It is a good life, then, about the best life they could have hoped for, but good must not be mistaken for easy, since it is the lot of shoes to work hard, even under the most positive circumstances, particularly in a place like New York, where a sole can go for months without stepping on a single tuft of grass or the tiniest patch of soft ground, where the extremes of hot and cold can cause havoc to the long-term health of leathery things, not to mention the damage wrought by downpours and snowfalls, of inadvertent missteps into puddles and drifts, of repeated dousings and drenchings, all the indignities that are visited upon them when the weather turns wet and foul, many of which could be avoided if their conscientious master were even more conscientious, but Quine is not a man who believes in rubbers or galoshes, and even in the heaviest blizzards he has no truck with snow boots, preferring at all times the company of his beleaguered brogans, who are both honored by his trust in them and vexed by his thoughtlessness.
Pounding the pavement: day in and day out, that is what Quine does, and therefore that is what Hank and Frank do as well. If there is any consolation in having their heels and soles worn down by the steady, abrasive interactions of leather and asphalt, it is that the two of them are in it together, brothers sharing their fate as one. Like most brothers, however, they have their moments of discord and petulance, their feuds and hot-tempered outbursts, for even if they are attached to one man’s body, they themselves are two, and each one’s relationship to that body is slightly different, since Quine’s left foot and right foot are not always doing the same thing at the same time. Sitting in chairs, for example. As a left-handed person, he tends to cross his left leg over his right leg far more often than his right leg over his left, and few sensations are more enjoyable than feeling yourself being lifted into the air, of quitting the ground for a while and having your sole bared to the world, and because Hank is the left shoe and consequently is able to enjoy this experience more often than Frank, Frank harbors a certain resentment toward Hank, which he mostly struggles to suppress, but sometimes the liftoff puts Hank in such buoyant spirits that he can’t stop himself from rubbing it in, laughing from his high perch as he dangles to the right of the master’s right knee and calling out to Frank, How’s the weather down there, Frankie boy?, at which point Frank will inevitably lose his composure, telling Hank to butt out and mind his own business. At the same time, Frank often pities Hank for being the left shoe of a left-handed man, since Quine generally takes his first step with his left foot, and whenever they pause for a red light on rainy or snowy days, the first step across the street is always the most perilous one, the often catastrophic fording of the gutter, and how many times has Hank been dunked in puddles and immersed in soaking mounds of slush when he himself has remained dry? Too many times to count. Frank rarely laughs in the face of his brother’s humiliations and near drownings, but sometimes, when he is in a particularly sour mood, he just can’t help himself.
Still and all, in spite of their occasional spats and misunderstandings, they have become the best of friends, and whenever they look at the brogans worn by their master’s partner, a pair of grizzle-guts named Ed and Fred (all shoe couples in Ferguson’s story have rhyming names), Hank and Frank know how blessed they are to have fallen in with an upstanding sort like Abner Quine rather than the slovenly thug he works with, Walter Benton, who seems happiest with his job when he’s punching out suspects in the interrogation room or kicking them in the back with his shoes. Ed and Fred have done this dirty work for him often enough over the years to have been brutalized by it, and they have turned into an ornery pair of low-life cruds, so cynical and disgusted with the world that they haven’t talked to each other for close to a year—not because they don’t get along anymore but simply because they can’t be bothered. On top of that, Ed and Fred are beginning to fall apart, for Benton is a neglectful master as well as a stupid one, and he has allowed the heels of his shoes to wear down without replacing them, has done nothing about the hole developing in Ed’s underbottom or the cracked leather skin in the toe crease of Fred’s upper, and not once in all the time that Hank and Frank have known those ratty buggers (Hank’s phrase for them) have they ever been polished. By contrast, Hank and Frank are polished twice a week, and in the two years they have been serving their master they have each been given four new heels and two new soles. They still feel young, whereas Ed and Fred, who went on the job only six months before they did, are old, so old now they’re just about finished and ready to be junked.
Because they are work shoes, they rarely get to accompany their master when he steps out with the ladies. The pursuit of love requires something less homely and down to earth than brogans, so Hank and Frank are cast aside in favor of Abner Q.’s triple-eyeletted dress shoes or his black alligator slip-ons, which always fills them with disappointment, not only because they dread being left alone in the dark but because they have been with Quine on several of his amorous excursions (when he was too pressed to go home after work and change), and they know how much fun those outings can be, especially when the master spends the night in a woman’s bed, which means that Hank and Frank get to spend the night on the floor beside the bed, and because it is the woman’s apartment, the woman’s shoes are there as well, most often right next to them, and how raucous and jolly it was the first time, when they chatted and laughed and sang songs with Flora and Nora, an adorable pair of red satin high heels, and all the other times since then in a different woman’s apartment, a big blonde the master calls either Alice or Darling, cavorting in her place on Greenwich Street with a pair of black pumps named Leah and Mia and a pair of penny loafers named Molly and Dolly, and how those girls carried on and giggled when they saw the master take off his clothes and strip down to the altogether, and how they gawked when they saw the ample breasts of their mistress bouncing up and down in the throes of love. Such splendid times they were, so scintillating when compared to the drab world of sweaty criminals and judges in black robes, and all the more precious to Hank and Frank for having been so few.
Months go by, and it becomes more and more apparent to them that Alice is the One. Not only has the master stopped seeing other women, but most of his spare time is now spent with her, his beloved Darling, who has rapidly acquired several other names as well, among them Angel, Sweetheart, Gorgeous, and Monkey Face, signs of an ever-increasing intimacy that leads to the inevitable moment in late May when, sitting on a bench in Central Park with Alice, Quine at last pops the big question. Because it is a workday, Hank and Frank are there to witness the proposal, and they are more than encouraged by Alice’s tender response, I’ll do everything to make you happy, my love, which seems to suggest they will be happy, too, as happy with the new arrangement as they have been with the old.
What Hank and Frank have failed to understand, however, is that marriage changes everything. It isn’t just a question of two people deciding to live together, it’s the beginning of a long struggle that pits one partner’s will against the will of the other partner, and although the husband often appears to have the upper hand, it is the wife who is ultimately in control. The newlyweds abandon their respective apartments in Hell’s Kitchen and Greenwich Village and take up residence in a larger, more comfortable place on West Twenty-fifth Street. Since Alice has left her secretarial job in the D.A.’s office, she is in charge of all household affairs, and while she routinely asks her husband for his opinion about the new curtains she wants to buy, the new rug she is planning to put in the living room, the new chairs she is dreaming about for the dining room table, Quine’s response is always the same—Whatever you want, Babe, it’s your call—which means, in effect, that Alice makes all the decisions. But no matter, think Hank and Frank. Alice might be the ruler of the roost now, but they still get to spend their days with the master, pounding the pavement in search of crooks, grilling suspects in the interrogation room, appearing in court to testify at trials, following up leads on the telephone, typing reports, running down alleys whenever a b
ad guy is foolish enough to bolt, going to Penn Station for their twice-weekly buffings from Moss, and now that Benton has given Ed and Fred the old heave-ho, they have a new pair of associates to work with, Ned and Ted, surly customers to be sure, but not half as bad as the recently departed ratty buggers, which would suggest that while many things are different now, the essential things are the same, perhaps even slightly better than they were before. Or so Hank and Frank tell themselves, but what they don’t know, and what their complacency prevents them from grasping, is that sweet-voiced Alice is on a mission, and her efforts to improve the master’s life will not stop at curtains and rugs. Within three months of the wedding ceremony, she is forging on into the realm of her husband’s clothes, in particular the clothes he wears at work, which she contends are too dull and shabby for a man who is destined to become a captain one day, and though Quine responds somewhat defensively at first, saying that his suits are good enough, more than adequate for the kind of job he does, Alice wears down his resistance by telling him how handsome he is and what a dashing figure he’d cut in a top-of-the-line outfit. Both flattered and annoyed by her compliments, the master makes a witless crack about how money doesn’t grow on trees, but he knows he has lost the battle, and on his next day off he reluctantly follows his wife to a men’s store on Madison Avenue, where his wardrobe is refurbished with a couple of new suits, four white shirts, and six of the skinny ties that are now in fashion. Three mornings later, as the master dons one of those new suits before heading off to work, Alice breaks into a broad smile and tells him how impressive he looks, but then, before he can get a word out of his mouth, she glances down at his feet and says: I’m afraid we’ll have to do something about those shoes.
What’s wrong with them? Quine asks, beginning to show some irritation.
Nothing really, she says. They’re just old, that’s all—and they don’t go with the suit.
That’s ridiculous. They’re the best pair of shoes I’ve ever owned. I bought them at Florsheim’s the day after my promotion, and I’ve been wearing them ever since. They’re my lucky shoes, Angel. Three years on the job, and in all that time not one shot fired at me, not one punch thrown at my face, not a single bruise anywhere on my body.
That’s just it, Abner. Three years is a long time.
Not for a pair of brogans like these. They’re not even fully broken in yet.
Alice purses her lips, cocks her head, and playfully strokes her chin, as if trying to assess the shoes with the solemn detachment of a philosopher. At last she says:
Too clunky. The suit makes you look like an important man, but the shoes make you look like a cop.
But that’s what I am. A cop. A goddamned flatfoot.
Just because you’re a cop, that doesn’t mean you have to look like a cop. The shoes give you away, Abner. You walk into a room, and everyone thinks: There’s a cop. With the right pair of shoes, they’d never even guess.
Hank and Frank wait for the master to speak up for them, to say a few more words in their defense, but Quine says nothing, answering Alice’s last remark with an inscrutable grunt, and a moment later they are traveling with him as he walks to the front door of the apartment and leaves for work. The day is no different from any other day, nor is the next day any different from the day that preceded it, and Hank and Frank begin to hope the conversation with Alice was no more than a false alarm, that her harsh judgments about their value to the master are not shared by Quine himself, that the whole nasty business will blow away like a thin, passing cloud. Then it is Saturday, another day off from police work, and out goes Quine with their new enemy, the obtrusive, opinionated Alice, out in his weekend loafers as they stand beside the bed and wait for the couple to return, never once suspecting that they are about to be betrayed by the man they have served so loyally for the past three years, and when the master comes back later that afternoon and tries on his new pair of oxfords, Hank and Frank suddenly understand that they have been booted out and dismissed, purged by the upstart regime that has taken over the household, and because they have no recourse, no tribunal in which to lodge a complaint or present their side of the story, their lives are over and done with, stomped out by the palace coup that otherwise goes by the name of marriage.
What do you think? Quine asks Alice, as he finishes lacing the oxfords and stands up from the bed.
Beautiful, she says. The best of the best, Abner.
As Quine walks around the room, acquainting his feet with the spring and texture of his new workday companions, Alice points to Hank and Frank and says, What should I do with these old fogeys?
I don’t know. Put them in the closet.
You don’t want me to throw them out?
No, put them in the closet. You never know when I might need them again.
So Alice puts Hank and Frank in the closet, and while the master’s parting words seem to offer some hope that they will be recalled to duty one day, months pass without any changes, and little by little they resign themselves to the fact that the master will never slip his feet into them again. The two brogans are bitter about their enforced retirement, and all through their early weeks in the closet they talk about how cruelly they have been treated, wailing forth their grievances in long, foul-mouthed diatribes against the master and his wife. Not that this moaning and groaning does them any good, of course, and as dust begins to settle upon them, and as they begin to understand that the closet is their world now, that they will never leave it until the day they are junked, they give up their complaining and start to talk about the past, preferring to relive the old days instead of dwelling on the miseries of the present, and how good it is to remember their adventures with the master when they were young and vigorous and had their place in the world, how pleasant it is to recall the weathers they walked in, the myriad sensations of being outdoors in the fluctuating airs of planet Earth, the sense of purpose that had been given to them by belonging to the bigness of human life. More months go by, and their reminiscing slowly comes to an end, for it is becoming difficult to talk now, difficult even to remember, not because Hank and Frank are sinking into old age but because they have been cast aside, and shoes that are no longer taken care of go downhill rapidly, their exteriors dry up and crack when they cease to be shined and polished, their interiors stiffen when human feet no longer enter them to provide the oils and perspiration necessary to keep them soft and pliable, and slowly but surely cast-aside shoes begin to resemble blocks of wood, and wood is a substance incapable of thinking or speaking or remembering, and now that Hank and Frank have come to resemble two blocks of wood, they are nearly comatose, living in a shadow world of black voids and barely flickering candle flames, and so insensitive have their bodies become during their long incarceration that they feel nothing when the Quines’ three-year-old son Timothy slips his feet into them one afternoon and clomps around the apartment laughing, and when his mother sees his little feet inside those enormous, comatose shoes, she starts laughing as well. What are you doing, Timmy? she asks. I’m pretending to be Daddy, he says, and then his mother shakes her head and frowns, telling the boy she’ll give him a nicer pair of big shoes to play with, those brogans are so filthy and used up that it’s time to get rid of them. How fortunate it is that Hank and Frank can no longer hear anything or feel anything, for once Alice has given her son his father’s current pair of dress shoes, she picks up Hank and Frank with her left hand, puts her right hand on top of Timmy’s head, and then leads him out into the hall toward the incinerator chute, which is located in a minuscule box of a room behind an unlocked door. I’d forgotten all about these ratty old buggers, she says, pushing down on the handle of the incinerator chute door and allowing her son to do the honors, meaning he can perform the task of disposing of the shoes, and so little Timothy Quine takes hold of Hank, and as he casts him seven floors down into the basement furnace, he says, Good-bye, shoe, and then he takes hold of Frank and repeats the operation, saying Good-bye, shoe, as Frank follows his
brother into the fire below, and before another day has dawned over the island of Manhattan, the two sole mates have been transformed into an indistinguishable mass of red, glowing cinders.
* * *
FERGUSON WAS IN the ninth grade now, technically the first year of high school but in his case the last year of junior high, and among the subjects he studied during the first semester was typing, an elective course that proved to be more valuable to him than anything else he took that year. Because he was so keen on mastering this new skill, he went to his father and asked for the money to buy a typewriter of his own, managing to persuade the prophet of profits to cough up the cash with the argument that he was going to need one eventually and prices would never be lower than they were now, and thus Ferguson secured himself a new toy to play with, a solid, elegantly designed Smith-Corona portable, which instantly acquired the status of most treasured possession. How he came to love that writing machine, and how good it felt to press his fingers against the rounded, concave keys and watch the letters fly up on their steel prongs and strike the paper, the letters moving right as the carriage moved left, and then the ding of the bell and the sound of the cogs engaging to drop him down to the next line as black word followed black word to the bottom of the page. It was such a grown-up instrument, such a serious instrument, and Ferguson welcomed the responsibilities it demanded of him, for life was serious now, and with Artie Federman never more than half an inch away from him, he knew it was time to start growing up.