I see him take the black polish from the tin and wipe it over his shoe, rubbing it back and forth, producing a shine.
“What are you doing?” I ask, entranced.
“Putting the spring in my step,” he answers.
I’m not sure I understand what he is talking about, but I don’t say anything else. Just continue to watch from my perch on the step.
He has his foot up on the step and this is where he shines these shoes. He’s getting me ready to take a walk with him.
“Ready, kid?” he asks after a few minutes, after I have become bored with the process. Wondering when he’s going to be finished.
“Uh huh.”
He takes my hand. “Come on then.”
We go out through the garage where he collects two plastic shopping bags. He hands one to me. “You hold this one,” he says.”
“Okay.”
I’m not sure what I am holding it for, but I listen when I am told. Usually.
We walk down the long driveway and then take a left down the road. He is soon stooping over and reaching for something.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Moola,” he answers, putting an empty soda can into my bag.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Turn them into money. I’m going to be rich.”
“Let me help you find some,” I say, now intent on looking.
“That’s why I brought you along. I need your eyes.”
This frightens me for a moment but then he winks at me and it goes away.
Our bags are filling up quickly and eventually we cross the street and go back the other way. There is a deep trench on this side. He tells me to stay where I am and ambles down into the trench, retrieving two more cans. I hold open my bag.
“One for you, one for me.” He puts one can in my bag, the other in his own.
“These are for me?” I ask.
“Yes, you can have the money for those.”
My eyes get wide. To think that I am important enough to receive money. The thing that adults around me are always talking about. Talking about how hard it is to come by. If only everyone knew that all they needed to do was go for a walk and pick up cans.
“I don’t know what else to say.” I just smile and thank him.
“Thank you for thinking of me,” he says.
“I could smell you. I didn’t know what that smell was trying to tell me. That’s why I am here to ask you now.”
“How did it make you feel?”
“Not good, not bad. Just strange. Something I couldn’t place at all.”
“It brought you here.”
“Yes. You did bring me here.”
“And now it’s time for us to go home.”
“Together?”
“Yes, of course. How else?”
“I thought for a moment you didn’t want to be there anymore. Like the lost ping pong ball that you just couldn’t find again.”
“I found it.”
“Where?”
“He reaches out and like a magician, pulls it from behind my ear.”
Magic.
“Now you have me,” he says. “Your pockets will always be full.”
“I wrote something the other day about cans. Kicking them. For some reason I can’t seem to remember what that meant.”
“That’s because you’re not supposed to be kicking them. You see these shoes? They were just polished. And these cans are meant to be found, not kicked.”
“How do you find them?”
“You stop looking.”