Morgan's Passing by Anne Tyler Read Free Book Online

it back together. He would have to take the bus. He headed toward the transit stop, puffing on a cigarettethat he held between thumb and forefinger, sending out a cloud of smoke from beneath the brim of his hat. He passed a row of houses, an apartment building, then a little stream of drugstores and newsstands and dentists’ offices. Under one arm he carried a brown paper bag with his moccasins inside. They went with his Daniel Boone outfit. He’d worn them so often that the soft leather soles had broken through at the ball of the foot. When he reached the corner, he swerved in at Fresco’s Shoe Repair to leave them off. He liked the smell of Fresco’s: leather and machine oil. Maybe he should have been a cobbler.
    But when he entered, jingling the cowbell above the door, he found no one there—just the counter with its clutter of awls and pencils and receipt forms, the pigeonholes behind it crammed with shoes, and a cup of coffee cooling beside the skeletal black sewing machine. “Fresco?” he called.
    â€œYo,” Fresco said from the rear.
    Morgan laid his package down and went behind the counter. He pulled out a copper-toed work boot. Where would one buy such things? They really would be useful, he felt; really very practical. The cowbell jingled again. A fat woman in a fur cape came in, no doubt from one of those new apartment buildings. All down the edge of her cape, small animals’ heads hung, gnashing their teeth on their own spindly tails. She set a spike-heeled evening sandal firmly on the counter. “I’d like to know what you’re going to do about this,” she said.
    â€œDo?” said Morgan.
    â€œYou can see the heel has broken again. It broke right off while I was walking into the club, and you were the people who’d repaired it. I looked like an utter fool, a clod.”
    â€œWell, what can I say?” Morgan asked her. “This shoe is Italian.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œIt has hollow heels.”
    â€œIt does?”
    They both looked at the heel. It wasn’t hollow at all.
    â€œOh, we see a lot of this,” Morgan told her. He stamped out his cigarette and picked up the sandal. “These shoes from Italy, they come with hollow heels so drugs can be smuggled in. So naturally they’re weakened. The smugglers pry the heels off, take no care whatsoever; they don’t have the slightest feeling for their work. They slam the heels back any old how, sell the shoes to some unsuspecting shop … but of course they’ll never be the same. Oh, the stories I could tell you!”
    He shook his head. She looked at him narrowly; faint, scratchy lines deepened around her eyes.
    â€œAh, well,” he said, sighing. “Friday morning, then. Name?”
    â€œWell … Peterson,” she said.
    He scrawled it on the back of a receipt, and set it with the sandal in a cubbyhole.
    After she was gone, he wrote out instructions for his moccasins: GOWER. FIX!
Can’t live without them
. He put the moccasins next to the sandal, with the instructions rolled inside. Then he trotted on out of the shop, busily lighting another cigarette beneath the shelter of his hat.
    On the sidewalk his mother’s dog was waiting for him. She had a cocked, hopeful face and two perked ears like tepees. Morgan stopped dead. “Go home,” he told her. She wagged her tail. “Go home. What do you want of me? What have I done?”
    Morgan set off toward the bus stop. The dog followed, whining, but Morgan pretended not to hear. He speeded up. The whining continued. He wheeled around and stamped one foot. A man in an overcoat halted and then circled Morgan at a distance. The dog, however, merely cowered, panting and looking expectant. “Why must you drag
after
me like this?” Morgan asked. He made a rush at her, but she stood her ground. Of course he should lead her home himself, but he couldn’t face it. He