by Clint Smith
“Not bad.” Ray extends his arm over the glass counter and Wendell Harper applies a hearty handshake. “I was hoping I’d catch you here.”
“You kidding me?” Wendell says, feigning indignation. “They never let me out of this place.” His wrinkled features twist with a mischievous grin. “You look good, Ray. What can I do for you?”
“Well”—from his pocket Ray produces the personal check from his father—“my mom found this in my dad’s things . . .”
Wendell adjusts his paper cap as he interrupts. “Listen, Ray, it was an awful thing that happened to your dad . . .”
Ray cuts in, shaking his head: “No need, Wendell. Me and mom are doing fine. In fact, it looks like my dad had some unfinished business with you.” He hands over the check.
Glasses attached to a chain are hanging around Wendell’s neck; he lifts the spectacles, resting them on his nose. He scrutinizes the check. “Where’d you say you found this?”
“Mom found it in a pile of paperwork.”
Wendell’s gaze lingers on Ray for several long seconds before he flicks his eyes back to the check. “And your mom sent you here?”
Ray shrugs. “I just told her I’d take care of it. Check in on my old pal.”
It takes a moment, but Wendell finally responds with a weak grin. “Tell you what, Ray. Give me a minute. I’ll take a peek in dry storage, see what we have in safekeeping. Stick around for a few minutes, okay?”
“No problem.”
Wendell blinks, opens his mouth as if to say something else, but instead turns and disappears through the strips of plastic that serve as a curtained threshold.
Ray slips his hands in his pockets and paces along the front of the glass counter, idly appraising the selection of meat, casually scanning the aisle of the old-fashioned market, where cashiers still manually ring up purchases and bagboys walk people to their cars.
Ray bristles. At the far end of the aisle he sees Herbert and Hazel Steinhauer.
Herbert is crouched down, inspecting something on a shelf. The man’s mouth is moving, but whether he’s talking to his wife or himself, Ray can’t discern. Hazel, her garish makeup still appearing hastily applied, is standing next to her husband, her willowy frame rigid, one hand clutching her purse, the other arm hanging at her side. Her bulging, unblinking eyes are trained directly on Ray.
Even from this distance the sick woman’s condition appears to have deteriorated since he saw her at the barber shop a few days earlier. A dingy, short-sleeved dress hangs loose over her bony body. And now Ray notices something else: the inner portions of her forearms are noticeably jaundiced now, as if she’s been smeared with—What the hell is that stuff they smear on you before surgery? Clinically distant as it is, the word crawls into Ray’s mind: Betadine. Ray spots a cluster of livid bruises, the sort of marks people receive from intravenous injections. Perhaps the result of some recent hospital visit.
Ray swallows and lifts his hand to wave. The corners of Hazel’s lipstick-smudged mouth tug up in the pantomime of a smile. Her eyes are avid, unnerving, the effect bringing artificial life to her gaunt face.
A voice from behind Ray—“Daydreaming?”
Ray flinches and turns around. Wendell. He smiles at the butcher. “Yeah. Just sort of spacing out I guess.”
The old man hefts a brown bag, slender-shaped, tied with a piece of twine. “I think I found what you were looking for.”
“What is it?”
“Wine,” Wendell says, peering over the top of his bifocals. “And nothing cheap either. This stuff’s imported.” With a thick finger, the butcher points at a note on the bag. “Looks like your dad was sending it as a gift—says it’s supposed to go to old Vaught down the street.”
Vaught. The barber. “Really?”
Wendell nods.
“I’m going there anyway.” Ray smiles and gestures at his hair. “Why don’t you let me deliver it?”
Wendell eyes Ray for just a moment and then shrugs. “Suit yourself.” The butcher hands the brown bag over the counter.
Ray is about to say goodbye but stops short. “Do you need any help around here?”
Wendell adjusts his paper cap and scratches an eyebrow with his knuckle. “You mean like a job?”
“Yeah,” Ray says, “maybe for just a little while. Something to help me get out of the house, maybe get my own place.”
Wendell passes a hand over his face and crosses his arms. He’s quiet as he seems to consider this. “I can’t pay you much.”
Ray grins, “Anything’s better than nothing. Besides,” he says, thinking of his bygone days here in the market, “I could do most of this stuff walking in my sleep.”
Wendell smirks. The two share one last laugh. “Why don’t you stop by later this week and we’ll talk.” They exchange handshakes.
As he’s leaving, Ray sees Herbert and Hazel in a checkout line. Herbert is chatting with the cashier, but Hazel is still watching Ray, her bulging eyes following him. Slowly, drowsily, she lifts an arm, her slender fingers gently scraping at the air. Her oddly stilted mechanics make Ray think of strings on a marionette. Ray returns the wave.
Hazel Steinhauer smiles.
The barber pole is spinning slowly, hypnotically, in front of the barber shop.
On the sidewalk beneath the shadowed underbelly of the awning, Ray hesitates before clasping the door handle and entering Vaught’s Barber Shop. A tiny bell rings overhead. No customers.
Ray glances around. Nothing’s changed. The long mirror making the place look twice its size, walls still covered with antique memorabilia: wooden signs—Colonel Ichabod’s Conk Tonsorial Artistry for Fashionable Gentlemen—a vintage metal placard advertising “Cupping and Leeching”—Hot Bath 5¢. There’s an old chalkboard listing an array of services: Haircuts, Flat Tops, Wet Cuts, Shampoo, Beard Trim, Tonic, Razor Shaves. Ray is conflicted between a comforting sense of nostalgia, and a creeping unease with the shop’s stagnation. A radio is playing softly in the rear, some staticky big band tune. There’s a hallway back there and a door that’s been painted over, presumably leading to a basement or storage closet.
“Hello?” Ray calls out, his voice reverberating in the narrow space.
Someone clears their throat. A tall, thin man emerges from the corridor on the other side of the shop. “Pardon me,” he says, his raspy voice and wild gray hair suggesting he’s been drowsing. He takes his horn-rimmed glasses from his face and begins wiping the lenses on his white smock. “May I help you?”
“Yes, sir. I don’t know if you remember me or not, Mr. Vaught, but my name is Ray Swanson.”
“Ah yes . . . Roger’s youngest boy,” he says, his tone grave. “I didn’t have the opportunity to impart my condolences at the funeral, son. But you have them now. Your father was a good man.”
Ray nods, not knowing what to say. He lifts the brown bag. “I think this belongs to you.” Ray offers the bottle. “I think it’s a gift.”
Vaught’s eyebrows twitch as he looks back and forth from Ray to the paper-wrapped bottle. Almost warily, the old man takes hold of the package, unties the twine, and gently slips the bottle from the bag. “Oh . . . my,” he says. For the first time Ray sees that the dark bottle has no label, but instead displays what looks like an embossed number seven. The top of the bottle has been sealed with burgundy wax. Up close, Ray gets a better look at the barber’s austere appearance—a mortician in Buddy Holly glasses, Ray thinks. “Do you mind telling me”—Vaught licks his lips—“how you came across this gift?”
“My mom found a check addressed to Crenshaw’s Market. Wendell Harper told me my dad had reserved this bottle for you, that it was some sort of present.”
Smiling, Vaught shakes his head in what might be disbelief. Silence for several long seconds. “And what a generous gift it is, my boy. And since you are the one delivering it, I will thank you as my benefactor. Now,” he says abruptly, placing the wine bottle on his narrow work shelf in front of the mirror, “it would be imp
olite if I did not offer my services to you.” Vaught slowly spins the barber’s chair, his long hand inviting the young man to sit. Ray doesn’t mention that he’d planned on getting his haircut anyway, but instead smiles and sinks into the bulky barber’s chair, all chrome and cracked-vinyl cushion. In the mirror, Ray watches Vaught swipe a black cape from a hook on the wall and, with an old-fashioned flourish, snaps the cloth in midair and drapes it over Ray, fastening it around his neck.
The old man moves to his work shelf, lined with colored bottles and jars containing creams and tonics. In addition to several neatly arranged instruments, there’s also the tall, ever-present glass jar of Barbicide filled with the requisite blue disinfectant.
Vaught lifts a pair of electric clippers and begins whistling along with the low-playing radio.
Ray shifts in his seat, getting comfortable. “I was afraid you wouldn’t remember me.”
“Nonsense,” Vaught says with a dismissive gesture. “In fact, I remember your first visit to this very chair.” He clicks on the clippers and moves behind Ray.
“Really?” he says, sounding a little more incredulous than he’d intended.
Vaught addresses Ray’s reflection in the mirror. “Why certainly. My goodness, you threw a fit.”
Ray huffs a laugh. “Oh.”
Shaking his head Vaught says, “Lord, you just bawled.” And Ray recalls it clearly, that old photo—the picture commemorating his first haircut at Vaught’s barber shop: his round, tear-smeared face pinched in mid-cry, freshly trimmed bangs hanging across his forehead. And again his mind’s eye moves to the margin of the snapshot—once more he sees his father’s big arms reaching in. But now, Ray thinks, there’s nothing harsh or severe in that frozen motion—those arms are not restraining him—those hands are cradling him, trying to soothe him. Ray is clutched by a cold contemplation: If he’d always been wrong about the interpretation of that photo, what else had he been wrong about?
Ray is shaken from this vivid image when Vaught whistles through his teeth. “Yep, your daddy took good care of you that day, and every other time he brought you. I tell you that man sure loved his boys, you in particular. Always said you were his special boy.” Vaught thumbs off the clippers and returns to his cluttered work shelf.
While the man has his back turned, Ray winces, his chin sinking to his chest.
Vaught must have glanced in the mirror because the old man has been silent, peering at Ray’s reflection. “You all right, son?”
He looks in the mirror at Vaught, who turns slowly. Ray swallows hard, knowing that his expression, his eyes, betray his true feelings. After a long pause, Vaught simply nods solemnly. “We all go through that, son.” With his long fingers laced through the eyelets of his scissors, Vaught walks back behind the chair, speaking to Ray’s reflection. “Sometimes we don’t realize how much we love someone until it’s too late.” Silence. “All that matters is that your love is sincere in your heart.”
Ray takes a rough swipe at his eyes and sets his forearms on the armrest. “It is.”
Vaught is reverently silent for several seconds, and then slams his foot down on something.
All this happens very fast.
There’s a metallic clack, and Ray’s forearms are restrained from the sides of the armrest. The same thing happens to his shins. Ray’s heart lurches and he begins to thrash.
Vaught pulls off the black barber’s cape; now Ray can see his wrists clamped with stainless steel cuffs. The armrests have opened to reveal slender troughs, each containing a shallow drain positioned under his forearms.
Ray’s eyes dart to the mirror to see Vaught standing behind the chair, smiling. “HELLLLPP!” Vaught reaches down, reemerging just as Ray sucks in another breath. “HEL—”
Vaught slaps a piece of duct tape over Ray’s mouth. “You might as well knock off that racket, son.” He strolls over to his work shelf. From a drawer he removes a worn leather strop. “I’d appreciate a little cooperation, and I know your daddy would too.” He places the strop over Ray’s forehead, latching the ends to the neckrest.
The big band music fills the barber shop.
On the shelf, Vaught opens a wooden box and removes a silver straight razor with an ornate ivory handle. Ray flexes and bucks against his restraints. “I assure you it’s no use,” the barber says.
Vaught retrieves the wine bottle and uses the razor to peel back the wax. With another instrument he removes the cork. The man sniffs at the lip of the bottle and smiles. “In vino veritas,” he says. Ray watches Vaught remove the blue Barbicide jar from the shelf, revealing a small, funnel-shaped receptacle. The barber upends the bottle, inserting it into the small drain. Ray hears liquid flowing, gurgling as it travels through what sounds like tubes or pipes, just like a sink draining.
“A long time ago,” Vaught says, scrutinizing the bottle as it depletes itself, “members of my guild were called barber-surgeons. And we performed more than just haircuts, we were more like novice physicians—we had our hands in pulling teeth, bloodletting, tonsillectomies, Caesarian sections, amputations. Did you know that?” Ray’s chest rises and falls rapidly. “No. I didn’t think so.” Apparently pleased with the progress of the draining wine, Vaught lifts his razor and approaches Ray. “Back then, the key was to convince people of the doctrine of the four humors: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and of course blood. It was necessary that these four elements remain balanced in order for a person to be healthy. Or at least think they were healthy.” The old man adjusts his glasses. “The number four carries great symbolic significance, son—the four stages of life, the four seasons.” He chuckles softly. “I could go on and on.”
Ray screams under the duct tape as Vaught lowers the straight razor. With a practiced movement, the barber carves a design—what looks like a curled number seven—across the inner portions Ray’s forearms. Blood courses down and into the armrest-troughs. “These symbols,” Vaught says, using the razor to gesture at the intricate lacerations, “are fleams—my guild’s cherished instruments for bloodletting.”
Ray thrashes and shakes his head, blinking back petals of darkness blossoming on the fringes of his vision. “And now”—Vaught sweeps his hands wide like a conductor—“to complement one pagan consecration with another: ‘By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain . . . and through it he being dead still speaks. By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son . . .’”
The sound of Vaught’s recitation grows distant, and Ray’s head begins lolling. The last thing he hears is the tiny bell above the door as someone enters the barber shop.
“. . . For the life of the creature is in the blood . . .”
Monosyllabic chants. Whispered scripture.
Ray urges his eyes open. The duct tape has been removed and he can breathe through his mouth. He’s cold. It’s dark here—scents of soil, rust, and rot. Lying on his side, Ray squirms, feeling dirt on his cheek and under his fingers. Through his slitted eyelids he sees guttering lights, flickering thinly as if from lanterns. The walls are thickly mortared stone, slick with moisture. This is a cellar, he thinks. Or a dungeon. Ray tries to move and winces against pain pulsing through his forearms. They feel bound or bandaged now.
“. . . and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar . . .”
Amber light pulses at the far end of the room. Ray tries to focus on the reverent whispers. He squints across the cellar, seeing them now, their figures defined by the weak light from bull’s-eye lanterns.
Ray hears his mother, the sound of her voice blending with the words of Harlan Vaught. Ray realizes that he’s in the basement below the barber shop.
With the last of his strength, Ray struggles up on his elbow. Now he notices the tangle of thin, liquid-filled tubes hanging from the ceiling, dangling like IVs. Wine. Blood. Something else. He follows them down to a long wooden bench, to the crumpled row of corpses—hud
dled shapes in varying degrees of decay.
His mother and Vaught are standing at the far end of the bench, leaning over the body of Roger Swanson, the corpse still dressed in its funeral suit, its sleeves rolled up to expose forearms riddled with plastic tubes.
“. . . it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life . . . because the life of every creature is its blood.”
And with that incantation, Roger Swanson twitches and slowly raises his head, viscous fluids seeping from his nostrils and mouth. Alice Swanson gasps. “Amen,” she says, reaching out to her husband. “Amen.” Vaught delicately disconnects the needled tubes hooked into the cadaver’s arms, and dark liquids weep from track-marks along its forearms.
With vertiginous understanding, Ray summons an image of Hazel Steinhauer. Intuitively, he knows that Travis Steinhauer is one of those hunkered shapes slumped along the wall.
Tenderly, Vaught helps the thing that was Roger Swanson to its unsteady feet. After a moment, Alice steps in and the two begin shuffling toward the basement stairs. Vaught strides forward, and Ray is hoisted up and dragged across the dirt floor. And there, between two mold-mottled corpses, Ray replaces his father as he is settled into his special spot on the bench.
Corbin’s Gore
Where to begin? Where to begin . . . ?
Well, we could start with Cassidy, she was wealthy—that is to say her family, the Davenports, were wealthy—and that has some bearing on all this, because Corbin would have been rich too, by way of nothing else but relational proximity, if he would have just been a little more ambitious, if he would have just cooperated, if he would have just capitulated. If only you could see the big picture . . .
On second thought, maybe we should begin with the Gore, or at least the old gypsy-witch woman at the end of his fifth-floor apartment hallway. Corbin Hollis had noticed her on the first day after moving into that dreary, uptown dwelling. Of course she was no gypsy or witch at all, but as she resembled somebody’s mummified but animated hippie grandma, sometimes staring vacantly down the fifth-floor passage, it was difficult for Corbin not to conjure a few entertaining associations.