Shoe Dog (7 page)

Of course! Johnson. I'd known him at Stanford. He'd been a runner, a pretty fair miler, and we'd competed against each other at several all-comer meets. And sometimes he'd gone for a run with me and Cale, then for a bite after. “Heya, Jeff,” I said, “what are you up to these days?” “Grad school,” he said, “studying anthro.” The plan was to become a social worker. “No kidding,” I said, arching an eyebrow. Johnson didn't seem the social worker type. I couldn't see him counseling drug addicts and placing orphans. Nor did he seem the
anthropologist type. I couldn't imagine him chatting up cannibals in New Guinea, or scouring Anasazi campsites with a toothbrush, sifting through goat dung for pottery shards.

But these, he said, were merely his daytime drudgeries. On weekends he was following his heart, selling shoes. “No!” I said. “Adidas,” he said. “Screw Adidas,” I said, “you should work for me, help me sell these new Japanese running shoes.”

I handed him a Tiger flat, told him about my trip to Japan, my meeting with Onitsuka. He bent the shoe, examined the sole. Pretty cool, he said. He was intrigued, but no. “I'm getting married,” he said. “Not sure I can take on a new venture right now.”

I didn't take his rejection to heart. It was the first time I'd heard the word “no” in months.

LIFE WAS GOOD.
Life was grand. I even had a sort of girlfriend, though I didn't have much time for her. I was happy, maybe as happy as I'd ever been, and happiness can be dangerous. It dulls the senses. Thus, I wasn't prepared for that dreadful letter.

It was from a high school wrestling coach in some benighted town back east, some little burg on Long Island called Valley Stream or Massapequa or Manhasset. I had to read it twice before I understood. The coach claimed that he was just back from Japan, where he'd met with top executives at Onitsuka, who'd anointed him their exclusive American distributor. Since he'd heard that I was selling Tigers, I was therefore poaching, and he ordered me—ordered me!—to stop.

Heart pounding, I phoned my cousin, Doug Houser. He'd graduated from Stanford Law School and was now working at a respected firm in town. I asked him to look into this Mr. Manhasset, find out what he could, then back the guy off with a letter. “Saying what, exactly?” Cousin Houser asked. “That any attempt to interfere with Blue Ribbon will be met with swift legal reprisal,” I said.

My “business” was two months old and I was embroiled in a legal battle? Served me right for daring to call myself happy.

Next I sat down and dashed off a frantic letter to Onitsuka.
Dear Sirs, I was very distressed to receive a letter this morning from a man in Manhasset, New York, who claims . . . ?

I waited for a response.

And waited.

I wrote again.

Nani mo
.

Nothing.

COUSIN HOUSER FOUND
out that Mr. Manhasset was something of a celebrity. Before becoming a high school wrestling coach, he'd been a model—one of the original Marlboro Men. Beautiful, I thought. Just what I need. A pissing match with some mythic American cowboy.

I went into a deep funk. I became such a grouch, such poor company, the girlfriend fell away. Each night I'd sit with my family at dinner, moving my mother's pot roast and vegetables around my plate. Then I'd sit with my father in the nook, staring glumly at the
TV
. “Buck,” my father said, “you look like someone hit you in the back of the head with a two-by-four. Snap out of it.”

But I couldn't. I kept going over my meeting at Onitsuka. The executives had shown me such
kei
. They'd bowed to me, and vice versa. I'd been straightforward with them, honest—for the most part. Sure, I hadn't “technically” owned a “business” called “Blue Ribbon.” But that was splitting hairs. I owned one now, and it had single-­handedly brought Tigers to the West Coast, and it could sell Tigers ten times faster if Onitsuka gave me half a chance. Instead the company was going to cut me out? Throw me over for the fricking Marlboro Man? Come to where the flavor is.

TOWARD SUMMER'S END
I still hadn't heard from Onitsuka, and I'd all but given up on the idea of selling shoes. Labor Day, however, I had a change of heart. I couldn't give up. Not yet. And not giving up meant flying back to Japan. I needed to force a showdown with Onitsuka.

I ran the idea by my father. He still didn't like me jackassing around with shoes. But what he really didn't like was someone mistreating his son. He furrowed his brow. “You should probably go,” he said.

I talked it over with my mother. “No probablys about it,” she said.

In fact, she'd drive me to the airport.

FIFTY YEARS LATER
I can see us in that car. I can recall every detail. It was a bright, clear day, no humidity, temperature in the low eighties. Both of us, quietly watching the sunlight play across the windshield, said nothing. The silence between us was like the silence on the many days she drove me to meets. I was too busy fighting my nerves to talk, and she, better than anyone, understood. She respected the lines we draw around ourselves in crisis.

Then, as we neared the airport, she broke the silence. “Just be yourself,” she said.

I looked out the window. Be myself. Really? Is that my best option?
To study the self is to forget the self.

I looked down. I certainly wasn't dressed like myself. I was wearing a new suit, a proper charcoal gray, and toting a small suitcase. In the side pocket was a new book:
How to Do Business with the Japanese
. Heaven only knows how or where I'd heard about it. And now I grimace to remember this last detail: I was also wearing a black bowler hat. I'd bought it expressly for this trip, thinking it made me look older. In fact it made me look mad. Stark, staring mad. As if I'd escaped from a Victorian insane asylum inside a painting by Magritte.

I SPENT MOST
of the flight memorizing
How to Do Business with the Japanese.
When my eyes grew tired I shut the book and stared out the window. I tried to talk to myself, to coach myself up. I told myself that I needed to put aside hurt feelings, put aside all thoughts of injustice, which would only make me emotional and keep me from thinking clearly. Emotion would be fatal. I needed to remain cool.

I thought back on my running career at Oregon. I'd competed with, and against, men far better, faster, more physically gifted. Many were future Olympians. And yet I'd trained myself to forget this unhappy fact. People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that's only true of people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, I'd learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past. You must forget that internal voice screaming, begging, “Not one more step!” And when it's not possible to forget it, you must negotiate with it. I thought over all the races in which my mind wanted one thing, and my body wanted another, those laps in which I'd had to tell my body, “Yes, you raise some excellent points, but let's keep going anyway . . .”

Despite all my negotiations with that voice, the skill had never come naturally, and now I feared that I was out of practice. As the plane swooped down toward Haneda Airport I told myself that I'd need to summon the old skill quickly, or lose.

I could not bear the thought of losing.

THE 1964 OLYMPICS
were about to be held in Japan, so I had my pick of brand-new, reasonably priced lodgings in Kobe. I got a room right downtown, at the Newport, which featured a revolving restaurant on the top. Just like the one atop the Space Needle—a touch of the Great Northwest to settle my nerves. Before unpacking, I phoned Onitsuka and left a message.
I'm here and I request a meeting.

Then I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the phone.

At last it rang. A prim-sounding secretary informed me that my contact at Onitsuka, Mr. Miyazaki, no longer worked there. Bad sign. His replacement, Mr. Morimoto, did not wish me to come to the company's headquarters. Very bad sign. Instead, she said, Mr. Morimoto would meet me for tea in my hotel's revolving restaurant. Tomorrow morning.

I went to bed early, slept fitfully. Dreams of car chases, prison, duels—the same dreams that always plagued me the night before a big meet, or date, or exam. I rose at dawn, ate a breakfast of raw egg poured over hot rice, and some grilled fish, and washed it down with a pot of green tea. Then, reciting memorized passages from
How to Do Business with the Japanese
, I shaved my pale jaws. I cut myself once or twice, and had trouble stopping the bleeding. I must have been a sight. Finally I put on my suit and shambled onto the elevator. As I pressed the button for the top floor I noticed that my hand was white as bone.

Morimoto arrived on time. He was about my age, but far more mature, more self-assured. He wore a rumpled sport coat and had a kind of rumpled face. We sat at a table by the window. Immediately, before the waiter came to take our order, I launched into my pitch, saying everything I'd vowed not to say. I told Morimoto how distressed I was by this Marlboro Man encroaching on my turf. I said I'd been under the impression that I'd made a personal connection with the executives I'd met the previous year, and the impression was underscored by a letter from Mr. Miyazaki saying the thirteen western states were exclusively mine. I was therefore at a loss to explain this treatment. I appealed to Morimoto's sense of fairness, to his sense of honor. He looked uncomfortable, so I took a breath, paused. I raised it from the personal to the professional. I cited my robust sales. I dropped the name of my partner, the legendary coach whose reputation had cachet even on the other side of the Pacific. I emphasized all that I might do for Onitsuka in the future, if given a chance.

Morimoto took a sip of tea. When it was clear that I'd talked myself out, he set down his cup and looked out the window. Slowly we rotated above Kobe. “I will get back to you.”

ANOTHER FITFUL NIGHT.
I got up several times, went to the window, watched the ships bobbing on Kobe's dark purple bay. Beautiful place, I thought. Too bad all beauty is beyond me. The world is without beauty when you lose, and I was about to lose, big-time.

I knew that in the morning Morimoto would tell me he was sorry, nothing personal, it was just business, but they were going with the Marlboro Man.

At 9:00 a.m. the phone by the bed rang. Morimoto. “Mr. Onitsuka . . .
himself . . .
wishes to see you,” he said.

I put on my suit and took a taxi to Onitsuka headquarters. In the conference room, the familiar conference room, Morimoto pointed me to a chair in the middle of the table. The middle this time, not the head. No more
kei
. He sat across from me and stared at me as the room slowly filled with executives. When everyone was there, Morimoto nodded to me.
“Hai,”
he said.

I plunged in, essentially repeating what I'd said to him the previous morning. As I built to my crescendo, as I prepared to close, all heads swiveled toward the door, and I stopped midsentence. The temperature of the room dropped ten degrees. The founder of the company, Mr. Onitsuka, had arrived.

Dressed in a dark blue Italian suit, with a head of black hair as thick as shag carpet, he filled every man in the conference room with fear. He seemed oblivious, however. For all his power, for all his wealth, his movements were deferential. He came forward haltingly, with a shuffling gait, giving no sign that he was the boss of all bosses, the shogun of shoes. Slowly he made his way around the table, making brief eye contact with each executive. Eventually he came to me. We bowed to each other, shook hands. Now he took the seat at the
head of the table and Morimoto tried to summarize my reason for being there. Mr. Onitsuka raised a hand, cut him off.

Without preamble he launched into a long, passionate monologue. Some time ago, he said, he'd had a vision. A wondrous glimpse of the future. “Everyone in the world wear athletic shoes all the time,” he said. “I know this day come.” He paused, looking around the table at each person, to see if they also knew. His gaze rested on me. He smiled. I smiled. He blinked twice. “You remind me of myself when I am young,” he said softly. He stared into my eyes. One second. Two. Now he turned his gaze to Morimoto. “This about those thirteen western states?” he said. “Yes,” Morimoto said. “Hm,” Onitsuka said. “Hmmmm.” He narrowed his eyes, looked down. He seemed to be meditating. Again he looked up at me. “Yes,” he said, “all right. You have western states.”

The Marlboro Man, he said, could continue selling his wrestling shoes nationwide, but would limit his track shoe sales to the East Coast.

Mr. Onitsuka would personally write to the Marlboro Man and inform him of this decision.

He rose. I rose. Everyone rose. We all bowed. He left the conference room.

Everyone remaining in the conference room exhaled. “So . . . it is decided,” Morimoto said.

For one year, he added. Then the subject would be revisited.

I thanked Morimoto, assured him that Onitsuka wouldn't regret its faith in me. I went around the table shaking everyone's hand, bowing, and when I came back to Morimoto I gave his hand an extra-vigorous shake. I then followed a secretary into a side room, where I signed several contracts, and placed an order for a whopping thirty-five hundred dollars' worth of shoes.

I RAN ALL
the way back to my hotel. Halfway there I started skipping, then leaping through the air like a dancer. I stopped at a railing
and looked out at the bay. None of its beauty was lost on me now. I watched the boats gliding before a brisk wind and decided that I would hire one. I would take a ride on the Inland Sea. An hour later I was standing in the prow of a boat, wind in my hair, sailing into the sunset and feeling pretty good about myself.