A Man Without Shoes

by John Sanford

  And then someone else was in the room and close by, but the voice of the someone seemed far away and sifted by distance. “Danny,” it was saying. “Danny.”

  He opened his eyes to see Miss Forrest at the foot of the flight. She held her purse in one hand and her key-ring in the other. “Hello,” he said. “Hello, Miss Forrest.”

  “What’re you doing here?” she said.

  “I was waiting for you.”

  “Were you? Why?”

  “You said to come and see you again.”

  “I’m glad you remembered.”

  “I thought we could have another talk.”

  “What would we talk about?”

  “I don’t know. We had a good talk last time.”

  The woman shook her head. “We really didn’t, Danny,” she said.

  “It was good when you were telling me about being a teacher, and about teachers being human.”

  “You knew that all along, didn’t you?”

  “I guess so, but now I think everybody is human.”

  “This is getting to be a good talk too, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what I came here for.”

  “I know,” the woman said, “but I don’t think we ought to have any more talks.”

  “But why, Miss Forrest? I like to talk to you better than anyone else.”

  “I feel the same way, Danny.”

  “Then why can’t we have any more talks?”

  “I didn’t say we can’t,” the woman said, and the key-ring fell, and she picked it up. “I said we oughtn’t to.”

  “I wish…,” Danny said, but he knew that wishing was futile.

  A Fake and a Phony

  Danny and Tootsie had finished work for the day, and with their shoe-shine boxes slung, they were walking home across 125th Street in the late-afternoon sun, their block-long purple shadows outflung before them.

  “Danny,” Tootsie said after covering some distance in silence, “what’s your philosophy?”

  [What the hell did that mean?] “My philosophy?” he said.

  “That’s right. What’s your philosophy?”

  [Was it something like a scout-oath, or what?] “Well, I’ll tell you, Tootsie. My philosophy is.…What I mean to say.…I been thinking about my philosophy for a long time and I finally figured it out.”

  “That’s good,” Tootsie said, “but what is it?”

  “It’s this: do good by your fellow-man.” Danny kicked an empty matchbox a few cracks along the sidewalk, and then Tootsie took it over and made a goal when he hit a hydrant with it. “Do good by your fellow-man,” Danny said again. “That’s my philosophy. Whenever I feel like doing a thing, I first ask myself if it’s going to do good by my fellow-man. If it is, then I do it. If it isn’t, then I don’t.” He ran a finger between his throat and collar, using the gesture to cast a quick glance at the colored boy; he learned little, for Tootsie continued to stare straight ahead up his shadow. “There’s nothing so noble as the simple word of ‘friend,’ so if my fellow-man comes to me in his hour of need, I will do good by him. I will not be a fair-weather friend; I will be a friend in deed. I will share my portion with him when his fortune is at a low ebb, and I will not charge him interest, and I will turn the other cheek even if he does not do good by me. That’s my philosophy.…”

  They were crossing Fifth Avenue, and now Tootsie’s way lay north. They paused for a moment at the curb, their shadows still making two long stains running east.

  “See you tomorrow,” Tootsie said.

  “See you,” Danny said, and he watched Tootsie move off. [Jesus Christ, what must he be thinking of you?]

  The Stamp Act

  The regular weekly meeting of the Mt. Morris Philatelic Society was in progress. The founder and first president, a boy named Perry Floyd, was chairman as well, and equipped with a tack-hammer and a block of wood, he was guiding the disposal of such items as the agenda contained: 1) a reading of the Society pledge by Albert Hughes, vice-president; 2) a reading of the minutes of the previous meeting by Maxwell Gage, secretary; 3) a financial statement by Carl Eames, treasurer; 4) the collection of dues by the same; and 5) a report called “News of the Stamp World,” delivered by the chairman himself. After the next routine item—6) new members—the meeting would be thrown open to 7) selling and swapping.

  Officers and rank-and-file alike had begun to crackle packets, open stamp-books, and arrange displays for the trading-session, but Chairman Floyd brought them to order with his tack-hammer.

  “Item 6,” he said. “New members.”

  Danny Johnson raised his hand, and the Chair recognized him. “I got two people that want to join our Society,” he said.

  “What’s their name?” the Chair said.

  “Julian Pollard and Tudor Powell.”

  “I never heard of them. Who are they?”

  “Friends of mine.”

  “What’s their qualification?”

  “I went to school with Julian, P.S. 604. He was smart, and a thing he was specially good in was geography, so he ought to be able to learn about stamps. The other one, Tudor, is my partner. I’m in business with him.”

  “What business?”

  “The shoe-shine business.”

  “The shoe-shine business! What kind of a qualification is that?”

  “By being in it with him, I found out he was very honest and would never cheat anybody, and that’s a pretty good qualification.”

  “Does he know anything about stamps?”

  “I don’t think so, but he could learn, just like Julian.”

  “Have these guys got enough money to pay the initiation-fee?”

  “My partner has, and if Julian’s short, I’ll loan him the fifty cents.”

  “Well, I don’t see any objection,” the Chair said. “All those in favor of the new members, raise your right hand.” The vote for admission was unanimous. “They’re elected. Tell them to come to the next meeting.”

  “They’re waiting downstairs, “Danny said. “They could come to this one.”

  “If they pay the initiation-fee.”

  Danny went to a window and called down into the dark street. “Come on up! You got elected!”

  “Item 7,” the Chair said. “Selling and swapping.”

  The room, the parlor of the Floyd flat, at once became a market place for peddlers of stamps in sets, stamps in blocks, uncancelled stamps, hand-cancelled covers, internal revenues, commemorative issues, Latin-Americans, Africans, British Colonials, and grab-bag specials. Being both customer and merchant, each boy hunted for bargains while barking his wares. Examinations were made under glass, the Stamp Bible was consulted, argument and haggle began, and money and merchandise changed hands. More stamps appeared, choicer ones now, and silver coins supplanted copper.

  The doorbell rang.

  “I’ll open,” Danny said, but no one heard him. He went to the hall and let the new members into the flat.” You got elected unanimously,” he said, and congratulating them, he led them toward the parlor.

  For a moment, none of the tradesmen noticed the trio, and they stood between the shirted portieres, watching the loud and gymnastic making of deals. Turning from the crowd at length, one of the boys, in the act of secreting a coin, stopped and stared. Another boy happened to glance at the doorway, glanced off, doubled back quickly, and froze. And now a third and a fourth and a fifth all singly stared, and now a sixth and a seventh, and in the end, the eyes of the entire Society were holding a meeting among the curtains. It was a very quiet meeting.

  “Fellows,” Danny said, “these’re the new members—Julie Pollard and Tootsie Powell.…”

  The founder and first president cut across him. “But they’re niggers!” he said.

  Words, launched, were coming down the ways of Danny’s mouth, and he heard himself say, “Tootsie stands for Tudor…,” but the filler was draining from his smile, and his face was left with the smile’s empty form, a cramp.

  “No niggers can bel
ong to this Society!” the founder and first president said.

  “No niggers want to belong!” Julian said, and he pitched the black boulder of his fist at Perry Floyd’s face. The founder and first president came apart harelipped as he fell, and lying in a snow of stamps, he bled over the rectangular flakes. Julian looked at him for a moment, and then he left the flat, followed by Tootsie and Danny.

  “So we got unanimously elected!” Julian said when they reached the street. “Looks to me, Negroes ain’t allowed to collect stamps!”

  “I never thought to say you were colored,” Danny said. “I figured the guys were regular.”

  “Have to be white to belong to a little ole stamp-club!”

  “Well, anyway, you had the fun of belting that stinker in the moosh.”

  “Don’t do me no good to be belting people in the moosh! That’s the way I’m going to get in trouble! I’ll hear the word ‘nigger’ some day, and I’ll have a bottle in my hand, and some day I’ll have a knife, and God damn it, some day I’ll have a gun!”

  “Not everybody’s like that pissy Perry Floyd.”

  “Whole damn club is pissy Perrys! Whole damn world!”

  “That isn’t fair,” Danny said. “There’s me, and there’s lots of other people you don’t have to get mad at.”

  “Like to meet up some time.”

  “You met Miss Campbell. She was nice to colored people.”

  “Met Doc Page too, and he was a white-meat bastard! Would’ve read my paper if it was the other way ’round. But if you’re black, it’s never the other way ’round. Be black, and you’re suppose to be ass-frontways—only I don’t turn my back for nobody, and that’s how I’m going to get in trouble!”

  Tootsie said, “Who you been listening at, Julie?”

  “It wasn’t you, Mr. Kneel-down!”

  “I don’t aim to always shine shoes.”

  “No? How you going to get your yaller Stutz?”

  “I don’t aim at a yaller Stutz,” Tootsie said.

  “You just don’t aim,” Julian said. “You’re black, Tootsie, and you’re being aimed at”

  “Maybe, but I ain’t aiming to be aimed at, and you are. You’re so sure you’re going to get in trouble account of being black that you won’t rest till you do. They’ll be caving your head in, and you’ll be getting a fat comfort out of saying, ‘I told me so.’”

  “Could was, but I still ain’t shining no shoes.”

  “I’ll quit that when I get what I want out of it: a box of money.”

  “And I still ain’t waiting on no tables, like your old man.”

  “A box of money,” Tootsie said. “I’m going to college.”

  “You in college right now—Kneel-down College!”

  “Have to kneel down to get what I’m after, but I don’t mind because I ain’t kneeling down to people—only to money. Everybody does that, and there’s lots do it standing up.”

  “You got it all doped out—all except how to unkink your hair.”

  “I’m black, and I want to stay black.”

  “You can kiss off that college-stuff, then.”

  “I’ll get to college,” Tootsie said.

  “If they let you, Mr. Kink-head. I want to be a lawyer, but they ain’t letting me”

  “People sitting around figuring how to stop Julie Pollard being a lawyer?”

  “Not any more. They all done figuring.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “State of New God damn York.”

  “They didn’t figure too good, because there’s forty Negro lawyers in Harlem alone.”

  “And seven hundred Pullman porters that wanted to be, but ain’t! They rake in your cush in law-school, they sell you bookybooks, and they even give you a crack at the exams—and then they flunk you and say, ‘Tough titty. Try again next year.’ Next year! What do you do for meat-eating till next year? Does the State feed you till next year? In a pig’s brown! You go out and get you a job being a elevator-boy, or you rack’em up, or you pimp for some poor ole black bum, or you bust in a Western Union and get shot in the entrals. ‘Try again next year, nigger.’”

  “What happens if a white man flunks?”

  “White man don’t flunk.”

  “Now, that’s a lot of crap,” Tootsie said.

  “What I care about a white man flunks? Phrig him! He can look out for himself.”

  “No better than you can. If a man’s poor, he’s poor—and he can be poor in any color.”

  “White man can do something else.”

  “Suppose he don’t want to. Suppose he wants to be a lawyer or nothing, like you.”

  “I say, phrig him!”

  “We’re going awful slow,” Tootsie said, “If you say phrig him, why shouldn’t he say phrig you?”

  “Let him. I still ain’t kissing his peach.”

  “Poor people don’t have to kiss each other’s peach.”

  “Tootsie,” Danny said after a long, attentive silence, “where do you get all that stuff you’re saying?”

  “Mostly from my father.”

  “He sounds like he’s a smart man.”

  “All waiters’re smart. There’s nobody in the world that’s as smart as a waiter on a table.”

  “We got some pie left from supper,” Danny said. “Come on up my house, and I’ll be a waiter on a table.”

  Not long afterward, three boys full sat in the downpour of the Johnson chandelier, their milk-mustaches still glistening.

  From Wandering on a Foreign Strand

  “I never saw action in the war,” Uncle Web was saying, “but all the same, I was seriously wounded at the Peace Conference: they were only out to divvy the world a new way, so as soon as I got my discharge, I made a beeline for Russia. All the further I got was Brussels: every God damn road was blocked by some God damn counterrevolutionary army—the British, the French, the White Guards, the Finns, the Poles, even the Germans. The Germans—and only a little way back, they were our worst enemies! All Philip Nolan said was ‘I wish I may never hear of the United States again!’ I go him one better. I say, ‘I wish I may never hear of any country again!’ I hope the whole globe catches fire from Russia and burns to the ground, and then, if there’s any flag left to fly over the ruins, it’ll be the red one!” He put a match to a dead cigar, and it came to life. “What’ve you been scribbling there?” he said to his nephew.

  Danny let a pencil fall. “Nothing,” he said.

  The hack-driver reached across the table and drew a sheet of paper from under the boy’s hand. “What’s this mean?” he said. “‘Tanforan, Tanforan.’”

  “I don’t know,” the boy said.

  “Over and over again—‘Tanforan.’”

  “I was just writing it. I don’t know why.”

  Champeen of the World

  There was a knock on the door of the Powell flat, and Tootsie’s father said, “See who that is, Tudor.”

  “It’s probably my uncle,” Danny said.

  When Tootsie opened the door, he found Webster Varner standing in the hallway. “Hello, Mr. Varner,” he said. “Come on in.”

  “Hello, Tootsie,” Varner said. “How be you?” After being introduced, he said, “I told Danny I’d call for him if I was in the neighborhood. Nice place you have, Mr. Powell.”

  “Nice as some, Mr. Varner,” Powell said.

  “Well, Danny,” Varner said, “how about that chocolate sody?”

  “I’m ready, unc,” Danny said.

  “Want to join us, Tootsie?”

  “If he won’t be in the way,” Powell said.

  “Not at all. Glad to have him.”

  Tootsie ran for his jacket and cap.

  “Mind if I look at your books?” Varner said.

  “That’s what they’re for,” Powell said.

  There were many books in the Powell parlor—in cases, on the Dutch shelf, on the mantelpiece, in a china-closet, propped on tables, and stacked in corners. Few of them were new, and many were cover
less, but all that Danny’s uncle happened to pick up and open were name-plated Ex Libris: Raymond Powell and filled with marginal notes.

  “Interested in economics, I see,” Varner said.

  “Mighty little else to be interested in,” Powell said.

  “Veblen,” Varner said as he passed a row of volumes, “Morgan, George, Kropotkin, Marx.…”

  “And Lenin,” Powell said.

  “I don’t see him, but I’m sure he’s around.”

  “If Marx is around, Lenin’s around.”

  “And Trotsky,” Varner said, “but I don’t see him, either.”

  “You won’t,” Powell said. “I threw him out.”

  “Threw him out! How’s that?”

  “Threw him out like I threw out Kautsky.”

  “Now, what the hell’d you do that for?”

  “Trotsky can’t stay in the same room with Lenin.”

  Danny said, “Tootsie’s ready, unc.”

  “Be with you in a minute,” Varner said, and he turned back to Tootsie’s father. “Just what did you mean—Trotsky can’t stay in the same room with Lenin…?”

  * * *

  “Sorry I’m late,” Danny said when he joined his partner at the 125th Street subway-station in the morning. “I slept and slept.”

  “Did you finally get that soda?” Tootsie said.

  “Listen. You know what time that argument was over? Two o’clock!”

  “I’m glad I went to bed.”

  “I snoozed off on the couch, and I got woke up four different times. I never heard such terrible noise.”

  “Politics is a loud business,” Tootsie said “Herey’ are! Getcha shine! Who won?”

  “Nobody,” Danny said.

  “Before I went to bed, I seem to remember my father had your uncle over a barrel.”

  “And after you went to bed, my uncle had your father over a barrel.”

  “My father usually wins an argument.”

  “Nobody won. Somebody was always over a barrel.”

  “When my father gets a man over a barrel, he stays there.”