The Emperor of Shoes

by Spencer Wise

  Before I could answer, I heard that noise again. Coming from outside. Music piped in over loudspeakers in the yard.

  We both turned our heads toward the window.

  A Chinese military marching song. A song that made you think about Red Guard youth with their arms around each others’ shoulders. Chins up. Boots polished. What you’d listen to if you didn’t care if you lived or died.

  My phone trilled. Ivy’s name flashed across the top of the screen—and my skin went cold. Warning me maybe about the demonstration. Tomorrow? I fumbled for the silence button and dropped it on the rug.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Dad said.

  “I stayed up all night making these,” I said.

  “Take the rest of the day off, will you? You’re a man, not an elf. You’re no good to me like this. Rest up.”

  He started pushing me in the small of the back toward the door, saying goodbye, but I was leaning back, dragging my feet, making my body go heavy.

  “Everything’s an ordeal with you,” he said, edging me toward the door. “I thought you have children and the children love you. Simple.”

  “There’s way too much going on,” I said.

  He stopped pushing for a second. “Interesting,” he said.

  Then he gave one last hard shove and slammed the door behind me.

  So I was in the corridor, outside my own office, staring at the wood door and wondering what the fuck just happened. And it slowly started dawning on me that he did it. Exactly what Bernie and I had feared.

  I rode the elevator down to the ground floor trying to understand how it had happened, how I could undo it. I stepped out into the yard. In the humidity, it felt like I was swimming toward my house and I patted my pockets for my wallet and stopped, remembering that I’d left it upstairs. So I did a quick about-face and went back to my office, relieved to see that Dad was gone. I scooped up my wallet, and right before I left I stopped short. The table was empty. All my samples were missing.

  For a moment the floor seemed to slant, my knees buckled—everything in me, on the table, vanished. He’d taken them. Dad. Taken what I made and scurried off.

  My hands were trembling.

  The motherfucker ripped me off. After that whole speech about Ben Kaplan, the hypocrite still took them. Buttered me up and swiped them from under my nose.

  I paused, trying to be logical—maybe he just brought them to his office. Which didn’t mean anything necessarily—that he took them. Not on the face of it.

  But it did. It meant everything.

  He slid me right into the Fedor machine and spit me out. It shouldn’t matter that he took them out of my office without asking or giving a reason, but I felt fucking gutted. I couldn’t put anything of myself into this factory. It was Fedor’s show. His factory. His vision. The shoes were gone. I was gone. My stake in this plant. Standing here like a dumbshit gweilo who just crawled out of the Pearl River. It wasn’t my factory. I understood. There was no use pushing for the brand later. I’d give the designs to Bernie to take to Magotan or Gold Valley. Why should Dad make a penny off it?

  My whole I’m-just-a-shoe-dog-adjusting-on-the-fly rationale I’d told myself—man, what a load of horseshit. Stop lying to yourself, Alex. You wimped out. Wake up and face it, he’ll always run you over.

  I walked out of my office without even closing the door behind me and rode the elevator down and stepped out into the yard.

  Across the way, from under the arcade of the canteen, the workers were swarming into the courtyard to punch the shift clocks. Hundreds of them returning to work, a sea of people between me and my house and nowhere else for me to go but into them.

  I walked straight into the crowd, the current thickening around me. All of them straining, jostling to punch their time cards, every second costing money. I felt their closeness and smelled their sweat. Dad hadn’t said no to my ideas, he’d devoured them. What were my choices now? Submit or get lost. Nothing would change—that was what I realized—squeezing through the current, catching flashes of a few faces: a boy’s lips moving silently like he was still counting dwell time on the sole press machine; a young girl with plastic shavings garlanding her hair. I knocked shoulders with an old aunty in a floral smock and a wobbly head, the rictus of a benzene smile, she was in there, somewhere, thrashing. Time for their drowsy eyes to widen briefly—nothing more—before I was past them.

  These were the people I cared about. The workers. This flow of bodies pressed tight around me. The ones suffering because of me. So if I was going to bitch and moan about the system we profited from, then I’d better be willing to do something about it. If I wasn’t a hypocrite, I had to pick up the microphone. Make a moderate speech. Go public with it all. Every wrong against the Chinese workers. Nothing to lose now. I’d call on all the factory owners in Foshan and in Guangzhou, the whole Pearl Delta, to get it right. And if that ruined Dad, if it fucked the whole business, I couldn’t say I cared anymore. What was the business to me now? This black emptiness I was hurtling toward. Why play nice anymore? Why be the good Jewish boy? For what? To carry Dad’s legacy? So I could be some walking urn. His musty hope chest, smelling of pine and old tea, aromas of the old country. No way. This man treated me just like he treated the workers. He could be a shithead—was a shithead. Shocking how long it’d taken me to realize. It was nothing personal, Dad. I’d tell him that too. Tell him to hurry up and get into grapefruit spoons before the market closed.

  I spilled out of the crowd and jogged to the corner of the canteen on a sunny quarter-triangle of pavement facing the sky—a little clearing, a crisp triangle of light. I took my phone out of my pocket, scrolling down, and I pressed my thumb over Zhang’s name, and while it rang I lifted my face to the sky. It wasn’t going to rain today. That was a real stupid thing to think in a moment like this, with the phone ringing, so I looked down at the pavement and made a quick spin, but I couldn’t see my shadow. Nobody threw a shadow in Foshan—I’d been here long enough to know that, not with all the grit and smog—but it only registered now as a conscious thought that chilled my skin. And I heard Zhang saying my name. Saying hello? Is this you? My tongue was dry, pressed hard against the back of my teeth, and Zhang was saying my name, how many times, thumping in my ear, and before he could hang up, I said, “I’ll talk.” Then I said it again, louder. “I want to talk.”

  16

  IN THE MORNING, I was expecting to hear it: a crowd, music, megaphones but it was quiet. I moved down the cool blue brick alley between dorms and stepped out into the courtyard. No Zhang or Ivy, no demonstrators. Just some stray dogs licking ropy cow guts out of the storm water drains, a cook carrying a basket of watercress to the canteen. When I’d called Zhang he told me only to be ready, but he hadn’t given me a day. It wasn’t today. I was relieved by that. There was still time to get to Ivy, tell her what I’d decided.

  Up on the third floor of Plant C, I toed the cyclone fence, put my nose right in one of the diamonds, searching the workers on the production line but I didn’t see Ivy inside the cage—that’s what it was, it struck me, a cage. I nodded to the manager at his desk. He opened the hinged wire door, and I walked down the line to the stitchers at the far end of the floor.

  The workers were sitting on either side of a long metal table and I spotted Ivy from the back wearing my old JCC basketball T-shirt, our names in flaky white plastisol on the back: Goldstein, Jablonski, Cohen—the “Lynn All-Schnoz” my mother liked to tease.

  Sensing me beside her stool, Ivy’s hands froze on her Golden Wheel sewing machine and then she went back to stitching zippers into boots. I was looking down at the white centerline of her scalp and the tip of her ear glowing red, poking up through her hair tied back in a ponytail, and I felt a great love for her, our closeness, even if she wouldn’t look up at me, or maybe it was for that very reason.

  The muscles in my neck relaxed. She was here and safe
. Of course why wouldn’t she be, but she was, that’s all, and this must have been the reason I came up here, not to ask her about the demonstration. Just to stand by her. To keep everything the way it was for a little longer, even if it couldn’t stay that way forever. I knew that. And I knew I couldn’t talk to her here in front of the other workers, so I picked up one of her finished pieces and pretended to inspect her work, but then, because I couldn’t help it, I found myself actually looking at the boot in my hands.

  Fat marks on the leather. Streaking. The vamp and shaft almost two different colors. Cheap split leather. From the cow’s neck. Bound to buckle.

  This was what I’d tried to move Dad, move us, away from. But Dad wouldn’t listen. He devoured. So, right. It was the other path now.

  I tossed the shitty boot into the plastic basket on the table. I didn’t need to notice anymore. Not shoes at least.

  The boy across from Ivy sensed me reading his name tag—Liu Jianbin—and he lifted his head, our eyes met just for a beat before he looked away. He had spikey hair, real sharp cheekbones, denim shirt with the sleeves cut off and a gristly nub on his left hand where his index finger ought to have been. Splitting machine, maybe. Embossing plate.

  His white jade bracelet clinked against the glass cutting board as he skived the leather with a flat razor.

  I started walking down the line when a cell phone rang. My eyes snapped up and the only one on the line who met them was Jianbin. The razor frozen in his hand.

  The phone trilled again and Jianbin reached into his pocket for his phone, fumbled with it, hands shaky, and groped for the silence button, and set the phone on the table. It was an iPhone. Thin. Brand-new.

  He was one of Ivy and Zhang’s twenty-four. The secret group.

  Jianbin looked down at the flashing number. Then up at me, straightening, like someone had pressed a cold stethoscope to his back. The silence between us stretched out. We held our looks. Not even a breath. A moment longer. Then longer.

  I nodded at the phone sitting on the table. To tell Jianbin I knew what I was seeing. To say: It’s okay, I support you. Jianbin gave me a halting smile. His four-fingered hand slowly covered his phone and slid it off the table back into his pocket.

  But Production Manager Shen was already beside me, shaking his stopwatch, red in the face. “No phone! In factory, no phone. Understand?”

  Shen turned and looked at me. “So lazy it break my heart.”

  I told him it was okay. Don’t worry.

  “This last chance,” Shen said to Jianbin. “You want money with success? Last chance.”

  But Jianbin ignored his production manager and started humming into the popped collar of his jean vest, that same marching tune I kept hearing, swaying a little in his chair.

  Shen’s mouth swung open, quivering for a second. “Deduction!” he yelled, pointing at Jianbin. “No singing!”

  Down the line, a girl snickered.

  “Deduction,” Shen shouted again, pointing in her general direction. More giggles. “All you. Deduction trouble. Must be strong.”

  Ivy leaned away from her machine. The bobbin unwound, the rubber belt fluttered to a stop. I saw the tips of her fingers pressed white against the table.

  “That’s enough,” I said to Shen. “Calm down.”

  So he started yelling at the workers in Chinese, as he would normally if I wasn’t here for him to show off.

  Right then I heard the scrape of the stool against the cement floor and Ivy stood up. She slowly untied the apron knot behind her back and lifted the loop over her head.

  “Where is restroom permit?” said Shen.

  Ivy folded her apron neatly in half and placed it down on the table. The machines fell silent as she walked the length of the whole production line, past me and Shen, past the inspectors, past the manager by the gate, whose pen slowly slipped out of his mouth and rolled onto the floor. She opened the fence and walked out.

  So, I was right. It was today.

  And I had to resist an urge to smile. Maybe even I set it in motion by calling Zhang. That was fine. It was what I wanted. Still something was gnawing at me; if Zhang wanted me involved so badly, you’d think he’d give me an exact date—but that thought broke off when Jianbin stood up.

  He pulled the hand-sewn finger guards off and cut Manager Shen a look of complete contempt, and walked for the door.

  “Where you go?” Shen asked him, pulling self-consciously at the front of his shirt to get it to sit up on his shoulders. “You go back here. Hey! Hey, you like McMuffin? Then you go back!” The tips of his hair were wet with sweat. “Hey! You like green tea Frappuccino? You want good future. Sit work!”

  Jianbin briefly looked back, not at Shen but at a girl. Another stitcher. Tinted tortoise-rim glasses, very thin. She nervously touched the silver cross necklace on her neck, and slowly stood up.

  “Sit down!” Shen shouted.

  She looked at Shen, then me, then back at Shen. Sweat pooling in the pockets below her eyes. Her shoulders turned toward the door, as if every few degrees she was measuring Shen’s reaction and, realizing there was nothing he could do to stop her, she went toward the exit.

  “Stop!” Shen yelled, fumbling for the whistle tucked inside his shirt, and blowing it, shrill and loud, he stormed after them.

  I glanced down at Ivy’s empty stool. The seat paint stripped from the hundreds of workers who’d sat here and I couldn’t help touching it. A shallow scoop, smooth as river rock. I didn’t know why, but I sat down. On Ivy’s stool. Right in front of her Golden Wheel, and around me I saw the stares of the kids, the shovel-faced rage scraping them up inside.

  They were on the move now.

  The line managers yelled at the shuffle of heavy feet. Maybe half of the workers stood up and walked. The whole building seemed to sway as they headed down the stairs.

  Hongjin, my friend from purchasing with the scar on his chest that my father touched—he was over by the manager’s desk rocking back and forth on his heels. He looked over at me—a Yancheng drooping from his corner lip and his left eye squinting even though the cigarette was unlit—and I gave him a quick nod. Barely anything. It’s okay. It’s fine.

  A beat of hesitation, but then he gave me a flick of his chin and fell in behind the queue of workers headed for the door.

  I turned to the window facing Plant A. They were coming down too.

  A few stools down from me, one girl was left. The only one from Ivy’s line who stayed. Very dark skin. Cheeks sunken. She was looking at me, but I didn’t have any sense of what was on my face. She cranked the flywheel and the Golden Wheel shuddered to life, the pedal squeaking—letting me know she’d keep working no matter what happened.

  I lifted myself off the stool and started to the stairs and I had to remind myself why I was going out there. I was done here. Sorry, Dad, but these aren’t the faces of people who give a shit if Andrew Carnegie started in a textile factory—buck fifty a week shoveling coal—saving every penny. No one believes you anymore when you say their time will come. It’s either now or it ain’t coming.

  So, it’s now, I reminded myself as I slipped through the cyclone fence and down into the stairwell, when I heard someone shout my name. I looked up.

  One flight up, Dad was leaning over the railing.

  “Hey, you’re going the wrong way,” he said. “Get the hell up here. You see what’s happening? A strike. Honest to God. Where the hell you going?”

  “Out there,” I said.

  “What the hell for?” he squealed. “To apologize? Are you crazy? We don’t beg. Not to people like that. Get up here and let the police handle it.”

  “Don’t call the police.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  “Let’s hear them first.”

  “Alex. Please.”

  I took a step down. “I’m not chasing you,” he sai
d, stretching a little farther over the railing to keep me in sight.

  I took another step down. “I can’t,” I said, midstep. The diagonal slice of the stairwell severed his neck, then his face vanished, and I started hurrying down the stairs two at a time. Maybe Dad had already called the police? Or he was about to? Either way I had to find Zhang and Ivy and warn them.

  Outside, a tumult of cheering, shouting. If Zhang was anywhere he’d be up there, near the front. I forced my way through the crowd. Red tongues. Yellow armbands. Workers with wood placards strung around their necks. Words in scab-red paint, English and Chinese, 我要作人 I will be a person. I turned for a second and coming straight at me, head level, was a wide white bedsheet, red paint: 围观 Surround and Watch, and I ducked as the bottom of the banner slipped over my head, brushing my hair.

  I was wheeled along by the workers’ marching toward the front gate. Everyone pushing in that direction. Where the fuck were Zhang and Ivy in all this?

  I looked up. Fourth floor of my building and Dad was in the window looking down on me. His hands pressed against the glass. No body. Just his white face and hands. A bedsheet banner dropped from the roof opposite him and in the window I could read the paint backward across his chest: 合鞋 #FittingShoe.

  Up in the fire escapes and squatting along the ledge of the roof, workers were filming live on their iPhones. A girl climbed up on a company van and aimed the red phone light at me, then a thump on my side: a woman’s right shoulder—a green butterfly beneath the strap of her overalls—slipping past. A crunch under my foot—broken sunglasses.

  Another surge and I was spun right into the face of Die Jo, our former foot model turned Poker Committee Chair.

  “Oh, Mr. Younger Cohen,” she said. “Where you hide that gorgeous face?” The words came out slowly, like she was remembering them from a film.

  “Sunset Boulevard,” she added, bringing a cigarette to her mouth and, over her shoulder, for a second, I saw Goldstein in white plastisol. My T-shirt. Ivy.

  “Got to go,” I said, trying to step around Die Jo, but I was cut off by demonstrators on both sides and Ivy vanished in the flick of Die Jo’s lighter.