As soon as I got to school, I ran into the classroom to get my patrol equipment. This gave me the chance to talk to Miss McKee. I explained my plan and she thought about it for a moment, then smiled and told me it was a very generous thing to do. She gave me permission to go to his house as soon as the students had entered the building and my patrol duties were completed.
I approached Charlie’s house full of excitement but, as I got closer, the same sort of subtle anxiety crept in. What was I getting into? What would I say?
There was no one to greet me this time, and I had to knock on the door. Instead of Charlie, it was an old man with curly white hair who greeted me. He stared at me for a moment, then in a quiet voice said, “Yes?”
“Is Charlie here?” I asked him, my heart pounding so hard that it startled me. The old man turned and called something unintelligible back into the house.
Turning to me while we waited, he said, “You have to be good to your Mam and do what she tell you.” I blinked in surprise, not certain I had heard him correctly. We stared at each other for a moment, and then Charlie appeared.
“You’re here again” he observed. I nodded. Another awkward moment.
Finally I explained, “I have to check if you’re coming back today.”
He looked at me, an odd expression on his face, then said, “I still have the same problem as yesterday.”
I blurted out, “That’s why I came. I have something for you.” He didn’t know what to say – he was waiting for me to offer the gift, and I was waiting for him to invite me in. I was determined to go into his house this time, and I thought my gift gave me the perfect excuse to do so. Finally, I asked, “Can I come in? For a minute?”
He scowled ever so slightly, then said, “Yeah, sure.” He stepped back and I edged my way around the old man who was still standing in the door. The main room had a wooden floor and wallpaper from which large sections were missing. The area was circled by what I gathered were old sofas, one on each wall, covered with blankets. Off to the left rear was the kitchen, and I could see a woman standing at a counter there, eyeing me curiously. Charlie led me into a room in the left front of the house, obviously a bedroom for more than one person. It had several beds in it and a mattress on the floor in one corner. He pointed to the mattress and said, “This is where I sleep. My sisters and my Mam and Poppa sleep there,” indicating the beds.
I looked at his floor level sleeping area, and noticed behind his mattress a shelf filled with books. “Are those all yours?” I asked.
He nodded. “I read a lot when I’m not working. I get them from the library.” Then, turning to me, he asked, “What do you have for me?” I held out the bag and he took it without looking at me. Opening it to peer in, he scowled again, then asked, still without looking at me, “What are these?”
Trying to minimize the gift, I said, “They’re my old shoes.” Immediately, I regretted the statement. First, they weren’t old and, second, it sounded as though I was giving him junk. I hurriedly tried to cover my faux pas by saying, “Well, they’re not really old,” but he interrupted me.
“Why are you doing this?”
“So you can come back to school.”
He looked me in the eye and said, in an ironic tone, “Thanks.” At this moment, the old man, whom he called Poppa and who I judged to be Charlie’s grandfather, wandered into the room. He looked at me with a curious smile and asked, “Are you one of the good boys?”
Again, startled, I wasn’t sure how to react. “I hope so,” I mumbled. Then turning to Charlie, I said, “I’d better get back to class.” He saw me to the door and, as I left, I asked him, “Are you coming?”
He started back into the house and I heard him say, “Maybe later.”
When I got home, I was anxious to tell my mother what I had done. But I was not prepared for her reaction. “You did what? You gave away your good new shoes without asking us? Your father is going to be very upset.”
Suddenly, what I had done came crashing in on me. I had expected at least a little praise from my mother, thinking that she might temper my father’s reaction. But it seemed that both of them were going to be angry with me. Still, I thought I had a reasonable defense in terms of helping a friend in need.
My father said nothing during dinner, but called me into his study as soon as the meal was over. Being called into the study was always an ominous thing, and I had not been able to eat much for worrying about it. He sat me down opposite his desk but pulled his chair around to face me.
“Now, tell me in your own words what you did today.” His face was impassive, but I had seen that expression before.
“Charlie’s a good student. He gets as good grades as I do. But he can’t come to school because someone stole his shoes.”
He waited, nodding. “Go on.”
My heart was racing as I realized what I had to say next. I was desperate for him to understand my motivation. “He knew I had a bunch of shoes…and I found out he only had one pair.”
“So he asked you for a pair of your shoes?” Dad’s eyes drilled into me.
“No,” I shouted. “I thought it was the Christian thing to do, to share with the poor. Isn’t that what Jesus told us to do?”
With an icy quiet in his voice, he said, “It might have been what Jesus told us to do if you had given him your own shoes.”
The statement was so unexpected and so confusing that I just looked at him with my mouth open. “But,” I stammered, “I did give him my shoes.”
Dad shook his head. “No,” he said a little more sternly, “you gave him my shoes!”
I shook my head, completely puzzled. In almost a whisper, I said, “They weren’t your shoes; they were my black dress ones.”
He moved his chair a bit closer and leaned forward. “Did you buy those shoes?”
I scowled a bit. “No.”
“No, because I bought those shoes. Did you ask me if you could give away those shoes that I bought for you?”
I suddenly saw where this was going. Deflated, I admitted that I hadn’t asked for permission. I started to apologize but he cut me off. “So, what would you call this behavior of yours?” I didn’t understand what he meant so I shook my head. “Well,” he continued, “they were my shoes and you gave them away without my permission. What do you call that?”
“I don’t know.”
He moved even closer. “I call it theft!” he shouted.
I recoiled in shock. His words hurt worse than if he had slapped me in the face. I had wanted to do something nice, something in line with what I had been taught in Sunday School, but suddenly it had become a crime!
“And you gave them to a black boy!” he concluded, as if that were a crime even worse than theft. I started to cry. I couldn’t help myself. “Tears won’t get you out of this one, young man!” he said somewhat more quietly. Then after a moment he asked, “So, what shall we do about this?”
I couldn’t think straight. I just shook my head and mumbled, “I don’t know.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to talk to him tomorrow, and you’re damned well going to tell him to give you back my shoes.”
I looked at him in horror. “I can’t do that!”
He flashed me a bitter smile and said, “Oh, yes you can. You are going to do just that.”
I got no sleep that night. Between fits of crying and bouts of rage at my father, I tried to figure out what I could possibly say to Charlie tomorrow. I finally decided that the best solution was simply to run away somewhere. I never wanted to see my father again.
I walked into class the next morning, dreading what I would find. I peeked around the corner toward the rear of the room, and there sat Charlie at his desk next to mine. So, he had decided to use my gift and return to class. I walked to the back of the aisle and dropped into my seat. He didn’t raise his eyes to meet mine. I glanced down to see my shoes, and sat up in shock! He was wearing a pair of very old, dirty brown shoes, obvio
usly too large for him.
“Charlie,” I called in a loud whisper. “Where did you get those shoes?”
“They’re my Poppa’s,” he whispered.
“Where are the shoes I gave you?” He mumbled something and I had to ask him again.
He finally looked up and said, as if it made no difference at all to him, “My mother sold them.”
I gasped for breath. That was the last thing in the world I expected to hear. “She what?” I said out loud. The whole class turned around to look at us. Charlie shriveled back inside himself and I turned around, too shocked to think straight. What was going to happen now? Did this get me off the hook? Would my father just forget about it now that the shoes were gone?
When school was over, I looked for Charlie but he was already gone. I thought about going over to see him but decided against it. I didn’t know what to say to him. He obviously didn’t think much of my gift to him.
I was called back into my father’s study after supper. He resumed his place, his chair close in front of me, and leaned in as he asked, “Well, sir, let me hear what you did today to rectify this situation which you have created.”
As I looked at him, I could feel the blood draining out of my face. “I couldn’t get them back,” I said in a tiny voice.
“You couldn’t get them back,” he repeated. “And just why was that?”
I took a deep breath. “His mother sold them.”
His eyes widened, then narrowed. His voice rose as he said in astonishment, “His mother sold them?”
“Yes, sir. That’s what he said.”
“His mother sold them!” He said it as though he was trying to come to terms with something that was impossible to believe. I nodded. “Well,” he said after a moment, “we will have to deal with this matter.” He lifted the phone and asked for the police department. A physical shock ran through my chest.
“What are you going to do?” I asked in a panic. I could see him sending me away in a police car to wherever they take shoe thieves. My terror was escalating.
“Yes, Sergeant Williams. This is George Shepardson on Grove Street. I want to swear out a complaint against a Mrs. Vander on Springfield Avenue.” Pause. “What’s the complaint? She has stolen a pair of shoes that belong to me.” Another pause. “Very well, I think we had better deal with it straightaway. I’ll meet you there in a half hour. You know the place? Good.” He hung up and turned to me. “You’re coming with me, young man. You’re going to see what kind of a mess you’ve created.”
I was numb as I got in the car alongside my father fifteen minutes later. We drove in silence back to school and parked in front of the Vander house, waiting for the policeman to arrive. The sergeant pulled up behind us in a black and white patrol car a moment later and got out, adjusting his hat and slipping his billy club into its holder. He had responded more quickly than he might otherwise have done, when he heard that the complainant was Colonel Shepardson. My father went to meet him. They stood behind our car for a moment discussing something, then turned toward Charlie’s house. My father signaled for me to join them.
The sergeant marched up onto the porch and knocked loudly on the door. Dad stood behind him holding my hand firmly.
A woman answered the door after several knocks. I assumed it was Charlie’s mother, although I couldn’t guess whether she was old or young. At one point, I could see into the house. Charlie was standing in the middle of the room. He didn’t seem afraid to see a policeman on his front porch. He just had a disgusted look on his face.
“Are you Mrs. Vander?” the sergeant asked.
“Yes, sir,” she said in a very soft voice. She didn’t seem afraid either, just tired.
“We’ve had a complaint sworn out against you,” the officer continued.
She looked back and forth between us and the cop. “What sort of complaint?”
The sergeant looked at my father, then turned to Mrs. Vander. “This gentleman says that you sold a pair of shoes that didn’t belong to you, that belonged to him.”
The woman seemed to sag. She sighed deeply, then searched the policeman’s face without apparent emotion. At length, she said in a voice so soft that I could barely hear her words, “Those shoes were given to my son as a gift.”
My father stepped forward abruptly when he heard that, and said, “My son had no right to give those shoes to anyone. I want my shoes back, or I want the $10 I paid for them.”
The sergeant put his hand on my father’s arm to calm him, and said to Mrs. Vander, “Well, we have a problem here. Colonel Shepardson’s boy had no right to give you those shoes, and you had no right to sell them. Now, we want to settle this matter quietly and not create a bigger problem for you or for the colonel. How much did you sell the shoes for?”
Mrs. Vander, still without any apparent emotion, said, “Two dollars.”
“Two dollars!” my father exploded. “Those shoes were new and they cost me five times that much.”
The cop looked at my father with some irritation. “Calm down, Colonel. We’re going to get this thing settled.” Turning to the woman, he said, “Do you have the two dollars?”
“No, sir,” she said. “I spent it on food for my boy.”
“Well, since you can’t give him back the shoes, you will have to pay him $10, because that’s the value of the shoes.”
She looked at my father for a long moment, then said slowly, “I don’t have no $10.” There was silence for a moment as they all considered this impasse.
I could tell that my father was getting very angry, and I was afraid of what he was going to do next. Charlie was standing in the middle of the room listening to it all. I felt terrible about the trouble I had brought on them, and so I blurted out to my father, “I’ll pay you the $10. I’ll work for it and I’ll pay you back.”
They all looked at me, but Charlie’s stare bothered me the most. I couldn’t bear to see his expression. My father turned to me and said in a steely voice, “Yes, you will. You bet you will.”
He shook hands with the officer, then turned without acknowledging Mrs. Vander or saying goodbye, and walked to our car. We drove home in silence while I desperately scoured my mind for ideas as to how I was going to earn the $10.
A week later, when my father came home from some kind of a meeting downtown, I could hear him talking loudly to my mother in the kitchen. He seemed to be upset. I was doing my homework in my bedroom, but his obvious excitement made me curious. I stole to the top of the stairs so I could eavesdrop on them. I was surprised when I realized that they were talking about Charlie’s house. I heard him say that it had been built in 1870, and he went on about how it needed to be “raised.” I didn’t know how you could raise a house, but it sounded as though they were going to fix it up since it was in bad shape. However, that didn’t explain why he was so upset.
I asked my mother about it the next morning, when the four of us boys were gathered at the breakfast table, and what she said shocked me. She told me that my father was trying to get the city housing authority to “raze” Charlie’s house, to tear it down because of its poor condition. She explained that it was wrong to leave it standing there across from the school where all the children gathered, because it was a public health threat. And it didn’t belong among the new houses that were being built around it.
It was disturbing to hear this because I felt somehow responsible. “Where will Charlie live? Does that mean he won’t be coming to school with me anymore?”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, trying to sooth me. “The committee refused your father’s request. They’re not going to force Charlie’s family to move. That’s why he was so upset last night.”
“That’s good,” I said, feeling as though I had avoided causing Charlie’s family a new problem. Everything had gone wrong since the moment I offered Charlie those damned shoes.
My mother explained. “A long time ago, the Vanders had a farm in that part of Springfield Avenue. Charlie’s grandfather’s gr
andfather had been born a slave, and he moved here after the Civil War when the slaves were set free. The men in his family built that house with their own hands, and they’ve been there for eighty years. So the people on the committee didn’t want to make them move now. They’ve been sort of protected there all these years.”
I nodded. I had known none of this before. “But why is Daddy so unhappy about it. I would think he’d be glad that Charlie doesn’t have to move and leave Roosevelt School.”
“Well,” my mother said thoughtfully, “your father doesn’t think it’s healthy to leave that house there anymore. And,” she added, “he’s used to getting his own way.”
Charlie’s attendance at school became more and more uneven after that, so much so that Miss McKee stopped asking about him when he was absent. When he was present, he seemed to shrink even more deeply into himself. He sat huddled in the corner facing away from me, totally isolated from the rest of the class. I could no longer make contact with him.
Then one day, he was not only gone but his desk was cleaned out. It was as though there had never been anyone sitting in that space. I raised my hand and asked Miss McKee why Charlie’s desk was empty, and she answered curtly that he had moved. She obviously didn’t want to talk about it.
I was aware that I had caused Charlie’s family nothing but trouble, even though I was trying to do something nice for him. I realized that they probably didn’t want to see me again, but I needed to know what had happened and at least say goodbye to him. So I gathered my courage when school was over and walked around to the front of the school building, planning to cross Springfield Avenue. What I saw was such a shock that I had to sit down on the sidewalk.
Charlie’s house had burned to the ground.
The chimney stood straight up on the right side of the wreckage, but the rest of the place had been reduced to blackened timber. What was left of the roof lay collapsed on top of the charred remnants of that old house. Sitting there on the cold concrete, I was so horrified that I started to cry. Everything had been so peaceful and normal before I thought of giving him my shoes. Did I cause this to happen, too?
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