Old Scalias

“It broke off again yesterday, as I was walking out of a meeting.”

He laid the boots on the counter. Well-worn Tomlinsons, made in that three-year window when they used some new-age glue company in Arizona. The stuff not only withered under vicious impact (i.e. heel whacking concrete, rather than soil, gravel, mud, a cowboy boot’s natural habitat) but disintegrated the wood, ever-so-slightly, so subsequent heels couldn’t fortify flush against moisture.

She realized he’d used the word “again”, in an isolated way.

“I brought them in here a year ago,” he continued. “Forty-five bucks should get me more than a year, right?”

It was that kind of day and her only solace was that Antonin Scalia had just died. She didn’t object with his politics, as much as the way the departed justice handled himself. Here was another god-complex gringo peering over his spectacles, acting like he truly knew what’s best, somehow, for millions of people. The other justices, even the conservatives, at least they feigned humility.

“These boots,” she said. “They don’t take new heels well. I do my best when people bring them in, but they’re known to break down. You can read about it online.”

“I guess what I’m asking –– is if you can fix them again.”

Though he didn’t have spectacles, she didn’t appreciate the way he let that one linger. He could just ask for a discount.

He was somewhat perturbed at losing Scalia. The court needed someone that defaulted to state’s rights. He didn’t like Citizens United, supported “the spirit” of Obergefell — but local laws line up with local values. That’s just a fact of nature, he believed.

“I can fix them again, sure,” she said and wrote $45 on an invoice.

He put a hand on the counter. “I’m not looking for a subscription to boot heels. I asked you to fix it the first time,” he said. “A year — that’s not fixing it.”

“For these boots, a year is fixing it,” she said. “You’re welcome to take them somewhere else.”

“You’re right next to my house and the cheapest — look, I’m asking you to fix them again.”

“And I’m telling you that I’m happy to,” and she tapped the invoice with her pen.

[Caleb Garling is a writer in San Francisco and the author of The St George’s Angling Club, a novel about the outdoors.]