“Looly-Dooly!” is what my feet are singing today. Or perhaps it is the shoes who do the singing. The feet are inside. Maybe they are even the vocal cords or throat or some such thing. But the shoe would be the singer, or at least the face that most people would attribute the words to.

So, then I shall say that my shoes are singing “Looly-Dooly!” as they Kloomp along the red brick road downtown. I may be the only one who uses the Kloomping technique of walking. My shoes slide slyly and slowly. It tickles the sweet red bricks all playful like until they laugh their little fucking heads off. I giggle back at them sometimes when the mood strikes me.

I look around for other Kloompers, but only see people with mean old elephant feet. These feet are made of tumors that get bigger and heavier everyday and make the road say, “My cousin Sam is a dirt driveway in the country. Nice white chickens cluck cluck and eat his gravel. Barefoot children pitter patter with their tiny toes and draw smiles in his sand. SIGH.”

Today, the road looks like Sally to me. She is not red. She is not a brick. And I don’t think she has ever been a brick. As long as I have known her, she has been a woman. A woman who works at the library.

Secretly, I think she is a Kloomper. I have not seen her walking style; she is always sitting behind a desk. But I have seen her staple papers together. She squeezes the stapler like it is her husband’s hand. If her husband exists. I do not know if she has a husband or if that husband that she has exists. But you must imagine. The stapler is like her husband’s hand—in the future—when they are both at the point in life when the skeleton frequently tries to jump out of the skin and tunnel under a pile of dirt. She wants him to know that her hand is there and full of love energy, but she doesn’t want to turn his hand into a pile of pretzel crumbs.

One of the bricks in the road reminds me of her eyebrow. It is red like the others and there are cigarettes and dog poo all over it. Sally doesn’t usually have cigarettes and dog poo all over her, but if she did I would still like her. Her spirit is a bright red like the brick and it would glow and shout until the poo and cigarettes decided to let her have all the attention.

I decide to pet the brick that looks like her eyebrow.

When my thumb goes in one direction, it says, “Wake up you little bastards!” Then all the hairs on Sally’s eyebrow stand up and pretend they didn’t fall asleep.

When my thumb goes in the other direction, the hairs on Sally’s eyebrow lie down and say, “MEOW MEOW I am a tired lazy fat cat.” Then they sleep all day.

Today will be the day when I ask Sally to go to the new giraffe exhibit at the zoo with me. I am afraid that she will say, “I like girls.” or “I will be eating string beans on that particular day.” or “you look like a rusty tambourine waiting in front of a deaf man’s shack for the garbage man to come.”

There have been many signs, though that Sally is in love with me. One time, I said, “I’d like to check out this book about owl habitats.”

Then she said, “Okay,” and stamped the due date on a little paper card so I wouldn’t forget when to bring the book back.

But even with this evidence, I figure it couldn’t hurt to bring a gift along when I ask her out. Maybe it will make her feel obligated to stare at some giraffes in my company.

All this Kloomping brings me to the bookstore somehow. A lady is there on the couch and she is a wave in the ocean and she is coming towards me and her mist says, “Shush”.

“What?” I say. She had said something. Or I thought she had said something.

“What?” She says. We what? each other for some time. Eventually I say WHAT with an exclamation point after it. She hears my exclamation point and takes it and puts it in that pouch on the front of her overalls. OVERALLS. Once is not enough with that word.

OVER

ALLS

“Fish books.” I say.

“No. Or Yes.” she says.

“Oh?”

“No, if you like the blue gill. I mean if you are looking for the blue gill. A book about the blue gill that is.” Her words begin to find it difficult to climb in my ears. There are already so many words swimming around deeper inside. And they have covered the entrance with more fur and bigger greasy yellow walls. Inside is where I begin to decide what her lips want me to know. “It was sold not more than an hour ago to a woman with teeth. Teeth that I noticed. Most women have teeth, I think.”

“Maybe.”

“Does your grandpa still shoot little kids’ dogs?”

“I don’t have a grandpa anymore.”

“He must be somewhere.”

I decide to leave the bookstore for some reason. Maybe I’m tired or maybe the ceiling at the store is too low. I’m not sure. But, either way, I continue walking around town in my Kloompy fashion.

“Apples for sale!” This is what a man on the street selling apples is saying. He has a moustache. I don’t like his moustache.

“How many apples do you have?” I ask. It looks like he has a lot of them.

“I couldn’t tell you.” I’m not sure why he wants to keep that number a secret, but it makes me like him less.

“Do you have one apple? That’s how many apples I would like.” I figure an apple is a better gift for Sally. She doesn’t eat books about fish.

“I’ll see if I can find one apple...Yes, here is one apple.” He gives me the one apple. It is red, like the brick that was Sally’s eyebrow. It is also red like all the bricks that are not Sally’s eyebrow.

When I arrive at the library, Sally is behind the check out desk at the library eating a tuna salad sandwich. I am standing in front of the desk tossing my apple up and down in the air.

“What kind of sandwich is that?” I have already decided the sandwich is tuna, but I don’t know what she has decided it is.

“A good one.”

“Oh my! Oh my!” I have not even thought of that possibility—“good” can be a type of sandwich! “You must be a Kloomper! I knew it!”

“No, my name is Sally Dargensmurg.” She points to a nametag I have seen before.

“Do your shoes tickle the ground like a Kloomper or stomp on it like an elephant? Surely you do not stomp!”

“No, I do not stomp.”

“Then you tickle?!”

“I will show you what my shoes do when I move.” I wait for her to stand up. Instead of standing up, she squeaks. The squeaking makes her face go further away from me.

Her chair is singing a song that says, “REEK REEK! WAH!” So, I show her the song my shoes sing—“Looly Dooly!” while I Kloomp behind her desk to understand the secret squeaker.

Her chair is a shoe. She is a foot. Or maybe her chair is a sandal, but it rolls and squeaks and brings her to places.

“Your squeaking can massage the bricks while my Kloomping can tickle them.” Now I know of three movers—the elephant foot, the Kloomper, and the squeaker. Yesterday the world only had two movers. My brain doesn’t have time for giraffes and zoos and women who look like bricks anymore.

I leave Sally in the library and eat my apple while starring at the lawn. I wonder how many ants are hiding in the grass.