Sylvia Ross

The first few years she wore them I didn't even notice the leather's soft tan, and the buckskin laces roughly looped. By the time I paid attention, her feet had already curved the shoes inward, weather had toughened the soft leather, and one lace had broken short. Then I asked where she got those shoes and she said from the Indian store down in Mountain View. Some other time, another year, I asked the name of the Indian store that sold handmade shoes like hers, but she said it went out of business and no store sold mocs with vodka splatters and Yosemite dirt ground in with a little tamale pie, so I couldn't buy shoes like hers anyway. Last summer, laughing and crying together, in the campground at Lake Mendocino, on the night before her youngest son's wedding while the men drank beer and talked of politics and sports, I told her how much I really, really liked those old shoes of hers. So she took them off and gave them to me. Those beat-up, raggedy Kaibab moccasins I wear are stained and worn rough by hard years in my friend's life. I wear them when I need her courage.