The Baby Shoe
I had to rummage through the closet to find it. When I finally did, I pulled it out and looked at it: My Law School Diploma. The pride I once felt for it had faded. My parents, on the other hand, were still very proud of the degree, and my father had even taken it somewhere to have it framed, with the intention that I hang it on a wall rather than tuck it behind a pile of clothes and a knapsack.
It had a light film of mildew over the glass from he dampness of the closet, which was against an outside wall. And the closet was always more damp in the summer, which always made me worried that my clothes might pick up a mildewy or musty smell.
Hey, Kennedy took it three times!
"I found it." I said to my wife.
I was going to visit my parents later that afternoon, and my father requested that I bring the diploma so that he could show it to his friend--yet another friend of his that might possibly help me to find a "Professional" job.
I looked for my missing sneaker.
Hey, Kennedy took it three times!
"Honey," did you see my right sneaker?"
"I don't know." she said. Look on the Porch. Maybe Star took it."
I laughed. "That's right. She probably did."
I put on my left shoe, and hobbled through the kitchen and onto the back porch, and sure enough, there was Star laying on the deck with my New Balance sneaker between her paws, pulling and chewing on the laces.
Hey! Kennedy took it three times!
Back inside, I looked around.The kitchen was a mess. We had had a liesurely and long morning together, and had made a big breakfast, with Lots of bacon and even crepes as a special treat. There was no dishwasher, so it was going to be a two person, 20 minute clean-up by hand at least.
Hey! Kennedy took it three times!
"There's no time to clean up right now." I said. Can we do it when we both get back?"
My wife entered the room and said. "Oh why not. What the Hell. It's our day off.. We can do it later. Besides, It's not like anyone's coming over"
"That's true," I said. And I'll be back pretty early anyway. I'll just scoot out there, and then tell my parents we have to go visit your sister or something."
Hey! Kennedy took it three times!
"My Sister!" she exclaimed. "Boy! That's a switch! Since when?" And we both laughed.
"Well............you know what I mean." I said.
Hey! Kennedy took it three times!
And so we both left the house, leaving Star behind, and before locking the front door we told her: "We'll be right back girl! Don't worry, we'll be right back!"
My wife left for the supermarket, and to get some vegetables at the local farm stand, and some chopped clams at Brauns fish market. I climbed inot my Work Van and drove to Riverhead to get a haircut, and to buy some new white painters pants for work the following week. (The old pants were getting very torn and dirty by that point.) After that, I was to drive to my parents house for a brief visit.
Once in Riverhead, I discovered that the woman that usually cut my hair was not in, so someone else cut it, and I was pleasantly surprised with the results.
"Wow! Can you cut my hair from now on?" I chuckled.
Hey! Kennedy took it three times!
On my next stop, the Hardware Store, I discovered that the painters pants in my size were sold out.
'I'll get them next week' I thought, and walked a few stores down to the Deli for some coffee.
_____________________________________
When I was back in my Van and heading North and away from town on Roanoke Avenue, I glanced to the left and then to the right, and took in the view of the countryside.
Hey! Kennedy took it three times!
The East End of Long Island was so beautiful in the Summer, and the long, loping jets of water from the sprinklers on the farms added to the rustic splendor. I turned off the AC, and opened my window wide to feel the rush of the pleasant country air on my face.
When I arrived at my parents house, I was greeted warmly. We sat on the front porch near the driveway, and talked, and I said: "Oh! I almost forgot," and I went back to my truck and retrieved my framed diploma, and handed it to my father.
"You're taking a course I hope." My mother said. There's a course you can take for the Bar Exam you know."
"I know that." I said. of course I do. Everybody HAS to take a prep course, otherwise they can't pass the damn thing.
"Don't worry." My father said. A lot of people take that exam a few times. And they're all lawyers and judges now........and Hey! Kennedy took it three times!
"I know. I said, somewhat annoyed. That's all I hear. Everywhere I go. From Everyone: "Kennedy took it three times! Kennedy took it three times! Kennedy took it three times!
And besides, not many people know it but, Kennedy only took it TWO times!
"Relax," my mother said.
"I'm sorry," I said. I am relaxed. But Cheez! When I confide in people, and tell them I've taken it three times already, even the plumbers and carpenters tell me that Kennedy was a triple threat."
"How's everything at home?" they asked.
"Fine."
"Are you eating enough? You look thin and tired"
"Oh yeah. She's a great cook. Gourmet. Salad every night and Italian Cooking. I couldn't be happier."
They smiled at this. "Are you studying?"
"Yeah." and that's why I look tired probably. And I do eat, it's just that the hours fly by when I'm in the Bar course and on the road back and forth. I forget to eat sometimes. But I do eat."
And a little while later I brought up the white lie about having to go to my in-law's house. They waved goodbye as I backed out of the driveway, and then pulled away in my Van.
______________________________________________
On the way home I decided to take the "North Road" or Sound Avenue. It was sometimes a little faster--that is--if there were no slow moving farm vehicles ahead, or an old person driving under the speed limit.
I turned the radio on. It was a preset news station, and the voice was excited. I turned the volume up. The announcer said something like:
"John Kennedy Jr. has been reported missing. He was flying to Nantucket Island earlier, and is now believed to have gone down somewhere in the Long Island Sound off Mattituck."
Mattituck was where my parents lived, and I used to repeatedly tell my tired old joke about Mattituck being something Robin Hood said to the Friar, as in : "What's the Matta' Tuck?" My wife would roll her eyes whenever she heard me telling the joke to someone yet again, and I once told it to a rustic, older man, and a lifetime resident of Mattituck, who didn't smile and gave me a queer look.
I turned the volume up more. A slow moving moving van was in front of me. 'Shit' I said to myself. I was stuck, and could only hope the truck turned off the one-lane highway more sooner than later. There was a 10 mile stretch of road ahead until the highway divided into two lanes, and passing would not be possible until that point.
The news station, and several other news stations that I swithched to such as WINS or WCBS, were all reporting the same story: John Kennedy Jr. was piloting a small airplane with his wife and sister-in-law as passengers, and was believed to have either crashed or made an emergency landing in the Long Island Sound, very near to where my wife and I lived.
I wanted to tell my wife, but I didn't have a cell phone. The moving van kept plodding along at 40MPH until finally, about 15 minutes later, the highway divided. I passed, and sped up, taking the most direct route I knew to get home.
When I finally made it home I hurried inside and found my wife already there, unpacking the groceries and vegetables.
"Hurry Honey!" I said. "We have to find him!"
"Who?"
"John Kennedy Jr! I exclaimed almost breathlessly and with a smile.
"What?"
"I'm serious." And I told her the story, making light of it, perhaps because of the very premise of us being in a position to aid someone so noteable and wealthy.
"He's probably hanging onto his wrecked airplane somewhere in the water, and we might be able to help him."
It might seem a little absurd now, but the news was fresh, and the story was still unfolding, so anything was believeable. And my wife even thought the same thing. We were like minded in that sense: experienced at walking on lonely stretches of the many Eastern Long Island beaches by then, and we sometimes spotted large pieces of pilings or planks from smashed bulkheahds floating in the waves after a storm. They usually came from Connecticut, directly across the Sound. We would also sometimes find similar debris washed up on the beach that no one else had probably seen before in such isolated parts.
"We can take Star" I said, still smiling. "She can help."
"Want to help us Star?" I asked. Star sensed the excitement in our tones, and was wagging her tail like a "doggy helicopter,", as we often called it.
I put the leash on Star and my wife grabbed her purse. We locked the house, and drove to the nearest Public beach on the Long Island Sound that we knew of--the one in Cutchogue, in front of Horton's Point Lighthouse.
On the way my wife said: "He's such a handsome guy! The best looking man I've ever seen!"
"Hey! I said. What about me? But you know, his wife is very beautiful, so there." My wife feigned some punches at my body. It tickled slightly and I laughed, and we both continued joking and laughing until we arrived.
No one else was in the Lighthouse parking lot, and we got out of the car and made our way down the steep staircase to the beach. I took the leash off Star and let her run. We then strained our eyes as we looked out upon the Long Island Sound. My wife had a pair of binoculars.
A large Coast Guard Helicopter flew by--a cargo -type. And we saw several boats, and a police boat race by in the water. It felt exciting, but suddenly a little more serious, and we could sense the urgency.
We walked Westward on the beach. Star led the way. The beach was rocky, interspersed with very large boulders. The tide was low, and there was a lot of marine and small household-type debris scattered around, as usual.
As we walked, I continued joking slightly: "We gotta save them! We gotta save them. It's up to us baby! It's up to us! Let me see the binoculars."
"You're silly," she said, and started to hand them to me."Wait." she said. "No Wait!" Look there. Look at those seagulls!"
There were three seagulls circling around us; curious, as if they had never seen too many people before and were "checking us out." Star looked up at them and started barking wildly. Her front paws bounced off the ground with the effort. "Easy girl.", we said, laughing.
"See that Honey?" I said. That's her hunting instinct. She's such a bird dog."
"Look!" my wife said, and pointed at the larger seagull. "That one's a male see? And their breasts are so white! Snow white, like a Dove! Such beautiful birds!"
She tried to follow the seagulls with her binoculars, but they were moving too quickly, and they finally flew off, and landed on the green, seaweed covered remains of a jetty some distance down the beach before flying away for good.
"Maybe they wanted us to throw them some bread or something." she said dubiously.
Star, in the meantime, followed the retreating birds with her eyes, until she lost interest and wandered a little into the brush at the base of the sandy cliff. She started sniffing, following a scent, with her nose to the ground, zig zagging slightly and with her tail waving like a little white-tipped brown flag.
"I better get her" my wife said. "She's going to pick up a lot of burrs and ticks in there." And she trotted off in the direction of Star, some 25 yards away.
At the end of an hour or a little over, the excitement, it seemed, had died down. There were no more aircraft and boats speeding by. We were no longer telling jokes. The Long Island Sound in front of Horton's point looked the same as it always did, and it was getting overcast, and the wind was picking up. The green water started taking on a more leaden hue. Nothing unusual was floating in the water, or washed up on the beach.
I drifted towards the base of the sandy cliff and stared at all the "stuff" that always collected behind the large rocks, and among the continuous mounds of jingle and slipper shells created by the tides: an occassional buoy broken free of a lobster trap, disposable plastic cigarette lighters, sun-faded aluminum cans, drinking straws, wiffle and tennis balls, glass bottles and plastic bottle caps. There was even a small American Flag, untouched by the elements, that seemed like it had been lost by someone from a Fourth of July party the previous week. I rolled the flag up on it's stick and put it in my breast pocket. Looking around some more I saw a red plastic cap. I picked it up, and looked underneath to see if it had a prize stamped there. It did-- a free 24 oz. bottle of Coca Cola-- but the sweepstakes had expired the previous winter. Somehow that made me a little sad.
Then I found a small, white leather shoe. A toddler's or a small child's shoe. It too was worn and weathered by the sand, sun, and salt water. The laces were missing and the shoe was misshapen slightly, but still wearable I thought strangely.
'How old is it? I wondered. And where in this wide world is the other one?' Gone forever I guess. And then I thought: 'And where is the child it belongs to?"
I carried the shoe in my hand and wandered around some more. I saw the remains of a torn paperback. It was a Romance Novel. Mostly unreadable, and swollen from having floated in sea water, which made most of the pages stick together. What I could read was something sexual, about a man's hot and searing mouth making it's way down the throat of a Countess, towards her breasts,which were panting above the neckline of a green dress--but that was all I could make out, because the next page was obliterated by decay.
I found a stick, and picked it up. It was about four feet long. My wife was heading back towards me with Star on her leash. I pushed the stick in the sand as hard as I could, and then fitted the small shoe on top of it. It resembled a hasty grave marker. I was facing the water, and saw that while I was nosing around the beach, a dark cormorant had alighted on a large boulder, perhaps 30 yards out in the water, and was now spreading and drying his wings. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner came to my mind for some reason.
My wife approached from my right, and looking at my creation asked:
"What are you doing? What's that?"
I smiled. "Aaaah, I said. It's nothing really."
And our trip to the beach that afternoon suddenly became somber. I wanted to go home. My wife was looking at the waves, and felt it too. We both looked at the waves together for a moment, and then at each other. Neither of us was smiling. Star was sitting and looking up at me, and at the sort of comical upside down baby shoe on top of the stick next to me. She had been running in the surf, and the fur on her white chest had the kinkled look it had whenever it was wet.
"Do you think they're OK?" she asked.
"I don't know, I said, and I looked down.
"I found something, I continued, then paused.
"What?" my wife asked. What is it?"
I shrugged slightly, and looked down again and said:
"I found........I found it."
"What?" she asked again.
"I found........
John John's shoe."
She looked at me with a wan smile, and seemed a little anxious. "You're silly" she said, then shoved me slightly.
I wasn't smiling much either. "I know." I said, and we embraced.
The stick from the mini flag in my pocket was poking my left side. I took it out and unrolled it. I looked at it, and then, on a whim, knelt down and slipped it between the tongue and the body of the small shoe at its narowest point. I left it there, almost upside down, and slightly moving in the wind coming off the water.
The day was drawing to a close. The crimson rays of the sun had broken through the clouds a little. It reflected on our faces, and we both became silent again, and looked out across the Sound, towards the distant Horizon where the sun was setting over the Connecticut shore.
JD Pitty-Party Painter
Bron-Y-Aur Cottage, County Cork, Winter-2011
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*I realize this is a political song, but I also feel, aside from the political message, it is a very beautiful song as well, and somehow seemed to fit the mood of the story, for me at least.
(I'll be editing and adding to this story as always. I did it today. Just an idea of mine. So if youse
people notice any changes, dont get upset)
"Let em' eat Crow, then let em' eat cake!
Robespierre-eve of the 100 days war--1637
