Alice Munros Best

Herman. You do a good job here. You do honest work.”
    “That’s good.” Herman took a quick look at the boot on his hand. Mr. McCauley knew that the man wanted to get back to his work, but he couldn’t let him.
    “I’ve just had an eye-opener. A shock.”
    “Have you?”
    The old man pulled out the letter and began to read bits of it aloud, with interjections of dismal laughter.
    “Bronchitis. He says he’s sick with bronchitis. He doesn’t know where to turn.
I don’t know who to turn to.
Well he always knows who to turn to. When he’s run through everything else, turn to me.
A few hundred just till I get on my feet.
Begging and pleading with me and all the time he’s conniving with my housekeeper. Did you know that? She stole a load of furniture and went off out west with it. They were hand in glove. This is a man I’ve saved the skin of, time and time again. And never a penny back. No, no, I have to be honest and say fifty dollars. Fifty out of hundreds and hundreds. Thousands. He was in the Air Force in the war, you know. Those shortish fellows, they were often in the Air Force. Strutting around thinking they were war heroes. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say that, but I think the war spoiled some of those fellows, they never could adjust to life afterwards. But that’s not enough of an excuse. Is it? I can’t excuse him forever because of the war.”
    “No you can’t.”
    “I knew he wasn’t to be trusted the first time I met him. That’s the extraordinary thing. I knew it and I let him rook me all the same. There are people like that. You take pity on them just for being the crooks they are. I got him his insurance job out there, I had some connections. Of course he mucked it up. A bad egg. Some just are.”
    “You’re right about that.”
    Mrs. Shultz was not in the store that day. Usually she was the one at the counter, taking in the shoes and showing them to her husband and reporting back what he said, making out the slips, and taking the payment when the restored shoes were handed back. Mr. McCauley remembered that she had had some kind of operation during the summer.
    “Your wife isn’t in today? Is she well?”
    “She thought she’d better take it easy today. I’ve got my girl in.”
    Herman Shultz nodded towards the shelves to the right of the counter, where the finished shoes were displayed. Mr. McCauley turned his head and saw Edith, the daughter, whom he hadn’t noticed when he came in. A childishly thin girl with straight black hair, who kept her back to him, rearranging the shoes. That was just the way she had seemed to slide in and out of sight when she came to his house as Sabitha’s friend. You never got a good look at her face.
    “You’re going to help your father out now?” Mr. McCauley said. “You’re through with school?”
    “It’s Saturday,” said Edith, half turning, faintly smiling.
    “So it is. Well, it’s a good thing to help your father, anyway. You must take care of your parents. They’ve worked hard and they’re good people.” With a slight air of apology, as if he knew he was being sententious, Mr. McCauley said, “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the –”
    Edith said something not for him to hear. She said, “Shoe Repair shop.”
    “I’m taking up your time, I’m imposing on you,” said Mr. McCauley sadly. “You have work to do.”
    “There’s no need for you to be sarcastic,” said Edith’s father when the old man had gone.
    HE TOLD EDITH’S mother all about Mr. McCauley at supper.
    “He’s not himself,” he said. “Something’s come over him.”
    “Maybe a little stroke,” she said. Since her own operation – for gallstones – she spoke knowledgeably and with a placid satisfaction about the afflictions of other people.
    Now that Sabitha had gone, vanished into another sort of life that had, it seemed, always been waiting for her, Edith had reverted to being the person she had been before Sabitha came here. “Old for her age,” diligent, critical. After three weeks at high school she knew that she was going to be very good at all the new subjects – Latin, Algebra, English Literature. She believed that her cleverness was going to be recognized and acclaimed and an important future would open out for her. The past year’s silliness with Sabitha was slipping out of sight.
    Yet when she thought about Johanna’s going off out west she felt a chill from her past, an invasive alarm. She