Stanley took a shower—if you could call it that, ate dinner—if you could call it that, and went to bed—if you could call his smelly and scratchy cot a bed.
Because of the scarcity of water, each camper was only allowed a four-minute shower. It took Stanley nearly that long to get used to the cold water. There was no knob for hot water. He kept stepping into, then jumping back from, the spray, until the water shut off automatically. He never managed to use his bar of soap, which was just as well, because he wouldn’t have had time to rinse off the suds. Dinner was some kind of stewed meat and vegetables. The meat was brown and the vegetables had once been green. Everything tasted pretty much the same. He ate it all, and used his slice of white bread to mop up the juice. Stanley had never been one to
leave food on his plate, no matter how it tasted. “What’d you do?” one of the campers asked him. At first Stanley didn’t know what he meant. “They sent you here for a reason.”
“Oh,” he realized. “I stole a pair of sneakers.”
The other boys thought that was funny. Stanley wasn’t sure why.
Maybe because their crimes were a lot worse than stealing shoes. “From a store, or were they on someone’s feet?” asked Squid.
“Uh, neither,” Stanley answered. “They belonged to Clyde Livingston.”
Nobody believed him.
“Sweet Feet?” said X-Ray. “Yeah, right!” “No way,” said Squid.
Now, as Stanley lay on his cot, he thought it was kind of funny in a way. Nobody had believed him when he said he was innocent. Now, when he said he stole them, nobody believed him either.
Clyde “Sweet Feet” Livingston was a famous baseball player. He’d led the American League in stolen bases over the last three years. He was also the only player in history to ever hit four triples in one game.
Stanley had a poster of him hanging on the wall of his bedroom. He used to have the poster anyway. He didn’t know where it was now. It had been taken by the police and was used as evidence of his guilt in the courtroom.
Clyde Livingston also came to court. In spite of everything, when Stanley found out that Sweet Feet was going to be there, he was actually excited about the prospect of meeting his hero.
Clyde Livingston testified that they were his sneakers and that he had donated them to help raise money for the homeless shelter. He said he couldn’t imagine what kind of horrible person would steal from homeless children.
That was the worst part for Stanley. His hero thought he was a no-good-dirty-rotten thief.
As Stanley tried to turn over on his cot, he was afraid it was going to collapse under all his weight. He barely fit in it. When he finally managed to roll over on his stomach, the smell was so bad that he had to turn over again and try sleeping on his back. The cot smelled like sour milk.
Though it was night, the air was still very warm. Armpit was snoring two cots away.
Back at school, a bully named Derrick Dunne used to torment Stanley. The teachers never took Stanley’s complaints seriously, because Derrick was so much smaller than Stanley. Some teachers even seemed to find it amusing that a little kid like Derrick could pick on someone as big as Stanley.
On the day Stanley was arrested, Derrick had taken Stanley’s notebook and, after a long game of come-and-get-it, finally dropped it in the toilet in the boys’ restroom. By the time Stanley retrieved it, he had missed his bus and had to walk home.
It was while he was walking home, carrying his wet notebook, with the prospect of having to copy the ruined pages, that the sneakers fell from the sky.
“I was walking home and the sneakers fell from the sky,” he had told the judge. “One hit me on the head.”
It had hurt, too.
They hadn’t exactly fallen from the sky. He had just walked out from under a freeway overpass when the shoe hit him on the head.
Stanley took it as some kind of sign. His father had been trying to figure out a way to recycle old sneakers, and suddenly a pair of sneakers fell on top of him, seemingly out of nowhere, like a gift from God.
Naturally, he had no way of knowing they belonged to Clyde Livingston. In fact, the shoes were anything but sweet. Whoever had worn them had had a bad case of foot odor.
Stanley couldn’t help but think that there was something special about the shoes, that they would somehow provide the key to his father’s invention. It was too much of a coincidence to be a mere accident. Stanley had felt like he was holding destiny’s shoes.
He ran. Thinking back now, he wasn’t sure why he ran. Maybe he was in a hurry to bring the shoes to his father, or maybe he was trying to run away from his miserable and humiliating day at school.
A patrol car pulled up next to him, and a policeman questioned why he was running. After taking the shoes, the officer made a call on his radio. Shortly afterward, Stanley was arrested.
The sneakers turned out to be stolen from a display at the homeless shelter. That evening, wealthy patrons were set to visit the shelter, paying a hundred dollars each to eat the same food the homeless received for free. Clyde Livingston, who had once stayed at the shelter as a child, was scheduled to speak and sign autographs. His shoes were to be auctioned, expected to fetch over five thousand dollars, with all proceeds benefiting the homeless.
Due to the baseball season, Stanley’s trial was postponed for several months. His family couldn’t afford a lawyer. “You don’t need a lawyer,” his mother said. “Just tell the truth.”
Stanley did tell the truth, but perhaps a small lie might have served him better. He could have claimed he found the shoes on the street. No one believed his story that they fell from the sky.
He realized it wasn’t fate; it was his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather!
The judge condemned Stanley’s actions as despicable. “The shoes were valued at over five thousand dollars, money meant to provide food and shelter for the homeless. You stole that from them just for a souvenir.”
The judge mentioned an opening at Camp Green Lake, suggesting that the camp’s discipline might benefit Stanley’s character. It was either that or jail. Stanley’s parents requested time to learn more about Camp Green Lake, but the judge urged a swift decision. “Vacancies don’t last long at Camp Green Lake.”
