Russ looked down at the shoe on the ground before him and decided it was, well. . . unremarkable. That was the only word that came to him. It was just a shoe, a woman's shoe, and that was all that it really was. It was not overly large, nor small, but average in size. It appeared to be well made, but not overly so. It wasn't cheap, but did not look particularly expensive either. It was a shoe a woman might wear to a PTA meeting, or a casual night out, appealing, yet also comfortable. It was neither utilitarian nor overtly glamourous. It was just. . . well. . .a shoe. No one would miss it if it wasn't there.
But there it was nonetheless, a shoe, alone, at once unremarkable . . . and staggering.
Russ could not escape these facts, nor thus, the obligation it laid upon him. This shoe required that he look at it, study it, and make judgment upon it, both as to its condition and to its importance. This was his place to do so, and while he felt fully equipped for the former of these tasks, the latter utterly escaped him. For that, there were simply no words that were adequate for that task.
And so, as required of him, he began to study the shoe before him, review it, draw some conclusion about that part of its condition that he could quantify. And for this part of the task, Russ was no neophyte. He'd been married a couple of times, raised two wonderful daughters and seen his family through hard times and good. He was accustomed to closets overflowing with named brand purses, bargain clutches, clothing of various qualities, both good and bad, and most assuredly shoes of every type and purpose. He'd seen more than his fair share of sneakers, pumps, boots and Crocs, but also plenty of heels from Jimmy Choo to Gucci to Louboutin. He was familiar with shoes that were to be worn and those that were to be admired, with those that served a function, and those whose only function was to make sure the wearer was seen. Utility vs. Promiscuity he categorized it. And, while this was no named brand footwear that might require a second mortgage to own, it was no bargain discount item either. There were embellishments certainly, accents, inlays, special stitching, but the stones were only adequate fakes, the accents were sparse, and the stitching and inlays were uneven and inconsistent.
The shoe in question lay lengthwise, half buried in the dirt, its exposed side heavily crusted and faded. It had clearly been here for some time, and yet, somehow, the bright emerald green, polished leather still held some of its original color, daring itself to yet be seen in the morning sunlight. It did not belong here, and yet somehow, it insisted on being noticed, as if the very weight of its existence required it.
Along the top of the heel were the remnants of ruby studs, cracked and weathered in ways real rubies would not, a few still partially retaining hints of their original red hue. Down the heel the remains of an intricate pattern or logo could faintly be seen. The main part of the leather that surrounded where the heel would have fit was an elegant though faded green, with equally faded red stitching that could still be made out in places along the seams. As the leather wrapped itself forward around the side of the shoe, it narrowed and tapered down toward the sole, eventually giving way to a delicate series of straps that would have gone along the top of the foot, and down onto the toe. Just the edges of most could be seen, just the tiniest of millimeters where they began to emerge and separate from the larger part of the leather sides, the remainder of their length lost somewhere in the dirt below. But one strap remained atop the dirt, askew from the rest of the shoe, stuck at an odd angle and bent awkwardly outward as if it demanded its own attention. As Russ watched it, it occasionally caught the wind, lifting itself from the dirt slightly, pulling, flapping as if striving to revive life into the rest of the shoe. But it was only a shoe. Any life it may have once had had belonged to the wearer alone, and had long since died with her absence.
He studied it again, more carefully, more slowly, bending forward slightly to get a better look, but there was not much more that he could make out about the shoe, not without digging it out and lifting it from the dirt, or touching it to test the material. Neither of which he would do, neither could he do. No, the shoe must remain untouched, as he was sure it had been for a very long time, until men wiser than he saw fit to examine it more closely.
But even upon this simple examination, of an unremarkable, singular shoe, he knew this, that this was a shoe of leisure. This was a shoe of largesse. The woman who had bought this shoe and worn it had not done so because it served any practical purpose. This shoe was worn without worries, without concerns. The woman who had worn this shoe had done so for pleasure, for fun, and maybe even for a little show. She was under no current demands, relaxed and at ease with no schedule to keep. She would have worn this shoe with a feeling of complete safety, relaxation, and comfort, in herself as well as her surroundings.
And that dichotomy of purpose and position made the remainder of his required examination all the more unfathomable.
It was only a shoe. A shoe that was in and of itself unremarkable. It was a shoe that spoke of profound comfort and ease of purpose. A shoe that someone had found . . . simply nice to have.
All of this Russ ascertained in a matter of moments. All of this came to him with little thought or need for overly careful analysis. It was, after all, simply a shoe, a common, everyday item with which he had no small amount of familiarity.
But how to measure its importance?! This he could not comprehend, and the simple attempt of fashioning a thought in that regard left him dizzy, lost, mentally speechless. There were simply no thoughts that were adequate, no words that could possibly suffice. The very concept left him reeling, as if the foundation of his universe had fallen away and there was nothing remaining to hold him in place.
It was only a shoe and yet. . . no. . . there were no words for it.
Commander Russel T. Grimm heaved a heavy sigh into his shaded visor, hearing the oxygen pump in his suit kick on momentarily to deal with the sudden exhalation, and turned to look behind him. His visor clouded for a moment, his breath visible on the tempered plexiglass, but only for a moment. There, about ten feet behind him, his footsteps clearly visible in the red dirt between it and himself, was the Eagle-13 landing module he had stepped out of only moments before. And all around it, as he let his sight pan slowly across the surrounding landscape, was the expanse of the Martian desert. Dusty, reddish in hue, beautiful and new, the planet's dunes stretching off in every direction, as far as the eye could see.
Commander Russel T. Grimm, commander of the first manned flight to Mars, the first man to set foot on the surface of the red planet, looked once again at the shoe half buried in the dirt before him.
There were no words indeed.
