The Shoes Laced On at the Bench

Ten o’clock

Kimber turned around and went out. The bell rang behind her. Through the big window I watched her walk to her car, which was parked in front of the bank, and sit in it with both hands on the wheel without starting it.

Dad lowered himself back onto the bench. He was tired, and his face had gone a little gray. I sat down next to him.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I’m fine.” He looked at his shoes. “I’m sorry I said that in front of everybody.”

“You didn’t say anything wrong.”

“I know it,” he said. “I’m still sorry.”

That’s my father. Right and sorry at the same time, because it cost somebody something.

At ten sharp the bell rang again. It was Kimber. Her eyes were red, but her face was set.

“He’s got the clinic at ten-thirty,” she said to me, not quite looking at me. “I’ll take him.”

I looked at Dad. Dad looked at her for a long moment. Then he reached out his hand, and I gave him his cane, and he stood up.

“All right,” he said. “Thank you, Kimber.”

She held the door for him. She walked beside him all the way to the Buick, slow, at his pace, and she opened the passenger door and buckled him in herself, because his hands don’t like the latch.

What I didn’t see

I didn’t see the rest of it. I went home and sat at my own kitchen table for a long time. Then I got up and washed my kitchen floor, which I do when I don’t know what else to do.

At a quarter past twelve Thaddeus called me from the square. He’d left the field at noon, the way he said he would. He’d told his boss he needed an hour, and the man said take two.

“She already took them back,” he said.

“Took what back?”

“The boots. I pulled up in front of Feldkamp’s and she was coming out with the box. She’d gone home from the clinic and changed and come right back.”

He told me Mr. Feldkamp had taken the return without a word, except to ask her what she wanted done with it. She’d said she didn’t care. So Mr. Feldkamp had said, then I’ll put it on Bart’s account.

He’d given her back the twenty-nine dollars she’d paid out of her own pocket, in cash. The hundred and sixty went in Dad’s name.

“She was crying in the truck,” Thad said. “I didn’t say anything to her. I just drove her home and made her a sandwich.”

“That was right.”

“She said Dad was nicer to her than she deserved.” He was quiet a second. “I told her that’s how he is. That’s how he’s always been.”

The card in the box

Mr. Feldkamp keeps a long wooden file box behind the counter with a card in it for every family he’s fitted. Some of the cards go back to his father’s time. Ours has my grandparents on it, in his father’s handwriting.

The next time I was in, a week later, he pulled out Dad’s card to show me. Under the shoe size and the width and the note about the extra-depth insole, he had written in his square printing: Credit on account, $160. Next year’s pair.

“He’ll need another pair by next fall,” he said. “Diabetic feet change. When he does, it’s paid for.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s his credit,” Mr. Feldkamp said. “It was always his. It was just in the wrong boots for a while.”