shoes even though it isn’t Saturday. My dad’s made a little portable shoebox you can sit on. It has a lid so when you open it, there’s a place to put a shoe on, with little twist things on each side that are adjustable to hold the shoe tight.
My dad made this box when he was fired from J.I. and couldn’t get any job, not even with the WPA. We were on relief but all we got was cornmeal, rice, and once some Spam. We ate an awful lot of cornmeal muffins.
Dad made this box and went down outside the train station at Sixty-ninth Street and sometimes at Sixty-third Street to shine shoes. He told me he never made more than two dollars any day and sometimes he’d only be able to charge a nickel a shine. There were a lot of other men trying to shine shoes around there, and sometimes they’d get into fights about customers. Sometimes the police would come down from the municipal building up the hill and chase them all away.
But then Dad got a job working with the WPA. He’d walk to a place past Sixty-ninth Street, up on Westchester Pike, where they were fixing the streets. He’d walk all the way there and all the way back. He used to cut out cardboard or wooden soles for his shoes and tie them on to save shoe leather, also to keep his feet warm. Dad told me it was the coldest winter he remembers. I was too young to know; all I remember is the blankets we got from relief. We called them Indian blankets, like Indian givers.
When I was seven, my dad showed me how to shine shoes. After that, shining shoes on Saturday for church Sunday morning was my job. Even when we were building porches, after we came in I’d do the shoes. Sometimes Dad would stay on to help me when he wasn’t too tired.
Laurel’s are easy. They’re Mary Janes, patent leather, and I just brush them off, then rub Vaseline in to make them shine. Mom’s are white and brown in summer. They’re hard; you have to whiten the white part and shine the brown part. Now it’s getting colder, she only wears brown shoes with high heels. I have to do the heel, too. I know it’s about time Dad put on new heels; the bottom part on her shoes, that is, because it’s beginning to wear along the edge of the side where I shine them.
Dad wears cordovan shoes with a straight-across tip. He’s had these same shoes more than four years I know of; I guess all the way from back when he worked for J.I. before. He wears an old beat-up pair for working. The leather’s all cracked and you can see his socks through the top, but the bottoms are perfect.
Dad repairs all our shoes. Part of his work bench is a regular shoemaker’s bench. He has the right glue and the tiny square nails. He’s always saving a piece of leather from some trash or other. He cuts the soles out of this leather with a real shoemaker’s curved knife. I love to watch him when he fixes shoes; it smells good, too. I know I’m never going to be a man like my father; I don’t think I care enough about things.
My shoes have sharkskin tips so the more you wear them, the more they’re supposed to shine, but I wear holes right through the sharkskin as if it was nothing. Even so, I have to shine the rest of the shoe.
I go upstairs and gather the shoes. I line them up on the cellar floor. The floor of our cellar is always a little bit wet, even with the furnace going in the winter. Dad says the floor sweats.
I open the shoebox. I peek over at Cannibal; he’s still asleep. I take out some Griffin’s shoe polish and the Vaseline. I take out the shoe brush and the cloth for spreading polish. I’ve tried some others but I like Griffin’s best. I like the song they sing on the radio, too. I sing it to myself, keeping half an eye on Cannibal while I work on the shoes.
The sun shines east
The sun shines west.
But Griffin’s polish
Shines the best.
Some folks are not particular
How they look around the feet.
If they wore shoes upon their head
They’d make sure they looked neat.
So keep your shoes shined
With Griffin’s all the time.
Griffin’s time is the time to shine.
When you hear that familiar chime:
Ding-dong-dong-ding.
It’s time to shine.
Everybody get set—
It’s time to shine.
I decide to tell Laurel. I show her Cannibal behind the furnace; this is before Mom gets home from shopping. Laurel wants to keep Cannibal as much as I do but she’s sure Mom and Dad won’t let me. She wants to hold Cannibal but I tell her he’s still too sick. Actually, I’m afraid he might eat off one of her fingers. Laurel’s a very nice person even though she’s only six. She’s my best friend.
That night at dinner, before we finish dessert, when Dad is starting his coffee and Mom is coming in from the kitchen with her tea, I decide it’s the time. Usually if we want, now, we can get up from the table and go out to play.
‘Mom, Dad, I have something to ask.’
I look over at Laurel. She’s playing with her fruit cocktail, fishing out the cherries. She saves them for me. Dad looks at me over his cup, eyes gray, tired; he blows so the steam flashes out from his face the way I thought that devil was going to come out of my mouth.
‘O.K., Dickie, what is it this time? Have they thrown you out of the choir now?’
He smiles and I know he’s kidding. He looks over at Mom. She’s watching me. Mom’s better than Dad at knowing when something’s wrong. She always knows.
‘I have an alley cat in the cellar. Actually it’s only an alley kitten. It’s the smallest kitten I’ve ever seen.’
Dad takes a sip of his coffee. Mom puts the back of her hand against her mouth. I’m trying not to talk too fast. When I’m excited about something I talk so fast nobody can understand me.
I start by telling how I found the kittens in Mr Harding’s garage, the day I didn’t say mass. I tell how they’ve all disappeared except for one. I don’t tell about how I think Cannibal ate his brothers and sisters. I don’t even tell them his name is Cannibal.
I tell about how this kitten was dying and still trying to fight me off, standing in the corner with his paws up and his mouth open. I tell how I took him home and tried to feed him and now I have him behind the furnace to keep warm.
I stop and look at both their faces and try not to cry. Nobody says anything. Dad takes another sip of his coffee. Mom pours more tea in her cup.
‘You’re probably covered with fleas, Dickie. If we have to shave your head and sprinkle you with flea powder you won’t be so happy about that.’
She says it but she isn’t mad. She’s even smiling at me and I don’t quite understand. Dad puts his cup down, wipes his mouth with a paper napkin.
‘O.K., let’s go see this tiger cat of yours. He could already be dead. From what you say, I don’t know how you can keep him alive.’
We go downstairs into the cellar. I go first with Dad behind me, then Laurel and Mom. I reach carefully behind the furnace and Cannibal is asleep but he’s still alive. I slide out the cloth with him on it before he knows too much what’s happening.
I still haven’t told about stealing the milk and hamburger. I’m feeling once they see Cannibal it will be easier. When I get him out from behind the furnace, he rolls onto his stomach, looks at all of us, then rears up into his bear-lion position ready to fight our whole crowd. He looks even tinier than I remember. He’s rocking back and forth the way he did before and I’m afraid he’s going to fall over. Dad gets down squatting beside me.
‘My