R is for Rocket (28 page)

    The old man walked lightly across the store to the wall of ten thousand boxes, came back with some shoes for the boy, and wrote up a list on some paper while the boy was lacing the shoes on his feet and then standing there, waiting.

    The old man held out his list. "A dozen things you got to do for me this afternoon. Finish them, we're even Stephen, and you're fired."

    "Thanks, Mr. Sanderson!" Douglas bounded away.

    "Stop!" cried the old man.

    Douglas pulled up and turned.

    Mr. Sanderson leaned forward. "How do they
feel?"

    The boy looked down at his feet deep in the rivers, in the fields of wheat, in the wind that already was rushing him out of the town. He looked up at the old man, his eyes burning, his mouth moving, but no sound came out.

    "Antelopes?" said the old man, looking from the boy's face to his shoes. "Gazelles?"

    The boy thought about it, hesitated, and nodded a quick nod. Almost immediately he vanished. He just spun about with a whisper and went off. The door stood empty. The sound of the tennis shoes faded in the jungle heat.

    Mr. Sanderson stood in the sun-blazed door, listening. From a long time ago, when he dreamed as a boy, he remembered the sound. Beautiful creatures leaping under the sky, gone through brash, under trees, away, and only the soft echo their running left behind.

    "Antelopes," said Mr. Sanderson. "Gazelles."

    He bent to pick up the boy's abandoned winter shoes, heavy with forgotten rains and long-melted snows. Moving out of the blazing sun, walking softly, lightly, slowly, he headed back toward civilization. . . .