Rules of the Road (16 page)

I found other things, too. How the Shoe Warehouse went from four stores to four hundred and thirteen in five years by buying up small shoe chains and turning them into Warehouse clones. The
Wall Street Journal
called it “unprecedented growth.”

I found out that their stock had started at ten dollars a share and had risen to forty-one dollars. “A searing stock the hot funds love!” proclaimed
Money
magazine.

This guy was golden.

But more than that I knew he wasn’t afraid to stick his neck
out because he’d been a paper boy and mowed lawns. You’re getting to the core of people when you touch their grass and their morning paper.

I made copies of the articles and you could have knocked me over with a pair of peds when a decently cute guy smiled at me right there at the Xerox machine. I smiled back and headed out the door in all my splendor to see what was up with Harry Bender at Gladstone’s.

I’ve never been too good at taking days off.

“Caring about people is the greatest secret of success I know.”

Harry Bender was sprinkling Johnson and Johnson Baby Powder on his thick, hairy hands, rubbing them together like a surgeon scrubbing up for an operation. We were standing in the back room of Gladstone’s, surrounded by shoe boxes. I’d asked him if he could give me some sales pointers, and I was taking everything in.

“Folks might not like my face or the way I dress or what I’m selling, but they can’t deny I care about them.” He looked at me with my sparkling new fashion essence. “Texas sure seems to be agreeing with you.”

I grinned and followed him onto the floor.

We were off.

And Harry Bender was everywhere, listening . . .

To a woman who had weak ankles.

To a little girl who needed to beat her brother running.

To a man who loved saddle shoes.

“You seen these?” Harry asked, holding up tan calfskins with a brown saddle.

The man’s eyes got soft. You can see when it’s a passion. Harry just let him stand in the presence of the shoes. Finally the man whispered, “Twelve medium.” Minutes later he had them on his feet and Harry said quietly, “My guess is you’re not going to be taking them off.”

“You guess right,” the man replied.

Regulars came with their visiting grandchildren, mothers brought babies who were ready for their first pair of shoes, and Harry Bender found their buttons. He didn’t push. Didn’t get frustrated. He could tell when people needed him and when to back away. They could tell he cared the way a class knows a teacher cares about her subject. Too many people try to fake their way through life. That’s why the real ones shine so brightly.

When a woman came in apologizing for the battered-up shoes she was wearing, Harry looked at those disgusting things and said, “Those’ve been good friends.”

When an older man came in looking sad, Harry said to him, “How’s the world treating you today, my friend?” and that man almost broke down because his wife had died last month and she always came with him to pick out his shoes.

It’s the little things, not just in selling, but in life that make the difference. The small moments when you can touch another person. Harry Bender was always looking for them and he found more than any person I’d ever met.

I was walking back to the parking garage when I heard the music. Hand-clapping country music. The kind that makes you want to get up and dance and make a fool of yourself—if, that is, a person was a dancer, which, trust me, I’m not.

I walked toward the sound at the end of the mall. A stage was set up and a band was playing and people in western hats were dancing in a line. I stood on the sidelines to watch, tapping my foot, looking down at my new belt and my green checked skirt, feeling pretty close to perfect.

“All right now,” said one of the musicians on the stage, “grab a partner for the Texas two-step!”

I folded my arms and leaned against a wall when a male hand reached out, grabbed my hand, and started leading me to the dance floor. He was really tall and had blonde hair and nice brown eyes and was wearing a big brown cowboy hat.

“Come on,” he said grinning. “I’ve been watching you. You need to dance.”

He’d been watching me?

“Uh . . .no . . .I don’t dance . . .I . . .”

“Everybody dances in Texas.”

“I’m from Chicago, though, and—”

“Well, you can’t help where you’re from, but you don’t have to let it limit you.”

We were on the dance floor now.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Um . . .Jenna, but . . .”

“Pleased to meet you, Jenna. My name’s Will. Now all you have to do is follow me and remember, step, together, step, touch.” He showed me the patterns with his feet.

“I . . .I . . .won’t remember this.”

He showed me again. I tried, messed up. He showed me again.

My heart was thumping bad. I knew I was going to blow this and I wanted to sit down. Will took his left hand and grabbed my right one, then he put his right hand around my waist and I realized that Mom had been right. Social dancing skills were always appreciated later in life. I’d never been this close to a younger person of the opposite gender.

I gulped.

The music started.

“Step, together, step, touch,” Will said. I did it, sort of. “Now just do another step, touch and then repeat.”

I tripped, but he didn’t mind and after I got used to being this close to a male I’d never met, after I got used to the steps and going counterclockwise, after my breathing had slowed down, and my face had stopped blushing, I got it.

Step, together, step, touch, step, touch.

“You got it,” Will said, going wide to cover more of the dance floor which I hadn’t expected, but I’m here to tell you it was a miracle in the making.

I stayed with him.

I was dancing!

Will was saying how I was a fast study, and I was laughing as we two-stepped around that floor. We danced two dances and
I only tripped twice and when his friend came up to us and said they had to go, Will said it had been a pleasure to dance with such a pretty young woman and he wished me well in Chicago. Then he tipped his cowboy hat in a show of respect for my beauty and he and his friend were gone.

I leaned against a store window and watched him go.

Part of me wished he had stayed, but more important than that was the gift he gave me. I looked at myself in the store window and smiled.

Now there, I thought to myself for the first time ever, is a pretty young woman.

It was nine days to the stockholders meeting, and despite the support from many store managers, the news was bleak. The mail-in ballots were coming in at Gladstone headquarters and Harry Bender’s friend, Lyle, said that Elden and the Shoe Warehouse were going to win by a landslide. We’d had an all-out telephoning marathon with me, Harry, Mrs. Gladstone, and Alice calling all the stockholders and asking them for their support. In one hour seven people hung up on me, two asked if I was crazy, and one said she’d think about it.

I’d just come off the sales floor with Harry Bender, who’d shared with me his two golden sales rules that lifted him from the sewer of despair to the top of his profession.

Rule Number One: Care about people more than what you’re selling.

Rule Number Two: Never miss a good opportunity to shut up.

We were sitting in the backroom; Harry Bender was studying a can of Coke like it held some hidden secret to victory.

“It looks pretty bad, doesn’t it, Mr. Bender?”

He took a long drink, wiped his mouth. “There isn’t any stockholder we talked to who doesn’t want to make more money, but there are still lots of folks out there who don’t want the Gladstone quality changed. That’s the good news. The bad news is we’re in the minority.”

“It doesn’t sound like anything can be done.”

He slapped his knees. “This dog fight isn’t over yet.” His phone rang. He flipped it open.

“You got Harry . . .”

He listened for a while, then spoke into the receiver: “Well, that’s the worst thing about it, cause the booze doesn’t know how to talk to you any other way than lying. So you got to remember that and keep reminding yourself how it was when you were drinking. Feelings get in the way of facts, friend, and you got to distinguish between the two . . .all right then . . .you stay clean. Call back if you need to.”

He folded the phone shut, looked at me.

“Mr. Bender, can I talk to you about my dad?”

“Sure thing.”

“I’m getting to the point with him that I’m not sure how to handle things. He hurts me so much when he’s around and when he’s gone I worry about him and never know if he’s coming back. It’s like I lose if he’s here and lose if he’s gone and . . .”

“You told him you feel that way?”

“I couldn’t say that to my dad. He doesn’t take responsibility for anything, he’s just filled with excuses.”

Harry Bender leaned forward. “Maybe saying it isn’t as much for him as it is for you.”

I was about to say he didn’t understand when Mrs. Gladstone walked in the back.

Harry Bender patted my hand. “We’ll talk about it later. Think about what I said.”

Mrs. Gladstone was looking brave, like a politician who knows they’ve lost an election. “Is this the wake?” she asked, sarcastically.

“Don’t go getting negative on me, old girl.”

“I’m simply being practical, Harry.”

“Shoot, Maddy, any fool can be practical. You want to start exercising your brain capacity, find some faith and hold onto that.”

Mrs. Gladstone laughed. “I’ve got faith in you, Harry.”

“Well,” he said smiling, “let’s see what that’ll do.”

He patted down his Stetson hat, got out his car keys. “I’ve got a meeting with a man who can maybe get us more votes.”

“Who?” Mrs. Gladstone demanded.

He smiled mysteriously. “I haven’t got it all clear yet in my head.”

“Harry Bender,” Mrs. Gladstone shouted, “you tell me what you’re up to!”

“Not yet,” he said, laughing, and headed out the door.

You know the thing about hope, how it sneaks up behind you when you’re sure everything’s in the toilet, and starts whispering to you that maybe, just maybe, things could turn around.

That’s the gift Harry gave us that night. Some people, all you have to do is stand next to them and you feel protected. Mrs. Gladstone said he was always like that, too, a presence of hope, even after all he’d been through, able to laugh darkness in the face.

I wondered if that came from knowing the darkness so well, he’d figured out how to beat it.

Mrs. Gladstone said if anyone could bottle and sell Harry Bender, they’d make a fortune. I didn’t think any bottle could hold what that man’s got.

I pictured him getting out of his Chevy Suburban, saddling up to some millionaire’s house, and talking that man over to our side.

I saw him standing up to a podium at the stockholders meeting, giving a speech about truth, justice, and selling shoes, winning the trust of everybody in that room, even Elden, and saving the company.

I saw him telling me that he’d always wanted a daughter like me and that if I didn’t mind, he’d be so proud to be my surrogate father and that I could come down and visit him and his wife in Texas any old time I liked.

The stockholders meeting was eight days away. Alice was having dinner with friends and Mrs. Gladstone and I were sitting on her beige couch drinking iced tea. I looked at Mrs. Gladstone’s face. She had deep wrinkles around her mouth, the skin around her eyes was cracked by lines and too much sun—but still, she was beautiful. She smiled from her heart and handed me a big envelope.

“I want to thank you, Jenna, for being so kind to me these weeks. You’ve made this time downright bearable. Open it.”

I did. Took out a stack of important-looking stiff papers.

“Fifty shares of Gladstone’s stock,” she said. “Worth around twenty-two dollars a share at the moment, but at the end of the week, it should be worth more.”

Twenty-two dollars a share. That was over a thousand dollars. I looked at the papers. Jenna Boller, stockholder.

“Mrs. Gladstone . . .wow . . .”