A Man Without Shoes

by John Sanford

  “How old are your parents?” the teacher said.

  “About the same age as you, I guess.”

  “Do you think they’re young?”

  “Not specially,” the boy said.

  “Then why do you say I am?”

  “Because you’re not related to me—but don’t ask me to explain that. I couldn’t.”

  “Maybe I make you feel older,” the teacher said.

  Danny looked at her. “I never would’ve thought of that,” he said.

  DO YOU KNOW DR. DAHLGREN?

  “Quite well,” Miss Forrest said. “Why?”

  “He owns a camp in the Adirondack Mountains,” Danny said, “and every summer he picks ten boys from Clinton to go up there and be waiters on the table, and he pays them a hundred dollars a season, and they’re allowed to keep the tips they get from the councillors and the parents. The camp is called Camp Clintonia, and it’s on Schroon Lake in the Adirondack Mountains.” The teacher took the boy’s arm as they crossed Broadway, but she did not release it when they reached the curb. “I’ve got a chance to be one of the waiters. I’m pretty good in Doc Dahlgren’s subject—you got to have 85 or better to be eligible—and now all I need is a letter of recommendation from somebody on the Faculty.”

  “If you get the job, you’ll be away all summer,” the teacher said. “From your family.”

  “It’ll only be two months.”

  “Two months is a long time.”

  “Remember what we were talking about?” Danny said. “A time is never long when it’s over.”

  “I know, but it takes a long time to be over,” the teacher said. “What would you want me to say in the letter?”

  The boy shrugged. “I never got recommended before,” he said.

  “I’ll do what I can,” the teacher said, “but on one condition—that you write to your folks at least once a week. They’ll miss you.”

  “That’s an easy condition, but I’ll write because I miss them. It’s the person that does the missing that ought to write.”

  After a little way, the teacher said, “Yes,” but she spoke the word softly, and she thought it went unheard.

  THIS SIDE OF CARD IS FOR ADDRESS

  On the rear car of a North Creek local, Danny stood with his elbows in the angles of the collapsible gate and watched the city of Albany slide away on a treadmill of track and ties. [“I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you yesterday, like I promised, but I had a lot of things to do, and when I got finished, it was too late, and then when I tried to phone you this morning from Grand Central, I couldn’t find your name in the book. So I will just have to write what I would’ve told you if I saw you—that I hope you have as good of a vacation as you got for me. I’m only away for four hours, but I miss you already. I guess two months is longer than I thought….”] And now Albany (with the State Building, the Day Line docks, the people and trees and trolley-cars, and a penny postal lying in a mailbox at the D & H depot) was gone.

  WAITERS ARE THE SMARTEST PEOPLE

  The lake at dawn was slick under a fleece of mist, but now and then a trout briefly puckered the surface, or a kingfisher plunged, and these were the first moves of the day, and then came a wind, woolgathering, and squirrels stuttered in the copper beeches, and and the bills of woodpeckers uttered Morse, and now a bugle-call answered itself from across the lake, and now boys’ voices were on the warming air, a multiple sound with a single tone, as from a swarm of birds, and the day began.

  [“Say, Al,” you said, “could I talk to you for a minute?”

  [He said, “Councillors are called Mister at Clintonia.”

  [“Okay,” you said. “I’d like to talk to you for a minute, Mr. Nicholson.”

  [“Get it over with, Johnson. I‘m in a hurry.”

  [“It’s about the Mess Hall rules. Breakfast is served from eight to nine, and the guys at your table never show up till eight-fifty.”

  [“What about it?”

  [“Well, coming in that late, they don’t get done till ten, and us waiters kind of count on the time between meals.”

  [“I didn’t think waiters counted.”

  [“It’s the only chance we have for hikes and fishing—things like that.”

  [“Things like that,” he said. “Answer me something, will you? Do you pay the camp, or does the camp pay you?”

  [“The camp pays me, but it pays you too, so we ought to be on the same side.”

  [“Whatever side you’re on, I’m on the opposite. I’m a councillor, and you’re a waiter, and I’ll thank you to keep your place!”

  [“If I knew you felt that way, I wouldn’t’ve spoke to you, but as long as I did, I might as well finish: come in earlier for breakfast, or you’ll still be waiting for it when supper rolls around. I can stall too, you know.”

  [“We start that game tomorrow,” he said. “Look for me at one minute to nine.”]

  The lake caught whispers of wind, and sun-sequins flashed, and leaves clapped hands, and shadows shortened toward shadowless noon.

  [The kid said, “I want to use the handball court.”

  [“Wait till we finish our game,” you said.

  [“Waiting is only for waiters.”

  [“But you’re all alone. You got nobody to play with.”

  [“I’m going to practice for the tournament, and I want the court.”

  [“The waiters have a right to use it too.”

  [“Not when a camper’s around. Ask Dr. Dahlgren.”

  [“Look,” you said “This is a challenge-game.”

  [“I’m only going to ask you three times more, and then I’m going to tell Dr. Dahlgren.”

  [“Why do you have to be such a stinker?”

  [“Now I’m not even going to ask three more times.”

  [“Ah, Christ,” you said, “take the court and break your ass!”]

  Bats whacked balls, and balls whacked mitts, and there were thrashing arms and running feet, and reels unwound and whined, and keels gave passing patterns to the water, impermanent waves, and shadows grew slowly eastward.

  [“I been looking for you, Jerry,” you said. “I wanted to tell you about that tray of dishes I busted yesterday. They fined me a buck for it.”

  [“That’s tough,” he said, “but why tell me?”

  [“I tripped on your foot.”

  [“You should’ve kept your eyes open.”

  [“You should’ve kept your hoof out of the aisle.”

  [“Where do you expect me to put it?”

  [“Under the table, where it belongs.”

  [“I’ll put it wherever I feel like” he said.

  [“Do that” you said, “but next time I find it in the aisle, I’m going to reach down and snap it right off your leg.”

  [“Say, you’re talking to a camper!”]

  The sun was low now, and shade sprang from pebbles, and blades of grass were shorter than their own silhouettes, and thrushes played flourishes on flutes, and fireflies flew on and off, and against the trees on the far shore a single light came on.

  [It was your turn to wait on the waiters, and when you got to the dessert, you slapped a tray down on the bakery-counter, saying, “Ten big portions for the proletariat.”

  [The bake-chef shoved a pie-tin at you, and he said, “Cut it ten ways.”

  [“Half a pie for ten working-stiffs!” you said. “Nix on that!”

  [“Nix is nix,” he said.

  [“Why, I could eat half a pie singlehanded! I could eat the tin and all!”

  [“Don’t eat the tin,” he said.

  [“Why do campers get seconds when waiters don’t even get firsts?” you said.

  [He laughed, saying, “You ain’t organized.”]

  In a circus of brightened faces, a campfire burned on the beach, and songs were sung to the calisthenic flames, and now and then, when a figure passed between the light and the lake, a giant shadow strode over the water, and after a time the fire-hour ended, and the faces withdrew, leaving only a stadium of ston
es to ring the embers.

  * * *

  “That bake-chef was only trying to be funny,” Danny said, “but when you come right down to it, a Waiters’ Union wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”

  In a pine-grove near the boathouse, the ten waiters of Camp Clintonia were bedded down in needles.

  “My father don’t like unions,” Vic Sabin said.

  “When we signed up with Doc Dahlgren,” Danny said, “he told us we’d get treated like regular campers, but if that’s what this is, all I can say is I’m losing weight on it.”

  “My father says if you want to stay out of trouble, stay out of unions.”

  “If you ask me, your father sounds like a Boss,” Danny said. “Doc promised we could use the camp facilities just like anybody else, but as far as I can see, that only holds good for the toilets. We start to play handball, and we’re right in the middle of a champeenship game, and any snot-nose Junior can kick us off. We’re out in a rowboat, and even a Midget can holler he wants it, and we got to come in. We get docked a quarter for every busted two-cent plate, no matter who busts it, and we don’t sit down to eat till every regular camper is full as a banana. Christ!”

  “How about the rest of it?” Earl Sultan said. “How about that hundred bucks we was supposed to get at the end of the summer? When we took the job, Doc never said nothing about we had to pay our own railroad-fare, and now all of a sudden we get charged fourteen smackers to ride to work!”

  Pete Swann said, “The minute that train pulled out of Grand Central, we couldn’t possibly make more than eighty-six bucks apiece, but that don’t get my ass out nearly as much as being stuck for our laundry-bill. Two bucks a week times eight: there’s another sixteen we can pull the chain on!”

  “Fourteen and sixteen is thirty,” Marty Solomon said, “but the way things’re going, we won’t even make the seventy that’s left. Breakage is good for a buck and a half a week. Figure fifteen for the season.”

  “That leaves fifty-five,” Joe Geiger said, “but peel off the price of bus-rides to Pottersville in the camp bus, and wear and tear on our uniforms. That’s good for another sawbuck.”

  “It’s only forty-five now,” Ed Oliver said.

  “It ain’t over yet,” Solly Fishman said. “Take a buck off for the camp paper.”

  “Take off another for the camp show,” Stan Vogel said, “and two more for insurance.”

  “And two more for meals on the train,” Wally Willard said.

  “Thirty-nine bucks!” Danny said. “But you can lay yourself odds it’ll get less and less. When Doc signed us on, he knew full well we’d land in New York without a cent.”

  “What about tips?” Vic Sabin said.

  “Tips!” Danny said.

  “What tips?” Marty Solomon said.

  “There ain’t no such word,” Ed Oliver said.

  “Tips! “Danny said. “I’m bowlegged from waiting on parents and guests, and I swear to God I ain’t collected a nickel from them in four weeks!”

  “That’s funny,” Vic Sabin said. “I’m in fifteen bills so far, and I’m going to triple that before I’m done.”

  “No wonder you don’t want a union,” Danny said. “You might have to cough up some of that dough for dues.”

  “Damn right,” Earl Sultan said. “I think we ought to get up a committee.”

  “But supposing Doc tells the committee to cop itself a walk,” Vic Sabin said.

  “It’ll cop a long one, then,” Danny said. “We’ll go out on strike, all the way to Pottersville, and while we’re eating sodas at Griswold’s, the whole damn camp can starve. say we ought to stand up on our rights!”

  “I’m in favor,” Pete Swann said.

  “Second the motion,” Joe Geiger said.

  “All those for having a union, say ‘aye,’” Danny said, and there were ten ‘ayes,’ nine strong and one weak. “The Waiters’ Union of Camp Clintonia is formed. Now we get up a committee.”

  “I nominate Danny Johnson,” Vic Sabin said.

  “I second the motion,” Wally Willard said.

  “I move nominations be closed,” Vic Sabin said.

  * * *

  “Dr. Dahlgren,” Danny said, “the Waiters’ Union elected me to be a committee to talk to you about some of the camp rules.”

  “When was the union formed?” Dr. Dahlgren said.

  “A few minutes ago. The rules us waiters don’t like are the ones that take away the money you promised us before we came up here. We all expected to make a hundred dollars salary and whatever we collected in tips. Only one of us has got any tips so far, but that isn’t your fault, and we don’t blame you for it: you can’t help it if the parents’re a bunch of cheapskates. But you made the rules, and it’s the rules that take away our salary little by little, and we can’t afford it.”

  “Who suggested that the waiters form a union?”

  “I did. The way we figure, none of us can make more than thirtynine dollars out of the hundred you promised, and we don’t think that’s fair. For instance, it isn’t fair to charge us for our railroad-tickets after saying we’d be treated like regular campers, and there’s other things that aren’t fair, either, like charging us for dishes that the campers break, and for laundry, and for rides in the camp bus. All those things add up to a lot of money, to sixty-one dollars and maybe more, and it isn’t fair.”

  Dr. Dahlgren took a ledger from a shelf above his desk, opened it at one of the projecting tabs, and totaled a few figures, “You’ve earned forty-six dollars so far, Johnson,” he said, “and the charges against you come to forty.…”

  “Forty!” Danny said. “What for?”

  “Forty,” Dr. Dahlgren said, and taking two bills from a tin box in his top drawer, he laid them on the ledger and turned it to face Danny. “Sign there,” he said, pointing.

  Danny signed D.Johnson near the man’s fingernail.

  “Now, put that money in your pocket,” the man said.

  Danny stored the bills in a wallet of imitation alligator.

  The man referred to his wrist-watch and then looked at Danny. “You have exactly one hour in which to pack your things and get off the grounds,” he said. “You’re fired.”

  “Do you know what you are, Dr. Dahlgren?” Danny said. “You’re a crook.”

  “Get out of here, you dirty little bastard!”

  * * *

  “…We had it arranged that when I got done talking to Doc Dahlgren, I should meet the waiters back in the pine-grove and tell them what happened. I went straight down there and give them my report, and then I said all those in favor of going out on strike should raise their right hand. Only one hand went up, and it was mine.”

  “The stinken finks!” the hack-driver said. “What did you do…?”

  * * *

  “…What could I do, Miss Forrest? I packed my stuff and got out.”

  In the teacher’s parlor, the window was open wide, and the blind, drawn to within an inch of the sill, hung still. Through the slit, a sliver of green park could be seen, with a figure or two lying in the greener shade, and a few cars, snarling over the soft asphalt, could be heard.

  “Did Dr. Dahlgren give you a return-ticket?”

  “I asked him, but he only called me a bastard again.”

  “How did you get back to the city?”

  “I went out on the road and got hitches.”

  “It was nice of you to write to me so often.”

  “I was hoping you’d answer, but after a while I realized you must’ve went away somewhere.”

  “I was at a hotel on Lake George.”

  “Why, that’s right near Pottersville! You should’ve let me know, and I would’ve come to see you on my days off.”

  “Your letters told me what you were doing.”

  “My letters? But you didn’t get those till you got home.”

  “I had them forwarded.”

  “I never knew you could do that. What did you think when you got the one about me being k
icked out for an anarchist? I wrote it from Saratoga.”

  “It came yesterday. Just before I checked out of the hotel.”

  “I hope you weren’t kicked out for an anarchist.”

  “I was tired of the place.”

  “It’s lucky I happened to drop around this afternoon,” the boy said. “I wouldn’t’ve known you were home.”

  “It’s very lucky,” the teacher said, and she turned away to stare at the bright and quivering strip of park. “What do you plan to do for the rest of the summer …?”

  * * *

  “…Well, being as how I’m such an anarchist, Mig, I thought I’d look you up and see if I could do something to help Mr. Sacco and Mr. Vanzetti.”

  “You know what a mimeograph-machine is?” Mig said.

  “I never even heard of one.”

  “You’ve heard of a crank, though.”

  “Sure,” Danny said, and he grinned. “A crank is an anarchist.”

  “You’re going to turn one for a couple of wops.”

  A COUPLE OF WOPS

  Tacked on the wall above the mimeograph-machines were two faces in rotogravure, the faces of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, both of them smiling down at Danny as he wound one of the stencil-drums and ground out a growing stack of throwaways. The apparatus clicked and clinked and clanked, but its sounds were almost smothered by the pounding of presses that filled an acre of loft. Ink had stained the boy’s hands and apron, and his head, where he had swabbed off sweat, wore black swipes, but he knew they were there, and occasionally, when he glanced along the table at Mig DeLuca, he winked a blackened eye. Always, however, his gaze would return to the two faces before him, and always it would momentarily fall to a third one, plastered below the others in a slash of paste, and always then the rollers of his machine would suddenly seem to say thayer thayer webster thayer.

  At five o’clock in the afternoon, Mig DeLuca said, “Okay, Mr. Anarchist, you can quit now.”

  Danny said, “No coppish,” and kept on cranking.

  Mig approached him with a newspaper-clipping and said, “Listen to this, kid.”

  I could see the best man, intelligent, education, they been arrested and sent to prison and died in prison for years and years without getting them out, and Debs, one of the great men in his country, he is in prison, still away in prison, because he is a socialist. He wanted the laboring class to have better conditions and better living, more education, give a push his son if he could have a chance some day, but they put him in prison. Why? Because the capitalist class, they know, they are against that.