Pride

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 goodness, Dickie, I think you’ve got yourself a miniature tiger or a lion here, all right.’

He puts out his finger and Cannibal strikes out at it with his pointy teeth. Dad just lets him bite and pulls him out of the paint rag by his teeth and holds him in his other hand. Dad’s hands are so hard with calluses, cuts and bruises, he doesn’t seem to even notice a little kitten biting him.

‘You’re a fierce little fellow, aren’t you there? Dickie, this is the smallest living cat I’ve ever seen. He must be some kind of runt in that litter.’

‘He’s the only one who stayed alive, Dad, even if he is a runt. I’ve never met anybody who wants to stay alive so much. I think he might have some kind of little devil in him.’

‘Does he or it have a name yet?’

‘Cannibal.’

He looks at me quickly, smiles, looks up at Mom.

Dad runs his other finger over Cannibal’s head while Cannibal holds with his little teeth on to Dad’s finger desperately, feebly; rocking his head back and forth, sinking his teeth deeper into that hard flesh. I turn around to look at Mom. She’s standing with her arm around Laurel in our dark cellar and only one bare light bulb up in the rafters.

‘Can I keep him, Mom, please? I’ll do anything you say.’

She’s looking at the top of the Argyrol bottle and the lid to the mayonnaise jar beside the paint cloth; I forgot all about them.

‘I’m sorry, Mom. I took some milk and even some little pinches of hamburger. He was starving to death and you weren’t home to ask.’