�y��vlog

We don’t think of the thousand other bootblacks who will not meet their benefactors, boys whom the text dismisses as ruffians or ne’er-do-wells or simply never acknowledges at all.

Some bootblacks sat together under a tree talking to a soldier.

His pleasure in the attentions of the bootblack’s whisk reflected a consciousness about clothes unusual in a small-town man.

He forced himself to remember the dullest things he knew—bootblack, an application form, a wet towel on his bedroom floor.

At the corner two bootblacks caught me, one on either side, shrill and raucous, like blackbirds.