

  Well, kid, you find The Snake turning up in a lot of places these days, and it kind of keeps a guy on the go. This time it calls itself Franco, and that’s the long and short of what I’m doing in the land of Don Quixote.

  But, hell, you don’t need any pamphlets from me. After that course, you know the score yourself, and the fact that you’re not over here with us only means you realize there’s vital work to do elsewhere. Plenty of Russkis I know were actually ordered to stay home, and the order was a correct one, because in many cases it was the most politically-advanced that wanted to volunteer, and you can’t always spare that kind. I’m sure you’ll do as much good right there on Manhattan Island as I will behind a stone wall over here. It don’t make any difference how you kill a Fascist. With a gun, or with words, or with the old evil-eye—just so you kill him.

  If you’re wondering when I’m going to get to the subject of Irina, you can stop wondering right now. We got married last summer, a couple of days after she got back from the Crimea. She had a vacation coming to her, and so did I, and that’s when we pulled off the job. Guess where we went. Correct—right back to the Crimea! I had to chase her through the vineyards. I might as well have married a grape. But of course I’m only kidding about that. I didn’t really care where we went. In fact, I was only too glad to let her have her way. It made her happy to know that her Amerikanski understood there’s no separating your personal life from your work.

  So in the daytime, she was busy running around watching the grapes grow, and at night—well, at night, we made good love, like you and Mary. I didn’t tell her I’d decided to go to Spain till we were back in Moskva, and all she said was, “Mikhail, if you vili go, then I vili not stop you.” There were many things, though, that we wanted to say and couldn’t, and to know what they were, try and imagine leaving Mary. You’d be full of words too, but damn few of them would come out. You see, we’re in love.

  I’m going to close now, kid, asking you to kiss Mary for me. Compañeros, salud!

  Breathing open the torn end of the envelope, he saw that something had remained within. He shook it out, and on the table in the lamplight lay a photograph of two people standing in an aisle of grapevines.

  * * *

  Dan and Mary were at the door, across the room from an old man and an old woman. On a sideboard stood a decanter of wine and four empty glasses, and above it, flanking crossed Italian flags, hung the now framed and faded pictures of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

  The old man said, “For come and tell us about our boy, grazie.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Dan said. “For God’s sake, Papa, don’t thank me.”

  “Yes,” the old woman said. “You good friend with our Michele that you call Miguel. You good friend, or you no have to come out this bad night with snow to read letters. For this, we say grazie.”

  MAINLY ABOUT FEET

  Across the city, an east wind herded clouds that resembled a flock of soiled sheep: gray, silver, slate, and ashen, they milled overhead and passed.

  “Morning, kid,” Peterson said. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” Dan said.

  “I have a little gift for you,” the man said, and on the desk-blotter he placed a package wrapped in gaudy paper. “A token of my esteem on this another milestone in what I trust will be a long and honorable life.”

  “You didn’t have to buy me anything, Pete.”

  “I never forget one of the truly great days of history.”

  “It could’ve been greater,” Dan said, “but it was nice of you to think of me.”

  Peterson indicated the package, saying, “Aren’t you going to open it?”

  “I’ll wait till I get home. Mary’ll have something for me too, and she likes to watch me gnaw at the wrappings.”

  “You’ll only have to bring this back here. It’s for the office.”

  “Well, if it’ll give you pleasure,” Dan said, and taking up a paper-cutter, he slit the covering. What he brought to light was a wooden plaque bearing a saying in painted letters:

  I HAD NO SHOES AND COMPLAINED

  AND THEN I MET A MAN WITHOUT FEET

  “Entertaining?” Peterson said. “I found it in an antique-shop up the bullyvard.”

  “Entertaining as all hell,” Dan said, and he donned a shaving-smile, empty of amusement and fleeting.

  “It looked like a good thing for you to sit in front of all day. I thought it’d make you tolerant.”

  “What I needed was something to make me intolerant,” Dan said, and he went to a clothes-tree for his coat and hat. “You don’t know it yet, but you gave it to me.”

  “You sound sore, kid.”

  Dan said, “I just told you what I was—intolerant,” and picking up a pair of rubbers, he tossed them at the trash-basket. “I borrowed those from you the other day, but you don’t need them any more: you’ve got no feet.”

  “What’s got into you, kid?” Peterson said.

  Dan rapped himself on the chest. “I’ve got into me,” he said, “and I’ll be God damned if I didn’t find something dead there and the rest dying. Maybe it’s all dead, I don’t really know yet, but I’m sure as Christ going to learn before I have to crawl like you. I’m taking a walk, you son-of-a-bitch, a long one, and I mean to complain till I get my shoes or lose my feet. You never complained. You let them chop you down inch by inch till you stood knee-high to a human being, and I hope to die if I ever get to where I see eye-to-eye with you. So help me God, Pete—I hope to die!” He started for the door, but he stopped before he reached it and put out his hand. “Want to say goodbye, Pete?”

  But the man had stooped for one of the rubbers, and he stood turning it over in his hands.

  DEATH AVENUE

  From the curb, Dan watched trucks roll over the now paved right-of-way of the New York Central freight-division [and you remembered the screaming flanges of the old high cars as they rocked along rails set in a streetwide waffle of cobblestones. A man on horseback had ridden ahead of the engine, you remembered, with a red flag for day and a red lantern for night, but to the downtown dock-front gangs, the color had been a signal for sport, not danger, and they had played train with the trains, hooking rides on the rungs, climbing the couplings, and running the sway of the catwalks—and sometimes a foot had slipped, or a hold had been shaken loose, and then a scream of another kind, not long prolonged except by the mind, had been heard. Death Avenue, this street had been called, and from the unabated shock on the faces of the buildings that lined it, you knew it was Death Avenue yet].

  At the Chelsea yards south of the Pennsylvania cut, Dan went into the timekeeper’s office and knocked on the scored sill of a barred window. A man at the slant of a standing desk was comparing slips of paper with entries in a journal, and he continued to do so even after Dan had played on the bars with a coin. “Keep your skin on,” the man said, glancing up from his work only to impale batches of slips on a billhook. When the last of these had been disposed of, he approached the window. “Now, what can I do you for?” he said.

  “I’d like to see one of your men,” Dan said. “His name is Pollard.”

  The man leafed a few ironbound frames in a rack and clicked a pencil-point down its celluloid flaps. “You’ll find him over in the Claim Office today,” he said. “Cliff Pollard.”