"shoesmaketheman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davis Harold A)

SHOES MAKE THE MAN
by HAROLD A. DAVIS

He was too good-natured, until his shoes began to pinch!


JOE McCARTHY knew that he was too good-natured. He had always been that way, He
blamed it on his size. Even when he'd been a kid, he'd been extra large for his
age. Not being of the bullying type, he'd learned to shrug and smile when youths
smaller than himself tried to get tough. He'd never been able to convince himself
that it was sporting to hit an opponent he knew he could lick with one hand tied
behind his back.

It had been just as bad when he was grown. The school-day-nickname of Happy had
seemed to fit him even more than before. Huge, weighing almost two hundred and fifty
pounds that was all muscle, he had gone cheerfully on his way, determined to achieve
his one ambition.

But now, for probably the first time in his life, he wasn't smiling. He swung out
of city hall, limping just a trifle--in his good-natured way, he had permitted a
clerk to sell him a pair of shoes that were too small--his round moonlike features
set into as close an imitation to a scowl as he could manage.

A small man, head down to escape the slight rain that was falling, crashed into him.

Automatically, Joe McCarthy stepped back and smiled. "Pardon me," he grinned.

The small man looked up, a curse on his lips. The curse died, as he saw Joe McCarthy's
size. He scuttled on swiftly.

The scowl returned to Joe McCarthy's round features. There it was again, the habit of
a lifetime, a habit he couldn't seem to break. Even when the other fellow was in the
wrong, he couldn't get mad and tear into him like most people would. No, he had to
back up and apologize.

Joe McCarthy's big ears reddened slightly; doggedly he limped on.

That habit of his, that habit of always smiling, of never getting mad, was going to
cost him the one job he had ever wanted--was going to balk an ambition he had since
he was ten.

His lips tightened a moment, only to relax again as he thought how much Police
Commissioner Pike had resembled a bantam rooster in strutting about his office. The
smile faded and the red spread from his ears to his moonlike face, as he recalled
Commissioner Pike's words. The commissioner had put it bluntly, and the words he'd
used had ended hope for Joe McCarthy.

"I like you, Joe. Everyone likes you," Commissioner Pike had rasped. "But that's just
the trouble. You've never gotten mad in your life. You never will. And cops in this