Chap­ter 10: The Skrup Shoe begins with Doc, whose knowl­edge of the Jew­ess hid­ing a Negro child had been passed on through fam­i­ly gos­sip. This par­tic­u­lar rumor came from his cousin, Carl Boy­d­kins, who worked for the state wel­fare office. The two fam­i­lies, the Robert­ses and Boy­d­kins, had long-stand­ing ties to the local com­mu­ni­ty, with roots that, as they claimed, stretched back to the Mayflower. How­ev­er, this lin­eage was noth­ing more than a fab­ri­cat­ed sto­ry. In real­i­ty, their ances­tors hailed from an Irish­man named Ed Bole, who had been involved in the Chi­nese impe­r­i­al court before mak­ing a for­tune in Eng­land. He lat­er sent his wife and chil­dren to Amer­i­ca, where they set­tled near Pottstown, giv­ing rise to the Roberts and Boy­d­kins fam­i­lies.

Doc had grown up in the com­forts of rur­al Amer­i­ca, far removed from the strug­gles of the immi­grants and minori­ties who began arriv­ing in the town as it expand­ed. He nev­er ques­tioned his family’s his­to­ry, nor did he ever think about the broad­er racial ten­sions emerg­ing in Pottstown. But things were chang­ing rapid­ly. The fac­to­ries and indus­tries that were grow­ing in the area began to replace farms and dairies, bring­ing with them a mix of eth­nic­i­ties that altered the town’s social fab­ric. While Doc’s fam­i­ly had pros­pered, the Boy­d­kins fam­i­ly found them­selves trapped by indus­tri­al expan­sion, with their once-beau­ti­ful land now pol­lut­ed by the new fac­to­ries. Despite their protests, the Boy­d­kins were forced to sell their land for far less than it was worth, a deci­sion they would regret as the town became increas­ing­ly indus­tri­al­ized.

Doc’s own sto­ry was equal­ly com­plex, marked by a child­hood filled with inse­cu­ri­ties about his deformed foot, which he tried to hide from oth­ers. His strug­gles in school and awk­ward inter­ac­tions with girls shaped his view of the world. He had been embar­rassed by his foot after a painful inci­dent in first grade, where his class­mates mocked him, call­ing him “Hoof.” This expe­ri­ence left him ashamed, and despite his aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess­es, he con­tin­ued to har­bor resent­ment toward his phys­i­cal dif­fer­ence. Yet, his moth­er had always encour­aged him to keep his dis­abil­i­ty hid­den, teach­ing him that appear­ances mat­tered more than any­thing. Despite this, Doc still man­aged to gain some respect from his peers, espe­cial­ly as he excelled in sub­jects like biol­o­gy, even­tu­al­ly becom­ing the pres­i­dent of the school debate team.

One key event in Doc’s life came when he was forced to seek out the town’s infa­mous shoe­mak­er, Nor­man Skrupske­lis, to craft a spe­cial shoe for his deformed foot. Nor­man was a gruff, silent fig­ure, whose shoe-mak­ing skills were unmatched but whose per­son­al­i­ty was infa­mous in town. Doc’s vis­it to Norman’s dark, clut­tered work­shop was uncom­fort­able, but the result was a pair of shoes that fit per­fect­ly and alle­vi­at­ed his dis­com­fort. Despite his grat­i­tude, Doc har­bored resent­ment toward Nor­man, feel­ing humil­i­at­ed by the shoemaker’s aloof atti­tude. After Norman’s death, his sons took over the busi­ness, and though they were high­ly skilled, Doc refused to patron­ize their shop, choos­ing to pay three times more for shoes made in Philadel­phia out of spite.

As Doc’s life con­tin­ued, his views became increas­ing­ly shaped by his hometown’s social dynam­ics. While he ini­tial­ly strug­gled with his foot and the way peo­ple per­ceived him, he lat­er found him­self drawn to the idea of pre­serv­ing the val­ues of his com­mu­ni­ty. His child­hood had been one of com­fort and priv­i­lege, but as the town grew and changed, he felt a grow­ing sense of unease. He began to see the immi­grants and minori­ties in town as threats to the way of life he had known. This belief led him to join the White Knights, a local group that shared his views on pre­serv­ing a “pure” Amer­i­ca. His cousin Carl, ever the oppor­tunist, pre­sent­ed Doc with a new prob­lem to solve—one that involved a Negro child being hid­den by the Jew­ess of Chick­en Hill. Car­l’s pro­pos­al to have Doc exam­ine the child for the state stirred a com­plex mix of curios­i­ty, resent­ment, and duty in Doc.

The child in ques­tion was deaf, pos­si­bly mute, and had been kept hid­den from the author­i­ties by Miss Chona, a woman who had once been part of Doc’s past. He remem­bered her from high school, where she had limped along, much like him. But now, years lat­er, he found him­self intrigued by her and the life she led. The con­ver­sa­tion with Carl about the child, how­ev­er, was not one that Doc took light­ly. He ques­tioned Carl’s motives and won­dered if this was more about pol­i­tics than med­ical neces­si­ty. Despite his dis­com­fort, Doc agreed to see the child, not out of kind­ness, but out of a sense of duty to the state.

In the weeks that fol­lowed, Doc’s thoughts became con­sumed by Miss Chona and her mys­te­ri­ous rela­tion­ship with the child. He recalled his awk­ward teenage years when he had tried to approach Miss Chona, only to be reject­ed in a way that stung deeply. The girl he had once seen as an object of curios­i­ty had now become a sym­bol of some­thing more com­plex. She was an out­sider, much like him, yet she seemed to live a life full of con­tra­dic­tions. The Skrup Shoe, which he had once despised, became a sym­bol of their shared his­to­ry, and Doc found him­self reflect­ing on the ways in which his own life had been shaped by those small, seem­ing­ly insignif­i­cant details.

Doc’s vis­it to Miss Chona’s store would change every­thing. It marked the begin­ning of a com­pli­cat­ed jour­ney, where his pro­fes­sion­al role as a doc­tor col­lid­ed with his per­son­al inse­cu­ri­ties and long-held prej­u­dices. What start­ed as a sim­ple med­ical exam­i­na­tion turned into some­thing much deep­er, forc­ing Doc to con­front not only his own bias­es but also the shift­ing dynam­ics of his town. The town that had once been so famil­iar, with its tidy church­es and clear bound­aries, was now unrec­og­niz­able. The influx of out­siders had brought with it not only diver­si­ty but also a sense of unease that had nev­er been there before. And as Doc faced Miss Chona and the child, he began to real­ize that the world he had once known was slip­ping away.