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“Well, you come here then.” The cop crooked his finger to draw Elro closer. “That’s right, let go your girlfriend there for a second.”
Elro looked at me and dropped my hand, then took a halting step toward the table. The cop hoisted himself up a few inches. He spoke under his voice. “You tell your girlfriend that we’ve got an ord-nance in this town that says people gotta wear shoes in public extablishments. Tell her that if she comes in here again, she better cover up her pretty toes.”
“Yes, sir,” said Elro.
“Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
The waitress came up again with a fresh pot of coffee. “Are you botherin’ these nice kids, Stan?” she asked. “Now, you just let them be.”
“I was just tellin’ the girl here that she better learn to wear shoes in a extablishment like this.”
The waitress stared at my feet. They looked huge and shamefully pink against the scuffed wood of the restaurant’s floor. I felt as if I were in one of those dreams where you suddenly realize you’ve arrived at school wearing your pajamas. “Why, you’re a regular poet,” the waitress said.
“Whaddaya mean?” demanded the cop.
“See?” she said to me. “I told you this town don’t know nothin’.” She shooed us away. “You kids run along. Leave us old folks to argue.”
“Why a poet?” huffed the cop, his cheeks jiggling.
Outside, Elro grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me toward the truck.
“Wait,” I said. “I’ve got to get shoes.” My embarrassment in the restaurant had punctured my confidence. I could have cut off my feet at the ankles.
“Not now, we gotta get out of here.” He continued to pull me along the sidewalk.
I shook my arm free. “I’m not leaving without shoes. It’s your fault I lost my others, and I’m not going barefoot anymore.”
“Jesus!” Elro stomped over to the truck and jumped into the cab, slamming his palm down on the steering wheel. Behind me, the waitress rapped on the restaurant window. She’d apparently witnessed our scene, and now she shook her head knowingly. The knob of hair flopped back and forth above her.
I turned and scurried down the sidewalk in search of a place to buy shoes. In a two-minute walk, I passed a grocery, a tavern, a hardware store, another tavern, and a tiny post office whose front was almost covered by two gigantic white columns. Beyond the post office came several boarded-up buildings, a vacant lot, and, at the end of town, a wood building whose whitewashed walls had weathered into the dirty, smudged color of old snow. Stenciling on the window said DEMARZO’S DEPARTMENT STORE. Kitty-corner across the street, a sign on a brighter, newer building said FINNEGAN’S FIVE AND DIME. But the children I’d noticed before were playing in front, and I didn’t want to walk past them in my humiliating bare feet. So DeMarzo’s was it.
Inside, the lighting was dim. I didn’t see anyone around and wandered down one aisle. Away from the front, the air was stale. Dry goods were stacked on the shelves in neat piles that looked as if they hadn’t been disturbed in years. I picked up a man’s white dress shirt packed in a clear plastic envelope. The envelope had gathered a coating of dust, and the shirt inside was turning faintly yellow, like an old photograph.
At the far end of the aisle, a door opened into a small room with a rumpled sofa pushed against the wall. “Anybody here?” I called out, and to my left a voice suddenly crackled. Tucked in a corner of the store, an old woman was sitting in a ladder-back chair. Her dress was a shapeless mass of black, and she was sitting with her thighs apart, resting one hand on a cane.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m looking for shoes.”
“Got shoes,” she said, speaking with a strong accent. “Lotta shoes.” She pointed with her cane to the wall nearby, where one whole section was taken up with shoeboxes. I went over to have a look. The boxes, too, had yellowed with age. I started flipping through them, looking for shoes that might fit, but all I could find were men’s shoes, black and brown and all very plain.
“No, no,” said the woman. Pushing herself up with her cane, she rose to her feet. I saw that she was extraordinarily short, the top of her head barely came to my chest. She shambled over and again using her cane, she poked at my feet, taking the measure of them. Then she bent slowly at the waist and pulled a box from the bottom shelf. “Here,” she said. Cradling the box on her hip, she took off the top. Inside, unprotected by any tissue paper, two ankle-high black shoes nestled against each other like napping puppies. The shoes appeared to be made of some thin, shiny material, and black, wiry laces ran up and down the fronts.
“Try, try,” she said.
I lifted one out. Though it must have been sitting there for decades, the shoe was in perfect shape. The leather sole was stiff, but flexible. There was a short, thick heel. The woman didn’t seem concerned that I was barefoot, so I sat in a nearby chair and slipped the shoe on. It was narrow, but the right length. I laced it up over my ankle.
“Fit good,” the woman said.
“Yes.”
“Very fine shoes, very beautiful. The beautiful women, they wear this shoe.”
“I can imagine.” I turned my ankle round and back, studying the effect. In fact, the shoe was ugly, I thought. It was grim and indelicate, and it looked preposterous on me. The high, blunt top came to the cuffs of my jeans. Still I liked having the shoe on. I felt sort of honored, as if I’d been entrusted with something treasured and pure.
“It’s ancient!” I said.
“Made good,” said the woman. “These new, they break.” She swung her cane to indicate the rest of the contents of the store.
