“We mean you no harm,” I said.
The men were skinny and tired-looking. The woman looked flat-out exhausted.
“Hold on a minute,” I said. In case they didn’t understand me, I held up my hand in a policeman’s stop gesture. “Please.”
They stopped. It was a mighty sad-looking trio. Up close I could see that the men’s mouths were beginning to turn up. Soon they would be crescents that hardly moved, like Dora’s. They huddled next to the woman when I reached into my pocket and she pulled her bundle to her breasts. I got one of the little leather shoes and held it out to her.
“Take it. Please.”
She reached out hesitantly, then snatched it from my hand, as if she expected me to grab her. When she did, the blanket fell away from her bundle and I saw a dead baby, maybe a year or a year and a half old. It was as gray as the lid of my mother’s coffin. Soon this poor woman would have another to replace it, and probably that one would die, too. If the woman didn’t die first, that was, or during her labor.
“Do you understand me?”
“We understand,” said the man in the boots. His voice was grating but otherwise normal enough. “What would you have with us, stranger, if not our lives? For we have nothing else.”
No, of course they didn’t. If a person had done this—or caused it to be done—that person belonged in hell. The deepest pit thereof.
“I can’t give you my cart or my food, for I have far to go and my dog is old. But if you walk another three…” I tried to say miles, but the word wouldn’t come. I started again. “If you walk until maybe midday, you’ll see the sign of the red shoe. The lady who lives in that place will let you rest, and may give you food and drink.”
That wasn’t exactly a promise （my dad was fond of pointing out what he called “weasel words” in TV commercials for wonder drugs） and I knew Dora couldn’t feed and water every group of refugees that passed her cottage. But I thought when she saw the state of the woman, and the horrific bundle she carried, that she would be moved to help these three. Meanwhile, the man in the sandals was examining the little leather shoe. He asked what it was for.
“Further on, past the woman I told you about, is a store where you can give that token for a pair of shoes.”
“Is there buryin’？” This was the man in boots. “For my son needs a buryin’。”
“I don’t know. I’m a stranger here. Ask at the sign of the red shoe, or at the farm of the goose girl farther on. Madam, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“He was a good boy,” she said, looking down at her dead child. “My Tam was a good boy. He was fine when he was born, rosy as the dawn, but then the gray fell on him. Walk your way, sir, and we’ll walk ours.”
“Wait a minute. Please.” I opened my pack, rummaged, and found two cans of King Oscar sardines. I held them out. They shied away from them. “No, it’s all right. It’s food. Sardines. Little fish. You pull the ring in the top to get them, see?” I tapped it.
The two men looked at each other, then shook their heads. They wanted nothing to do with pull-top cans, it seemed, and the woman seemed to have disconnected from the conversation entirely.
“We need to get on,” said the one in the sandals. “As for you, young man, you are going the wrong way.”
“It’s the way I have to go,” I said.
He looked me straight in the eye and said, “That way is death.”
They went on, trudging up dust from the City Road, the woman carrying her awful burden. Why did one of the men not take it from her? I was just a kid, but I thought I knew the answer to that. He was hers, her Tam, and his body was hers to carry for as long as she could carry it.
3
I felt stupid about not offering them the rest of the cookies, and selfish about keeping the cart. Until Radar fell behind, that was.
I was too deep in my own thoughts to notice when that happened, and you may be surprised （or not） to learn those thoughts had little to do with Sandal Man’s doomish parting words. The idea that I could get killed going in the direction of the city came as no great surprise to me; Mr. Bowditch, Dora, and Leah had all made that clear in their various ways. But when you’re a kid it’s easy to believe that you will be the exception, the one who wins through and gets the laurels. After all, who had scored the winning touchdown in the Turkey Bowl? Who had disarmed Christopher Polley? I was at an age when it’s possible to believe that fast reflexes and reasonable care can surmount most obstacles.