The carpet was obscenely dirty. Who was responsible for vacuuming? I looked underneath claw-footed chairs and saw dust balls, ripped papers, desiccated food particles and cigarette butts, matches burnt black, and many gray heaps that must’ve been ashes surreptitiously dumped. The carpet itself was gritty to the touch; the weave felt suffused with sand and dirt, and the rancid smell that rose from it was of something wet and dead. How many after-dinner ports had been absently tipped and allowed to dribble into sugary pools that fed the bugs and soaked through these old threads, down into the foam matting and between cracks dividing floorboards that groaned beneath our shoes and boots all stomping this way and that, to the bathroom, the porno cabinet, the drinks table?
Hiram’s stockings were checkered and sheer. One had slid down its leg. There was not much leg there. The skin was chalky alabaster, speckled brown. Hiram’s trousers rode high on him. He belted these at the bottom of his rib cage. If you look around the world, you’ll notice elderly men wearing pants in this fashion. Hiram’s were green and a mismatch with his socks. The shoes, as I have said, were black, and they were massive. They held my attention. I should say that they held me under their spell. I reached out to take a flower that lay across a shoe’s toe. As if responding, this shoe moved toward my hand. Of course, this was only Hiram shifting his foot. But it seemed to me, down there on my belly on the reeking carpet, as though this fat black wing tip had become self-activated, that it had decided, all by itself, to proffer its white bloom. Obviously, Hiram’s wing tip was not alive. I knew this. It’s just that the shoe looked so big up close, and so oblong, so impressively thick-skinned, with its laces like whiskers and its toe that glistened like an animal’s wet nose.
I wanted to pet it.
Perhaps, if I caressed the shoe, I might like myself better. I have found it calming, from time to time, to make a small gesture expressing abjection, and to really get in touch with feelings of loneliness and shame.
I crawled toward the shoe. It was Hiram’s right shoe, not the left. It rested beside its mate inside the open metal cage formed by the walker’s tubular framework. The shoe was a foot away from me. I was flat on my stomach. One dozen broken lilies were in my hands. These flowers were barely more than denuded stems. The stems were bent and their fallen petals lay scattered across the carpet. I inched forward. I suppose you could say I was sneaking up on Hiram’s shoe. I dragged myself along; I stayed low; I tracked my quarry. The carpet’s rank musk smelled delicious. I breathed in the smell. The shoe waited. It seemed to regard me. Tiny impressions punched in the uppers made lacy, delicate arabesques, heavenly swirls in the black leather.
Such thick soles.
I crawled closer — near enough to kiss the shoe, almost. My breath fogged its shine. Light dust showed on its toe. Suddenly Hiram’s foot inside the shoe moved and I feared for an instant that I had charged too close too fast and would frighten the shoe away. But the shoe stayed put. Its movement was slight — only Hiram stretching, redistributing his weight, getting comfortable. Naturally, Hiram’s slightly moving foot caused the shoe’s uppers to stretch and expand (much in the manner of a languid animal’s leathery back, whenever the animal shifts its weight or stretches after a nap), and this movement, the shoe’s breathy dilation, seemed to me so absolutely lifelike — and of course it was; Hiram’s old foot was alive and kicking, as they say — so adorable and beguiling, so downright friendly, that I began to feel warm all over. I felt happy. I felt, in my happiness, able to do what I had crawled across the unclean floor to do: I dropped the lilies, reached out, and stroked, with my hand, Hiram’s wing tip.
It seemed to like this. I gave it a squeeze. I felt Hiram’s foot buried inside. The foot made subtle nuzzling motions, as if responding to my touch. And with each soft nuzzle from the shoe, I felt an accompanying wave — these were physical sensations that originated deep in my stomach — of pleasure. I became aware of a wonderful feeling of peacefulness and ease that I can describe only as a general loosening of bodily tensions. The miniature waves of pleasure feathered out along my arms and legs, and I noticed in myself a capacity for deeper breathing; each exhalation of rotten air became a gentle evacuation of the stresses and strains of life. How relaxing it was to lie down on the floor. In my right hand was Hiram’s black shoe. Here were Hiram’s trouser legs, and here were the walker’s slender posts. Lily petals resembled water flowers drifting across the dark and tranquil rug. Cigarette ashes rose up beside chair legs; the ash piles looked to me like volcanoes. Convoys of brothers’ feet passed in every direction. I could see every type of footwear, loafers and canvas sneakers, lace-up oxfords and water-resistant work boots, expensive running shoes and cowboy and riding boots and moccasins and floppy bedroom slippers, sandals worn with socks, you name it, dozens of shoes stamping to and fro; and I could feel, as I lay breathing deeply on our threadbare carpet, the mingled repercussions of everyone’s steps, the mild shock waves echoing through the floor and the rug.
What a sweet feeling. It was a vibrating massage. I breathed out, let myself go slack, and considered, for the moment, the other men lying on the floor.
The doctor was closest. His head was purple and his eyes stared from swollen sockets. One might imagine that the rumbling made by his brothers’ feet produced a gentle back rub, relieving Barry’s aches.
A few steps past Barry was Virgil. Virgil was curled tight around his embroidered cushion. He trembled; you could see his shoulders twitch, but this was, as I may have mentioned, often the case when he slept. The trembling did not appear violent. Clearly our resonating floor had soothed Virgil.
Likewise with Max. Max was still on his back; his nose no longer bled; he seemed looser in the body. Evidently the floorboards were helping him to unwind.
It is worth noting this phenomenon — in which a lot of thoughtless pacing around the room produced a desirable secondary outcome, healing body massage — as an instance of spontaneous, intrafamilial mutuality and caring. No doubt this kind of unpremeditated caretaking occurs frequently in large communities, perhaps even within other species with complex societies, like the termites and bees. It pleased me enormously to imagine my brothers going about routine business while serendipitously tending to one another’s health and well-being. This is the way family members ought to coexist. I can honestly declare that, in that moment, belly-down on our floor, gazing at the ashes, the injured men, the promenading shoes, in that moment I loved my brothers.
I gave another firm squeeze to Hiram’s wing tip, then crept closer and snuggled. Gently I rested my cheek on the shoe’s cold toe. I could feel, pressed sharply against my chest, the hypodermic syringes and assorted medicine vials in my jacket’s inside breast pocket. I did not mind the pain of lying on these things. On the contrary, the needles were a comfort to me. Tremors rolled through the floor, and I heard Gunner the Doberman barking from the dark canyons of bookshelves. The shoe felt so comfortable to lie on. Its smell of leather and pungent black polish gave me a memory that I could not place — the inexplicit memory of a feeling that was like sadness, though not exactly sadness. Certain feelings lie in wait for certain sounds or scents to activate them. Everyone knows the power of the senses. Deep memories of feelings describe the earliest manifestations of the Self. Pillowed by Hiram’s shoe, smelling its leather, I felt transported back to a time too distant to accurately recollect. I felt with real conviction that I was alone in the world, that my brothers were not gathered around me, that no people were outside in the meadow beyond our garden wall. I imagined our garden full of green trees and youthful, blooming plants. The rose garden, in particular, appeared, in my mind, splendid with color. I suppose it was Hiram’s shoes themselves, and his shoe polish with its fertile, earthy smell, that provoked these images of red flowers, crawling vines, branches swaying in a breeze.