The Shoes Laced On at the Bench

The laces

He opened the box on the bench beside Dad. The shoes were black leather, plain and deep, with a wide rounded toe and a firm heel cup and six eyelets on each side. They looked like the shoes a good man wears to a funeral, or a wedding, or his own retirement party.

Mr. Feldkamp pulled out the insoles and checked them. He looked at the dressing on Dad’s heel and took a soft pad from a drawer and set it into the right shoe just so, so nothing would press.

Then he knelt again, on both knees this time, on the bare wood floor in front of the bench. I heard his knees crack. He didn’t use the stool.

He took Dad’s left foot in his hand and eased the shoe on, holding the heel back with his thumb so Dad’s foot slid in straight. He did the right foot even slower. Dad watched him the whole time.

Then Mr. Feldkamp laced them. He started at the bottom and worked up, pulling each crossing snug but not tight, checking with two fingers at the top that there was room. He tied each one in a bow.

And then he tied each bow again, into a double knot, and gave each one a small tug.

Dad looked down at his feet. He didn’t say anything. His mouth moved a little at the corner.

“Your mother did that,” he said to me, not taking his eyes off the shoes. “Every morning for fifty-two years.”

I knew. I had watched her do it my whole childhood. Every morning before he went to the elevator, Dad would sit on the back step and Mom would kneel on the concrete and double-knot his work boots, because he’d tripped on a loose lace on a grain bin ladder once in 1971 and she never let him forget it.

“She said a man with untied shoes on a ladder was asking the Lord to take him early,” Dad said. “So she tied them. And then she’d pat the toe of each boot. Like that.”

He nodded toward his own feet, and Mr. Feldkamp, who had no way of knowing, reached out and patted the toe of each new shoe, once, with the flat of his hand.

Mom has been gone two years this January. It was her heart, in her sleep, without any warning. Dad found her in the morning when she didn’t get up to make coffee.

I stood beside that bench with my hand on Dad’s shoulder and my mustard scarf around my neck, and I could not have said one word if the building had been on fire.

The walk

Mr. Feldkamp got himself up, one hand on the bench, and stood back.

“All right, Bart,” he said. “Walk it for me. Down to the window and back.”

Dad held his cane out to me without looking. I took it.

He stood up. He put his hand on the bench rail for a second, testing. Then he let go.

He walked. He walked the full length of the store, down the middle aisle between the shelves of boxes, one step after another, his heels landing square. No slide. No shuffle. The new soles made a small clean sound on the wood.

He walked right up into that long square of sunlight from the front window. He stood in it a second. Then he turned around, careful, the way you turn on ice, and walked back to us.

Not one hitch. Not one.

He stopped in front of the bench, a little out of breath, and looked at Mr. Feldkamp.

“Well,” he said. “I’ll be.”

“How’s the heel?” Mr. Feldkamp asked.

“I can’t feel the heel,” Dad said, and then he smiled, because that’s the joke he always makes about his feet, and for once it didn’t sound sad.

“An hour at a time this first week,” Mr. Feldkamp said. “Then two. Have your daughter or somebody check that foot every night for red spots. If there’s red, they come off.”

“Yes, sir.”

That’s when the bell over the door rang.