Evan scanned the huge bulletin board in the hall of the student union more from boredom than interest. Then he saw it, fluorescent lemon yellow and hand-lettered in a sea of grainy photocopies advertising for roommates or used textbooks. "WANTED: Evangelist!" it screamed. Intrigued, he took a closer look. There was nothing else on the sheet except an address.

The friend for whom Evan had been waiting appeared, apologetic at being late, and for the moment, the poster was forgotten. Evan was in the computer room, waiting for his printout at the hopelessly slow band printer when he thought about it again, because there was a lime green one just like it on the bulletin board in the computer lab.

When the hot pink one caught his eye in the cafeteria, he silently conceded to fate and jotted down the address. He asked one or two of his classmates if they knew anything about this mysterious ad, but no one else had noticed it.

He'd almost managed to forget about it once more, studying feverishly for a history mid-term when he heard a little noise behind him and found that an electric blue copy of the poster had been shoved under his door. His concentration now broken, Evan glanced at the clock and realized it wasn't yet 4:00 p.m. He knew he should be cramming all the facts he'd ignored into his poor brain, but the curiosity about the posters was stronger. He closed his book, picked up his jacket and headed out the door.

The address was four or five blocks off campus, in an older, somewhat shabby neighborhood. He found the street, and then the number. It a shoe repair business located in the basement of one of the delapidated brownstones, and the lettering on the shop's window read "R. Simonds, Shoemaker" in arched gold lettering. Beneath the name, in italic script, was the simple phrase "We remember how to make shoes."

Now that he'd found the source of these posters, Evan had more questions than he had in the beginning. He'd expected some pentecostal minister looking for college students still altruistic enough to commit to volunteer work. This small shoemaker's shop didn't fit his expectation at all. Just slightly mistrustful, but his burning curiosity unquenched, Evan walked across the street and leaned against a lamp post, watching the storefront.

As the daylight dimmed and the shop lights came on, he was able to pick out three people in the store, a bald older man with wire-rimmed glasses and a thick mustache, a college-aged girl (quite pretty, he noticed), and a younger boy. Everyone was smiling, and after the third time they'd erupted into laughter, Evan gave in and walked back across the street to enter the store. The door's opening triggered bells attached to the transom, and as he glanced up, Evan's mind flashed to a short clip from "It's A Wonderful Life," in which an angel is said to earn its wings for every bell that rings.

"Hello," the old man called out pleasantly. "What can we do for you today?" Still distracted by his memories, Evan turned back to the shopkeeper, noticing the man's bright blue eyes and his leather apron.

"I came about the poster," he started, and paused while he tried to formulate just why he'd come. "Well, I guess you could say I was curious about the ad." He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the electric blue sheet that had been shoved beneath his door. "I've been seeing these all around campus and thought I'd come and see what it's all about. Are you 'R. Simonds?'"

The girl and the old man exchanged a glance and a smile, and the boy started to chuckle. "Sure, sure," the old man assured him. "I'm Raymond Simonds, and this is my shop." He walked to the end of the counter and swung open a gate. "Come on back here, young man. What is your name?"

"Ah, Evan," he replied, hesitating slightly before accepting Mr. Simond's invitation. "What religion are you recruiting for?"

"Oh, no, it's not religious," the boy said. "At least not church religious." The girl ruffled his hair and he stopped with a gesture of mock annoyance. "Is it, Ray?"

"No, Steve's right. It's not religious." He went to the rear of the shop and returned with a stool for Evan. "Please, sit down." The girl and Steve went back to their work, and Ray sat down on a stool near him.

"Nobody wants to be a shoemaker any more. Not a very glamorous profession, I have to admit. Fewer and fewer people even think to use us any more." He gestured down to Evan's feet. "Athletic shoes."

Evan had to admit, he couldn't remember ever having taken anything to a shoemaker, nor had he even considered it. "No offense, but isn't it kind of a dying profession? You said yourself -- no one uses shoemakers any more."

Ray just smiled, and gestured for Ray to follow him as he moved through the rows of shelves in the back of the store. "You're about a nine and a half, aren't you?" It took Evan a couple of seconds to realize what Ray meant, then he nodded.

Ray stopped in front of a shelf, reached up and pulled down a pair of intricately tooled cowboy boots in a rich, deep brown. He handed them to Evan, and he had to admit that the boots were a thing of beauty. "These are really nice," Evan said, "but who wears cowboy boots around here?"

"Humor me," Ray encouraged him with a smile, and held them out to Evan. Self-consciously, Evan kicked off one of his sneakers and pulled on a boot. "Now the other one," Ray said, and Evan put the second boot on. "Do they fit alright? Good. Now walk to the front of the store."

Evan had never had footwear as comfortable as the boots he wore now. They seemed to change his entire gait, his posture, his whole way of presenting himself. The transformation was remarkable. "Wow!" he exclaimed as he returned to where Ray stood. "These feel great!"

Ray nodded, smiling. "You can't get that kind of fit or quality from an assembly line. You may have to resole those at some point, but you will never have to replace them...that is if you can find someone to do the work."

"What about them?" he asked, gesturing toward the girl and Steve. "Aren't they your apprentices?"

Ray shook his head. "Emma is my granddaughter, and although I would love for her to follow in my footsteps, her talent lies in other directions. She is a genius with flowers. She will have her own florist shop some day. And Steve, well Steve is young and although he's interested in becoming a shoemaker now, that may not last. I can't wait for him. I'm getting old."

Evan thought about his own plans after college. He'd been taking classes for almost three full years now and hadn't decided what he wanted to do when he graduated. He hadn't even been able to decide upon a major, and had switched his several times before giving up and declaring liberal arts.

"Why did you advertise for an evangelist?" Evan asked.

"Because there is so much more to this profession than simply sitting in the shop waiting for someone to bring in a pair of shoes to be repaired," Ray explained. "If that was all I did I would have had to shut the doors years ago.

"What else is there?" Evan asked.

"You have to make people see what's happening," Ray began, and Evan began to wonder if this was where Ray became a raving lunatic. "You have to make them see that it's wrong to perpetuate this disposable society we're living in. People keep buying cheap shoes, thinking that they can afford to throw them away and buy new ones because they are so inexpensive.

"But what they're doing will, in the long run, cost us all. Do you know that there are three times as many podiatrists today as there were a decade ago? Ten times as many chiropractors? And do you know why? It's because so many people have taken to wearing inexpensive shoes that don't provide the proper support for their feet. Have you so much as thought about your feet while you have been wearing those boots?"

Evan shook his head and looked down. "That's right," Ray continued. "That's because those boots were made by someone who knows how a shoe needs to fit. And it's more than that. Do you know how old those particular boots are?"

Evan shook his head again, then felt foolish for being so inarticulate. "Two or three years, maybe?" He'd been sure that they were brand new.

Ray smiled at him. "I made that particular pair of boots thirty years ago. The man that bought them wore them until the day he died, and he left them to me in his will with the stipulation that I pass them on to someone else who might be able to appreciate them as much as he did."

The old man stretched a little, and sighed. "No, it's not enough to be a good shoemaker these days. You need to convince people that they need good shoes. You need to convince them that there's a compelling reason to buy a pair of shoes or boots that will cost them three or four times as much as what they could buy in a shoe store. You need to convince them that it's worth coming in and being fitted, then waiting one or two weeks for the shoes to be completed. Everyone is in such a hurry these days." Ray shook his head sadly.

"Do you know that in the Metropolitan Museum they have a pair of kid boots that belonged to Lucretia Borgia? What was that, five hundred, six hundred years ago? And the boots are still there. I saw them on PBS. They actually had someone put them on and walk around in them. Six hundred year old boots and they were still useable."

He gestured toward the boots on Evan's feet. "Who knows? If you take care of them, they might be around six hundred years from now."

"I can't afford these," Evan started to protest and began to pull them off, but Ray gestured for him to stop.

"No, take them with my blessing," Ray told him. "I've already been paid for them once."

Evan felt uncomfortable, not knowing what to say. "Thank you," he muttered finally. Then he looked into Ray's face. "Thank you very much. These are wonderful boots."

Ray shrugged. "I know they're probably not the fashion on campus these days. But they'll last you for years, and they won't hurt your feet." He gestured for Evan to move toward the front of the store. "So what do you think, Evan? Is shoemaking doomed to extinction like the dinosaurs?"

"I hope not," Evan told him earnestly. They had reached the counter, and Emma was turning the sign in the door to read "Closed." "Can I come back again? To talk to you, I mean?" Emma overheard his question and looked back at him with a smile.

"Sure, sure, any time, young man." He shook Evan's hand and walked him to the door.

"Well, goodbye," Evan said awkwardly. "It was nice to meet you and thank you for the boots."

Ray smiled at him, opened the door and ushered him out. He pulled the shades on the door and the shop window and turned back to Emma with a wide grin on his face. "I think we've got one," he told her gleefully, and she responded with a smile of her own.

It was a chilly evening, and Evan buried his hands in his pocket as he walked back to the dorm. He knew he should be thinking about tomorrow's history mid-term, but instead, he couldn't stop thinking about Lucretia Borgia's boots and how different he felt in a those of a dead man.

Maybe when he returned to Ray's shop, he'd ask him more about the previous owner of his new footwear. Maybe he'd get up the nerve to ask Emma out. Maybe he'd talk to his advisor tomorrow and see if there was a way he could get credit toward his degree by learning to make shoes. Maybe he'd take a marketing class and see if he could develop an advertising campaign for hand-made shoes.

Then he wondered if this was how the apostles had started out.

Props to the CHPercolator List for the prompts
February 17, 2001
2,106 words