“You want me to go and see the googir?”
She nodded.
“My dog needs to rest. She’s not in great shape.”
Dora pointed at Radar, made the sleeping gesture.
I thought to ask how far I was supposed to walk, but I doubted if she could answer that kind of question. This would have to be a yes-or-no-type operation.
“Is it far?”
Head-shake.
“The googir can talk?”
That seemed to amuse her, but she nodded.
“Googir? Does that mean good girl?”
The crescent smile. A shrug. A nod followed by a shake of the head.
“I’m kind of lost here. Will I be back before it gets dark?”
Strong nodding.
“And you’ll keep Radar?”
“Yezz.”
I thought about it and decided to give it a try. If the googir could talk, I could get some answers. About Dora, and about the city. Googir might even know about the sundial that was supposed to make Radar young again. I decided I’d walk for an hour or so, and if I didn’t find the googir’s house, I’d turn around and come back.
I started to open the door （instead of a knob there was an old-fashioned iron latch）。 She held me by the elbow and raised a finger: wait one. She hurried back to Shoe Repair Central, pulled out a drawer in the workbench, got something, and hurried back to me. She had three small pieces of leather, less than palm-sized. They looked like shoe soles dyed green. She gestured for me to put them in my pocket.
“What are these for?”
She frowned, then smiled and turned her hands palms-up. Apparently that was too complicated. She touched the straps of my pack and gave me a questioning look. I decided what the hell and slipped it off. I put it beside the door, squatted, opened it, and jammed my wallet into my back pocket—like someone was going to ask me for ID, which was absurd. I looked at Radar as I did it, wondering how she’d take me leaving her with Dora. She raised her head when I stood up and opened the door, then laid it down again, perfectly content to stay where she was and snooze. Why not? Her belly was full of hot food and she was with a friend.
There was a walk leading to the wide dirt road—the thoroughfare—lined with poppies. There were other flowers as well, but they were either dying or dead. I turned for a look back. Over the door was a large wooden shoe, bright red, like the ones Dora wore. I thought it just about had to be a signboard. She was standing below it, smiling and pointing to the right, in case I’d forgotten which way to go in the last minute or so. It was such a mom thing to do that I had to grin.
“My name’s Charlie Reade, ma’am. And if I didn’t say so, thank you for feeding us. It’s a pleasure to know you.”
She nodded, pointed at me, then patted above her heart. No translation needed for that.
“Can I ask one more thing?”
She nodded.
“Am I speaking your language? I am, aren’t I?”
She laughed and shrugged—either she didn’t understand or didn’t know or felt it didn’t matter.
“Okay. I guess.”
“O’ay.” She went in and shut the door.
There was a signboard at the head of the path, like the kind of menu board some restaurants put out on the sidewalk. The side on the right, in the direction I was supposed to go, was blank. A four-line verse was painted on the side facing left, in perfectly understandable English:
Give to me your broken shoes
For down the road you’ll find ones new.
If you place your trust in me,
Lucky will your journey be.
I stood looking at this for much longer than it took to read it. It gave me an idea of where the shoes she was rehabbing came from, but that wasn’t why. I knew that printing. I had seen it on shopping lists and on many envelopes I’d put in the mailbox at 1 Sycamore Street. Mr. Bowditch had made that sign, God knew how many years ago.
5
Walking was easy without the pack, which was good. Looking around for Radar and not seeing her wasn’t good, but I was sure she was safe with Dora. I couldn’t keep track of the time very well with my phone out of commission, and with the constant overcast I couldn’t even take a rough measure by the sun. It was up there, but only as a dull blob behind the clouds. I decided I’d use the old pioneer way of marking time and distance: I’d go three or four “looks,” and if I still saw no sign of the googir, I’d turn around and go back.
As I walked, I thought about the signboard with the verse on it. A restaurant menu board would have stuff written on both sides, so people could see it both coming and going. This one only had the verse on one side, which suggested to me that traffic on the thoroughfare only went one way: toward the house I was supposed to find. I couldn’t understand why that would be, but maybe the googir could tell me. If such a creature actually existed.