Best Foot Forward (6 page)

“And how does that help him?”

“It means he knows what's what.” Burt Odder leaned against the checkout counter like he owned the place.

“I would imagine he already knows what's what, Mr. Odder. I would imagine he would want to know how to get out of the fix he's in.”

“Look, lady—”

“You can call me Mrs. Gladstone.”

Burt Odder didn't like that, but she was just getting started. She narrowed her eyes and charged. “This is my store, Mr. Odder. I pay my taxes and I'm a law-abiding citizen. I can hire whomever I choose.”

He wiped his sweaty forehead, but it didn't make much of a difference. “I just came to warn you, nice and friendly. My job is to protect the public, to assist ex-offenders adjusting to life in a free community, and to prevent future criminal acts.” He said it like he had that memorized. “The rules are like this—if you decide to keep him employed, I can come in here at any time to check up on him. I got Judge Perrelli's personal orders that I'm to watch this one specially close.” He showed her some official paper.

Mrs. Gladstone said, “Jenna, let Tanner know that Mr. Odder is here.”

I headed in the back as Burt Odder said, “I don't need to talk to him now.”

“No time like the present, Mr. Odder.” She nodded to me. “Jenna . . .”

Burt Odder glared at me like I'd better not go back there.

Do I obey the law or The Law? I decided to obey the one who signed my checks.

I rushed into the back. Tanner was sweeping up, doing a really thorough job, too, getting all the dust balls from the corners. He probably learned good sweeping skills in prison. My warning bells were clanging.

“Listen,” I said, “there's a guy out there you know.”

Tanner looked concerned. “Who?”

“Um . . . Burt Odder.”

Tanner threw the broom against the wall. The stick broke in two.

I stepped back. “I think you'd better come.”

He didn't move.

“You did a good job on the floor, Tanner.”

He clenched his fists, shoved them in his pockets. We walked out on the sales floor. Burt Odder smirked. “Okay, you know the routine.”

Mrs. Gladstone snapped, “I don't know the
routine,
Mr. Odder. Explain it to me, please.”

“He's gotta check in with me when I say and stay clean. Isn't that right, Cobbie?”

“Yeah. That's right.”

“And we're happy to know he's going to be helping out here at the store.” He said it like it was all a good joke.

Burt Odder jingled his keys, turned on his cheap plastic soles, and waddled out of the store. It was like watching a bad storm pass, hoping it hadn't left too much damage.

Mrs. Gladstone said, “Tanner, you can go back to what you were doing.”

 

I carefully avoided the back room until we ran out of peds; unfortunately, that's where they were stored. Murray and I flipped a coin to see who would go in. I lost.

I poked my head in the door; Tanner was creating a recycling space, putting all the supplies in order. The peds were on the shelf across the room. How to build camaraderie and remain uninjured?

I did a quick dash across the floor, saying, “That guy Odder's a genuine jerk.”

Tanner slammed twine and scissors on a shelf.

I reached up on the high shelf and got the peds. “That must be hard to have to report to somebody like that.”

Tanner moved behind me. “What do you know about it?”

“Nothing. I was just—”

“What—trying to
help
? You want to rehabilitate me so you can put a badge on your arm, show you did your good deed for the day?”

I spun around.
“No. That's not—”

“You got some kind of thing to prove with me?”

“That's not fair!”

He grabbed a box of shoes and threw it against the wall; he hurled another one, swearing. I dropped the peds, tore out of the back room, and almost crashed into Mrs. Gladstone; she'd been standing at the door.

“Jenna,” she said,
“stay here.”

She marched into the stockroom. “
Mister
Cobb, I have no idea what your life has been like. I have no idea what it is like to try to play the hand you've been dealt. To tell you I understand would be an insult to you, but to excuse your behavior solely because of it discredits us both.
Pick up the shoes
and apologize to Jenna.”

Tanner stood there, not moving. His breathing came in short gasps. Mrs. Gladstone didn't blink. Then Tanner bent down, slowly picked up the shoes, put them back in their boxes, and said, “Sorry.”

She turned to me.

I swallowed hard. “It's okay, Tanner.”

“Sorry about my language,” he added to Mrs. Gladstone.

She glared at him. “I find that talk mostly tiresome and un-creative. But I do have a favorite four-letter word. Would you like to hear it?”

I took a step back.

“Work,”
she snapped, and threw a mop toward him. “There's one thing I know to be true for rich and poor—there's power in honest labor. I know how to teach it; I know how to make sure you are properly trained so that you can make a fair living. That is the opportunity I offer you here, but it won't be handed to you. You will have to work for it.”

Tanner exhaled sharply and looked down.

“Jenna Boller has a work ethic that you would do well to emulate.”

He nodded. “I guess I could sell shoes.”

“That remains to be seen, young man.” Mrs. Gladstone turned on her heel and hobbled off.

Over the next few days, I felt
observed.

Tanner Cobb was studying my every move like a robber casing a bank. Mrs. Gladstone had set the stage, too.

“Jenna, I feel that there's much you can demonstrate to Tanner about good business sense.”

I shook my head. Not me.

“I'm asking you to take him under your wing.”

“I'm wingless.” I put my arms firmly at my side to make the point.

“You soar more than you realize, dear. Now when you're doing something, explain the steps to him. Let him soak in the experience of how well you do your job.”

It's hard to say no when a request comes wrapped in compliments.

I was standing on the sales floor with Tanner. When you do things naturally, it's hard to break them down with explanation. Like measuring feet.

Tanner was on his knees, trying to measure my right foot. He moved the lever to the top of my big toe and studied it. “I can't tell if it's a ten or an eleven.”

“It's a nine and a half. See that half line there?”

He peered at it. “You got big feet!”

“Tanner, think about how that might sound to a customer.”

“You're not a customer.”

“But if I were, saying a person has big feet might make them feel, you know, embarrassed.”

He nodded. We tried it again; I stuck my foot in the measurer, Tanner fiddled with it. “You got interesting feet,” he said, which wasn't much better.

“Tanner, it's best not to say anything about a customer's foot size or whether it's interesting or not.”

“Why?”

“Because feet are . . . personal, but we don't want people to feel we're getting personal with them. You know?”

He studied the measurer and announced, “Okay, you're a nine and a half, but don't take it personally.”

I closed my eyes and tried to impart great shoe truths:

Not every shoe is for every foot.

You can't sell everybody, but it doesn't hurt to try.

If a customer has smelly feet,
always
suffer silently.

I tried to tell him that when you have a job, you've got to get to work on time. He really had problems with that one. “I haven't got an alarm clock,” he kept saying, like that excused being late. And then his phone would ring and he'd talk in that low, breathy voice. . . .

“Baby, I'm working . . .”

“Baby, I'll come by when I'm through. . . . Yeah, I will . . .”

“Baby, don't be mad. . . . Come on . . .”

“Tanner, we don't normally take so many personal calls at work. Maybe you'd better tell your friend not to call so much.”

“I'm telling those girls not to call. They just keep after me.”

How many
Baby
s have you got?

 

I stapled the white Lone Star in the corner of the big relief map of Texas, put five Western boots on plastic stands in front of the map, and lugged out the sign I'd made that proclaimed:

Tears stung my eyes, but I wasn't going to cry. I touched a stacked-heeled black boot. Harry Bender always wore cowboy boots.

He was the greatest shoe salesman in all of history.

Murray stood quietly at my side. “You know, kid, when Harry was ringing up a sale, he'd flick the corner of the credit card, make it twirl in the air, and catch it behind his back. The customers loved it.”

“I hadn't heard that story, Murray.”

“There are a million stories about him.”

I centered the little photo of Harry in his Stetson hat laughing away. I decided that lighting a candle might be overkill.

Tanner sauntered into the store, twenty minutes late from lunch. He looked at the memorial. “What's that?”

“It's to honor a friend of ours that died,” I told him. “When I line up all the men I've known in my life, Harry Bender was the best of them all. When I sell shoes, I think about how he did it and that helps me do my best.”

Tanner touched the scar on his face. “The best man I knew was our neighbor, Ice. If you got locked out, he'd kick down a door for you or throw a brick through your window. He was that kind of guy.”

“Kid,” Murray said, “pulling from that memory won't help you in retail.”

Tanner shrugged. “You line up most of the guys I know, you'd be smart to run the other way.”

A small man was standing by the oxfords, but looking wistfully toward Harry's boot display.

“Can I help you, sir?” I asked. Tanner was at my elbow.

“Oh, I'm just looking.” He stared longingly at the cowboy boots.

“I've seen a lot of people stand here trying to decide if they should try on a pair of boots,” I said, smiling. Tanner smiled, too.

The man laughed. “Well, they're impractical. Cowboy boots . . . I mean, where would I wear them?”

I just stood there.

The man looked at Tanner. “Okay, tell me the truth. Would you wear these?”

Tanner grinned. “Are you kidding? I'd sleep in 'em, they're so cool.”

That man's face beamed confidence. I already had the foot measure ready.

“I really came in for an oxford, but . . .”

Tanner looked at the oxfords and shook his head.

The man gulped.

I got the boots.

“Just step firmly in here, sir, and press your heel down.”

That man started strutting around the store, stopping at every mirror. He stuck his thumb in his belt. “I'll take 'em,” he said. His voice had grown deeper.

I rang him up at the counter, took twenty percent off in honor of Harry. Told him to stay safe out there. Tanner rolled his eyes at that one.

“Yep.” He sauntered out the door. If we sold cowboy hats, we would have had a sale. Horses, even. I turned to Tanner. “It doesn't always go like this.”

“You haven't had me to help before.”

Just then, Yaley walked in.

“What are you doing here?” Tanner demanded.

“Checking up on you.”

He opened his hands. “I'm here.”

“I see you,” she responded.

Tanner made an irritated noise and sauntered into the back.

“My job's never over with him,” she said to me.

I had a memory flash. Me as a little kid checking up on Dad when he was watching TV. I'd count the number of empty beer cans by his chair. I learned to count that way. After a six-pack, he'd be drunk.

I looked at Yaley. “That's a lot of responsibility on you,” I said.

She was defiant. “If I don't do it, he's gonna get cocky, and when he gets cocky he messes up.”

“He gets cockier?”

“He's got
moves,
okay?”

I laughed. “I've got moves, too, Yaley. Don't worry. He's not my type.”

Yaley shouldered her backpack like it held the weight of her world. “I want to talk to you more about Tanner sometime.”

I'm not sure I wanted to learn a whole lot more, but I gave her my cell phone number before she left.

I was trying to think of the 12 Steps of Al-Anon as if they formed a staircase up to a place I really wanted to go. The problem was, I kept tripping on the first step.

I'll tell you, for a strong, tall, self-controlled person, that's a tough concept.

Don't powerless people get stomped on and lie down like doormats?

Don't strong people survive in this world?

But when I step back, I begin to see the meaning.

I'm not responsible for my dad's behavior. I have no power when it comes to that.