The Haircutter

by Dana Thompson

  We rode lying down, snuggling. Carol’s limbs wrapped around my fat body. She was a net and I was a beached whale someone was hauling.

  As we got closer and closer to Wyoming, Carol cried more and more. It was alarming, but I didn’t hear the alarm going off. It got so bad that every time I looked at her she had tears dripping from her face. “I don’t wanna split up!” she’d whisper. She was in real heart pain. She’d scratch at her heart as if to stop it from itching. The skin over her heart looked like one of my paintings where I took some red and made a motion like the brush couldn’t stop signing a check (over which I painted Perry Sufo wrote Serious on a Tuesday in 1991 in present tense). Carol crawled across the haul floor crying and saying “John” like the word hurt to say.

  “We don’t have to do this.”

  She said, “Yes, we do.”

  Then she shook her hair and howled to show: Let’s get back on track.

  Carol and The Haircutter crossed America with their cheeks vibrating in the steel haul as they held their heads in ways that made the vibrating least unflattering. Charlie Quick in his driver’s seat felt a foreign sense of relaxation. He started whistling, but caught himself and bit his hand white. He hadn’t grown up with happiness, so he always thought that people thought he was trying to act like Christmas if he showed some. At a sleep stop one night, he was disgusted by the truck rocking like a Hush Little Charlie, so he got out and went to the bar at the edge of the lot they were parked in. Around the top of the bar ran a choo-choo train, and when Quick walked in, the tender lady did a trick where she hollered and it came out sounding like a train. Around the carpeted floor of the bar, mouse droppings five years old mingled with mouse droppings five seconds fresh. Charlie Quick bought a beer and felt patrons look at his blue suit. He shrugged to drape it better. A news anchor on TV said, “The Middle East is falling apart.” A patron grunted and Charlie Quick looked at her—she had a fuzzy birthmark around one of her eyes like her name was Spot and the tender let her eat out of the dumpster at night. Quick blushed his English cheeks. He looked at the other patron, who was wearing rose-colored glasses and spitting tobacco juice through a missing tooth to arch toward the TV but land with a rattle in a bucket behind the bar labeled Dip spit “here” and no where’s else! Charlie Quick’s heart palpitated. He was a scared man; that’s why he was companions with Christmas. Christmas equaled power, which equaled protection, which equaled companionship. The bar he was in? It made him feel unprotected. He couldn’t do normal things; he couldn’t even finish his beer. He left an enormous tip and left his bar stool spinning. He burst through a swarm of moths. He heard the tender lady make her train sound through the window screens. He ran back to the truck, his suit coat flapping like chicken wings. He settled into the cab and, rock-a-bye Charlie, fell asleep.

  And in the haul, Carol came. In orchestral, silent-sex fashion, the orgasm had many layers—it ended with an oboe of all instruments holding out a note softly retarding. The oboe player, Carol saw for a flash second, had a lazy eye, and stood knock-kneed while he piped. She shook the image out of her head and her vagina throbbed herself to sleep—rock-a-bye Carol. The Haircutter handled his shriveling balls and looked at the roof of the haul, which had scratches on it from hauling art, and thought, This is an art truck and this is my girlfriend, and this is an art project I have to do. He thought, Ma-ma! He thought, I miss my old life with my Cokes and books and car wash job. But then I’d have to give up Carol. He thought, Well then I’d have to kill her. He smelled the top of her head and said, “I’d rather she be asleep than somewhere awake and without me.” Outside of the truck, the Midwest crickets throbbed the word weird weird weird weird weird weird weird weird weird.

  ACTION.

  Carol and The Haircutter bouncing so hard their bodies come up off the floor. Fat-stuffed H.C.’s not used to feeling weightlessness—he’s giggling. Carol lifts her shirt to show how her boobs are responding—blurry. Quick rips up backroads terrain.

  H.C. sees through a bullet hole, “This is it!”

  Carol cries, “I ain’t ready yet!”

  The truck halts to a stop, making Carol and H.C. scatter.

  The haul door rolls up to the sound of Carol shrieking.

  Quick moves about in the cab.

  Carol blows her nose on H.C.’s sleeping bag.

  A POP! as Quick unstops the peephole. A camera lens blinks in its center.

  Carol presses The Haircutter’s head to her protruding sternum—he finds her pearl and sucks it. She shakes her hair and howls. The electronic turning of the film roll inside the black camera captures the scene.

  They can smell the color scale of the trees. From wet to dry. From wild flowers to wild animal feces. They flick their tongues for a kiss. Two snakes—one fat, one thin, one male, one female, both from Wyoming.

  H.C. pulls his body walrus-like by the palms to the corner where Carol’s backpack is. The camera captures the scene—Carol and The Haircutter, in camping clothes clean, attach her sleeping bag to her pack, thread her arms through the straps. The Haircutter smashes his face into hers. The camera shyly blinks.

  Carol says, “I wish I could talk right now!”

  H.C. says, “Me too! What would you say?”

  And with a surprising amount of heft and gathered strength, Carol Mary Mathers leaps from the truck. Two female-sized hiking boots land HUFF on the earth. A female spine responds accordingly. A thirty-year-old blond makes a ponytail.

  She looks back to see the face of one fat Haircutter and the lens-eye of one drilled peephole, which she—barely detected, but captured on film—winks at.

  The truck lurches forward before the haul door is even half-closed.

  I let out a roar of misery when we pulled away. Every thought of what we didn’t learn about survival was an electric shock. I started clutching my head like I was going crazy in a movie—I was like, Whoa, this is actually pretty serious. I was like, I just left my girl in the woods.

  I ferociously ate granola all the way to my drop spot. Some tears piddle-paddled—fine, add all that. I blew my nose in the same place Carol blew hers on my sleeping bag to see if later a flower would grow.

  When the truck finally stopped I fell face-first into the granola pile. When I pulled my head out, the haul door was rolled up—hello nightmare.

  Pop went the peephole plug above my head. I scurried to my sleeping bag and rolled it up. The camera whirred. I sucked in my stomach so hard it made me cough. I put on my backpack and went to take two handfuls of granola, then I walked on my knees to the end of the haul and worked on sliding out—I scraped my forearms. The camera whirred once more when I was outside. It’s an ugly pic—you can only see my head off the end of the haul looking in the lens, thinking, “I’m getting this head photographed so I might as well close its mouth.” The haul door closed electronically and the truck pulled away. What had we gotten ourselves into.

  The wilderness watched me from the corners of its eyes to show how it’s more important than me but wonders why I’m there. Or did it wave with its branches saying, “You’re a part of us!” Either way, I put the granola in my mouth, but realized I didn’t want it, so I spat it out (like that same hamster). I took off my backpack and got out the cell. What’s the use wasting time?

  Riiiiiiiing, riiiiiiiiing—you know.

  “Hello?”

  “John Junior here.”

  “This is Charlie Quick.”

  I was like, “Oh!”

  And told him nevermind and waited forty-five minutes.

  Riiiiiiiiiiiiiig—

  “This is Darron speaking.”

  “Yeah I know!”

  “Brother John! This is a FUCKING cool surprise! You gotta explain it to me, but I’m just happy to be a part of whatever it is!”

  “Good, so you read the letter?” I said.

  “Yeah! Sounds real arty, but I kinda get it, even though at first I was like, ‘Oh is this some art baloney?’”

  “Yeah yeah, listen. A
re you in front of Ma or Father John?”

  “Huh-uh, I’m in my car already.”

  “Good! Okay, come out and get me now. I’ll explain when you pick me up, but basically I’m not waitin’ in these damn woods for a week, if you hear.”

  “I got the keys in the ignition! Where are you?”

  “It’s what I gave you the map for!” I grouched.

  Laziness is as what fat lazy men do, or whatever saying you could say for it. It would’ve taken a minimum of four days for us to find each other, and what’s the difference between me sleeping in bear shit four days or me sleeping in a hotel four days? The difference is bears. I’d have Darron take me back to the woods in four days and drop me closer to where Carol’s drop spot was. So sue me. And send the bill to my mother—she’d be happy to pay it. Talk about a fair fare.

  I went out to the road and waited. When cars passed by I dove into the bushery. You know—don’t let anyone recognize The Haircutter in case the arm of fame can reach Wyoming and point him out. I paced the road and tried playing with a stick but knew I wasn’t the type, so I ditched it. I started getting choked up on “poor Carol” stuff—was I doing the right thing? It was hard for me—let’s just leave it at that, along with leaving Carol in the woods.

  The blue car in the distance. A rusty Volkswagen Golf. Coming at me like a slow unzipping. Darron’s smiling face. Har-har. There’s my little brother. Two chords up the back of his straight boy’s neck; one missing tail. When we were little in the summer he’d have to go outside to get warm because Father John put the A/C up high and Darron didn’t get fat genes like everyone else. Sitting on the sidewalk by himself tickling his eyeball with a blade of grass, moaning.

  Tires crackling over chipped road. He cranks the brake. His door asks, “Huh?” then falls shut, “Oh.”

  “Brother John!”

  He comes to hug.

  And smells the same.

  And says, “I just seen Carol! Hitchhiking down the road a few miles back!”

  The words swarmed around my head trying to find my ear holes, but they were blind and senseless; wrought, with hands bound. (Or whatever. It just sucked, is what.)

  “She’s a brunette now?” he said.

  I shrank in relief.

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?” he said. “That was her.”

  I said, “No it wadn’t, she ain’t brown-headed.”

  He said, “But don’t her legs kinda go backwards when she stands?”

  Wrought. Felt like I was swallowing long, flexible needles.

  I said, “What’d you just say?”

  “That was her, I swear to god, I know her face. And I think she recognized me too cause she was like—,” he made a surprised face and turned away to hide it.

  I said, “Shit!” I said, “Really?” I said, “Christ!” I said, “She’s prolly goin’ to a hotel like me!”

  “You’re goin’ to a hotel? Aww, you dog! Y’all are cheatin’ on your thing or what?”

  I said, “Hurry up, get in the car.” I thought quick, “Now listen here Darron, this is what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna get in the trunk, no matter how hard you gotta squeeze me, and you go pick her up, k? And try to get as much info as you can outta her. And if she asks if you recognize her from Blue Bear, you just say no. Even if she says I’m that Blue Bear waitress, you say, ‘Hell, I’m usually dancin’ so hard I can’t capture faces, they’re all a blur.’ K?”

  Darron nodded slow and serious. I was really grateful for how seriously he took all this, and I still am.

  I said, “Now most important thing is you say you were up these ways cause you got called that your friend shot a buck up here and needed help getting it in his truck cause his saw was busted, but when you got up here, just say your friend used a hatchet instead and didn’t need your help.”

  Darron said, “Dang! That’s all real smart! Okay, git in the trunk.”

  I curled up like a stupid roly-poly hugging onto my backpack and Darron shut the trunk.

  I heard him go, “Looks like the car’s got a shit in its rear,” and I chuckled at that, even though I was confused as hell, and nervous, and still felt like I was swallowing those long needles.

  We rolled to a stop a few miles later. I heard the muffled voice of a female with the exact musicality of Carol’s. She got in. I heard waka-waka talking between the two of them. Once we started driving, I couldn’t hear a thing—only the engine and the sexual sounds that my body pushed out of my mouth when we went over bumps.

  After a while, we rolled to a stop and I heard what could only have been, “Welcome to McDonald’s, may I take your order?” Based on how we proceeded stop/start then for a bit made me sure that we were in a McDonald’s drive-thru. Hungry, Carol?

  Shortly after the drive-thru, we came to another stop and I heard waka-waka thank yous and goodbyes. Carol’s door slammed shut.

  Darron let me out of the trunk as he was saying, “She’s been hitchhiking since Rock Springs, is what she said, which I’m guessing is a lie, and she told me a pervert asked her for a sexual favor, so she made him let her out. And that’s where I hitched her. It’s good she dudn’t hunt, cause I was like, ‘there’s a moose up here with a saw in its rear, and my friend needed help gettin’ it in his trunk.’”

  “WHERE’D YOU DROP HER OFF?” I said.

  “The bus station,” he said.

  “The BUS STATION!”

  I watched Darron army crawl up a grassy hill down the block that summited to the bus station parking lot. He saw Carol waiting with her long backpack. (“Was it red?” “Yes.”) He saw her with her head down and the bangs from her wig covering her eyes. He saw a bus pull up and watched her get on. He bolted back to the car and smacked the hood, “Duck down! We got a bus to follow!”

  I said, “HONK! Go catch her!”

  Darron said, “No way!”

  I instinctively went to yank his tail but it was gone.

  He said, “What good’s that gonna do if you don’t spy? Then you’ll never know the real reason why. Where’s she going? We gotta spy, big bro.”

  I said, “FUCK YOU, IS WHAT!”

  Talk about hush, howler. He was right.

  The day faded into night.

  Keep your eyes on that bus was the theme.

  “Maybe she’s goin’ back to New York,” Darron said.

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Maybe she forgot somethin’,” he said.

  “She didn’t.”

  The familiar square of the bus hovering mirage-like ahead of us. Fuck you, is what.

  Darron said, “I’m gonna use this cell to call Ma and Father John.”

  Right now I should be at a motel vending machine asking what things I’m gonna get, I thought.

  “Ma?” Darron said, “I just wanna let you know I decided last minute to go outta town on a Salvation shoppin’ spree.”

  I heard my mother whine her worries.

  “Actually, I found my New Year’s resolution list the other day? And I was like, Oh my god, I forgot one’a my goals was to go on a Salvation spree for Imitation supplies.”

  Where did she get a wig? Was it made of real hair? Whose?

  He hung up wincing.

  “I don’t like lyin’,” he said very quietly under his breath.

  My brother got nice genes instead of fat ones. Or maybe he got fat ones too, but kept them at bay with dancing. Maybe we got nice genes too, but we just can’t tell because all that fat being there makes the heart’s function penetrate through less efficiently. Darron’s heart’s function penetrates through like light through a window you wash. Or some math like that where I’m fat.

  The night faded into day.

  “What’d she get at McDonald’s?”

  “Chicken sandwich, a thing of chicken nuggets, two large fries, strawberry shake, and a Coke,” he said.

  My eyes filled with tears at the thought of her enjoying that nice meal—the bus blurred into the horizon like this was all a
dream.

  The three people who had just driven to Wyoming together were now driving back to New York in three separate vehicles. Charlie Quick was singing in the empty wolf job truck and feeling more protected than he’d ever felt before in his life. His task was to drive, and his doing it could not be improved upon—he was driving. He held a low note that crackled into a whinny when he realized that there is as much protection in absolute freedom as there is freedom in absolute protection. He took his right hand off the wheel and punched his window out. One hundred and fifty-three miles back, The Haircutter was telling his little brother about all that had happened to him and Carol since they’d settled in New York—Darron was so impressed, he took his right hand off his mouth and rolled his window down. Fifty-three feet in front of Darron and H.C., Carol was leaned into a bus aisle watching the road roll under the window shield—she had a hand up her shirt and she was twiddling a nipple unbeknownst to her. She only stopped that task to sleep or to shit her nerves into the little bus toilette—the other passengers thinking, She’s goin’ again. She’d crack the toilette window to watch cattle pass while she sat. When she’d flush, she’d tell the pot, “Swill that down, you’re used to it,” and the pot would guzzle like a lupo hick trying to make her puke.

  Tinkle twinkle, little pussy little stars. Each one asking, “What the hell?” “What the hell?” “What the hell’s going on?” It didn’t occur to me to be bothered by the fact that Carol was so fancy-pants she kept her pajamas under her pillow, or that her skin looked like the underside of a bar table since she’d started wearing so much makeup. I had one thing in mind, and one thing only—how’d she learn how to take a bus by herself, and what did it mean about where she was going? Carol at transfers having to switch buses like a game of cups—which one has Carol? We followed the buses through Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, wherever-the-stupid-fuck. Darron slept with his mouth open and it smelled like a soggy box of firecrackers from a garage flood. I drove like a bull on fire, snorting and making a high-pitched sound while getting burned alive wondering what the hell’s going on. My mind thought, “Hey maybe this is a little cat and mouse aspect she added!” Then, my mind roared, “She’s goin’ back to New York and leavin’ you in the woods and you know it!!!” My mind’s eye showed myself sleeping in the pup tent hugging onto my bear mace being like, “Carol, I love you! Maybe tomorrow I’ll find you!” I wrung the steering wheel and made that high-pitched sound. I was connected to Carol by telepathic tendons plucked by thought, and a fever ignited in them when she wouldn’t respond. Why aren’t you out in the woods right now? … Carol?… Why am I not at a vending machine right now while you’re out in the woods? The fever bent down into heartache, then boiled up into rage, then bent down into heartache, then boiled back into rage, then became the fist of pain grabbing me by the heart, twisting it like a T-shirt, lifting me up off my seat and saying through gritted teeth, “FEEL.” Darron said, “There there,” which was such a strange and parental thing to say, it actually did calm me down. My high-pitched sound retarded. Rock-a-bye H.C. (Just after you kill yourself.)