A Hole in His Shoe by Robert Fromberg

                DieselDemon CC



A Hole in His Shoe
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Steve and I were sitting next to one another on the group home couch. I had just arrived from the airport. He was holding his shoes, ready to put them on so we could go out for a drive. I chatted with one of the managers, and the other residents wandered in an out of the room, saying hello to me and asking the manager for this and that. The group home was the most cheerful place I knew. A place without inhibitions. A home in the fullest sense.
    As usual, Steve did not participate in the conversation, but bounced subtly, happily, as the activity went on around him. I saw that, as always, Steve’s left big toe was fully exposed, poking out from a hole in his sock. 
    For many years, Steve always had a hole in his sock in the spot that should have covered his left big toe. Frequently, the hole spread so that all his toes on that foot were exposed. Every time I saw Steve I bought him new socks. When he was visiting, I asked Steve to give me the socks with holes so I could throw them away. When I was at the group home, he and I went through his drawers and, asking permission from Steve, who would touch each pair twice with his fingertips, and sometimes took the pair and touched it once to his cheek, I took away his holey socks. Usually I threw them away at my hotel so he couldn’t retrieve them from the garbage. Sometimes I mailed Steve new socks—and jeans and underwear and shirts—but I was never sure he wore them. It was very difficult to introduce new pieces into Steve’s clothing rotation. 
    In the earlier days of Steve’s sock-hole habit, I sometimes saw a bit of blood on his sock near the exposed toe, but, examining his feet, I could never find the source, and I hadn’t seen any blood in years. I always assumed the holes were caused by his toe nails needing to be clipped. Vaguely, I would wonder why the holes only appeared in the left sock, but I never thought about that for more than a few minutes, having long ago stopped seeking logical explanations for the phenomena that surrounded Steve.
    I said, “Hey, Steve. How about you put those shoes on so we can…” here I paused with over-obvious drama that Steve seemed to like…“go for a drive!”
    “Yes!” Steve said. “Go for a drive!”
    As Steve slipped on his tennis shoes—a pair I had sent him a few months ago—another manager entered the room, and we started another line of conversation. Steve, shoes on, sitting on my left, sat back and crossed his legs, left ankle on right knee, and jiggled his left foot. 
    I glanced over and saw a hole the size of a half-dollar in the sole of his shoe, just at the big toe. And I saw his bare big toe through the hole.
    I always tried not to embarrass Steve, but an “Ah!” escaped me. Two thoughts fought for right of way in my mind. “How did you get that hole in your shoe?” came out of my mouth first.
    “I don’t know,” Steve said, the words running together, as he slapped his foot flat on the floor so I couldn’t see the hole.
    I let the second thought out: “So that’s why you get holes in your socks!” 
    It was like the denouement of a whodunit. But even as that feeling was registering, I was already questioning my conclusion. Why had I never seen holes in the sole of his shoes before? Well, the soles always faced the floor, but still, in all the years Steve’s big toe had been exposed from a holey sock, would I never have seen the sole of Steve’s left shoe? 
    As this and other questions pecked at my thoughts, one of the managers made his own exclamation: “Ah!” 
    I turned toward him. 
    “I know how that happened!” he said. “Yesterday. I saw Steve on his bike. Down at the end of the driveway. And he was stopping the bike with his foot!”
    Steve was squirming, as he always did when anyone mentioned his behaviors, and I patted his knee and then his shoulder. I considered it my greatest accomplishment, a plenty good reason to have lived a life, that Steve no longer flinched from my touch.
    I said to the manager, “And his brakes are always getting broken.” I turned to Steve. “Are your brakes broken again? Were you stopping your bike with your foot?” Although Steve regularly told me his brakes weren’t working, and I regularly arranged to pay for the repairs, I imagined that perhaps his brakes malfunctioned even more often than he let on, and not wanting to sacrifice his bike rides, Steve was not telling anyone and using his foot instead. I pictured him coasting into an oncoming car, unable to make a hard stop with his foot on the pavement. 
    “Oh well,” I said to Steve, I know one thing we’ll be doing during this visit. “Buying you new shoes and socks!” I tried to make it sound like a party.
    “Buying me new shoes and socks,” Steve said.
    As we drove that afternoon, the satisfaction of having solved a mystery started to decay. I had just paid for repair to Steve’s bike, so why was he stopping with his foot yesterday? And if he was stopping his bike with his foot, and if he had worn a hole in his shoe sole, why was his toe not bloody? And had this really been happening for so many years?
    That night, I drove to the outskirts of town for a drink. In the bar, a man shouted, “Now this guy,” pointing at me, “if I were to steal this guy’s wallet, that would just be a sign of my low self-esteem. See, if I stole this guy’s wallet, I would be saying that this guy has his shit together enough to have three hundred dollars, but I only have my shit together enough to have three dollars.” 
    People around the bar laughed, and so did I. The man called to me, “Do you have a condo in Durham?”
    I told him no.
Later, as he was presumably heading for the bathroom, the man paused at my stool, put his hand on my shoulder, and whispered into my ear, “I still think you have a condo in Durham.”     That night, sitting up in bed in my hotel room, I again saw Steve’s foot—the hole in his shoe sole, the bare toe visible through the hole. 
     I thought, “I know how Steve will die.”
     I didn’t know exactly, but that was the point. 
     I knew some private behavior, some unknown activity, would twist inside him, like a tiny dagger, for years and years. It would meet some other dagger twisting somewhere else inside him. And another. Then one day Steve would just expire. His expiration would be a mystery to anyone not inside his mind or his body. But that wouldn’t matter. He would be dead. 

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Robert Fromberg has prose in Hobart, Indiana Review, Colorado Review, and other journals. His memoir is forthcoming from Latah Books. He taught writing at Northwestern University for a long time a long time ago.

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