In the early days, long before the Age of Synthetic Fibers and prior to the Scratchy Woolen Times, everyone in the city had to go around naked. This was for a very good reason, and the reason was that there were no clothes. There were no clothes anywhere on Earth or in Heaven. There wasn't so much as a single shoelace to be had, not for love nor money. And so, of necessity, the people of the city went naked. The postal carriers delivered the mail naked. The meter readers read the meters naked. Even the garbage men picked up the garbage naked. People's feet, as you may well imagine, got very sore. And in winter their skins were a mass of goosebumps. How unhappy the people were, back then. How the high school girls longed for tube tops to show off their budding breasts. How the young men wished for faded jeans to cover their irrepressible hard-ons. And how the garbage collectors yearned for rubber boots and leather gloves. In those days both laundry detergents and coat hangers were unknown, and balls of lint the size of baby buggies rolled the streets in a state of bewildered homelessness. In those days only weeds grew in the lot behind our building, and the sky above the storm fence was always clear. it might have been cloudy except for the wind. The wind in those days was as bitter as chewed white silk. Clouds were blown away like so many cotton balls. For millions of wash-and-rinse cycles, the wind had the sky to itself. There came a morning that seemed like any other morning. The sun rose from behind the parking spiral. the streetlights shut off just as usual. But something, something round and yellow which no one had seen before, was hanging on the ragged upperedge of the storm fence. That thing was an old straw hat with a ripped brim. Myself, I thought nothing of it. I thought it was a discarded basket of some sort. The wind hissed through the storm fence and rattled the hat. The hat clung stubbornly to the ragged steel wires. Bitterly peeved, the wind whistled and wheedled at the hat's wickerwork. But still the hat refused to be dislodged. The longer the hat clung and flapped, the more fiercely the bitter wind blew, until it was peeveder than a roll of shag carpet left to mildew in the rain. All over the city, men's teeth chattered, and women blew on their hands. Children stood on one leg and rubbed their arms, wishing for sweaters, which had not yet been invented. Now it happened, the straw hat was not empty. Tucked inside it's crown were two passengers of the hat. One was a man's belt of brown leather with a cowboy buckle. The other was a woman's belt of red vinyl with a sterling silver buckle. Just before the wind could blow away the whole city, the two belts uncoiled themselves. They slithered down the mesh of the fence and wound their way across the vacant lot into the middle of the street. The streetlights and sidewalks and parking meters were fascinated by the hat and his passengers, because such things had never been seen before. The belts lifted their buckles into the wind and defiantly snickered their clasps at it. Then the two belts balanced on their tail tips. The brown belt bowed to the red belt, and the two began to dance. They coiled together, one round the otherrubbed their buckles together, and kissed with their tongues. Then the belts moaned the moans of leather-and-vinyl passion. the parking meters and the telephone poles fell silent. Even the wind fell silent. Buildings leaned this way or that in their efforts to get a better view. Our building was no different. The belts twisted together, slipped apart, and knotted together again until they'd tied themselves into a solid mass. Then scores of tiny beltlets--- brown leather beltlets and red vinyl beltlets and any number of other kinds of beltlets--- came slithering out from the core of their knotted parents. The beltlets swarmed on the surface of the mass, engulfing it within a interslithering spheroid of inching sliding stretching newborn beltlets. Beltlets cascaded from the spheroid onto the dirt. They poured from the weedy lot in all directions and filled the city. The wind went and sulked behind the parking spiral.

THE SHOE TREE

by Stepan Chapman

Illustrations are by George Parsons
Before long there were belts in every corner of the nation. Countless people were soon finding belts under beds or behind their sofas and wondering what the belts were for. When all the beltlets had dispersed, their parents crept away as well. But a strange thing remained in the middle of the street on the spot they'd recently occupied. It was a thing seen clearly from the windows of our building. And that thing, I can assure you, was a sapling composed entirely of shoes. In a matter of minutes, to the amazement of the telephone wires, the sapling grew into a mighty tree. The tree bore leaves, and each leaf was a shoe. Some leaves were loafers, and some were sandals. Some were high heels, and some were sensible flats. There were tap shoes, army boots, toe shoes, tennis shoes--- any kind of shoe you could name. And as fast as they sprouted, they fell to the pavement. The fallen shoes went creeping up the street and departed to parts unknown to seek their fortunes. The more shoes crept away, the more shoes grew on the tree. Certain people found shoes that fit, and tried them on. Other people thought that wearing shoes might possibly be a good idea. Many people began to feel that shoes should be required. Eventually all of the landmasses of the planet were fully equip with footwear. Since shoes come in pairs and see a lot of each other, they began to produce children. Some of the children were baby shoes. But many of them were other things--- things such as their fathers and mothers had never imagined. Some of the children were underpants, and some were silk shirts. Some were garter belts, and some were sequined evening dresses. Others were ties or suspenders or satin vests or aprons or jockstraps or rain slickers or bathrobes. Every kind of clothing was born from the coupling of those early shoes. And the whole thing started out with that ripped straw hat on the storm fence out back of our building. By this time the bitter wind had finished sulking and caught it's breath again. It blew through the city constantly, ferocious as tight italian shoes and as mean a shirt pins. The dandelions trembled in their nudity. The beech trees in the park bent down their branches in fear. But the people of the city were unimpressed. They merely bundled up in their warmest clothes. They put on scarves and gloves and mittens and earmuffs. Most of the clothes stayed and lived among the people. But some of the clothes went wild. These became the tribes of the Secret Clothes. Among them were the Blind Cave Gloves and the Deep-Swimming Socks, the Zebra-Striped Arctic Wading Boots and the Flying Hats of the Congo, and more besides whose names are lost from the human lexicon. Whether wild or domestic, all clothes everywhere remember the torn straw hat and his amorous passengers, the brown belt and the red belt. The bitter wind is blowing down our street tonight, pretending anger. But it stopped hating the clothes a long time ago. When the wind first saw the straw hat by the light of dawn, it knew it was licked. It knew that soon people everywhere would have warm coats and dry boots. and after all these years, the wind isn't nearly as petulant as it sounds. Now it only hisses at the window stripping because it likes to scare our underwear. Yes, that's really the only reason. The wind wants to intimidate the clean underwear in our underwear drawers. It likes to hear one little underpants cling to the elastic of another little underpants and say, "Listen to that wind. It must be awful out there." It loves to hear the other little underpants say, "Brrrrrrrr!"

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