* * *
DURING REST HOUR on Friday afternoon, his name was announced over the loudspeaker. Archie Ferguson, the voice of the camp secretary said. Archie Ferguson, please come to the main office. You have a telephone call.
It was his mother. Such a terrible thing, Archie, she said. I feel so sorry for that boy, for you … for everyone.
It wasn’t just a terrible thing, Ferguson replied. It was the worst thing, the worst thing that’s ever happened.
A long pause followed on the other end of the line, and then his mother said that she had just received a call from Artie’s mother. An unexpected call, of course, an excruciating call, of course, but purely for the purpose of inviting Ferguson to attend the funeral in New Rochelle on Sunday—assuming he could get permission to leave the camp, and assuming he felt up to going.
I don’t understand, Ferguson said. No one else is invited. Why me?
His mother explained that Mrs. Federman had been reading and rereading the letters her son had sent home from camp, and in nearly all of them Ferguson had been mentioned, often several times in the space of three or four paragraphs. Archie is my best friend, his mother said, quoting from a passage that had been read to her over the phone, the best friend I’ve ever had. And again: Archie is such a good person, it makes me happy just to be near him. And again: Archie is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a brother.
Another long pause, and then Ferguson said, in a voice so quiet he could barely hear his own words, That’s how I felt about Artie.
* * *
IT WAS SETTLED, then. There would be no weekend visit from his parents. Instead, Ferguson would take the train down to New York in the morning, his mother would meet him at Grand Central Station, they would spend the night in the city at her parents’ apartment, and the next morning the two of them would drive up to New Rochelle together. Not one to ignore the exigencies of public occasions, his mother promised to carry along clothes for him to wear at the funeral—his white shirt, jacket, and tie, his black shoes, black socks, and charcoal-gray pants.
She said: Have you grown much since you’ve been up there, Archie?
I’m not sure, Ferguson answered. Maybe a little.
I’m wondering if those things will still fit you.
Does it matter?
Maybe yes, maybe no. If the buttons pop off your shirt, we can always buy some new clothes tomorrow.
* * *
THE BUTTONS DIDN’T pop off, but the shirt was too small for him now, as was everything else except the tie. What a nuisance to go out shopping in ninety-four-degree weather, he thought, trudging through the streets of the broiling city because he’d grown two and a half inches since the spring, but he couldn’t go to New Rochelle in his camp jeans and tennis shoes, and so off he went with his mother to Macy’s, prowling the men’s department for more than an hour in search of something decent to wear, without question the most boring activity on earth even in the best of times, which these times most definitely were not, and so little was his heart in what they were doing that he allowed his mother to make all the decisions, selecting this shirt, this jacket, and this pair of pants for him, and yet, as he would soon learn, how preferable was the boredom of shopping to the wretched hopelessness of sitting in the synagogue the next day, the hot sanctuary crowded with more than two hundred people, Artie’s mother and father, his twelve-year-old sister, his four grandparents, his aunts and uncles, his boy and girl cousins, his friends from school, his various teachers going all the way back to kindergarten, his friends and coaches from the sports teams he had played on, friends of the family, friends of friends of the family, a mob of people baking in that airless room as tears spurted from clenched eyes and men and women sobbed, as boys and girls sobbed, and there was the rabbi at the pulpit reciting prayers in both Hebrew and English, none of that Christian claptrap about going to a better place, no fairy-tale afterlife for Ferguson and his people, these were the Jews, the demented, defiant Jews, and for them there was only one life and one place, this life and this earth, and the only way to look at death was to praise God, to praise the power of God even when the death belonged to a fourteen-year-old boy, to praise their fucking God until their eyes fell out of their heads and their balls fell off their bodies and their hearts shriveled inside them.
* * *
AT THE CEMETERY, as the casket was being lowered into the ground, Artie’s father tried to jump into his son’s grave. It took four men to pull him back, and when he tried to break free of them and do it again, the biggest of the four, who turned out to be his younger brother, put him in a headlock and wrestled him to the ground.
* * *
AT THE HOUSE after the burial, Artie’s mother, a tall woman with thick legs and broad hips, threw her arms around Ferguson and told him he would always be part of the family.
* * *
FOR THE NEXT two hours, he sat on the sofa in the living room talking to Artie’s little sister, whose name was Celia. He wanted to tell her that he was her brother now, that he would go on being her brother for as long as he lived, but he couldn’t find the courage to push the words out of his mouth.
* * *
SUMMER CAME TO a close, another school year began, and in mid-September Ferguson started writing a short story, which slowly grew into a rather long story by the time he finished it in the days before Thanksgiving. He suspected it had been inspired by the joke that was not a joke about the two A.F.s, but he wasn’t quite sure, since the story had come to him out of nowhere as a fully formed idea, and yet somehow or other Federman must have been in there, too, given that Federman was always with him now, would always be with him from now on. Not Archie and Artie, as he had been tempted to use at first, but Hank and Frank, those were the names of the principal characters, a rhyming pair rather than an assonant pair, but a lifelong pair for all that, in this case a pair of shoes, which was how the story got its title: Sole Mates.
Hank and Frank, the left shoe and the right shoe, meet for the first time in the factory where they were made, arbitrarily thrown together when the last person on the assembly line puts them into the same shoe box. They are a sturdy, well-crafted pair of brown leather lace-ups commonly known as brogans, and while their personalities are slightly different (Hank tends to be anxious and introspective while Frank is blunt and fearless), they are not different in the way that Laurel and Hardy are different, for example, or Heckle and Jeckle, or Abbott and Costello, but different, perhaps, in the way that Ferguson and Federman had been different—two peas from the same pod, yet by no means identical.
Neither one of them is happy in the box. They are still strangers at this point, and not only is it dark and stuffy in there, they have been jammed up against each other in a most intimate and compromising way, which leads to some unfriendly bickering at first, but then Frank tells Hank to get a grip on himself and settle down, they’re stuck with each other whether they like it or not, and Hank, understanding that he has no choice but to make the best of a bad situation, apologizes for having gotten them off on the wrong foot, to which Frank says, Is that supposed to be funny?, meaning he didn’t find the remark funny at all, and so Hank comes back at him by dropping his voice and speaking in a broad southern accent: Ah shoe hope so, brothuh brogan. Can’t live this life without no funnies, can we?
The box containing Hank and Frank is put on a truck and driven to New York City, where it ends up in the back room of the Florsheim shoe store on Madison Avenue, one more box added to the hundreds of boxes stacked on shelves waiting to be sold. That is their destiny—to be sold, to be de-boxed by a man with size eleven feet and led away from the back room of that store forever—and Hank and Frank are impatient to begin their lives, to be out in the open air walking with their master. Frank is confident about their chances for a quick sale. They’re an everyday sort of pair, he tells Hank, not some novelty item like patent leather dress shoes or Santa Claus slippers or fleece-lined snow boots, and since everyday shoes are the ones most in de
mand, it shouldn’t be long before they can say good-bye to this dreary, stinking box of theirs. Maybe so, Hank says, but if Frank wants to talk about odds and statistics, he should think about the number eleven. Size eleven worries him. It’s much bigger than average, and who knows how long they’ll have to wait before Mr. Bigfoot walks in and asks to try them on? He’d be much happier with an eight or a nine, he says. That’s what most men wear, and most means faster. The bigger the shoe, the longer it’s going to take, and size eleven is one hell of a big shoe.
Just be glad we’re not a twelve or thirteen, Frank says.
I am, Hank replies. I’m also glad we’re not a six. But I’m not glad we’re an eleven.
After three days and three nights on the shelf, a bleak span that only prolongs their doubts and febrile calculations about when and how they will be rescued, if indeed they will be rescued at all, a clerk finally comes in the next morning, pulls out their box from the tower of boxes they were consigned to, and carries them into the showroom at the front of the store. A customer is interested! The clerk removes the lid from the box, and in that first moment when the light of the world shines upon them, Hank and Frank start to tingle with joy, a joy so vast and intoxicating that it spreads all the way to the tips of their laces. They can see again, see for the first time since the factory worker put them in their box, and now that the clerk is taking them out of the box and putting them on the floor in front of the seated customer, Frank says to Hank, I think we’re in business, pal, to which Hank responds, I certainly hope so.
(Note: At no point in the story does Ferguson address the question of how shoes can talk, in spite of the fact that all lace-up shoes are equipped with tongues. If it is a problem, he solves the problem by refusing to consider it. Nevertheless, the language spoken by Hank and Frank is apparently inaudible to human beings, since the two of them carry on conversations wherever and whenever they like, with no fear of being overheard—at least not by living people. In the presence of other shoes, however, they must be more circumspect, for all shoes in the story speak Shoe. As it happened, none of Ferguson’s early readers objected to his use of that absurd, make-believe language. They all seemed to go along with it as a legitimate case of poetic license, but several people thought he had gone too far by giving Hank and Frank the ability to see. Shoes are blind, one person said, everybody knows that. How on earth can shoes possibly see? The fourteen-year-old author paused for a moment, shrugged his shoulders, and said: With their eyelets of course. How else?)
The customer is a big man, a great hulking fellow of broad girth with a pair of swollen ankles and the moist, pallid skin of someone who might or might not be suffering from diabetes or heart trouble. Not an ideal master, perhaps, but as Hank and Frank have told each other countless times over the past three days, shoes can’t choose. They must submit to the will of the person who buys them, no matter who that person happens to be, for their job is to protect feet, any and all feet under any and all circumstances, and whether those feet belong to a madman or a saint, shoes must perform that job in perfect compliance with the wishes of their master. Still, it is an important moment for the newly manufactured brogans, so young and gleaming in the stiffness of their cowhide uppers and untrammeled soles, for this is the moment when they will at last begin their lives as fully functioning shoes, and as the clerk slips Hank onto the customer’s left foot and then slips Frank onto the right, they both groan with pleasure, astonished by how good it feels to have a foot inside them, and then, miraculously, the pleasure only increases as the laces are tightened and the two ends are knotted into a crisp, firm bow.
It seems to be a good fit, the clerk says to the customer. Would you like to have a look in the mirror?
And so it is that Hank and Frank are able to see themselves together for the first time—by looking into the mirror as the fat man looks into the mirror as well. What a handsome pair we are, Frank says, and for once Hank is in accord with him. The finest brogans ever made, he says. Or, as the bard might have put it: the very kings of Cobbledom.
While Hank and Frank are admiring themselves in the mirror, however, the fat man is beginning to shake his head. I’m not sure, he says to the clerk, they look a bit clunky to me.
A man of your bulk needs a hardy shoe, the clerk replies, delivering his words in a matter-of-fact tone so as not to offend the customer.
Of course, the fat man mutters, that goes without saying, doesn’t it? But that doesn’t mean I have to walk around in these clodhoppers.
They’re classics, sir, the clerk says drily.
Cop shoes. That’s what they look like to me, the fat man says. Shoes for a plainclothes cop.
After a considerable pause, the clerk clears his throat and says: May I suggest we look at something else? A pair of wingtips, perhaps?
Yeah, wingtips, the customer says, nodding in agreement. That’s the word I was looking for. Not brogans—wingtips.
Hank and Frank are put back in their box, and a few moments later they are lifted off the floor by a pair of invisible hands and carried back to the back room, where they once again join the ranks of the unsold. Hank is burning with indignation. The fat man’s comments have incensed him, and as he spits out the words clunky and clodhopper for the forty-third time in the past hour, Frank finally speaks up and implores him to stop. Don’t you realize how lucky we are? he says. Not only was that man a numskull, he was an obese numskull, and the last thing we want is to be saddled with too much heft. If old Mr. Chunkowitz didn’t weigh three hundred pounds, he must have been a good two-sixty or two-seventy, and just imagine the day-to-day wear and tear of walking around with a mountain like that on top of us. Little by little, we would have been crushed, used up before our time, junked before we’d even had a chance to live. There might not be a lot of featherweights who wear size eleven, but at least we can hope for someone who’s lean and fit, a man with a light and even step. No waddlers or plodders for us, Hank. We deserve the best because we’re classics.
Two more misses follow over the next three days, one of them a near miss (a man who falls in love with them but discovers he needs a size ten and a half) and the other one a dud from the word go (a scowling teenage giant who mocks his mother for making him try on such ugly gunboats), and the wait goes on, so dispiriting in its languorous monotony that Hank and Frank begin to wonder if they aren’t doomed to remain on the shelf forever—unwanted, out of style, forgotten. Then, three full days after the gunboat insult, when all hope has disappeared from their hearts, a customer walks into the store, a thirty-year-old man named Abner Quine, six feet tall and a trim one hundred and seventy pounds, a size eleven who not only is looking for a pair of brogans but will not settle for anything but a pair of brogans, and so Hank and Frank are taken off the shelf for the fourth time, which turns out to be the last time, the end of their fretful week in black shoe-box limbo, for when Abner Quine sticks his feet into them and walks around the store to test them out, he says to the clerk, Excellent, they’re just what I wanted, and the two sole mates have finally found their master.
Does it make any difference that Quine turns out to be a cop? Not really, not in the long run it doesn’t, but after Hank and Frank were rejected by the fat customer for looking like a pair of cop shoes, it is something of a sore point with them, and rather than laugh at the coincidence they feel hurt and bewildered, for if brogans are the quintessential cop shoe, then it would seem they were fated all along to be worn by a flatfoot, a figure of immense ridicule in popular lore, and to be the shoe of preference for the flatfeet of this world, that is, the very embodiment of flat-footedness, means there must be something ridiculous about them as well.
Let’s face it, Hank says. We weren’t built for tuxedos and wild nights out on the town.
Maybe not, Frank replies, but we’re solid and dependable.
Like two tanks.
Well, who wants to be a sports car, anyway?
Cop shoes, Frank. That’s what we are. The lowest of the low
.
But look at our cop, Hank. What a fine figure of a man he is. And he wants us. Low or not, he wants us, and that’s good enough for me.
The tough, fast-walking Abner Quine has recently been promoted to the rank of detective. He has traded in his nightstick and patrolman’s gear for a couple of business suits, a woolen one for the winter, a lightweight drip-dry for the summer, and has splurged on an expensive pair of shoes at Florsheim’s (Hank and Frank!), which he intends to wear for his detective work every day the year round, regardless of the weather. Quine lives alone in a small, one-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, not the best of neighborhoods in 1961, but the rent is low and his precinct house is just four blocks away, and even though the apartment is often less than clean (the detective has little appetite for housework), Hank and Frank are impressed by how well he takes care of them. Though young in age, their master is a man of the old school, and he treats his shoes with respect, methodically undoing the laces at night and leaving them on the floor beside his bed rather than kicking them off and/or shutting them up in the closet, since shoes like to be near their master at all times, even when they are not on duty, and kicking off shoes without untying the laces can cause severe structural damage over the long haul. Quine tends to be busy and distracted while at work on his cases (robberies, mostly), but let anything fall on either one of his shoes, whether a white splat of pigeon shit or a red blob of ketchup, and he is quick to remove the offending substance with one of the Kleenex tissues he carries in his right front pocket. Best of all, there are his frequent jaunts to Penn Station to consult with his prime snitch, an old black man named Moss, who happens to run the shoeshine stand in the main hall, and as Quine plunks himself down in the chair to get the latest dope from Moss, more often than not he will ask for a shine to cover up the true purpose of his visit, thus killing two birds with one stone, as it were, doing his job and caring for his brogans, and Hank and Frank are the happy beneficiaries of this ruse, for Moss is an expert, with the fastest, most agile hands in the business, and to be rubbed by his cloths and massaged by his brushes is an unsurpassed pleasure for everyday shoes like Hank and Frank, a swooning plunge into the depths of footwear sensuality, and once they have been buffed and boffed by Moss’s sure hands, they end up spanking clean and waterproofed as well, winners on all fronts.