The Shoes Laced On at the Bench

The shoe store on the square

Feldkamp’s has been on the south side of the square in Washington since before I was born. The courthouse sits in the middle of the square with its clock, and the park around it has a bandstand where they still have concerts in the summer.

Abram Feldkamp’s father opened the store after the war. Abram started working the floor in 1970, when he was 18, and he has fitted shoes there ever since. He fitted my first pair of saddle shoes. He fitted the shoes I wore to Mom’s funeral.

He picked up on the third ring. “Feldkamp’s.”

“Mr. Feldkamp, this is Philomena Garrity. Bart’s daughter.”

“Philomena. How’s your dad doing in those shoes?”

I closed my eyes for a second. “That’s why I’m calling.”

I read him the slip. There was a long quiet on the line. I could hear the radio playing low in the store behind him, the way it always does.

“That was a Friday,” he said finally. “My wife had a heart appointment in Iowa City. Petronella was minding the store for me. She’s a good girl, she’s been with me four years. She’d have taken a return on an unworn pair with the receipt. That’s the policy. I’d have done the same for anybody.”

“I know,” I said. “Nobody’s blaming her.”

“She’d have had no way to know,” he said. “But I’d have known. I fitted those for Bart. I’d have asked.”

Then he was quiet again, and I heard him breathe out through his nose, the way older men do when they’re keeping something back.

“Is his foot bad?”

“The doctor wants him in shoes this week.”

“Bring him at nine tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll have a pair ready. I ordered both widths when I fitted him, in case. The wider pair is still in the back.”

Telling Dad

I drove Dad home. He lives in the same white house on the east side of town where I grew up, with the clothesline poles still in the back yard and Mom’s peony bushes cut down for winter along the fence.

I made him a cup of coffee and a slice of toast for his sugar. Then I sat down across from him at the kitchen table, the same table where I did my spelling words, and I put the pink slip in front of him.

He put on his reading glasses. He read it once. Then he took the glasses off and folded them and set them on top of the slip.

“Well,” he said.

That was all for a while. The clock over the stove ticked. A truck went by on the street.

“She told me they were too narrow,” he said. “I didn’t think they were. But I’m no judge anymore. I can’t feel half my foot.”

“Dad, you were right. They fit.”

He nodded slowly. He didn’t look angry. He looked tired, and something else, something I didn’t like to see on him. He looked ashamed, as if he’d been fooled because he was old.

“She’s been good to drive me,” he said. “That’s a lot of mornings. That’s a lot of sitting.”

“I know it is.”

“I never thought about what she was getting out of it,” he said. “I suppose I thought it was family. That’s what your mother would have done. That’s what we did for her folks.”

I reached over and put my hand on his. His knuckles are big from years of grain doors and shovels. The skin on the back of his hand is thin as paper now.

“We’re going to Feldkamp’s at nine,” I said. “You’re getting your shoes. And then we’ll see.”

“You’re not going to go out there and raise Cain?”

“No, Dad. I’m not.”

He looked at me a long time. Then he patted my hand twice, the way he did when I was little and had done something right.