Next? Ah. Master Robinson. You get to be the ghost today, Walter might say to a small boy who at that moment looked a bit apprehensive. Just climb up here, he’d say, where the clouds are. I’ll make a ghost of yah. Then with a flourish the chalk white cloth would be pinned about the poor kid’s body. Dad might be getting his own hair cut, and needed to assure his son, if it was a first time for him, that the scissors didn’t hurt, these suddenly jovial men weren’t dentists, and that the boy should banish fear and let his mouth water in anticipation of the flat round all-day sucker that would be his mouthful when his haircut was admired at last. Older kids, who were by experience now undaunted, might be rewarded—it depended on relationships formed on the street and outside the range of our observations—with a recitation of Walter’s renowned menu. A few of its offerings were pictured on a cardboard sign like wanted men. The whole show went as I now render it, spoken in rapid-fire bursts followed by some explanatory pauses.
Hey honey bunch…hey handsome little guy…welcome to Walter’s, home of all your desires. You want a part, a perm, ringlets, or a razor cut…an Afro? How about I give you a texture treatment? Hey, you want bangs, do you dearie, a beehive, or a blowout?—oh man, oh madam, right here—bob or bowl or buzz cut—you’ll find their picture on row five—along with a bouffant doodoo…how about we do it up in a bun, then? So many choices, like chocolates, boxed by the letter B; maybe a Caesar, a comb-over, what say? You’re getting a little thin on top—no?—like a pond in a woods—no?—all right, no pond, no woods, maybe a few cornrows, a crew cut? We can just flat-out crop it off, straightaway give it a Croydon facelift (you know, that’s a topknot); how about trying the curtained style, devil and dreadlocks, ducktails ass or a ducktails flail? It’s just hair, my darling, how can you get so fussy? Okay honey, okay handsome, did you ever consider a Dutch braid, the false hawk, or the feathered look? All the rage; let’s give you a finger wave then, a fishtail, a flattop, flipflop, French twist, fringe cut…or how about half a ponytail, half an updo? No? So you’re that sort, a Hime cut, what say, okay?…Hi-top with a fade…
Walter would make waves as if he were conducting the atmosphere.
…you know what, I’ve got it! A loose curl would look great on you…old liberty spikes…like the statue, see there—your hair is standing up like it was scared; so a Mohawk, what do you think, handsome? Have you come to that? A mullet…a mullet? Come on, honey, be brave; do pageboy, pigtails, pixie cut—look cute—pompadour—look hip—full ponytail—look perky—whoa! Knick knack…
Walter would rock as if riding an animal. A canopy of white starch settled over the barber chair.
…Is recon, rattail, or the notorious frat shag on sale? I know your head and how it grows: from pasted wig to when its amorously tousled; weve got a full range; you could try a purely spiky look if you think it suits you, sure, or make your head into an ocean of waves, anything that floats; we remove short hairs, do nails till they cry uncle; we cut long tresses, trim beards—only as you wish, sure—schurre—we shave cheeks too, clean as a tin whistle—we will grease your mustache till it shines like a saloon sign—oh dear—you prefer the same cut as last time?—oh, yes, I remember—as it used to be—as it has always been.
Hey, ask those chairs their opinion and they will tell you: your fortune depends on how you wear your hair, and what your shadow on the wall will say—those splotches where your heads rested…by the way, what did become of you?
Walter had the menu memorized. He would point imperiously to the faded poster on the wall while he chanted the shop’s selections, though no one ever challenged the availability of his hairstyles, so I had no handy measure for the truth of his boast. The safely tethered children remained mum and wide-eyed while Walter wore a grin broader than the local river. The other barbers would applaud with a rattle of spoons in their coffee mugs.
It was a friendly place, a little stuffy from piped-in warmth through the winter, but blossoming with habitués at all times of year because, as every person not cursed by baldness knows, hair in plenty grows, through droughts and blights and snows, but not in tidy rows. Not them. Not those. Walter told his clientele that they were presently enjoying his garden, not theirs, and that he harvested head hair, ear hair, nostrils, brows, sideburns, goatees, beards, while cultivating the colorful blooms of fingernails, sandaled toes, and inked eyes. At her table at the back of the shop, Millicent manicured the ladies, but she took a little trolley to the chairs to tend the men. There they held out a shy paw and, bashful about such primping, hid their vanity in a din of rough male sports talk, political opinion, scandal, and local news, all in a language meant to impress one another and intrigue Millicent, who was immune to shock.
Prince Paul claims that Millicent (I never heard her natal name) dresses like a whore—long, thickly painted nails, piled hair, bright cheeks, ample bosom (a sample showing), a tight short sheath, and heels that double her height—but how would he know if none of the rest of us knows? and none of the rest of us, I can assure you, knows. We know nothing about clothes, only a blink about hair, nothing much about bodies, and only a touch about mascara, a few pomades, and some rouge. That’s Prince Paul, though…he’s good at pretending.
Behind those big businesslike barber chairs, several shampoo sinks interrupt a narrow glass shelf. There numerous bottles mingle among the mirrors like guests at a ball, frisking between shears, brushes, whisks, and fist-sized piles of moist and steaming cloths. Oils, conditioners, rinses, talcums, tonics, lotions mill about while, for stability, a more disciplined row of antiseptic and restorative bottles stand at brilliantine attention against a wall. These are alleged to be good for baldness. I know them by their glints, their hums. Women, even more than men, will try anything to prevent hair loss. I was told the shelf resembled a bar but my only encounter with bars has been with wooden ones and these were burned by cigarettes or ringed by drinks and other ghosts of grief.
When fellows come to get their face shaved, their hair cut and hair oiled, they tend to sit in seats that represent their favorite speechifications. I am remembering one conk head named Harold who used to come in to have his fuzzed dome mowed for just a buck and who plunked himself down on Overly Neighborly to—Walter joked—“weight” his turn. He would sigh like a squeaking tire—Walter joked—and address those who were there—how many or how few did not restrain him—“So, did you know that one of the lost tribes of Israel was black?” This was greeted with the silence it deserved.
So much clutter…buttons…marbles…pins…Creatures called Human Beings by other members of mankind are turning the world into fuel, into furniture, into tools like my friends—utensils, kettles, cars—into towns built of wood, brick, and stone. Watch out…Those curling irons, holstered in a block of wood, can get hot…We hugely outnumber them now, this squanderous tribe of people who invented us, who use us, and will discard us in mounds set afire by our remains. Combs alone outnumber the heads they coif. Scissors are in the same situation, pens, coins, rings, buckles, guns. Most people have a couple. Even plants in pots or aunts in hoards can’t measure up to the miles of tools shelved in stores, the unseemly tons of junk heaped in yards, knick knacks scattered like rice at a wedding. The entire surface of the world will be stored in pantry bins and furnish parlor tables. Assorted spools of stuff, in multiples and variations, boxed and bagged and trucked hither and yon—wires, pipes—yon and hither—are being displayed or captured, buried, sold, or stolen. When they dig our civilization up, and with those shards try to guess the rest, we shall outnumber the bones of Human Beings in offering clues. Think of it: the leaves of books may beat the leaves of trees in turning. And there are fewer cats than summer clothes.
Everyone enjoyed the soft blue haze left by the customers’ cigarettes. The smokers were mostly men, though Millicent swallowed her menthols like someone in a sideshow. Chewers alone were frowned on. A wad in the cheek would dissolve in spit and soon the spit was oiling the floor. Which was made of squares of linoleum. Anyhow
everyone enjoyed the haze left by lit cigarettes, smoky exhalations—they were thought—in a ghostly guise. The resulting communal breath seemed like a river of air that carried the fellowship of the shop from chair to chair. I know I never tired of our atmosphere: the smell of polish always pleased me, and the vigorous shine Archie would apply to some businessman’s shoes made a nice noise, the way the smell of coffee stirs you folks to ride forth in the morning, eager dogs baying at the rising sun.
Our customers were a mixture of races, unusual to be found, I understand, in this geography; but the reality is that the population mix was thin and came and went as the neighborhood did, slowly shrinking as the whites took to their heels and the street’s vacancies grew, swelling when poverty, like hunger, overtook its clientele. Serving such different heads was not easy. People born with hair bent like wire make a mistake to want it straight. Straights want swirls. Brunettes weep to be blond. Guys who have lots of it want their heads shaven and shiny. Learn, ladies, to be happy with the hue Our Great Maker gave you. Blacks who wanted to look white would come here on the assumption that white barbers would know better how to do it. As for my tribe of folding chairs—well, to us, asses differ only by weight. We ask two questions of our customers: how thin? how large? how small? how fat? how light? how heavy? That is that.
Every Front Room has a back room. That’s where the joint’s john flushes; where a restful rocker rocks; and an eight-place poker table swallows the central space. Barbers not on duty lazed there, playing solitaire, smoking one of the aforesaid cigarettes or reading the racing magazines. Walter took bets. On heralded occasions. For the Derby or the local track. And an evening game of poker took place, maybe once a week, sometimes twice, when a few friends dropped in and some chairs were enlisted to take care of the additional arrivals.
I understand and employ the word “herald,” because I was sometimes placed, for an evening, in the doorway of the shop as a signal to knowledgeable passersby that poker was “on” at 10:00 p.m. “Okay, old fellow, you can be our herald tonight,” Walter would say to me, though we both knew he was talking to himself. He likes to do that—be coy with a razor or angry with a comb. An occasional snarl would draw an expletive from him, followed by a small speech, all this for the amusement of the customer who was having his hair pulled.
Such outpost service is humiliating. You have been parked there, in the doorway, because no one will steal you, worn and rusty as you are, and there you must sit until the number of places for players has been fulfilled, whereupon you are removed from that spot to the poker room itself, your seat to be occupied by a nervous stranger from the street who has been brought to the shop by a friend and has, in any case, not come because of your ungainly presence. Regulars tend to be pros at poker and do not squirm in their seats like infants, though they may allow their eyes to wink and slide to one side, their nose to wrinkle and snort a swinish snort, their lips to grin or curl or smirk as if in commentary; and sometimes they like to release their grip on the cards for an expansive, apparently careless gesture, in order to mislead and deceive the other players. Meanwhile, I chatted with the chips in the pot. Boy, do they know a thing or two. As for me, I keep my lid on.
Doorman duty does pay some interest, face-to-face as you are with the street (seat to seat in our nomenclature) and brushed by the people passing, hurrying home after another warm day, with their anxieties safely snapped in their purses. Once in a while a funny thing will happen as it happened to Natty Know-it-all. Which is as follows: a little white truck double-parks in front of the shop and a guy runs to the rear of it. The truck, I mean. Then, before Natty can prepare himself, this hasty kid plops a large tub of chrysanthemums in Nat’s lap. Well, I didn’t mean a comical happening. Apologies if I mislead you. I meant strange. I meant odd. I meant mysterious. It was early fall, we all remember, at the very edge of evening, and the flowers were already half-lit, a pale pink, I think it was, the color of an embarrassed cheek, but, when fisted into a bunch by a determined hand, might be as perky as could be. Nat can’t make a ring-a-ding thing about the delivery, since his back is to us and mostly out of sight in the doorway recess. Lordy, he would have said if he could have. Lordy, this is quite a different kind of ass than I am used to making room for, he would have said, I’m sure, given a reason to say, or a way to say it.
So he sat there as the few lights along the street began to glow. The flowerpot was damp and cooling. He says it felt nice on a warm night. But the mums were playing their part in a puzzle. Which was as follows: Sam and Mart should have gone home through the front door. Neither of them participated in the poker game. That was Walter’s show. And when Sam and Mart left work they always ran their hands, in a kind of friendly gesture, over the curving blue back of whichever one of us was on watch. As far as I knew, the green metal door to the alley was never used. I mean the door opposite the john in the poker room. Which I refer to as the green metal door to the alley. So I say: how? how did they go in or out without spotting the pot, or the pot spotting them, for gosh sake?
In this way Natty passed his time that night. The moment the plant was delivered, the truck sped away. Some unknown person had parked before the shop, under the traditional red-and-white-striped spiral that had long ago stopped its dizzy spinning, a man, a young man maybe, had got out, was he the driver? did he take the pot from the rear of the truck or just come around the rear with it in his arms to deposit the—possibly a present?—yes, a gift. The street emptied. The bouquet (can we say?) sat in Know-it-all’s lap. Shadows ran together like ingredients in a drink. The flowers were waiting, maybe, to have their blossoms shorn. Know-it-all didn’t know it all, after all. The plant was uncommunicative. A place at the poker table must have remained empty because no one came to put Natty next to Perse. Hours passed. Darkness erased definition. That’s how long the night was—as long as the letters m and n spell “me and my mind’s memory.”
On wagerless nights Walter would leave last, checking the lights and other equipment, locking the door with a brass key; and just before he began his hike home, he’d pause before the window to give it scrutiny while inside we waited for his image to be eaten by others. On poker nights the front door would be busy until eleven before Walt locked up from inside. The game would then begin. Walt’s pick of folding chairs for back-room service was pretty random, though I was chosen often enough to learn the game. I thought I became rather good at it. Never play to win a particular pot, never become enamored of your pairs, because odds do not apply to particulars. Every deal is as unique as any other. Just keep track of the way the bidding breaks. Then follow the odds like a private eye. Fold when history tells you. Over the long haul you’ll be a winner more often than not.
One of our regulars (for a time) was an undercover cop. He would slink into the shop at the end of the day, seat himself on Prince, and hide behind a magazine—The Boxer’s Monthly, I believe—biting his cigar with yellow teeth. After a discreet interval, he’d stuff its dead stub in his mouth and slip away to the game. There, Walt would let him win one or two deals. It was a reasonable payoff. Some guys grumbled about it but Walt knew what he was doing. A little insurance, he said, against arrest. That’s all. And a lot easier to give away than a free shave.
While dealing, Walt would sometimes hum mumble a tune—his “Auntie’s in the Pantry” song. It really riled the other players. Mostly because they couldn’t hear all the lines clearly and found themselves straining to understand something they didn’t want to be bothered with. This is how his jingle went, as I made it out. His knees tended to knock.
What say you, mate,
as you accumulate
a stack from the dealer of the action?
Ante up, man, ante up.
Rattle your fist to simulate
the greed of the clattering cup.
Roll the craps, dude, shake and roll.
I’m twenty-one and lots of fun.
You can find me on the stroll,
wagging my hips, rou
ging my lips.
Ante up, mate, ante up.
I know how to flip an ace,
quietly fold or make a face.
Whatcha say, guy, whatcha got?
Threes are wild and I’m with child,
hid like a card in a lousy hand,
not at all as we had planned.
Ante up, man, ante up.
The fact that Know-it-all was doing an all-nighter weighed heavily upon me the way fat men, waiting their turn at the clippers, deepened the thin crease of my back. Dawn was arriving piecemeal, like a gift awkwardly wrapped, when the chrysanthemums—it must have been they—exploded, blowing away the glass front of the shop and hurling Natty out into the street, bent and spent, in a skid to the sidewalk opposite. Shards of glass rattled across the bare seats of those of us inside the shop, and slivers scratched our backs when we were blown against one another. Deadly Reckoning suffered a slightly bowed leg; Barry Buttock was seriously scarred; Overly Neighborly sailed out of his place in our row to strike Millie’s table so forcibly its wheels would never revolve again; both Perce and Commander Prince Paul were pelted by chrysanthemum leaves and pieces of dirt; while I, Mr. Middle, rocked against Perce and Prince Paul, shoving them so intently their eight legs screeched in protest.
Leaves, petals, and pottery flew hither and yon, plaster dust settled on the barbers’ chairs so abundantly you could write on them—and later, Mart would, with his finger, be inspired to reach eloquence. All of a sudden the place filled with police.
Eyes Page 12