“In 1954, the same year as Brown vs. Board of Education came out, Jack Finney wrote The Body Snatchers. The following passage has stuck with me for years:”
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This is very hard to explain, but — when I was in college, a middle-aged Negro had a shoeshine stand, on the sidewalk before one of the older hotels, and he was a town character. Everyone patronized Billy, because he was everyone’s notion of what a “character†should be. He had a title for each regular customer. “Mornin’, Professor,†he’d say soberly to a thin glasses-wearing businessman who sat down for a shoeshine each day. “A greetin’ to you, Captain,†he’d say to someone else. “Howdydo, Colonel,†“Nice evenin’, Doctor,†“General, I’m pleased to see you.†The flattery was obvious, and people always smiled to show they weren’t taken in by it; but they liked it just the same.
Billy professed a genuine love for shoes. He’d nod with approving criticalness when you showed up with a new pair. “Good leather,†he’d murmur, nodding with a considered conviction, “pleasure to work on shoes like these,†and you’d feel a glow of foolish pride in your own good taste. If your shoes were old, he might hold one cupped in his hand when he’d finished with it, twisting it a little from side to side to catch the light. “Nothin’ takes a shine like good aged leather, Lieutenant, nothin’.†And if you ever showed up with a cheap pair of shoes, his silence gave conviction to his compliments of the past. With Billy, the shoe-shine man, you had the feeling of being with that rarest of persons, a happy man. He obviously took contentment in one of the simpler occupations of the world, and the money involved seemed actually unimportant. When you put them into his hands, he didn’t even look at the coins you had given him; his acceptance was absent-minded, his attention devoted to your shoes, and to you, and you walked away feeling a little glow, as though you’d just done a good deed.
One night I was up till dawn, in a student escapade of no importance now, and, alone in my old car, I found myself in the run-down section of town, a good two miles from the campus. I was suddenly aching for sleep, too tired to drive on home. I pulled to the curb and, with the sun just beginning to show, I curled up in the back seat under the old blanket I kept there. Maybe half a minute later, nearly asleep, I was pulled awake again by steps on the sidewalk beside me, and a man’s voice said quietly, “Morning, Bill.â€
My head below the level of the car window, I couldn’t see who was talking, but I heard another voice, tired and irritable, reply, “Hi, Charley,†and the second voice was familiar, though I couldn’t quite place it. Then it continued, in a suddenly strange and altered tone. “Mornin’, Professor,†it said with a queer, twisted heartiness. “Mornin’!†it repeated. “Man, just look at those shoes! You had them shoes — lemme see, now! — fifty-six years come Tuesday, and they still takes a lovely shine!†The voice was Billy’s, the words and tone those the town knew with affection, but — parodied, and a shade off key. “Take it easy, Bill,†the first voice murmured uneasily, but Billy ignored it. “I just loves those shoes, Colonel,†he continued in a suddenly vicious, jeering imitation of his familiar patter. “That’s all I want, Colonel, just to handle people’s shoes. Le’me kiss ‘em! Please le’me kiss your feet!†The pent-up bitterness of years tainted every word and syllable he spoke. And then, for a full minute perhaps, standing there on a sidewalk of the slum he lived in, Billy went on with this quietly hysterical parody of himself, his friend occasionally murmuring, “Relax, Bill. Come on, now; take it easy.†But Billy continued, and never before in my life had I heard such ugly, bitter, and vicious contempt in a voice, contempt for the people taken in by his daily antics, but even more for himself, the man who supplied the servility they bought from him.
Then abruptly he stopped, laughed once, harshly, and said, “See you, Charley,†and his friend laughed too, uncomfortably, and said, “Don’t let ‘em get you down, Bill.†Then the footsteps resumed, in opposite directions.
I never again had my shoes shined at Billy’s stand, and I was careful never even to pass it, except once, when I forgot. Then I heard Billy’s voice say, “Now, there’s a shine, Commander,†and I glanced up to see Billy’s face alight with simple pleasure in the gleaming shoe he held in his hand. I looked at the heavy-set man in the chair, and saw his face, smiling patronizingly at Billy’s bowed head. And I turned away and walked on, ashamed of him, of Billy, of myself, and of the whole human race.
