by Brian Hodge
“Yeah, it’s pretty hot,” he murmured, looking around and surveying the cluttered shop. Jesus, that little greasy display case was still there with the cheap cigars and stale European cigarettes. And the comic book spinner was still over in the corner with the same old sixty-cent DC and Marvel titles: Flash and All Star Squadron and that stupid Star Raiders book. The memories made Davey’s stomach clench. You’d think the old man would get some new comics over the years.
“Hold the phone! Hold the goddamn phone!” The little troll in the powder blue barber’s tunic shuffled out of the shadows and approached, holding his broom, looking the tall young man up and down. Burdette Steagal had to be a hundred years old if he was a day, but Davey was damned if the old man didn’t look the same as always. That pug-dog face and bald head shaped like a fat missile, those little sausage fingers that played scissors over the heads of neighborhood kids like Paganini. “I’ll be a cross-eyed son of a bitch — is that Davey?! Davey Marsh?!”
“How ya doin’ Burdette,” Davey said.
The little man set his broom against one of the swivel chairs and trundled over to the lanky kid. Davey tensed as the barber embraced him. It was like getting hugged by an ape. Davey could smell Brylcream and a faint trace of BO on the portly little barber.
“Your old man was in, few weeks ago, told me you were in the service,” the barber said, holding Davey by the shoulders. The little man’s eyes glittered with emotion. “Told me you were over in the middle east. Jesus. Jesus, look at ya.”
“Yeah, well.” Davey didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what the hell he was doing here.
“Come in for a cut, huh? For old time’s sake?”
Davey shrugged and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the chair. His narrow, gaunt face was topped with the regulation buzz cap of a seasoned jarhead. In civilian life, Davey Marsh wore his wavy blonde hair long, in a pony tail, bound with a rubber band — perhaps as compensation for all those childhood buzz cuts. But now you could hardly tell he was blonde. He could still feel the sand in those bristles.
“Not much to work with up there, huh?” the barber grinned.
“I guess not.”
“Tell you what,” Steagal said, waddling over to the closest chair, spinning it toward Davey, snapping a towel across the seat. “Let’s see if we can’t make you look a little more suave for them neighbor girls.”
Davey shrugged again and sat down.
“So when did you get back?” the barber wanted to know, turning toward a glass canister filled with combs suspended in blue fluid. His portly little body moved with a dancer’s grace. He flung the liquid from a comb, grabbed a pair of scissors, then whipped a black plastic protective gown around Davey to catch what little hair there was left. Then the fat man started lavishing attention on Davey’s cranium. “What’d your ma think when she saw you?”
Davey listened to the snip-snip-snipping against his ears, which were red and hot with nervous tension. He wondered how to answer. He wondered how to explain what was going on inside him. How he had gone over there fresh out of basic at Fort Benning, all full of piss and righteous rage, wanting to get back at those goddamn zealots for 9/11. Davey Marsh — the guy they used to call Big Bird at Senn High School, the geek no girls would go out with because he was so gangly on the dance floor and wore braces until he was 18 — making it all the way to technical sergeant, the youngest non-com in the 7th Air Cav. But how in God’s name was Davey going to explain that first fire fight? How was he going to explain what had happened to him that night — riding shotgun on that Apache attack chopper a hundred feet above the sand, firing 30 millimeter tracers into cities boiling like cauldrons with anti-aircraft fire?
“I haven’t — haven’t been home yet,” Davey said finally.
“No kiddin’. Jeez.” Snip-snip-snip.
“Thought I get cleaned up first. Get the stink off me.”
“I’m honored, kid. You comin’ in here. Always said you were a special kid.”
“Thanks, Burdy.”
Snip-snip. “You see some action over there?”
Davey stared at himself in the mirror. He watched the glimmer of the scissors, the little plump pink fingers flexing, the comb flicking and teasing at the bristles, and the strangest thing occurred to Davey: There’s no hair being cut. Is he just pretending? Is the fat man just humoring a shell-shocked kid, just snipping at the air around Davey’s ears?
“You don’t gotta talk about it, you don’t want to,” the barber said.
“It’s not that, it’s just —”
“That’s okay, kid.”
“I just don’t —”
“That’s okay. Don’t gotta say a word. Just gonna make you look real dapper, real suave. For the girls.”
“The girls, right.” Davey closed his eyes, and saw the crackle of mortar fire streak across his vision, those same awful shooting stars that had been ruining his sleep. When he opened his eyes they were wet.
Snip-snip-snip-snip.
Minutes passed with neither man saying a word.
Davey could barely see his reflection in the mirror, could barely see the bizarre optical illusion materializing before him, obscured by his tears like shapes behind a rain-dappled pane of glass. It looked as though the barber was painting his scalp instead of trimming it, each little flick of the scissors dabbing a brush stroke of ginger-colored hair back onto his head instead of shearing it off. It felt odd, too, like warm goose bumps spreading across his scalp. It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant feeling either. Maybe the first pleasant sensation he had felt for months.
A tear tracked down Davey Marsh’s face. “Girls,” he murmured, his voice breaking. “Pilot I got shot down with was a girl. Can you believe that? Native American woman. Big fat gal, looked Hawaiian.”
“Davey, look… uh.” The barber paused. “You don’t gotta —”
“Chief Warrant Officer Irma Goode. You believe that? Old Irma. I can’t believe the fire we went through. I mean, you coulda walked on top of it, it was so goddamn thick, like we had gone and stirred up a hornet’s nest or something. It was — it was right outside of Basra, and they just opened up on us, the whole goddamn Republican Guard. I mean, they just hit us with everything they had. I saw two other Apaches buy it, you know, right off the bat, and I was — I was — I was just like screaming and shaking and laying down suppression fire, and, aw Jesus, it was bad. I wasn’t ready for it. You know? 57 millimeter flak chewing us all to hell, sparking and pinging off our belly, those goddamn S-60’s, like dragons on our ass, and we’re — we’re — we’re ducking left and right, and breaking our pattern, trying to throw ’em off. And I’m shaking, right? Like I’m having a seizure. Firing every which way, and I’m flash-blind now, and I can barely see the Longbow blasting the leaves off trees and the sand off the roof tops, and we’re like Mayday now, I mean, we’re like going in, we’re going down. And we belly flopped in the sand, and it was like — it was like — an elephant landing on me but we didn’t blow — thank Christ we didn’t blow — cuz I got thrown — landed on my back in the sand but Irma — aw Jesus — Irma bought it — I saw her face in the tracer flash her face — the flak took her face away — took it right off — sweet gal — Irma from Bakersfield California… had two kids… one of ’em was a cheerleader. One of her kids was a cheerleader. You believe that shit?”
Davey laughed then. It sounded alien in his own ears, like the bark of a hyena.
He began to cry.
“Aw Jesus… what good is it… what good is it… you see a good person like that get… and you’re just sitting there on your ass in the… and the rotor’s still spinnin and kickin up sand in your teeth and your… and you’re just sittin there shaking and staring at some lady with a cheerleader daughter and no face… face just gone… just —”
The barber laid a hand on Davey’s shoulder, and Davey clammed up.
The silence crashed down on the barber shop. The fat man didn’t say anything.
Another moment p
assed.
“It was a miracle these Special Forces guys got to me,” Davey said at last. “I mean, I don’t even remember gettin’ e-vac’d outta there… but I guess I did… cuz look at me now. Sittin’ here sitting in this… sitting in this barber chair.”
“And thank God for that,” Steagal said, returning to his work. The scissors continued snipping. Davey felt that humming sensation again.
“I’m sorry,” Davey finally said.
“Don’t be silly, kid.”
“I don’t know what —”
“Forget about it,” the barber said, busily flicking the comb, pinching the scissors.
Davey glanced up at the mirror and his stomach seized up again. He was seeing things. And why not? They say you hallucinate when the strings finally come undone. God knew, he was due. He was due for a major breakdown. But who would have guessed it would come like that: watching scissors paint hair onto his head?! Like a spatula frosting a cake, the gleaming metallic tips of those things kept extruding swath after swath of wavy golden curls along each contour of Davey’s scalp. There was already a good couple of inches feathering down over his ears, fringing along his neck line. And that warm, buzzing sensation of honey dripping over his scalp was intensifying.
“Must seem like another world over there,” the barber was murmuring.
“What?”
“Iraq — the middle east. Must seem like a whole ’nother universe.”
“Oh — yeah. I guess.”
Snip-snip-snippety-snip.
“Funny thing is,” the barber said, coaxing strands of blonde locks down the young man’s back, “it ain’t really like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“The world, the planet. You know. It ain’t made up of different kinds of places — it’s all one. We’re all floating on the same boat, if you follow my meaning.”
“The same boat.”
“I’m tellin ya, kid. I got the inside track on this thing.”
“Um….”
“What I’m saying is, I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut they got a few of these dumps over there in Baghdad, Ramallah, whatever they call it.”
“A few of these what?”
“Barber shops for Chrissake.” The fat man was going like crazy at that point with the scissors and the comb, the razor tips spewing lovely cascades of flaxen waves down Davey Marsh’s back. The hair shone in the mirror, lustrous locks of blonde parted down the middle, almost as long as it had been in his 1999 graduation picture. And that electric warmth. It poured across his scalp and down the chords of his neck like a sympathetic note strummed on his nerve endings.
“It’s like when you were just a little squirt,” Steagal droned on with that weird enthusiasm glinting in his eyes. “Used to come in here and read them comics while your dad got a shave. Used to sit for hours in the chair next to your old man, listening to the locals shoot the breeze, soaking everything up like a little sponge.”
“Burdy, I don’t —”
“Later, you know. You’d drop by. With all the hair, drove your dad crazy. Never wanted a cut in those days.” The fat man chuckled so heartily his paunch shook under his tunic. “Never a haircut! Just dropped in to read some comics. Get away from it all, I guess. Take a little vacation from the world. You remember that?”
Davey glanced across the shop. That couch, that couch — that shopworn, imitation leather couch with those rusty metal arms — it had to be older than Steagal. And yet. It sat there with that same spray of junkie magazines across its ratty seat that had cluttered the thing when Davey was a kid. Wouldn’t they have moldered and yellowed into powder by now? And that spinner rack with its chipped white lacquer compartments. It looked as though it had been pickled in time. And the comic books were mint originals. Giant Sized X-Men #1. The original Conan the Barbarian with that gorgeous Barry Windsor Smith artwork for God’s sake!
Davey looked at his reflection again.
“Oh no.”
“Kid?”
“Oh no, no, oh no.”
“Now they said this would happen,” the barber muttered, gently folding the scissors closed. He was done. Davey’s hair was completely restored to its original, heavy metal, shoulder-length AC-DC glory. “It’s nothin’ to worry about. Okay? Just the initial shock of the thing.”
“Oh my God,” Davey looked down at the black plastic protective gown draped over him, his new, lustrous hair falling across his face. There were no tiny hairs on the plastic. Only a long metal zipper bisecting down its middle. Davey had seen other soldiers — not many, thank God, but a few — cocooned in the same exact kind of plastic bag while being loaded onto C-130 Hercules transport planes.
“Take it easy, kid —”
Davey jerked forward with a start. He grasped the edges of the black plastic shroud and yanked it apart with a single spasm. The plastic tore in half, the zipper tumbling to the floor like a fillip of skin shed from a snake. Davey gazed down at his chest where the chambray shirt had buckled enough to expose skin.
“Oh God.”
“Now don’t be gettin’ all riled up, kid.” The barber placed a tender hand on Davey’s shoulder, steadying him, keeping him in the chair. “Like I said, it’s just the initial shock of the thing. Happens to the best of us sooner or later. Just take a deep breath.”
Davey stared at his chest. The entry wound was small. A tiny starburst between his nipples, crusty and black around the edges but fairly clean. Probably fired from one of those 5-56 millimeter carbines used by the Republican Guard in their fox holes on the outskirts of villages. “I never — I never — I never made it outta there,” he panted, looking up at the chubby barber through tears. “Did I?”
Burdette Steagal just smiled then — that same crooked grin with which he always graced his customers at the end of a long, dirty joke. “Like I said, kid. Just a place to get away. Relax. Shoot the bull for a while before movin’ on.”
Davey felt himself fall back into the spongy confines of the barber chair.
He started to say something else when Steagal suddenly called out, “Next!”
There was movement in the corner, and Davey swiveled in time to see Big Irma Goode rising from an armchair, setting down her magazine. She was smiling, her face restored to its olive-skinned, earnest beauty. Her hair was spikey-short, but looked as though it would be a wondrous black mane if allowed to grow out a little bit.
Davey smiled through his tears.
“C’mon sweetheart,” Steagal urged, grabbing another comb from its sapphire bath, and turning toward an open seat. “We got two chairs. No waiting.”
II. THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT
“An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.”
— Samuel Butler
THE PANIC SWITCH
I should have known I was in trouble the moment I saw the look on the priest’s face.
“You’re the fugitive agent?” the old man said, his ruined eyes peering out at me from behind the gigantic oaken doorway. Dressed in his black coat and collar, tendrils of wispy grey hair in his face, he looked to be somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred and twenty years old.
I shook my umbrella, straining my voice to be heard above the rain. “Jimmy Quint — at your service, Father.”
“Good, come in, please.” Father Mortimer Parrick made no effort to shake my hand or even smile. He simply gestured toward the dimly lit vestibule of St. Vincent de Paul.
I gladly stepped inside the candle lit foyer. The night had turned bitchy a few hours ago, and now the storm was having its way with the city. I shrugged off my leather jacket, wiped my water-beaded goatee, and followed the old cocker through a series of musty hallways and antechambers.
“Mr. Quint,” the old priest murmured finally as he opened the door to the rectory office, “I’d like to introduce you to a dear old friend of mine.”
On the other side of the door was a hushed, clubby kind of office with
tall velvet curtains over the windows, and fancy walnut bookshelves teeming with antique, leather-bound volumes. There were two middle-aged men seated in arm chairs near the desk, one in a suit and nervous expression, the other in sweat pants and windbreaker. I immediately made the man in the sweat pants as the reason I was here: His lantern jawed face was a war zone, eyes rimmed in red, chin unshaven, hair mussed. He levered himself out of his chair with great effort as I approached.
“This is Evan Mirrish,” the priest said, indicating the man in the sweat pants.
“Hello, Mr. Quint,” the man said, his voice like a broken music box.
“Call me Jimmy,” I said, and shook his hand. It was like grasping something that had recently died. Of course, I recognized the name. Sole heir to the Mirrish pharmaceutical fortune, Evan Mirrish was a regular fixture in Chicago’s gossip columns. He was always breaking ground somewhere, writing checks for charities, or throwing out baseballs at White Sox games.
The priest introduced me to the other man — Tom Andrews — who was Mirrish’s attorney.
“Mr. Quint comes highly recommended, gentlemen,” the old man added after we all took our seats. “He’s one of the most highly respected fugitive agents in the Midwest — and a good Catholic to boot.”
I smiled to myself. “Fugitive agent” was the politically correct term for what I did, and the phrase had always amused me. I was a bounty hunter. In fact, at five foot nine, with my scraggly beard, long hair and skinny frame, I looked more like a drug dealer than some legendary manhunter. But that was part of the secret to my success: Nobody ever saw me coming. “I’m sorry to be blunt, Guys,” I said at last, breaking the somber silence. “But I’m used to working with bail bondsmen. I just can’t imagine how I’d be able to help with church business.”
After a long pause and a lot of furtive glances, the old priest said, “You’re familiar with Mr. Mirrish’s youngest boy Christopher?”
I told him I was. The subject of much public hand wringing, the twenty year old Mirrish scion was a severe schizophrenic who had spent most of his sad life in mental institutions. But what the hell did this have to do with me?