Read Online Problems with People by David Guterson - Free Book Online Page A

strike. The teachers were either supporters or intimidated. This morning they were either thwarting students who tried to attend or letting them in furtively. A teacher had let the shoe boy through the door, so that he might make solitary use of a computer. But then the teacher had gotten nervous and kicked him out.
    “Okay,” he said. “So now what?”
    “Now,” said the boy, “I help you walk.”
    “What?”
    “We go,” said the boy. “This way.”
    They used alleys that weren’t shown on his map and, around two bends, crossed the “river” on a footbridge of well-traveled pallets planted in a wallow. Then, having detoured, theyreturned to the main road, well out of sight of the Maoist blockade. “Good one,” he told the boy. “Great.”
    He thought about doling out another hundred rupees. Two hundred rupees? He was in the midst of such deliberations when the boy touched his arm and called his attention to a man with a rag around his head. “Shoe man,” the boy said. “He have? He have the shoe box.”
    “Shoe box?”
    “Everything shoe box.”
    He looked. The man with the rag around his head had in front of him a rather elaborate-looking shoe-cleaning kit full of brushes, sticks, wires, polishes, rubs, rags, waxes, and oils. It was built like a large suitcase, foldable, with a strap. A clever contraption that made his business portable. He could easily purvey services and take it home with him each night.
    “Looks convenient,” he said to the boy. “But you’re better than he is without any ‘shoe box.’ You’re a shoe-shining fool, man, when it comes right down to it.” This seemed the right time to reach for his wallet, and as he did so he added, feeling a little jaunty, “It’s early and you don’t have school today. What will you do with your temporary freedom? Shine shoes? Homework? What’s up?”
    The boy replied that he was going home to his mother, two sisters, and two younger brothers, but not to his father, because his father was in their village in India while the boy and his mother and siblings were in Kathmandu. His father, he explained, couldn’t come with them, because he had a job making bricks in Bihar. Then the boy pointed down a hill to their left. In a field of rubble and garbage, beyond which stoodbuildings that looked bombed out, was a camp where people lived under tarps, plastic, and cardboard. “I am there,” he said. “My family.”
    So this was the boy’s turnoff. That’s what he was saying. He was saying that it was time for them to part. And this was fine, since, in his opinion, now was the time to do so. “Goodbye,” he said, but the boy replied, “You are meet my family, please. Sit down, drink a tea. Please, you come.”
    “No.”
    “Tea,” said the boy.
    “I don’t want tea.”
    “Please,” said the boy. “You greet my mother.”
    “Sorry. No.”
    “Please,” said the boy. “You buy me the shoe box.”
    “How much is a shoe box?”
    “Please, you have give me seven thousand rupee. For—”
    “Jesus,” he said, because, in the end, this was about something like eighty-five dollars and not about anything else. Which was too bad, because, until now, the episode had been affecting. He’d even imagined, in its midst, how he might speak of it in glowing terms when he returned home, how he would describe it as a positive experience to his kids and associates, how he would refer to it with his nurse and receptionist. But not now, because what had seemed so positive had swiftly collapsed. It had gotten entangling, irritating, difficult. “Look,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed our meeting. You did a great job with the shoes and the route finding. But, sorry, I have to move on now. So okay. So long. Thanks.”
    Yet the boy stayed at his side as he walked—at a faster, all-business,I’m-done-with-you pace—saying, repeatedly, “You buy me shoe box.”
    “Go home,” he shouted finally. “I mean it, now. Shoo!” He waved a hand menacingly.