Soles

As running shoes, we stay grounded. We do not have lofty ideals to be a hat or a pair of glasses. The top of Derek’s head is too high a pedestal for our personalities. During our evening runs in the park, we notice the figures of people placed on elevated stands for all observers to admire. But few do. Most people walk by them without a glance.

We don’t even want to be put in that position. Too much responsibility for a “thing” to have. We are not too big for the feet that fill us. We’re content with being shoes. We are not consumed with defining Derek’s identity, like a shirt or a scarf. As shoes, our purpose in found in function. We’ve heard Derek say that some people “wear their hearts on the sleeves.” We wear our trauma in our tread.

I’m the left running shoe. My sole mate is the right running shoe. We go everywhere together. We’re a pair, and have been since the moment of our birth in an Indonesia factory two years ago.

But being a twin, it is difficult to maintain my own identity. Only when I can’t be found am I seen as an individual. “Babe, have you seen my other shoe?” Derek will call to the other human in the house. The one with long dark hair and petite toes. “No, I haven’t,” is the reply. Derek is always losing me. Not my twin brother. Not the “right” one. The wrong one. The left one. Only in this context am I a singular entity. But when we are together, we are known merely as “the shoes.”

“Thank you for my shoes, Babe. I love them!” Derek said, after that first inaugural run after Christmas. That day he beat us against the pavement for what felt like an eternity. The human with the small toes and long hair smiled. “I am so glad! You needed new shoes. You ran holes into your old ones!” My brother and I shivered a bit at this. Derek, our owner, was a runner. And not the kind that goes for a jog one Saturday and declares himself an athlete. He was an every day runner. That’s how everyone knew he was missing. He stopped running.

As Derek’s shoes, I know that we should be more concerned for his welfare. But I am tired. And I don’t know where Right is.

Do you know what it’s like to be the intermediary between the unmovable ground and an unstoppable force? We tried to broker peace between the asphalt and Derek’s joints. Our own bodies were crushed and mangled trying to protect Derek from the repercussions of his daily war with the earth. Like a donkey who kicks against the goad, so Derek would kick against the ground that would never give. Yet, he would count the miles he moved forward as some sort of moral victory.

“I did ten miles today!” Derek would excitedly tell the other human with flowing hair and stubby toes. “I was feeling really good.”

But all that kicking up of dust didn’t move the earth one iota. Its orbit was not disrupted. It’s place in the solar system remain undisturbed. The planet did not even register the force of one tiny speck continually striking the top soil for ninety minutes. Yet, the resistance of the mighty earth was felt in Derek’s feet (they told us so) and in his legs (we heard them complain) and in the screaming muscles (we didn’t hear them. This is pure conjecture on our part). Every part of Derek's body continually railed against the insanity of wrestling with the ancient earth every day.

For us, the daily friction wore us down. And then there was everything Derek put us through. Poop of various animals. Strange liquids pooling in gutters. Still soft gum that would always stick with us. Derek placed us right in the middle of the most disgusting substances man has ever created or secreted. Derek put us through hell and back.

If it was really bad, Derek would turn the hose on us. Freezing jets of icy water would hit our bottoms with such force that our tongues would shrivel. I would look over at Right, and mouth “Don’t give up.” My brother would look back at me with sad eyelets, dog excrement flying off in chunks. Looking at him, I knew he was close to throwing in the towel. We had heard from the other shoes in the closet how it would end when it did.

The house slippers told us that eventually our seams would split.

The leather loafers explained that after our seams splitting our soles would detach from our bodies.

The ostrich boots (that Derek never wore so they would last forever) laughed loudly and said “Yeah! And when they happens . . . goodnight! You aren’t a shoe anymore. Just a worthless husk of string and cloth.”

“Couldn’t they put our soles back on our bodies?” asked my brother, fear making his voice tremble.

“Well,” said the rain galoshes, “there used to be a human who would fix shoes.” The galoshes were old and wise. They knew of times far behind and moments that stretched out in front. “They would call this human ‘cobbler’ and humans would take broken shoes to him. This ‘cobbler’ would take a tiny hammer and drive nails into your sole. It hurt. God, how it hurt. But in the end, you would be whole again.”

“What happened to the ‘cobbler’?”

The galoshes sighed. “He went away. No one knows ‘cobbler’ anymore. He became a myth. A story that big humans tell small humans at nighttime. Whether ‘cobbler’ died or disappeared, no one knows. All we can say is that ‘cobbler’ is no longer here. Now, humans throw broken shoes in the garbage. If your sole leaves, you are truly unfixable.”

I snuggled up to Right, and tried to hold him in my laces. I knew that this news would be hard to hear. Already we could feel our soles loosen. The constant running left us weakened and ready to come undone. The glue that held us together would eventually give out, and we’d fall apart.

Humans have a story about an egg-man who climbed up on a wall. Like a statue on a pedestal, the height was too much for the egg-man. He teetered and eventually fell. The impact of the fall splintered him into thousands of pieces. And no one could put him back together.

If we kept running, we’d fall apart as well. But there was no ‘cobbler’ to patch us up and make us whole. No longer with a function, we would cease to be. The pieces we would leave behind would not be “us”. The broken bits of shoelace, rubber, and foam thrown into the trash would only be the offal of being. “Us” would have run off long before our mangled bodies would be tossed aside.

Where do shoes go when they die? Would the beings of “Left” and “Right” remained paired, or would we be split up in the Great Hereafter? If we came back, would we return as shoes? Could we come back as socks? The pant-legs of a stylish pair of chinos? Or would it be outside the scope of imagination to think that perhaps we could return as the feathery wings of a cinder-black crow?

Who truly knows.

In the claustrophobic dark of the bedroom closet, I spoke these questions to Right. But he offered no opinion. In fact, he made no reply at all. “Right? Can you hear me?” I would ask. Silence.

“Are you asleep?”

Steady, heavy breathing was all I heard.

I would ramble on. I spoke of philosophy and religion. Semiotics and semi-tones. Race and racing. In that darkness, I let my voice run wild with commentary about serial killers and killer cereals. Who shot Kennedy and why the winter coats were moody. When summer solstice began and who invented black licorice. Words flowed out almost non-stop towards the end. Anything to get Right’s mind off the holes growing in our future.

It was only after Derek disappeared that I finally realized that as I blabbed on and on each and every night, Right wasn’t sleeping. He was thinking. But he wasn’t thinking my thoughts after me. In his mind were ideas of escape. Freedom. A life lived as beautiful apparel and not beaten tools.

When Derek failed to return home one night, my first thought was where is Right?

I was lost. Again. I had been mistakenly shoved underneath the couch, where I spent the entire day learning the atrocities of seasonal allergies for affected dust bunnies. When the shadows of the furniture lengthened into onyx obelisks and Derek did not come in through the front door, I knew something was wrong. Terribly wrong. My mind flew back to those nights in the closet, running my mouth, and Right staying silent.

Forgive me, but I could not help thinking did Right do something to Derek? A cyclone of crazy scenarios played out in my mind. Each one was more ludicrous than the last. Scenes of Right tripping Derek and him landing in a pit full of spikes. Right holding down the gas pedal, driving the car and crew into an icy pond. I even imagined Right using a stiletto to stab Derek in his strong runner’s heart. They were crazy thoughts, I know. Logically, Derek was merely running late. He had to stay at the office for a last-minute project. Maybe he stopped to get food for himself and the long-haired human with minute toes.

The shadows in the living room filled every corner until the entire room was in darkness. And still Derek did not walk through the door.

The sun has risen and set many, many times by now, and still Derek remains missing. Since everyone is looking for him, no one is looking for me. I stay crammed underneath the couch. No longer part of a pair. My identity reduced to memory. What I once was and now no more.

But unlike Right, I still have my sole.