The Boot Beside the Clean Door
Chapter 1The Visitor
One muddy boot stood outside the clean-room door.
It was enormous. Its loose laces lay like worms on the floor.
Mendy stopped with a bundle of old clothes in his arms.
"Who came in here?"
His friend Nochum looked at the boot. "Someone with one foot?"
They were building a scarecrow for the school's courtyard garden. Mr. Rosen had lent them an old coat, a hat, and two boots. The boots had dried mud on their soles.
The boys were supposed to keep those things on the newspaper spread near the outside door. The clean room held rolled rugs and spare chairs.
Mendy had promised they would not make a mess.
Now one boot stood exactly where a person would leave it before going inside.
Chapter 2The Terrible Trail
Mendy put down the clothes. A brown mark crossed the floor beside the boot.
It pointed toward the clean room.
"We must have tracked mud inside," he said.
Nochum bent to look without touching it.
"That is a straight mark."
"A boot can slide."
Mendy pictured the muddy floor under the rolled rugs. He pictured Mr. Rosen opening the door. Then he pictured their scarecrow standing nowhere at all because they had lost permission to build it.
He caught the handle of the clean-room door.
"We should fix it before anyone sees."
The handle did not turn. The room was locked.
Nochum said, "We can ask for the key."
That meant telling Mr. Rosen.
Mendy let go of the handle.
Chapter 3The Second Boot
At the newspaper, only one boot remained.
Its heel faced the wall. Beside it were two dry crumbs of mud and the old hat.
Mendy tried to remember the last ten minutes.
He had moved the coat. Nochum had brought a strip of cloth for the belt. Then two younger boys had run past the outside door, but they had not come into the work area.
"Someone moved it," Mendy said.
"We moved things too," Nochum answered.
Mendy did not want a list of everything they had done. He wanted the boot back on the newspaper and the brown mark gone.
He picked up the stray boot by its top and carried it to the paper.
A second brown mark lay underneath it.
Both marks were long and straight. Neither looked like a boot sole.
Chapter 4What the Mat Carried
Mr. Rosen came back with a wooden crosspiece for the scarecrow.
Mendy stepped in front of the newspaper.
"There may be mud in the clean room. We found a boot by the door."
Mr. Rosen looked at the locked door.
"This has been locked since morning. Nobody has gone in."
Mendy stared at the handle.
Mr. Rosen pointed at the doormat, which lay partly across the passage.
"Who moved that?"
Nochum raised his hand. "I pulled it aside so we could spread out the coat."
Mendy remembered. He had put both boots on the mat while smoothing the newspaper. Then he had lifted one back onto the paper. Someone had called him about the coat before he moved the second.
Nochum had pulled the mat with the remaining boot still on it.
Its muddy underside had brushed two straight lines across the floor. When the mat stopped, the boot slid off its edge beside the clean-room door.
It had not walked there.
Chapter 5A Smaller Mess
Mendy laughed once, sharply.
"So there is no mess!"
Mr. Rosen looked at the two brown marks.
"There is this one."
Mendy's laugh stopped.
The large imagined disaster had vanished. The small actual job had not.
Mr. Rosen brought a damp cloth and showed them how to wipe the marks without spreading the dirt. Nochum held the mat up by its clean edges while Mendy wiped beneath it.
They washed their hands afterward.
"I pulled it," Nochum said.
"I left the boot on it," Mendy answered.
They returned the mat to the outside door and put the boots together on fresh paper.
Mr. Rosen unlocked the clean room to fetch two unused wooden stands.
Mendy looked in. The floor really was clean.
He had spent a long time being afraid of dirt that was not there.
Chapter 6Two Feet on Paper
The scarecrow's coat hung from the crosspiece. Its hat sloped over a cloth face.
The boots were too heavy to hang from its trouser legs. Mr. Rosen suggested setting them at the bottom once the frame was safely fixed in the garden.
Nochum wanted the toes pointing outward.
Mendy wanted them straight.
They tried both positions before deciding the crooked toes looked funnier.
When they carried the scarecrow outside, Mendy held the boots in a shallow tray lined with newspaper. He watched the actual ground instead of imagining a trail behind him.
At the garden bed, Mr. Rosen fixed the frame and the boys arranged its feet.
Nochum tucked the loose laces inside.
"Now it cannot trip over itself."
Mendy stood back.
The scarecrow looked as if it had come a long way and was glad to stop walking.
Inside, the passage was still clean. The mat was in its proper place.
Mendy checked before going home.
