The story takes place in South Africa. It is about what happens after a local farmer dies in an accident. From all over the nearby area, bachelors, divorces and widowers come to try if they have got a chance to fill out the dead man’s place. And there is many good reasons to try, because the widow is not only attractive, she is also rich. She and her late husband had made a very nice and wealthy farm. Besides that, there is not very many white women available in this area. The numerous suitor are all received politely, but none of them is capable of winning her sympathy. After some time there is only seven local men left as suitor.
The rest has given up. But to the seven men’s surprise Anne, as the widow is named, apparently does not want to get into a new marriage. She is running the farm on her own. They try to persuade to marry one of them, but none of them seem to have luck with it. At least they say to her, that she must have a man to take care of her. At first that does not seem to affect her, but some months later they are all invited to the farm. On the front porch there is a pair of shoes. The men tells Sam, the boss boy on the farm to go get Anne, but he is not as submissive and obedient as he use to be. That makes the men rather angry.
Anne comes out and ask them to try the shoes on, but none of them have feet big enough. In the end they even let Sam try, because they have all sort of given up. The shoe fits and the men can not talk Anne from it, and she marries Sam, the black worker. Later the narrator is sitting having a drink with the local shoemaker, and he gets to know that Sam had the shoes specially made for himself, and it was not the dead man’s shoes. He surely would like to punish him, but that is no longer a possibility, after the apartheid regime has ended. And as the shoemaker says: “Live mans shoes – Dead man’s bed. ”
