David was looking for his other sneaker. He still wore the left one but had taken the right one off to shake out a pebble that had been annoying him, and he had (perhaps distracted by something more interesting) not bothered to put it back on. Since he did not remember where he had removed the sneaker, he was retracing his afternoon. He was not confident. He had not been paying much attention. He was moving back through time with a weird clip-clop gait because of the missing sneaker. Being 10 years old, he understood that it was unlikely someone had stolen his right sneaker, but he also understood it could have been chucked into a garbage can by one of the surly teenagers in his neighborhood. Or carried off by a dog. There was nothing unlikely about those possibilities.
He caught sight of Muffy Bradshaw through the slats of her backyard fence. She was a full year his senior and at the moment playing her new copy of “Hanky Panky” by Tommy James & the Shondells on a battery-powered record player. David entered her yard through a space between the garage and the last post of the fence. “Hello, Muffy.”
Muffy narrowed her eyes. “Admission is ten cents, David Grimes.”
“Admission to what?”
“The World’s Fair,” she said. There was a coffee table with a wobbly leg that Mrs. Bradshaw had left out for the garbage men, which Muffy had reclaimed and dragged into her back yard. On it was a neatly lettered sign that indeed read “The 1966 World’s Fair.”
There were other objects of interest, one of which was David’s missing sneaker. “That’s my right sneaker,” he said. Muffy glanced down at his naked right foot and pursed her lips.
“Five cents admission, then,” she announced. “I don’t see how I can do better than that.”
“Well, that’s my sneaker.”
“First things first, then we can talk about it,” said Muffy. She held out her hand. On a dilapidated folding snack tray, there was an open fishing tackle box, containing coins she intended to use to make change. David found a nickel deep in the pocket of his shorts. Muffy dropped it into the proper compartment of the fishing tackle box. It made a satisfying ‘chunk’ sound.
“I can’t go home without the sneaker. What’s all this other stuff?”
“This is a collection of rubber washers, donated by my brother Carl. They can also be used as Monopoly pieces when you misplace or lose the pieces that came with the game.”
“I like to be the Scottie Dog.”
“If you lose the Scottie Dog, one of these would make an excellent substitution,” said Muffy. “They have been in the family for generations.” This last statement might not have been 100% true, although perhaps it was. There was simply no way to tell, she reflected later, so it was not, strictly speaking, a lie.
“We use a wagon-wheel-pasta for the top hat. Mary Ann lost the top hat.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” sniffed Muffy. Muffy did not have a high opinion of Mary Ann Grimes. “The tire leaning against the garage there is very possibly from a famous get-away car.”
“Geez. How about the pink eraser?”
“That was in case I made a mistake when I was writing my ‘World’s Fair’ sign. I did not.”
“I could get you a jar of Vicks-Vape-O-Rub,” said David. “It’s not empty. There’s like a pinkie’s worth of Vicks inside still.”
Muffy thought about this. She didn’t care about the pinkie’s worth of Vicks one way or the other but the jar was made of deep blue glass, and very swanky. There was just no other word for it. “Alright. Bring me the jar, and you can have your sneaker back.” She pictured someone— not herself, maybe some… French girl— wearing the Vicks jar, in her eye, like a swanky blue monocle. But thicker. At this point the vision became indistinct.
David put the sneaker back on his foot and left to get the jar. Muffy replayed “Hanky Panky.” Was the record already getting scratchy? It certainly seemed so.
David returned with a grocery bag, tightly crimped at the top. “I got the Vicks,” he declared.
“Okay.”
“Do you want just the Vicks, or the jar too?”
“I want the jar. You can keep the Vicks, for all I care.”
David had not realized just how desirable the blue Vicks jar was, until he had retrieved it from the bathroom waste basket. He had devised some exciting plans for the jar on the way back to Muffy’s yard, but a deal was a deal. He had a Plan B, however.
“You could keep the sneaker. And the other sneaker, too.”
Muffy noticed that he was wearing flip-flops.
“David. What would I do with your old sneakers?”
“Well. Whatever you were going to do with them before.”
“I’ll tell you what I was going to do with the right one. I was going to stuff it with crumpled up paper, so it looked full, and I was going to charge 25 cents to look inside and see if it still contained a foot.”
“Wow.”
“Wow is right. But now that I know it’s your sneaker, I can’t very well tell people it might be the lost sneaker of a well-known kidnapping victim, and charge them a quarter to look inside, can I?”
“Why not?”
“It would be a lie.”
They both pondered this for several seconds. “People would get mad if they paid to see if there was a foot inside and there was no foot,” said David.
“Not decent people,” said Muffy. “Decent people would be relieved to know the kidnapping victim still had both of her feet.”
“They’re boy sneakers,” he pointed out.
“Girls wear boy sneakers when they feel like it.”
“That’s true. Mary Ann has a pair of red P F Fliers.”
“Of course she does,” sniffed Muffy.
David put the blue jar on the snack tray and went home.