Dandelion Wine Read Online Free PDF

to be alert, stay alert? Litefoot, then! Litefoot!”
    He held his coin bank up and heard the faint small tinkling, the airy weight of money there.
    Whatever you want, he thought, you got to make your own way. During the night now, let’s find that path through the forest....
    Downtown, the store lights went out, one by one. A wind blew in the window. It was like a river going downstream and his feet wanting to go with it.
    In his dreams he heard a rabbit running running running in the deep warm grass.
    O ld Mr. Sanderson moved through his shoe store as the proprietor of a pet shop must move through his shop where are kenneled animals from everywhere in the world, touching each one briefly along the way. Mr. Sanderson brushed his hands over the shoes in the window, and some of them were like cats to him and some were like dogs; he touched each pair with concern, adjusting laces, fixing tongues. Then he stood in the exact center of the carpet and looked around, nodding.
    There was a sound of growing thunder.
    One moment, the door to Sanderson’s Shoe Emporium was empty. The next, Douglas Spaulding stood clumsily there, staring down at his leather shoes as if these heavy things could not be pulled up out of the cement. The thunder had stopped when his shoes stopped. Now, with painful slowness, daring to look only at the money in his cupped hand, Douglas moved out of the bright sunlight of Saturday noon. He made careful stacks of nickels, dimes, and quarters on the counter, like someone playing chess and worried if the next move carried him out into sun or deep into shadow.
    â€œDon’t say a word!” said Mr. Sanderson.
    Douglas froze.
    â€œFirst, I know just what you want to buy,” said Mr. Sanderson. “Second, I see you every afternoon at my window; you think I don’t see? You’re wrong. Third, to give it its full name, you want the Royal Crown Cream-Sponge Para Litefoot Tennis Shoes: ‘L IKE M ENTHOL ON Y OUR F EET !’ Fourth, you want credit.”
    â€œNo!” cried Douglas, breathing hard, as if he’d run all night in his dreams. “I got something better than credit to offer!” he gasped. “Before I tell, Mr. Sanderson, you got to do me one small favor. Can you remember when was the last time you yourself wore a pair of Litefoot sneakers, sir?”
    Mr. Sanderson’s face darkened. “Oh, ten, twenty, say, thirty years ago. Why …? ”
    â€œMr. Sanderson, don’t you think you owe it to your customers, sir, to at least try the tennis shoes you sell, for just one minute, so you know how they feel? People forget if they don’t keep testing things. United Cigar Store man smokes cigars, don’t he? Candy-store man samples his own stuff, I should think. So …”
    â€œYou may have noticed,” said the old man, “I’m wearing shoes.”
    â€œBut not sneakers, sir! How you going to sell sneakers unless you can rave about them and how you going to rave about them unless you know them?”
    Mr. Sanderson backed off a little distance from the boy’s fever, one hand to his chin. “Well …”
    â€œMr. Sanderson,” said Douglas, “you sell me something and I’ll sell you something just as valuable.”
    â€œIs it absolutely necessary to the sale that I put on a pair of the sneakers, boy?” said the old man.
    â€œI sure wish you could, sir!”
    The old man sighed. A minute later, seated panting quietly, he laced the tennis shoes to his long narrow feet. They looked detached and alien down there next to the dark cuffs of his business suit. Mr. Sanderson stood up.
    â€œHow do they feel?” asked the boy.
    â€œHow do they feel, he asks; they feel fine.” He started to sit down.
    â€œPlease!” Douglas held out his hand. “Mr. Sanderson, now could you kind of rock back and forth a little, sponge around, bounce kind of, while I tell you the rest? It’s this: I