Zebra Forest by Andina Rishe Gewirtz Page B

father.”
    “He must have hated the shoe store, then,” I said.
    Andrew Snow shook his head. “Oh, no, not at all. He liked people, too. Always reading and learning things and talking to the customers. He knew everything about feet, for example, and shoes. You know there are legends about shoes? He used to tell one about the emperor Vespasian, back in Rome. He said that Vespasian was a general laying siege to the Holy Land, and an old wise man came to talk to him there. While they were talking, Vespasian started putting on his shoes. He got one on, and a herald came in to tell him that back in Rome, the emperor had died, and he was to be the new one. After that, Vespasian couldn’t get on that second shoe. He didn’t know why until the sage told him that good news makes your feet swell. That’s the kind of thing my father loved. Stories like that.”
    I studied Andrew Snow, eating his vegetables across the table. He hadn’t shaved since he’d come to us, and a light red stubble had come out on his face, the hint of a beard that would be almost the color of his hair. Behind him, through the window, the Zebra Forest was collecting shadows as it edged toward twilight. It was Gran’s favorite time out there, and I tried to picture her upstairs. Maybe she was watching it now, like she used to. On good summer nights, Gran liked to come out and sit on the old glider behind the house, a prize she’d hauled over from someone’s front yard in town, where they’d put it out for junk.
    She’d sit there, rocking and picking at the rust on the seat, watching the darkness soften the edges of the Zebra. That’s what she called it — softening. It was a word I liked. Now I thought of her, upstairs, silent. She was different than I’d imagined, almost as different as the real Andrew Snow. She was a woman whose husband loved people, who sold shoes and talked and read, and who loved trees. She was a woman who made pancakes and loved tomatoes and had a son who went to the woods and learned about moss that could live, even without water.
    Andrew Snow was watching me. I saw that when I looked his way again, from the window. He didn’t turn away, and I felt awkward a moment. So I asked, “What did you want to be, before? A woodsman, like your dad?”
    He cocked his head at that, as if trying to remember. “I did like the trees,” he said. “Liked them a lot. But I liked books even better. You’ll laugh when I tell you what I had planned.”
    I shook my head. “I won’t,” I said.
    He smiled then. Andrew Snow’s smile made me forget a lot. And I forgot enough to smile back at him. “I wanted to be a librarian,” he said. “I thought they read all day.”

O nce I knew he loved books, I found the best of them for Andrew Snow. I figured as long as he spent half his time by the door, he might as well have something to read. And he did read, but he also sat by the door less. He spent a lot of time in the kitchen, keeping it in order and getting our meals. And one day he even started on the front room as I watched him from the stairs.
    On day fifteen, Rew came back down from his room. He didn’t say anything to me, and certainly not to Andrew Snow, but he settled himself on the couch and pulled out his chessboard and pieces.
    “Want to play?” I asked him. He ignored me, and I saw he was setting the board to play Fox and Hounds. Fox and Hounds is how Gran started teaching us to play chess. Instead of using all the pieces, you just use four pawns and one bishop. The fox has to try and get to the other side of the board, moving diagonally only on the black pieces, and the hounds have to try to stop him from doing it. If the hounds surround the fox, he’s captured, but if the fox gets through to the other side, he wins. You’d think the hounds would have the advantage, since there are more of them, but it isn’t true, because each of the hounds can move only one space at a time, and they can only go forward. So if you’re