Cannot Wait to Get to Heaven - Fannie Flagg [88]
“Is this door always locked?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Have you been up here lately?”
“No, not lately. The last time I can remember was when we had a couple of leaks and a company came and hot-mopped around that ledge.”
“When was that?”
“Three or four years ago.”
“Other than that, nobody’s been up here that you know of?”
“No.”
After the janitor unlocked the door for him, Winston walked up the narrow flight of stairs and pushed against the last door leading to the roof. It was either stuck or locked, he did not know which, but he kept pushing and shoving it until he was finally able to open it far enough to step out onto the roof. This building faced the south, and the sun was blinding as it reflected off of the light gray gravel that covered the entire roof. The afternoon heat was rising from the floor as he walked around and looked behind every chimney, but the only thing he found was an old mop handle. He walked around to the other side and glanced over behind the chimney closest to the ledge of the building. Nothing. He walked around the other side and looked. Suddenly he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up and started to break out in an ice-cold sweat. Lying on its side, wedged between the ledge and the chimney, was one brown golf shoe with cleats. Jesus Christ!
He closed his eyes and opened them again to make sure he was not hallucinating. He looked again. No. It was there, all right, exactly as she had described it. Sprague’s clothes were now wringing wet and sticking to him. He forced himself to walk over closer to it. He stood there looking down at it. Finally, after a moment, he cautiously nudged the shoe with his foot as if it were a snake that might bite. It did not move. He kicked it again. It still did not move. He crouched down and tried to pick it up, but still it would not budge. Half of the shoe was stuck in the black tar surrounding the chimney. He had to work at it for about five minutes with sweat pouring off of him, pulling it back and forth until it finally came loose in his hand. But now that he had the shoe, he stood there and wondered what the hell he was going to do with it, and how was he going to get the thing downstairs without anyone seeing him? He propped it up by the side of the door and ran down to the next floor and found a brown paper bag with half a sandwich inside in a trash can. Winston emptied the bag and ran back up and put the shoe in it, and then carried it under his arm. He went down the emergency stairs all the way to the basement, crossed over to the main building, and ran into the bathroom. He scrubbed as much of the tar off his hands as he could and hid the sack behind a door, and wondered why he was feeling like a criminal. He then ran back upstairs to Franklin Pixton’s office, ducked into the office, closed the door behind him, and stood against it, out of breath and sweating.
A surprised Pixton looked up at him. “What are you doing here? Why is your face so red? Have you been running?”
Sprague said, “A shoe on the roof!”
“A shoe on what roof?”
“In the deposition…the old lady, Mrs. Shimfissle…swore…she saw a shoe on the hospital roof.”
“So?”
“You d-don’t understand,” he sputtered. “She said she was floating around in the air up over the hospital and saw a shoe on the roof…and when I went up there, there was a shoe on the roof!”
“Are you making this up just to irritate me?”
“No. I’m telling you the truth, the shoe was exactly where she said it was.”
“Oh, come on, Winston, pull yourself together. It’s probably just a coincidence.”
“A coincidence? That it was in the exact spot she said it was, that it was a brown leather shoe? Not only a brown leather shoe, but a golf shoe!”
“She said it was a golf shoe?”
“Yes. A damn brown leather golf shoe and that’s exactly what it was. I’m telling you there is no way she could have seen that thing, unless she was really dead