The Shoes in the Parking Lot

The sole of my left shoe let go of the leather with a sound like a page tearing, and I stood in the middle of the Kwik Stop parking lot with one foot hanging half out of its loafer and no idea what to do with my hands.

It was the last Saturday in September, a little past two in the afternoon, and the asphalt was warm right through my sock. I had a list in my purse that said milk, bread, coffee, and I had come to the one place in town where nobody was going to ask me how I was holding up.

I had fixed that shoe three weeks earlier with masking tape from the workbench in Clyde’s shop, winding it around and around the way he used to wind tape around a hammer handle. Now the sole hung open at the toe like a little flap of tongue, and when I tried to step forward it caught the asphalt and I stumbled and put a hand out to nothing.

A hand took my elbow. It was a young hand, and it was quick.

“Whoa. You okay, ma’am?”

He was seventeen, maybe. Skinny, with a long neck and a bad haircut, wearing a red work shirt and a paper hat from the Whistle Stop Burgers across the strip. His name tag said Tyler. He had a dollar bill folded in his other hand, so I knew he had been headed for the Kwik Stop and a fountain drink on his break, and I was in his way.

“I’m fine,” I said. “My shoe quit on me.”

He looked down. I looked down with him. There is no hiding a thing like that. The tape had given up, the sole was flapping, and my sock, which was a good wool sock, one of Clyde’s, was gray with parking lot.

“Those are done,” Tyler said. He said it kindly, the way a vet might tell you about a dog. “Those are all the way done.”

“I’ll manage. It’s just to the car.”

“Hang on.”

And then this boy, this stranger in a paper hat, dropped down onto one knee on the concrete, in front of the ice machine and the propane cage and the man at pump two who was pretending not to watch. He started working the laces out of his own sneakers. They were gray canvas, gone soft and furry at the toes, with a hole worn through the left one where his big toe pushed. He pulled the left one off. He pulled the right one off. He set them side by side on the ground in front of my ruined shoes, toes pointed at me, as neat as a man laying out a suit for Sunday.

“Take mine,” he said.

I could not have said a word if the Lord Himself had asked me a question.

“I can’t take your shoes.”

“I’ve got another pair in my locker at the Whistle Stop. These are just my old ones.”

“Young man, you will walk out of here in your socks.”

“It’s like forty yards, and I’ve got my spare pair waiting in the back of the kitchen for my shift.” He looked up at me, and he had one of those open, plain faces that hasn’t learned yet to keep anything back. “Please. It’s not a big deal.”