It isn’t something that you would see every day. A pair of flip-flops (or what my sisters and I, as children in the Philippines and Hawaii living on Air Force Bases, called zoris or thongs) abandoned on a bridge overlooking a river in the Hill Country of Texas. Not tossed aside, or dropped. Not taken off and left behind. But, rather, stepped out of, in stride, so that the left one was slightly ahead of the right one on the concrete walkway. A woman’s pair of shoes. Perhaps size seven or eight. Plain. Black. Not expensive, but not the cheap shower-stall kind. Avoid of decoration or identification.
What should one do about the odd encounter? Scoot them aside? Step over them? Pick them up and carry them to the nearest trash bin? Toss them over the bridge into a headlong plunge to the rocks and water below? More importantly, who was the woman and why had she walked out of her shoes? Had she gone on barefoot? Had she been alone or with a friend? Had she been running from a pursuer? Had she jettisoned foot ware in order to move faster? Had she decided to no longer be earthbound, but instead climbed up the bridge struts to exit this Earth by leaping and flying off into a star-studded sky?
The scenario could easily be the beginning of a novel. An entire crime scene might unfold, the headline reading, “Nothing left but the shoes.” Part of the investigation would involve the research of where the flip-flops were purchased, how much they cost, and who might have owned them. Kept as evidence they would have been given a tag, been enshrined in a plastic bag within labeled box and stored in a closet or warehouse.
If, by walking out of her shoes, the woman left behind much more than a ten-dollar investment, would anyone ever discover who she was and why she had fled? Did she wish to erase her identity, give up her past, let go of a difficult relationship or an abundance of debt? Or, maybe a likely outcome, would she miss her favorite pair of shoes and return for them, apologize, put them back on with chagrin and maybe even shame? Would she ever walk the same way again, or follow the same path?