Brandon’s blood was a hissing metronome is his ears as the RAV ascended the slope toward the farmhouse. Seeing Kyle today was far sooner than he had planned. He doubted the patch of ground he had painstakingly churned for the occasion was sufficiently saturated from just one summer downpour. He had envisioned testing it himself—even soaking it further with a garden hose, if necessary—to ensure that his carefully laid trap would have the literal climactic result he had been banking on.
“You don’t have to go through with this,” he murmured out load. The posts of the split rail fence glided by as if in measure of the dwindling time he had for deliberation. It was certainly true that discussion of the swale project to the west of the house would not require them to set foot beyond the patio at all. He could postpone the show, casually inquire about Kyle’s next visit to mow, and arrange his schedule accordingly.
Scheming was an exhausting business.
His resolve to delay gratification melted, however, when the gleaming tailgate of Kyle’s pickup came into view. Immediate reality always had a habit of crumpling his composure like it was soggy cardboard—especially when it was grasping him between the legs.
When Brandon was in ninth or tenth grade, he had been enlisted by his neighbor, Mrs. McHale, to care for their houseplants during their five week vacation. Situated further up the hill behind his own family’s wooded lot, the McHale house was a 1980s contemporary wood-and-glass affair. It’s tall windowed gables reflected light that could be seen glinting through the forest screen long before one reached the ribboned trees marking the property line.
Brandon was fascinated by the home, which was so contrary in character to his family’s. Instead of the polished brass lamps and dainty curves of the Queen Anne furniture he was accustomed to, the McHales had boxy sofas and squat black pottery lamps perched on chunky wood tables. There were no sage greens and deep burgundies here—just creams and beiges and the occasional pop of primary colors in artwork tastefully sprinkled in rooms with soaring ceilings, exposed beams, and ample light.
A few finicky ficus trees graced the main living areas—Brandon had explicit instructions from Mrs. McHale on when and how much to water those. But most of the plants were of the non-fussy variety. They lived in the sunroom, a long, sunken extension that ran the length of the house with glass walls that arched overhead until they met the wooden cladding that marked the original exterior of the building. The space was hot and smelled of earth and was overwhelmed with the drooping fronds of Boston ferns, the golden splattered leaves of pothos vines, and the lush spiny heads of mass cane. “Just stick your finger in these. If they’re dry, water them until they dribble out the bottom,” Mrs. McHale had said, tipping a long-necked watering can into a cascading spider plant until a small column of water splattered out the bottom onto the cement tiles below.
And so some weeks later, Brandon found himself on a particularly hot and sticky afternoon wandering the cavernous McHale residence as the last of the water softly tapped a dozen slowing beats from the pots suspended in the sunroom. The house was otherwise a yawning silence in the eye of a still, forested hurricane. Dust motes twirled in broad shafts of hot sunlight that shine from the gable windows in the great room. From somewhere in the eaves, Brandon could hear the occasional crack of expansion, as though the house’s dry bones were popping as it pressed itself a little harder against the earth for a midday nap in escape from the oppressive day.
There is an odd kind of allure to wandering someone’s home in their absence. Not only can one freely examine its contents, but also marvel at the set of circumstances that led each object to end its journey in that particular place. Brandon stopped and stared at a carved African mask that gaped bleakly from the wall over the kitchen phone. Who, he mused, had obtained this piece? Did Mrs. McHale find it in a flea market? Was it gifted to someone, who opted to proudly display it in this prominent location? Or maybe Mr. McHale had tacked it up there out of spite, knowing it was loathed by his wife? And when was the last time someone had even taken this much notice of it?
Brandon broke his gaze with the leering face only to have his eyes land on a much more innocuous pair of objects parked by the kitchen door, and yet of infinitely more interest in his estimation: black canvas shoes. Their twin white rubber arced outsoles across the toes were like disembodied grins emerging from the shadow of the entryway bench. He crouched to examine them and took in the familiar gleam of the silver eyelets and telltale outlined swooshes on the sides. Nike GTSes. He released a shaky sigh. It was as though a valve that held back a pressure he had been unconscious of until now had been turned. A tension that had slowly built since the first time he had seen those very shoes. On Travis Porter.
Travis was a baritone in Choraleers, Brandon was a tenor. While girls took an interest in Travis’s spiked blond hair and cornflower blue eyes, it was his skate sneakers that had Brandon transfixed that entire past spring semester. He always wore them with relaxed, light blue jeans breaking over them. Peering over the top of his book of madrigals, Brandon could see the dotted toe caps of the GTSes resting on their reflections in the waxed tiles. Once, when he had arrived first to practice and set up their usual circle formation of chairs, he had selected the one on the end of his section for himself, and for forty-five glorious minutes had been seated directly next to Travis. He had risked an “accidental” graze, sliding his shoe against the GTS so that he could watch the canvas upper move over Travis’s foot under his influence of his own.
It was the first time Brandon had obsessed over shoes that weren’t rubber boots. And their pull wasn’t any less potent now, in spite of being sadly unanimated by a boy’s feet in the sleepy stale quiet of the kitchen. Brandon slowly dragged the shoes into the light and, for the first time, appreciated them up close. He ran his fingers over the upper as it swooped over the thickly padded tongue, and he traced the orderly paths of perfectly uniform double stitches. He frowned. The McHales didn’t have any sons, just two pre-teen daughters. Judging by their size, the GTSes were most certainly Mr. McHale’s. A fresh ripple of excitement shimmered through Brandon. Something about the idea of the thirty-something man wearing the same trendy sneakers as Travis Porter was stirring.
Brandon kicked off his own sneakers and slid his feet into the cool roominess of Mr. McHale’s vacant Nikes, which were a size-and-a-half larger. Slowly, he lapped the kitchen island. The slap of his heart against his ribs outpaced the sound of the soles on ceramic as he beheld each footfall across the tiles. He couldn’t believe he was wearing these gorgeous sneakers, or that they belonged to someone else. It felt deliciously forbidden.
He entered the living room and stepped through the beige shag to see plush acrylic twists pile around his white rubber-outlined feet. He pressed a shoe onto a linen ottoman and flushed with pleasure as the cushion puckered and contorted under the weight of the GTS. If he ignored the scrawny legs that stretched down into them, he could almost be Travis, tall and lean with perfectly moussed hair. The thought mingled with the thrill already coursing through him and slowly began to expand, pressing against the inside of his shorts.
Brandon watched the Nikes carry him across the wet sunroom floor, through the glass slider, and into the sweltering haze. The dry grass snapped beneath him. His socked feet, growing warm in the black canvas, began to whisper and then to make audible protests against the lining as he walked. He looked across the yard, the summer having leached most of the color from it, and saw the pale remnants of tractor switchbacks preserved in the parched turf. Mr. McHale had been mowing the day he had stopped by to get his key from Mrs.McHale. He had smiled and waved to him from the tractor as he clattered by. Brandon remembered eyeing the beat-up black Reebok high tops Mr. McHale had been wearing. At the time, the scene hadn’t evoked anything for him. But in hindsight, and with the man’s oversized skate shoes now growing moist on his feet, the replay of him plunging those tall, cracked leather sneakers on the mower pedal made his body hum like the cicadas droning from the trees.
He staggered around the back of garage, head buzzing with heat from both outside and within, and found a pile of earth with an overturned wheelbarrow on it. The dirt was almost certainly from the beds that had been carved out around the front steps—it was the same crumbly clay and rock combination that his dad fought with in their yard further down the hill. It was impossible to grow anything in other than the scraggly variety of oak that dominated the hillside. The McHales obviously had means, though, and had probably hauled in topsoil just so that Mrs. McHale could enjoy hydrangeas next to the house.
Brandon scaled the dusty pile and let the wavy treads of the borrowed Nikes push avalanches of clay granules skittering to the grass. As the black sneakers grew chalky, the crest of his tenting shorts began to glisten. Mr. McHale probably hadn’t had the GTSes very long. The knit laces still had that lustrous stiffness. But by the time Brandon came sliding down the dirt mound, pebbles pouring in around his heels, they were unrecognizably grubby.
Shoe Horny 