Linguistist

Tuesday. Dambala Road, Bo. The dust has finally sat down for the day.

Sorie has mended shoes at that junction for eleven years, under a sheet of zinc that used to be part of a roof somewhere better. He has a wooden box, a hammer, a tin of tacks, and a small mountain of leather scraps he will not throw away, because you never know.

A boy comes with one shoe. The left one. The right one is gone, he says, taken by the water at the crossing. He holds the survivor up like it is a witness.

Sorie looks at it a long time. Then he says, bring me the other one.

It's gone, the boy says.

Then bring me the pair, Sorie says.

The boy decides the man is joking, or deaf, or both. He has one shoe. He wants the heel fixed so it stops flapping.

Sorie sets the shoe on the box. He picks up a scrap, cuts it, and fits a heel to it. Then he takes a second scrap and cuts the same heel again, and lays it beside the first, unattached. He charges for one.

The boy says, what is that.

Sorie says, that one is for the other shoe.

There is no other shoe.

Then keep it until there is, Sorie says. When it comes you'll have a matched pair. Nobody walks right on one good heel and one flat one. You'd limp your whole life and never know why.

The boy takes the spare heel in his fist like it is money. He does not understand it and he knows he does not, and he wants to ask something. Sorie has already gone back to the tacks.

The heel will sit in a drawer for a year. Then one day it will rain, and a shoe will come, wet, and the boy will know what the spare one was for.