Free Of Song and Water by Joseph Coulson

close by. The knocking begins again, harder this time, more insistent.
    Calling to collect at this hour is unusual. The city is bitter cold and the streets are empty. The knocking stops and starts.
    He can hear the man breathing. He’s heard it before. It’s the sound a man makes when he’s desperate for something – food or cash – when secrecy and stealth are no longer his concern.
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    THE RADIO plays old songs, whets desire, drips sound like sweet liqueur – then the music fades and a voice floating on the air speaks of love and fresh-cut flowers.
    He remembers how quickly it all happened, his first glimpse of Faya on a Monday and then meeting her father by the end of that week, how Faya had adored him and how her father had written him off as a man of insufficient means. The embarrassment pained him, of course, but it also spurred him to save money and stow it where it couldn’t be found.
    He’d made his first attempt at betrothal on a cloudless day after cutting his hair and buying a new suit, but Faya’s widowed and pigheaded father dismissed the idea.

    â€œYou’re a boy with an uncertain future,” he said. “She will wait for a shopkeeper, for someone of real substance.” He mopped his brow with a hankie. “But do come again if circumstances provide.”
    After that, Faya’s father dispensed with formalities and complained about his feet. “No circulation,” he said. “The tip of my little toe is black.”
    When Faya realized that her suitor had gone, she wept and threatened to run away.
    Her father changed the lock on her bedroom door and kept the only key.
    On the same day, he ordered new shoes, his third pair, from the finest boot maker in England. These, like the previous pairs, were too tight, stopping enough blood at his ankles to leave him standing on senseless feet. Having spent so much money on the shoes, he wore them everywhere, to work and to church, for a stroll near the river, even to the Jackpot, where the shiny leather commanded more respect than any man deserves.
    A year or so later, Faya sent a letter, this one more urgent than the others. “My Dearest Havelock,” it said, “I’ve now refused a well-to-do butcher and a middle-aged banker. If you don’t come soon, I fear I’ll be carried off.”
    Charged by the letter, he once again donned his suit and called on Faya’s father.
    He stood on the welcome mat and knocked.
    After a long interval, Faya’s father, red-faced and grimacing, opened the door. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he leaned and swayed, his swollen feet crammed into the shoes. He winced when he took a step. He hated to admit it, but several of his toes had turned black. “The leather needs more stretching,” he groused. “How difficult can cowhide be?” He said he appreciated the visit but wouldn’t discuss an engagement. “These feet are causing me too much trouble. Give it a month or two,” he said, “and we’ll see where things stand.”
    â€œFather can’t hold out forever,” said Faya. “Do what he asks.”
    â€œAll right,” he said, “I will. But it’s all for you, not him.”

    In pursuing Faya, he’d been obliged to suffer a fool, a snob plagued by ill-fitting shoes, and so he felt nothing but satisfaction when he showed up for the third time, hat still in hand, and discovered that the old man could no longer answer the door. The gangrenous foot was gone, lopped off by a doctor who, according to Faya, dumped the shoes at the curb and burned them, expressing with some gusto his contempt for human vanity.
    The patient suitor spoke his piece, refusing to sit, unruffled in his shirt and tie, while Faya’s father reclined in a leather chair, his bandaged leg resting on a stool.
    â€œOnly one?” said the man without a foot. “What kind of shipping business uses one