Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006

Shoes by Scott Mackay

Linc, alone in the class, got up, went to the front, opened Mr. Gonzalez’s drawer, and found an Exacto knife. Could blood freeze? He walked to the window, looked at the parking lot, and saw it filling with cars. He glanced at the basketball court and wondered if he would ever play hoops again. Without Madmaxx, it wouldn’t be the same. Dull January light struggled through the glass, and a few snowflakes fell from the sky. Linc opened the window, clenched his teeth, and drew the blade across his finger.

He had to squeeze the blood out. He smeared it onto the concrete windowsill. Not good enough. Madmaxx always said that. So Linc cut deeper, and this time got a decent flow. The blade was both hot and cool against his skin, with something satisfying yet terrifying about the way it sank into his flesh.

Blood fell in drops, bright round rubies, a pattern of dots like his chording chart at home, Madmaxx always saying no one played guitar the way Linc did, going to be a big star one day, the next Hendrix, the next B. B. King. Blood, at first steaming in the cold of a Detroit winter morning, then hardening.

Dilbert came in and said, “Close the friggin’ window,” so Linc closed it because Dilbert was like Papa Smurf, someone you had to fear. Linc glanced at the blood outside the closed window. Was it freezing? He couldn’t tell. He went to his science bench, got a paper towel, and wrapped his finger. He walked to the front, put the Exacto knife back, and returned to his seat.

Dilbert was smiling at him.

“What you lookin’ at?” said Linc.

“I’m lookin’ at you, boy.”

“Ain’t nothin’ to see here.”

But Dilbert stared, sitting at his own science bench, round and big, sure of his place in the universe, keeping the secret of Madmaxx’s murder buried under all that bling.

Other students drifted in, and the noise level went up. Mr. Constanza came in, then went out. Niveda came in. She was dark, a puma woman in an expensive leather jacket. Not about shoes, but about Niveda.

Mr. Constanza came back.

Over the next several minutes he taught chemical equations.

But Linc was too busy solving his own equations.

X plus Y didn’t necessarily equal Z. Not about a pair of shoes, but about Niveda, he was sure of it.

Papa Smurf came in at quarter past nine, shoulders jerking back and forth, head held high, smelling like Camels, do-rag on his head, bling-bling everywhere, and no late note from the office.

Mr. Constanza said, “Take your seat, Mr. Guthrie.”

But Papa Smurf didn’t take his seat. He came over and sat next to Linc. Linc’s fear opened wide and hurtful. He thought Mr. Constanza might tell Mr. Guthrie to go to his usual seat, but the science teacher continued with his chemical equations, his voice tight, like he knew what was going on but was too scared to say anything. Dilbert glanced. Niveda glanced.

Papa Smurf said, “We good?”

In a huge betrayal of Madmaxx, Linc said, “We good.”

“Water under the bridge, my friend. Got killed for a pair o’ shoes, that’s all. Someone stole ’em away. Happens all the time. Had nothing to do with me. So stop guessin’. You wasn’t there. How you know?”

Papa Smurf got up and took his seat.

Linc concentrated on his work, but kept wondering if his blood was freezing yet.

The class ended and he looked out the window.

Frozen solid.

Blood froze.

Like a cherry Popsicle.

He pictured it around Madmaxx’s body, and it made him weak. He looked at the parking lot. Then at the gray sky. Then into the basketball court.

Madmaxx’s Filas hung from the basketball hoop, a flash of yellow, like a pair of canaries tangled in shoelaces. And seeing Madmaxx’s yellow shoes dangling from the netless hoop, Linc knew it wasn’t about shoes, no, not at all, but about trophies, and big-game hunting, and a cockiness so twisted and disrespectful he knew he had to conquer his fear and bring Papa Smurf down. Detective Donaldson wasn’t doing it. The shoes swayed in the wind. Not stolen but gloated over. Linc glanced at Papa Smurf. Now that class was over, Papa Smurf strutted toward the door, proud, insolent, and defiant. Papa Smurf wasn’t afraid of Mr. Constanza, of Detective Donaldson, or of Linc.

But Linc would bring him down.

And Papa Smurf would burn.

After school, he went to the basketball court.

He didn’t see Papa Smurf, Dilbert, or Niveda, but that didn’t matter — other students watched, and they were like vidcams attached to Papa Smurf.

Linc took out his cell, thumbed Detective Donaldson’s number, and got Donaldson’s voice mail, “I’m away from my desk right now, please leave a message,” but Linc didn’t leave a message.

He put his cell away and looked around. Snow fell. Snowflakes had always fascinated Madmaxx. “How can every one be different, Linc? In the whole history of the world, in every snowfall, every flake was different, an endless variety of them going back millions of years. And if you look at grains of sand on a beach you see the same thing. Each one is different.”

Linc walked to the hoop and shimmied the pole.

A change came over the schoolyard, the same thing that happened to the hair on a cat’s back when a dog got too close. He knew he didn’t have much time if he wanted to take those shoes back to Madmaxx’s mother. Mrs. Sameer would want those shoes. He was good at shimmying poles and reached the top a few seconds later.

He inspected the shoes for blood because wouldn’t there have to be blood? But he saw no blood — the shoes were clean, too clean. Maytagged thoroughly. Their yellow fabric looked faded, the blue and red Fila logo blanched, and the laces white. Papa Smurf, thinking like a cop. Mr. Guthrie, taking science class one step further. X plus Y equals Z, but without proof, where did that leave him?

Didn’t matter.

The jackals spilled through the chain-link gate like Russian soldiers over German lines, yanked him from the hoop, and then it was, “Leave the shoes alone,” and a succession of kicks and punches that left him curled like the last of a species on the verge of extinction.

He lay there for a long time. He tasted blood. He looked at the shoes as they dangled in the wind. Maybe instead of Papa Smurf burning, he would be the one to burn. Another young black man, dead in the suburbs. But so much more — a young man who was going to be the next Hendrix, the next B. B. King, who understood the blues the way a physicist understood nature, not just another dead black man, but a whole universe of thought, feeling, and memory.

Like Madmaxx.

Now with his yellow Fila high-tops drooping from the rusted orange basketball hoop, obscene, a pair of lemony gonads, as good as parading Madmaxx’s head on a stake.

His ma asked him what happened, but he wouldn’t say.

His pa asked him what happened, but he wouldn’t say.

They left him to his fear.

He climbed the stairs to his room.

The walls slanted to a low ceiling. A poster of Hendrix hung next to the window.

He lifted his Stratocaster from its case — slaved away all last summer at Starbucks, slinging café lattes and overpriced carrot cake so he could own it. Now he had this wonderful Nina, going to take him on the voyage of the century. Only for the last two weeks, ever since Madmaxx got killed, his hands had been cramped and his ears sour. He tried again, plugging the instrument into his mini-amp, riffing on Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Little Wing, but the notes came out tinny and dead. Couldn’t stop thinking about the Fila running shoes hanging from the basketball hoop, and it was sucking the life out of his music.

Meat loaf for supper, and the ketchup stung his lips, but he ate it anyway. He was big, rangy, had to eat, even if he didn’t feel like it — his body was an eating machine.

As he ate, he brooded. He felt ashamed. He felt afraid. The jackals coming through the chain-link gate had been a warning. Tread not upon Papa Smurf’s trophy. Taking those shoes down to give to Mrs. Sameer — was it really going to bring Madmaxx back? Madmaxx was never coming back. No more thumb gymnastics with Madmaxx on the Xbox. No more sneak-ins at the Showcase Cinema. No more concerts at the Fox. He drank his chocolate milk in a daze. Madmaxx was gone, and Linc felt he should have done more — should have reached out and grabbed on, should have yanked Madmaxx away from the puma woman before it had been too late, before Niveda had infected the whole thing with her voodoo. About a woman, not about shoes.

He tried a few more phrases of Little Wing after supper, but his hands wouldn’t uncramp, and his ears were as deaf as Beethoven’s, so he put his guitar away.

He sat on his bed, his mind going over the same thing again and again. Should have warned Madmaxx that his voice got too loud around Niveda, he talked too smart, and the shift of gravity from Papa Smurf to Madmaxx had been too strong for the puma woman to resist. Papa Smurf, jealous, had finally been forced to use, as he liked to say, his sacred relic, holding it in his palms like an offering. “Look at this, this be my gun, this be my ticket to power, you may look, but you may not touch,” Papa Smurf always showing off his 9mm glory.

Tears burned. Always these tears at this time of night. His anger flared. Madmaxx, his main man. He had to do something about it. He took out his cell and thumbed the digits of Detective Donaldson’s number. This time he got through. “Detective Donaldson, Homicide,” a white man’s voice, flat, unmelodic, with none of the sing-song of the ’hood in it.

“Is Lincoln Arnold,” he said. “’Member you talk to me about Ahmed Sameer? You axe me questions about ’im?”

Long pause at the other end of the line, and Linc pictured cops scurrying all over the squad room, like he was a kidnapper calling with a ransom demand, and the call had to be traced, Donaldson pointing here, pointing there, a half-finished Big Mac at his elbow, a Coke with too much ice by the phone, other cops clicking away at computers, satellite maps coming to their screens, geocentric orbits changing, all the things Madmaxx said cops did when they were breaking a big case.

“Go ahead, Lincoln.”

“You ain’t recordin’ me?”

“The line is clean. It’s just you and me.” Then a clumsy attempt at ghettoese. “What’s up?”

The tears burned again and his hand shook, but he took a deep breath and got it under control. “His shoes show up on the basketball hoop at school. It ain’t about no shoes. Take another look. Stolen shoes was just to throw you off, make you think it was robbery, close the case early.”

“Lincoln, why don’t you come forward? I’ll guarantee complete anonymity.”

“Don’t want my blood freezin’ in no back alley. And I ain’t got proof. I wasn’t there. But it ain’t about no Fila pair o’ shoes. Them shoes is hanging on the basketball hoop at school. See for yourself.”

He thumbed Detective Donaldson into oblivion.

Make Detective Donaldson get the shoes so he might find something, use some special technique to get beyond the Maytagging, see what he could see, maybe see Madmaxx’s ghost hanging around those shoes, telling Detective Donaldson who pulled the trigger.

His mother came upstairs. He wiped his tears away.

She came in and it was as if, through all his grief, he saw her for the first time: saw that she now had gray hair, and that there were chronic pouches of tiredness under her eyes, and that the buttons pulled too tightly on her Rent-A-Car work blazer, and that she wasn’t the young mother who had once taken him to the playground, but a woman whose years were slipping away one by one.

Her face was creased with worry. “You want to tell me what happened?” she said, pointing to his fat lip and black eye.

“Can’t talk about it, Mama.”

Couldn’t talk about it because he was scared. This wasn’t the playground anymore. It wasn’t some little kid pushing you, and you go crying to your mama about it. She looked powerless, with those tears in her eyes, like she was aching to help but couldn’t. He refused to talk because Papa Smurf didn’t fool around. Papa Smurf would make him pay. Would make his family pay. Stayed quiet because it was the right thing to do.

She finally padded downstairs, and he was left to his science homework, grade eleven chemistry, the molecular structure of ammonia, what happened when you added another oxygen; and he got caught up in the problem, even felt some of the old joy. Mr. Constanza said he was a bright kid, always told him if you were smart you could do anything.

He raised his eyebrows. He looked out the window.

If you were smart you could do anything.

Could he be smart about Madmaxx?

Could he solve the problem of Madmaxx like he was solving this one about ammonia?

And could he do it without winding up dead in a back alley somewhere?

Got to school the next day, Mr. Constanza’s class, first period, looked out the window and saw that the shoes were gone. Yellow police tape threaded the fence.

Dilbert came in, and Linc could see it in Dilbert’s eyes, the stare that told him he was next, that he had gone too far calling Detective Donaldson about the shoes. Who else could it be?

When Niveda got there, she observed him with new interest, the same way she had with Madmaxx, before Papa Smurf had felt compelled to use his sacred relic.

Linc was so scared he could hardly breathe.

Mr. Constanza was next. The teacher gave him a forsaken glance, one that told Linc that as much as he wanted to help, it was now beyond his control.

Yellow police tape. How could Detective Donaldson do this to him after his guarantee of anonymity?

He looked at the windowsill, his blood from the day before, and saw, tracked into the red, a pigeon’s footprint, three front toes, a long back one, the bird landing just as the blood had been freezing. It made him feel sick.

He went back to his science bench. If you were smart you could do anything. Madmaxx always parroted those words. Mr. Constanza was Madmaxx’s favorite teacher. But Linc didn’t feel smart. He felt stupid. He felt like he was already dead. All because of Detective Donaldson’s yellow tape.

Mr. Constanza told them to turn to page 183, they were going to look at sugars today.

Turned to page 183, but all he saw were Madmaxx’s shoes dangling from the basketball hoop, then saw his own hanging there as well, another trophy for Papa Smurf, big game hunter.

Class started, and fifteen minutes later Papa Smurf strutted in, a mean look in his eyes as he swiveled on Linc.

Linc was sick of it.

He sat up straight, didn’t look away, stared at Papa Smurf the same way Papa Smurf stared at him, mean and insolent. He wasn’t going to take it anymore. Madmaxx deserved more than a gutless wonder for a friend.

They cornered him in the cafeteria at lunchtime, all three of them, and he knew that under their gangsta cockiness they were scared.

“We ain’t good no more, Linc,” Papa Smurf said.

Papa Smurf shook a can of grape pop and opened it in his face. Dilbert glanced around as if he were being hunted. Niveda’s eyes narrowed and she looked confused, as if she had woken up in a strange bed after drinking too much the night before. The grape pop sprayed all over Linc’s face, dripped down his chin, and onto his Oakland Raiders jersey. Papa Smurf gave him a shove. For some reason, Linc didn’t feel scared anymore. He didn’t care if he died. Now that he knew he was going to die, he felt free, and as if he could fight back.

“You gonna burn,” he told Papa Smurf.

Papa Smurf poked him with a hard index finger. “And you gonna die.”

The three moved off. Niveda gave Linc a backward glance. He could tell she wanted to stay, but he prayed she wouldn’t, not when she was the reason Madmaxx was dead in the first place. All a big case of jealousy, not about shoes, no sir, not about shoes at all.

Jackals at a nearby table stared at Papa Smurf, then at Linc, and they had the dumb look of scavengers waiting for the next piece of carrion.

Detective Donaldson had to — absolutely had to — find something on Madmaxx’s shoes. A fingerprint, a bloodstain, a hair, a fiber. If he didn’t, Linc was a dead man.

Linc walked to the cafeteria napkin dispenser, got some napkins, and wiped the grape pop away.

Maybe the men from the thin blue line would be here this afternoon, after Detective Donaldson had had a chance to look at the shoes for evidence. Maybe they would arrest Papa Smurf, and even Dilbert and Niveda. Because which was worse, doing it, or standing by and watching it?

He went to the parking lot, opened his cell, scrolled to Detective Donaldson’s number, and thumbed the automatic dial.

Waited a long time, listened to it ring eight times, smelled the grape pop on his jersey, watched pigeons walk around in the snow, pecking at a Wendy’s Spicy Chicken, birds eating birds, leaving footprints everywhere. Rang and rang, but he finally got through, and asked Detective Donaldson about the shoes. Detective Donaldson said that the men from the thin blue line had come to get them last night, and that the technicians had studied them all morning.

“But they’re clean, Linc. Strong detergent residue and some trace blood, Ahmed’s blood, but nothing else.”

Linc’s fear foamed like liquid nitrogen, spreading through his body in a cold and numbing cloud. He would be dead by sunset. His ma would be another Mrs. Sameer, sad, lonely, and missing her only child.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure, son.”

Not good enough. There had to be something he could do before his blood wound up freezing in a back alley.

In gym class, the first thing Papa Smurf did was grab him by the back of the neck and smash his head into the locker room wall.

Neon dots jumped to his eyes, like fairies of pain summoned by the Smurfmaster. Linc’s legs grew wobbly, and he slumped to the floor. He nearly lost contact, but pulled himself out of it just in time to hear Papa Smurf say, “You a dead man, Linc.”

He sat on the floor in his gym shorts, feeling sick to his stomach because the pain was so bad, smelling the stink of his own fear through the Mountain Air scent of his sports deodorant, all the jackals walking out to the gym, ignoring him, no one helping him.

He heard the whistle blow in the gym. Mr. Quantz barked, and the boys played basketball, the ball dribbling with painful whacks up and down the hardwood floor.

He pushed himself up. The bile rose in his throat, but he choked it down. He touched his forehead, felt a warm wet bump forming, pulled his fingers away, and saw blood, not much, but enough to make him think of blood the way Madmaxx might. Could blood freeze? He thought of his own blood on the windowsill. He thought of the pigeon print in the blood. And it was then that the heavens opened, and sunlight flooded through, and he realized that the whole thing was about shoes after all, only not about Madmaxx’s shoes, but about a different pair, Papa Smurf’s size 14 Nikes, the Smurfmaster’s bright red Shox Ride 2s, worn day in and day out, picking up scratches and nicks, thousands of identifying characteristics, so they at last had their own pattern, as individual as a snowflake, and as unique as the grains of sand on a beach.

He got out of his gym uniform and put on his street clothes. He checked his wallet, had seventeen dollars, enough to get him downtown. He walked to the garbage can, lifted the bag out, and found extra ones beneath, ready for the janitor. He took out a spare bag and stuffed the regular one back in.

He walked to Papa Smurf’s cubbyhole, retrieved the Shox Ride 2s, turned them over, and inspected the soles the way a palm reader might look at lifelines. Nicks and dents, even a chunk missing from the left one — a pair of shoes like no other, a snowflake, a grain of sand, uniquely identified, perfectly designed to leave an impression in half-frozen blood, like that pigeon print on the windowsill.

Papa Smurf had written his name on the inside, “Alexander Guthrie,” as well as his telephone number. Case closed.

Linc slid the shoes into the bag, left the locker room, exited the school by the back, and took the bus downtown.

Got to the police station and went inside. Cops all around, but they hardly gave him a look. He approached the duty desk, said to the desk sergeant that he was Detective Donaldson’s friend, they played hoops together. Detective Donaldson had forgotten his shoes, and here they were, in this garbage bag, could you make sure he got them?

The desk sergeant opened the bag, looked inside, and backed away. “They stink.”

“They stink all right.” And Linc wondered if all killers had the same stink. “But they be special. Tell him that. They be one of a kind.”

The desk sergeant’s eyes narrowed.

Before the desk sergeant could put it together, Linc moved off.

He didn’t go home, couldn’t go home, went to the library instead.

He called and left a message for his ma and pa. “Don’t worry about me, I be fine. I ain’t comin’ home tonight, but I be fine.”

He sat in the DPl’s Main Library on Woodward Avenue, a Wednesday night so it was open till eight, and read Guitar World, interviews with newer guitarists — Warren Haynes, David Chastain, and Derek Trucks. Chilled there until they finally kicked him out, but still didn’t go home, stayed away from home, protecting his ma and pa.

He left the library and wandered Detroit’s cold streets. The snow had been packed by people walking on it, and was as dirty as a doormat.

He walked to keep warm. He rubbed his hands repeatedly. The cold wind blew from Canada and he knew that he should have worn gloves, that he had to learn how to keep better care of his hands if he was going to be the next Hendrix. He tried to form, midair, a flat-nine chord, but his hands were so stiff, his fingers wouldn’t cooperate, and he finally gave up.

Went to a jazz club, but they kicked him out because he was underage. Not good enough. Madmaxx always telling him that. Always getting him to strive for better.

So he went to another, and the doorman let him stay because he was a musician and wanted to learn. As he sat there, he felt some of the old thrill coming back, especially when the guitarist played a blues lick. He was reminded of all the hours he and Madmaxx had sat in his room listening to music, and how Madmaxx, just by his presence, had made the music mean something. For the first time since the murder, his hands loosened. He touched his finger calluses over and over again, remembering how Madmaxx had once called them miracles of determination.

He wanted to stay all night, but the club closed and he had to go, so he wandered around some more, walking, walking, trying to keep his blood moving. Blood froze. Sometimes, after a concert at the Fox, he and Madmaxx would walk around. Sometimes they would go to the library together. He was going to miss Madmaxx. Madmaxx was his friend. His main man. And he would never have a main man like Madmaxx again

The sun rose over the Detroit River, and by that time the soles of his shoes had picked up a few more identifying nicks and dents of their own.

He phoned Detective Donaldson, but all he got was voice mail.

He went to school because they wanded for weapons at school, and at least he would be safe there for a while.

He called his ma and pa and said he was okay, and his ma asked, “Where are you?”

“At school, ma. Same as always. Papa Smurf show up?”

“No, son, he didn’t.”

That made him feel good.

He went inside, the security guard wanded him, and once he got past the checkpoint, he knew he could rest easy.

He went to his homeroom, Mr. Constanza’s class, was the first one there as usual, but after a while the jackals drifted in, and they all stared at him as if they couldn’t understand why he wasn’t a piece of carrion freezing in a back alley yet.

Dilbert came in, and Dilbert kept glancing at the ceiling like he thought it was going to cave in. Niveda arrived and she looked bewildered, as if she had studied for a science exam all night only to discover it was an English exam. Mr. Constanza came in and gave Linc a quick glance, a grin on his face, the kind of grin you saw on dogs when they were having their bellies scratched.

Linc waited for Papa Smurf, but the Smurfmaster didn’t show up.

Instead, two officers from the thin blue line arrived, and Mr. Constanza went out to talk to them.

A minute later he came back, and it was, “Niveda, Dilbert, could you please come out to the hall?”

Niveda and Dilbert went out to the hall. Some of the jackals looked at Linc, as if they couldn’t figure out how someone so low on the food chain could still be alive, but Linc kept his eyes down. Mr. Constanza came in, and Linc heard footsteps fading down the hall, the door to the stairwell opening, then closing, then silence, Dilbert and Niveda being led away by the men of the thin blue line.

Mr. Constanza stood at the front as if in a trance. He gave Linc another glance, the same glance he sometimes gave Madmaxx when Madmaxx had A-plussed a test, then told the class to turn to page 187, they were going to look at alkalies today. Madmaxx, his main man, always at the top of the class, and now hovering with remarkable clarity above page 187.

After a minute, Linc couldn’t concentrate on page 187. He stared out the window at the parking lot. The two men from the thin blue line led Niveda and Dilbert to a police car. And Linc thought, X plus Y equaled Z after all, because which was worse, pulling the trigger, or watching someone else pull it?

On his cell to Detective Donaldson later, he learned that the equation was a little more complicated than X plus Y equals Z, that it had the complexity of adding an oxygen atom to an ammonia molecule.

“We picked Alexander up late last night. Alexander says Dilbert did it, and Dilbert swears Alexander did it, and Niveda’s waiting to see what she can get out of the deal before she decides which way she’ll go. It doesn’t matter. They’re all going down.”

“So you got the shoes?”

“They were one of a kind, Lincoln, just like you said.”

Linc asked if he could have Madmaxx’s shoes back. “Got to give ’em to Mrs. Sameer.”

Linc got them back after one week.

He walked down the long, bungalow-lined street to Mrs. Sameer’s house. Linc wondered what Mrs. Sameer thought of all this, her life in America, coming from Qatar twelve years ago, a widow, wanting a fresh start for Ahmed, only to have Ahmed’s blood freezing in a back alley, life’s long road leading her to a place she never wanted to go.

He knocked on the door and she answered. She looked shrunken, worn by grief, her brown face as wrinkled as the shell of a walnut, her gold earrings hanging like desert flowers on her sagging lobes.

“Thank you,” she said, her English sounding strange. “Thank you.”

That’s all she said because Mrs. Sameer had never mastered English.

Had gotten Madmaxx to translate everything for her.

Now she would have to learn.

Linc walked away, wondering if doing the right thing had made a difference. He didn’t feel good, the way he thought he would.

He just felt it was over.

And was that good enough?

The wind picked up and blew snow against his legs.

Maybe that’s all he could hope for. It wasn’t the same as having Ahmed walk through the classroom door every morning, but at least he now felt the music coming back. He lifted his collar around his neck to protect it from the cold. The crampiness was leaving his hands, and the sweetness was coming back to his ears. And because of that, he knew the riffs would come easily tonight.

He would play for Ahmed when he got home.

And Ahmed would be there, in the music.

A part of the beat.

Elevating the blues. Becoming the blues.

His main man, once again.