The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

this. I am a shoeshine, but the shining man called me a bootblack and he thought this was funny, but I don’t know why. My father was a cobbler before he went to war and he said he was going to teach me but I am not smart enough and my father came back blind and he taught me to shine shoes.

The shining man came a week before the fighting. I remember because I woke up with blood in my mouth and a sore tongue. I was on the floor. My mother came in and saw the blood on the bedding and said I should clean myself up outside. I cleaned myself up. Before, when I was not this old, mother would have taken me to see the doctor, but not anymore. Mother said we could not pay for it anymore. And she said the treatment made no difference. My father calls this falling sickness the Morbus and he gave me a chain made of the backbone of snakes. I still get the Morbus, but when mother can afford Bromo-seltzer I don’t get it so much.

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I met the shining man while crossing the bridge. The Taff rushed very fast that morning because it had rained for many days before. I left home early even though my tongue was still sore from biting. When it rains there is mud, and when there is mud shoeshines make a lot of money because people step in the mud, making their shoes dirty. A horse carriage passed me, but there was nobody else on foot that morning.

I saw a light from the reeds. It was only for a short time and very bright. I was alone on the bridge. I took my box to the side of the bridge and sat down because sometimes I see lights before the Morbus. If I sit down when I see the lights I do not injure myself so much.

It was not the Morbus. When the light stopped I saw a man standing there. He did not shine, but he wore strange clothes that did shine. It shone like he wore clothes made of soft mirrors. He had engines and machines that shone too. He hid these in the bushes and took off the shiny clothes. I saw that he had regular clothes underneath, and he wore a flat cap after he hid his shiny clothes. Then he saw me.

He climbed up the bank and walked to me. His boots were muddy. He was smiling. He asked if I was a bootblack and I asked what a bootblack was and he told me and I said I was. He was light, with curly hair, but not white. He looked like the light-skinned Somali men who came and went on Millicent Street, which wasn’t in Niggertown but was owned by Negroes. He talked funny, and I thought he was an American because I have never seen an American except for the cowboy shows during the fair last summer and my father said they were Yorkshiremen pretending to be Americans. I think that pretending to be something can be being something if you pretend hard enough for long enough.

When the shining man asked me to shine his boots I said no because it is bad luck to shine shoes on a bridge. None of the boys will do this. He asked me why, but I said it was back luck. I said if we go to one end of the bridge towards the railway station I would shine his shoes and he smiled wider.

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I cleaned the boots first, because it is a mistake to shine dirty shoes, and the shining man’s shoes were muddy from the marsh. I did not talk because customers do not like shoeshines to talk first. Some of them start to talk, others keep quiet. The shining man started to talk as soon as my rag touched his left boot. He asked me my name and I told him. He asked where I live, and I told him. He did not know where that was and so I asked him where he was from, and he said, ‘Not from around here.’

I thought about it and later I realized that he did not want to say where he was from. People say I’m slow. It takes me a long time to learn something, but once I know it I never forget. Most people do not wait long enough for me to learn. I am not slow when I am doing what I already know, like shining shoes. I shine faster than any of the boys.

The shining man called me Master Carter, which made me laugh. Later, after the fighting, the police called me Master Carter, but that did not make me laugh because the police are not funny.

The boot leather did not take up the polish like normal shoes, so I stopped and touched the boots and stroked the toe. I asked the shining man what kind of boots these were and he said I should not worry about it. I explained that I was not worried, but I had to use the right polish. The shining man took his boot off the footrest and said that he was here looking for somebody and that he had to go. He paid me in coin and walked away.

That day was very busy and I stopped thinking about the shining man. It was also very hot. My mother said it was the hottest summer she could remember and my father agreed. In the town I heard some miners say it was the end of the world. I don’t know how the world can end, but I did not ask because sometimes, when I ask questions, people laugh at me.

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The next day I saw the shining man again. This time I did not think of the Morbus. I waited