Haberdashery

The goat with feline paws walks in measured paces, deliberately past the hill, ignoring the humming of insects.  It is headed nowhere in particular, having left its home on the island.  A failed experiment in making silent mutton, for reasons nobody could ever determine.  On the hill sits the lonely shoe store.  He approaches the store, dragging along the years, the many years, which have passed since he first saw the rows of shoes, high heels and low, laced and not, red and blue and brown, and (of course) black, size 9 and 7 and 8 and a half, both men's and women's but not European, boots and flats and loafers and sneakers and the shoes with green pom poms which nobody would ever buy.  There were even shoes for the baby who did not want to wear them.  But he knows that you are not there.  He does not know when you left and he has only heard faint rumors of why, but he knows, with a certainty with which he knows nothing else, that you are not there.  He draws closer, getting slower the nearer he approaches.  He sees the sign.  Buster Jones.  There is the dog and the little boy in the sailor suit, both looking content.  He is envious.  He pauses, not hearing the goat tread silently by, but remembering that day many Summers ago when he first discovered that other shoe stores existed.  He took the news hard, and not even whisky could dull the pain of that knowledge.  What forgiveness is possible after such knowledge?  Startled by the scurrying of a hare nearby, he boldly marches up to the store and looks in the window.  Cobwebs and dust, cobwebs covered with dust; even the killing fields are silent now.  He looks around.  On a clear day, someone standing on this hill can see New Hampshire or South Dakota, he cannot remember which.  There is no sign of human civilization.  But just beyond his field of vision, the girl has stopped in the oak forest or elm forest or maple forest on her way back from a day finding raspberries.  Her thumb, where she pricked it, is still slowly dripping blood, small drops mixed with the juice of berries, onto her leg, but she is unaware or unconcerned.  She sits on a rock or a log reading Chaucer aloud to nobody.  Periodically she is startled by the snapping of a twig, and looking around, seeing nobody, commences reading aloud again, and still to nobody.  But he knows none of this; he cannot hear her or see her.   He takes down the sign, and tucking it under his arm, walks West, and does not stop until the day when he will walk no more.  The people who put him in his final bed are relieved that he brought his headstone with him, and while they never did find the dog, they substituted a rabid stray poodle.