“Yeah,” I said. “I did.”
He started to roll his bucket away, but I stepped in front of him.
“What size shoe do you wear?”
“You didn’t have to do that, Harry.”
He blinked.
“What?”
“Your shoes. What size?”
“Harry, don’t.”
“What size?”
Mr. White sighed like I was making trouble for both of us.
“Ten and a half.”
“Your shoes. What size?”
I looked down at my sneakers.
Same.
They were not expensive, but they were clean, comfortable, and only six months old. My mom had bought them after my old ones gave me blisters during basketball tryouts.
I sat on the bench near the gym and untied them.
Mr. White’s face changed.
“No.”
My mom had bought them.
I pulled one off.
“Take them.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Mr. White.”
“I said no.”
I held the sneakers out anyway.
His eyes went shiny, and that almost made me stop.
Almost.
“Take them.”
“You need them more than I do, Mr. White.”
He stared at the shoes like I had handed him the moon.
Then, very slowly, he sat beside me and removed the taped ones.
When he slipped on my sneakers, he smoothed the tongue of each shoe with both hands before tying them.
“You need them more than I do, Mr. White.”
Not casually.
Professionally.
Like the way the laces lay mattered.
For some reason, that stayed with me.
“They fit,” I said.
He laughed once, but it came out broken.
“They do.”
For some reason, that stayed with me.
Then he covered his face.
I did not know what to do with a grown man crying in the hallway, so I sat beside him in my socks and looked at the floor.
“My daughter is sick,” Mr. White said after a while.
I turned toward him. “Daughter?”
“She’s been sick a long time. Bills don’t care how old a man is.”
That did something to me.
“Bills don’t care how old a man is.”
“You don’t have to pay me back,” I said.
“I will.”
“No, you won’t.”
He looked at me then.
“I have spent my whole life paying people back, son.”
“Then let this one go,” I whispered.
