Jewel Boots -- by Steve S. Saroff

© 2023 Steve S. Saroff


We were walking this afternoon, the kids and I, and at the corner of Higgins and Broadway, I looked around and Max was gone. Then I saw him. He was nearly a block behind us, looking in the window of the Oxford Bar. I yelled to him, but instead of running to catch up with us, he waved his arm and pointed in the window. He’s just turned eight, two years younger than his sister, and suddenly stubborn. So we went back to where he was. We got to him, and he showed us what he was looking at. In the window, in a sixteen by twenty-inch picture frame, pasted onto black cloth, was an arrangement of old arrowheads mixed with cheap costume jewelry. Bar art, something that looked like it was traded for an overdue tab. Max was interested in the arrowheads, he asked me about them, how old I thought they were, and where they were found. I told him I don’t know, but that they looked real and were probably collected from some farmer’s field. Max wanted to go inside to take a closer look. Through the window, I could see old men sitting and drinking and doing absolutely nothing. It was a few days past Christmas, and there was a large, blinking tree still in the window with fake presents under it. There were also food wrapers and peanut shells on the floor.

I said no. I said some other time. Max howled a bit, but Kay and I walked away, and he recognized my resolve, so he left the window and followed along, but far enough behind to let me know that he was pissed.

I’m not broke, I have money in the bank, but I need all of it right now. The car needs a tune-up, and the washing machine is making grinding noises. But I’m going to have to wait a while before I get to either of those. You see, I’m in the process of buying the place where I work. A bookstore cafe. The sort of business, which friends have pointed out, is right up there with restaurants as the easiest to open and the most difficult to keep from failing. Everyone knows how to read, and everyone knows how to cook. So lots of people think they know books, and lots of people think they know food.  And a few do. And those places work. My place will work. It’s got to. So it will.

So today, all I was thinking about were the details of buying the store and how I would do things differently to make it a success. And I was feeling good, but it was just like the time when I was in sixth grade, on my way to school one winter day. I was feeling then that I could do anything. I was thinking how I would be a professional basketball player. Then I was thinking about how I would be the first woman president of the country. Then thinking I could be both at once, the president and a pro-ball player, “Bam,” I’ve stepped on a patch of ice, and I am on the ground. Wind knocked out hard, feel like crying but can’t even get the breath to do that.

And today, a few blocks past the Oxford, I was thinking over what things I had to remember for a meeting with an accountant. When, “Bam,” again right there on the sidewalk -- even though I didn’t fall this time -- I am knocked flat because I was suddenly remembering my grandmother and her jewelry. Remembering how I glued all of it to a pair of cowboy boots. Jewelry like the jewelry in the window at the Oxford. Grandmother like the old men in there: alone so much. She’s sitting in her kitchen, I see her through the screen door window before I come in. She looks up and smiles at me, moves her hands off of her lap, touches her hair. I come in the door with the sack of groceries, like I had been doing every week since I got my driver’s license, since it became my ‘job,’ to visit her.

I am remembering all of this. She has saved up her words all week for me, and they pour out too fast and too confused. Every time it is almost the same. She’s trying to tell me more about how she left her husband, my grandfather, whom I never knew, and about how she raised my mother alone. She’s trying to tell me this, but I am looking at the clock on the wall, saying, “Where should I put this stuff?” My grandmother knows that I don’t want to be there. And then, like most weeks, I am out the door fast, back in the car, turning the ignition. The radio already cranked full volume, and I am spinning the wheels, gravel flying. Out of there. I was 16. Then she died. And I got a shoebox of worthless jewelry. Heirlooms. Which I put up on a shelf, and then lost, two years later, in one night.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Kay asked. I had stopped walking. Kay was a few paces in front of me, looking back. I shook my head, I said, “It’s nothing, I’m fine.” Max had caught up with me, and he was looking at me too. I held out my hand, and he took it, and we started walking home. I thought about how too soon, he would probably stop holding my hand as I walk, the way Kay stopped a year before, saying, “I’m too old for this.”

Even as children, we all rush into our own spaces.

Little things Grandma told me I remember clearest. She said, “You are luckiest if you make lots of mistakes.” She said, “Don’t ever be owned.” She said, “Eastern Montana, no neighbors, newspapers on the walls for insulation. Hell with that, and I got all the way to Seattle.” I remember her laughing then. Late eighties. Frail like eggshell, sitting there in the kitchen, the sound of the ticking clock filling the air after her laughter. Me silent and looking at my car parked outside. I was such a fool.

So then I’m eighteen, and I’m in college in Missoula, and no one is telling me what to do. I’ve brought everything that I think I will ever want from home. And I almost left the box, but it is there on the closet shelf in the dorm room. I’ve got a pair of cowboy boots, red ones, and decided that they are too plain. I take down the box and pour Grandma’s jewelry on the floor and go at it with pliers and a screwdriver. I pry the stones and the glass from their settings. On one large brooch, on the back of a silver flower petal, there is a fingerprint in the dark tarnish. But I don’t stop, I keep going. I throw all the empty settings in the trash can. Then I use crazy-glue and arrange the ‘jewels’ on the outer sides of the boots, across the feet, and onto the leather uppers. I’m drinking beer and listening to loud music. My roommate comes in, and she asks me what I am doing. I tell her I am making something to dance with. She picks up a boot and looks. Even though she didn’t ask, I tell her that I found all the jewelry at a garage sale. She says, “Cool.”

That night I am at Luke’s. All these black-and-white photos on the walls. Faces. I am drunk, and I am dancing, and I am in love with a cowboy. He keeps touching me and keeps me on my feet, and the bar spins, and all the faces become like the framed ones. I don’t know then what the gold stars in the bottom corners of some of the photos mean. I don’t care. And my cowboy is telling me things, and I am listening closely, believing what he says, my face close to his, close enough to hear over the noise from the band.

Now I can not remember anything he said, except that none was true. None of what he said lasted.

And that next morning, waking up, I am still wearing my boots. I kick them off, and I see then that every single rhinestone is gone. There are just lots of small, brown spots where the red polish has been pulled off. Every single jewel on that dance floor. Stamped on, scattered.

I’m going further back in my memories. Grandma is visiting when I was about ten, about the age Kay is now. Grandma and my mother are sitting in the living room. I am in my room, quiet, and they both think that I am outside. Grandma is asking about me, and my mother says I am not doing well in school. My mother says I spend too much time dreaming. Too much time trying to keep up with older kids. My grandmother asks what is wrong with that, and my mother says, “Be practical, Mom, please.” 

“There’s such a thing as being too practical,”  I heard my grandma say.

I’ve always found true things in books, and I like the true people who come into the shop, and I like talking with them about what is in the books. Of course, the smarter thing would be to get a job someplace with machines and noise, where I would be paid to pound on things. Or I could go back to waiting tables and make even more money. Or I could get married again. Or I could do just about anything else. But it isn’t simple, and it isn’t about being practical. “What makes the least sense sometimes makes the most sense.” Grandma said that too.

Now, back on the sidewalk near the Oxford. I’ve stopped walking again. And Kay is looking at me, and Max is looking at me, and I say, “I changed my mind.” We turn around and walk back the way we had come.

At the Oxford I push open the door, and the kids and I go in. Straight to the bar, straight to the bartender. And I ask, “The thing in the window, the arrowheads, and stones. Is it for sale?”  The kids are staring at me. The bartender nods. He says, “Yes, it is.”  He tells me how much, and right there, I take out cash and buy it. “It’s for them,” I say, touching Max’s head. “They would like to know some things about it too, if you can tell them. Or if maybe you can tell us where it came from. Something like that.”  The bartender smiles and says, looking down at Max and Kay, “Sure, I can tell them things.” Then the three of us listened.

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Additional Steve S. Saroff writing

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