The Man Who Collected Footprints
For forty years Old Qiu has mended the shoes of Linhe Town and read its people by their soles. When three of his customers drown one after another in Willow River—each wearing shoes he repaired, each sole caked with the same red backwater clay from where a woman died last year—the cobbler sees a pair of feet keeping count of footprints for the river, and finds his own shoes marked too.
On the north street of Linhe Town stands a narrow shop with a north-facing front, so it never catches the midday sun. Qiu Fulai has mended shoes in that shop for forty years. Townsfolk call him Old Qiu. He is a quiet man with a steady hand and a stubborn streak; on his wall the lasts, awls, linen thread, and hide glue hang in a neater row than any queue.
The shop holds the old smell of leather, mixed with the scorched sweetness of boiled glue. When his awl pierces stiff hide, it makes two dull taps—thuck, thuck—and Old Qiu narrows his eyes, as if listening to someone speak. He knows people by their feet. He can tell, with a single rub of his thumb, who walks the flats, who climbs the hills, who tips onto the balls of their feet; and where the sole wears thin, he reads like print. The line he repeats is this: feet are honester than mouths.
The first customer of spring was Widow Wang from the west end, who brought a pair of worn cotton shoes with the soles worn through. As he mended them Old Qiu felt a deep groove worn into the side beneath the little toe—she had walked crooked for years, rheumatism in the bone. He said nothing, only padded the spot with a softer scrap. Paying, Widow Wang sighed that her old man had been gone three years and she still kept his shoes. Old Qiu said, keep them; the feet remember the road.
Last July, a woman drowned in Willow River. No one claimed her; the town said she was a stranger's wife drifted down from upstream, and buried her without ceremony. After that Old Qiu swore the red clay of the riverbank carried a fishy reek that drifted, on the wind, clear across North Street.
On the sixteenth of the first month, Accountant Zhao from the east end came to mend a pair of black leather shoes. A thin, abacus-shrewd man, he had worn the right sole lopsided. Old Qiu replaced the sole and ran a diagonal seam along the worn line. Counting out coins, Zhao added two extra mao, saying prices would surely rise by spring, best mend now. Old Qiu scraped the sole and flicked off a layer of dark-red clay. Zhao hurried to explain: worksite red earth, nowhere else sticks like that. Old Qiu said nothing, smearing the clay onto the newspaper's edge.
Half a month later, Accountant Zhao finished his night shift and fell into the culvert of Willow River and drowned. When they pulled him out, those black leather shoes were on his feet.
Then came Butcher Qian. He had mended his boots last winter—stiff cowhide, the awl took half a day to bite through. In early third month Qian lay drunk on the Willow River beach and did not rise again; the boots were Old Qiu's work. They had borne red clay too, which he said was from the pigpen.
Then Peddler Sun. Late in the second month, back from his rounds, his heel had loosened and he came for a fresh linen stitch. Old Qiu spotted the dark-red at once and said, that clay is from the backwater bend of Willow River; stay away from there. Sun laughed: a peddler walks every road. On the third day after Qingming they found him under the Willow River bridge, also drowned.
Three men, no connection in life, yet the same red clay on their soles, and all dead in one river. Old Qiu gathered the scraped clay from all three into a tin box and compared: dark red, sticky when wet, flecked with crushed shell—the mark of the downstream backwater, nowhere else. Three men, one lie: none had admitted going to the river.
He turned the three pairs over and counted the layers of red clay with his thumb. Zhao's sole carried three; Qian's two; Sun's two. One layer, one trip to the bend. A cold dread took him—he had mended their shoes sturdy so they could walk back, again and again.
He would not let it rest. He shut the shop and walked to the backwater, scooped a handful of red clay, and set it against the box. Same color, same shell, and brought close, the same fishy reek. He remembered the three men's soles had carried that smell even in his shop, only mixed with sweat, and he had thought nothing of the river.
He asked Old Zhong, who had ferried the river forty years. Zhong said the drowned woman had taken his boat to cross and find her man; at the backwater she leapt herself, and a length of red string fell on the planks. Zhong kept it, then threw it back to the river. Old Qiu went to the bend and found, wound on a dead willow root, a length of red string, as if someone had tied it and forgotten to untie.
At night he dug from the bottom of his chest an old pair of boots his master left him on his deathbed. The master, too, had died at Willow River, forty years before. Old Qiu turned the boots over and rubbed the sole—the same dark red, the same shell.
He understood. The river did not want these men. A pair of feet was keeping count of footprints, for the river.
The day before the Dragon Boat Festival, Old Qiu wrapped the three pairs in cloth and walked alone to the backwater. He set the shoes out on the red clay, one by one, like three sticks of incense. Wind came off the water, fishy. He turned to go home, looked down, and saw that his own cloth shoes were already caked, at the sole, with a layer of dark-red clay.