The Haircutter

by Dana Thompson

  The lace duster was sewn to the stomach of the dress in a C. I thought, Creative, Carol.

  I looked at Anna-Patrick’s beautiful face, now framed by curls. I bit my hand again. Anna-Patrick was Miss Universe, and Carol was Little Miss Basement Bathroom of The Shopping Mall Where There’s No Toilet Paper And Somehow Diarrhea On The Wall.

  I put the dress down on Anna-Patrick’s desk and said, “Stand up.”

  She stood up and flipped her head upside down and ran her fingers through the curls.

  “You’re ruining it!” I shrieked.

  “No, this is what you’re supposed to do.”

  Her fingers separated the curls and made hundreds of smaller curls, making her hair bigger than it usually is.

  “Watch,” she said upside down.

  Then she flipped her head back and her hair flew up and landed behind her in a bounce.

  I grabbed her rump and yanked her close.

  “Ah!” she screamed.

  Our eyes locked clean, and in three deep breaths, Anna-Patrick’s rib basket was rested on my stomach. She lowered her face and we kissed. I put my hands in her hair. Felt the hot melonic ripeness of her head. Felt the warmth of her inner mouth with my tongue. Felt her rump again. When we pulled away, she was smiling, her teeth and gums protruding from her face. It made me squeal and honk a titty.

  “Aah!” she screamed and clutched at it. “Let’s take it slower than that!” she said, smiling.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I said, grabbing Carol’s dress.

  There’s H.C. in slow motion walking toward his mammoth art piece with his mammoth girlfriend. A trophy was growing inside of his chest ready to burst through it. There’s six hired men gathered funeraly around the base of the sixteen-foot cubular coffin. There’s Darron and Father John soldier-straight by the boulder at the ramp. Watch “Wendy” descend a steep hill to stand by Patty Reilly and the hired men. See The Haircutter walk up the ramp and move down the ladder into the sinkhole, the famous dress draped over his shoulder. There’s the mannequin waiting in the bottom of the hole like Carol Mathers. H.C. dresses it swift and quick. Doesn’t put panties on it so the viewer can see her cooter twat. He spies a strand of Carol’s hair caught in the string of lace like wolf saliva. He leaves it there. He positions the body on its back in the center of the sinkhole. Then climbs the ladder. A nod to Darron sets his voice box off, “We are gathered here today to put to rest one Carol Mary Mathers.”

  Darron had memorized the script, “She died in the Bighorns during an art project called Hush, Howler—Hunt. All the men present have helped to construct this life-sized re-creation of the sinkhole that she died in.”

  “Some women helped too!” Patty shouted, pointing at Anna-Patrick.

  “The glossy outer walls represent her coffin. The Headstone’s title represents the stone that dropped on her head. Her brain was smashed completely, along with her mind? One would wonder, and never get anywhere with it. Her lower body came up off the ground and seemed to pop. Steam came out of holes in her legs. Our goal today is to re-create her death and hopefully get her legs to stay up in the air off the ground. The Haircutter, whenever you’re ready.”

  Father John was looking at me with a look like you’d give someone who was telling a really great story. He shook it off when he saw me see him.

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  Darron and Father John came to get their hands on the boulder and their feet gripped to the earth. Patty rattled her keys and knitted her brow in the shrieking pink sunset, and Anna-Patrick sopped a tear duct with a tissue ball. The team of six hired men hung their mouths in disbelief and hung their calloused hands around their belt buckle names for handy frames. Some pee-crusted white-trash children hung on the fence in the background.

  “Go!” I shouted.

  We roared and pushed the boulder up the ramp. It went faster than expected. It dropped suddenly off the edge and fell into the hole. We almost fell in with it.

  The boulder landed on Mannequin Carol’s head. Her legs shot up and stayed aloft.

  Everyone cheered enormous hoots and emotional laughter.

  “So long, Girly,” I said under my breath.

  We put the lid on, then we had to chain the whole thing to the truck, even though it was so heavy a tornado couldn’t lift it off. The chains left scratches on the varnish and Father John ruined the mood of the ceremony by yelling at the men who’d voted chains instead of cloth straps, and then Anna-Patrick fixed the mood by saying that whoever buys The Headstone won’t mind the scratches because “coffins are usually scratched.” We put a tarp over the hole where I’d climb down the ladder at truck stops to sleep, and my mother screamed, “Anyone could get in there! Don’t let no knife murderers see you climb down in there!”

  I said, “Shut up, Ma!” fourteen in front of my new girlfriend.

  We affixed red flags and flashing lights to the chains and then panted on the ruined grass in front of The Headstone’s square and military mass, like eleven morsels of humanity having completed a Mannequin Ceremony.

  Anna-Patrick and I got in her truck and followed the Fair Fare van to the Blue Bear Saloon.

  “That was emotional,” she said.

  “Psh,” I said. “I’m just ready to cash the money in. Perhaps use it to fix up your house.”

  Her chin started quivering and her eyes welled hard.

  “Don’t look so scared,” I said. “Or hell, I can just move to Miami Beach with it and never see you again!”

  She laughed and shook her head like she couldn’t believe her luck.

  “Believe it, Bucky,” I said, which I wish I hadn’t.

  In the Blue Bear parking lot, all the hired men joined us with their wives and denim families to whoop and shout and show how their cowboy-dressed little sons could stick their tongues out of their mouths while doing fancy footwork. A smug little wifemom walking adroitly in high heels as though they were her hooves asked me about art and I announced to the parking lot that I don’t talk about art anymore. We flooded in, and I saw Carol Couch from when I’d come in looking for Carol. I said, “The Blue Bear,” aloud for some reason instead of nodding hi to her. It smelled like sawdust and cigarettes. I saw the waitresses pump their fists when Darron ran toward the dance floor and slid on his knees across it. Carol Couch went and lowered the lights, making the Christmas lights shine brighter. Gravely voices cut through uppity country music with opinions they just had to express to each other. Anna-Patrick, quiet as a church mouse, taller than the doorway to a house, held my fat hand in her tan elegant.

  “This is great!” she said.

  “Well this is Darron’s place,” I told her.

  Patty set an armful of Imitation Cowboys on a table that the Blue Bear had made especially for Darron with a sign that explains what the Imitations are. Customers went over to buy them.

  “Would you like a drink?” I asked Anna-Patrick.

  “Sure! Coke please!”

  We sat at a table with Patty and some of the hired men’s families watching everyone dance and get drunk. I saw Patty watching us, and she leaned forward and smacked Anna-Patrick hard on the shoulder. She screamed over the Toby Keith, “Junior’s quiet and ornery but he’s got a heart! This time he nicked himself with a pencil and came to me screamin’ about Let’s get to the hospital before the lead poisonin’ starts!” She pinched her straw and sipped on it coy and fast. (She really did look good in those earrings.)

  “He is very smart,” Anna-Patrick said.

  Patty said, “I never went to college.”

  I said, “Neither did she!” happy for the coincidence.

  Anna-Patrick smiled at me and bobbed her shoulders in time with the beat.

  “You wanna go dance? Darron would like it,” I said.

  “I wanna see you dance!” she said.

  “Aw hell, it’s been a while,” I said.

  “GO! DO it!” Patty shouted.

  I was in a good mood, I guess. The happiest ever.


  “Darron!” I shouted over the music, “Hey, Darron!”

  Darron spun around quick in his black clothes, his tail flying out from his neck, “Yeah?”

  “You still remember that Scissor Step?” I said.

  He bent his legs and screamed, “GET YOUR ASS UP HERE!!!”

  I took a big gulp of Coke. I stood up and yanked my belt up around my fat and stepped forward on the damp carpet until my sneakers were catching drag on the shiny wood dance floor. Darron joined me at my side and we waited for the right part of the song. Darron wagged his finger to count with, and when I looked up, everyone was watching us.

  “GO!” Darron screamed, and we crisscrossed our feet sideways down the dance floor. I knew right away that I wouldn’t be able to do the whole length of it, so I roared hard, thinking it would help, until I tripped on my legs and fell to my hands and knees.

  “Dang it!” I said.

  Darron tripped over me and did a somersault, then sprung up like a Halloween cat. Anna-Patrick was pulling me up, laughing like a flock of seagulls just got tossed a net of shrimp scampi. She screamed, “My turn!”

  Carol always blushed while she danced, doing these little movements that looked like she had to pee. Anna-Patrick circled me like a predator, her right hand flicking on its wrist in time with the drums. Elvis’s voice came on and she turned away from me and spelled each word he said with her hips. She did it in a circle and then did a move where she fell to her knees and popped up again, fell to her knees and popped up again, with her lips closed tight over her overbite. Hoots and whistles came from every patron in the room. I swear it was like she was moving inside of the song. She was like an added instrument.

  I said, “Goodness gracious, Anna-Patrick!”

  I backed up to sit with Patty to watch Anna-Patrick and Darron dance. Her head laughed back and her mass of curls rippled like a flag. Darron was in the presence of someone as good as he was at dancing. He was smiling so hard he kept choking, and soon he was crying. He pulled out all his best moves—ones he hadn’t done in ages because there had been no one to appreciate them. His face was neon red. He did a spin that seemed to last a half minute, where he nearly disappeared. Then he stuck his landing, and Anna-Patrick took the challenge to do a spin of her own—she spun so fast that she disappeared, making it look like Darron was standing alone. When she landed, they both bent their legs and moved in a circle enthused with each other, snapping like orphans in a musical.

  I decided to get some water to make sure my gravedigger was hydrated when she was ready for a rest, so I moved my way to the bar. Father John was sitting there so he could get his glass filled without waiting. I pressed my stomach into the bar and shouted, “Waters please!” to the waitress.

  Father John was looking at Anna-Patrick. His eyes had those star lines shooting out of them again, like God trying to scratch them open.

  Anna-Patrick was doing leg kicks in consecutive moments where her knee touched her buckteeth.

  “Oh! Her name is Anna-Patrick,” I told Father John, happy to report.

  “Here you go!” the waitress said and handed me the waters.

  Father John said, “HEY!”

  I flinched and water dripped to my shoes like a bubble had burst.

  He was squinting at Anna-Patrick.

  Then he was howling.

  “I said I know names, didn’t I! That’s the whore I paid to take your virginity!”

  I walked back to the table with the waters spilling in my flapping hands. I set them on the table and went out onto the dance floor.

  I said to Anna-Patrick, “I didn’t know. I’m dumb.”

  She shouted, “What?!”

  Darron said, “Whoa, big bro, what’s wrong? Your face is all white.”

  I shouted into Anna-Patrick’s ear, “I’m goin’ to the john, and then I want you gone. I don’t need a girlfriend.”

  I walked off the dance floor and looked back at her once. She was standing there doing a hoo sound with her overbite, crying.

  I went into the john and tossed the trashcan at the wall.

  I’ll admit I cried. So what.

  Then I peaked my head out the door and Anna-Patrick was there.

  “Hi!” she said cheerfully. Trying things.

  “Go away!”

  I shut the door and she came to shout on the other side of it. Someone was pooping loud farts into the toilet as she said, “Did someone tell you? I didn’t know if you knew or not! It doesn’t mean I can’t love! It was the only thing that made me feel! I was all alone!”

  “Feel?! Yuck!”

  “No, not like that! I can’t explain it, H! These men they’d get all inflated as they were coming back to the room, and then they’d be deflated when they left, and it was interesting! I don’t know why! They were coming in like flashcards or something—I mean, fat ones, skinny ones, old ones, young muscly ones—just go to the grocery store and see how wide of a variety there is! Bless, I guess it’s weird now that I think about it, but at the time—bless, H! Honestly, I didn’t even enjoy the sex part, and that’s something I’d still like to discover in myself and I look forward to your help! H.C., please understand me! That’s why when you said about your haircutting I understood!”

  “I know how fat I am, okay?” I said. “Quit pretending and scram!”

  “Hoooooo,” she cried. “You’re not fat!” she blubbered.

  “It makes sense why you’re a prostitute, you’re gorgeous. Who wouldn’t want to sleep with you,” I said to the sink.

  “I’m not!” she shrieked. “I only did that for a couple years, and then I got the graveyard job and that replaced my need to feel something because I LOVE tending land, I told you! It was so long ago, I was just a dumb person all alone! I didn’t have anyone, H! That’s why I’ve been hiding all these years and why I changed my name! I can’t even look at myself because it reminds me of what people would think if they knew my history! Tonight I thought, ‘I’m just going to show my face!’ Because it’s time to grow up and move on and I finally found a man I love.”

  More hoo’s as she cried harder.

  The pooper came out of the toilet and I saw he was a scared little kid in cowboy clothes.

  “Does your tummy hurt?” I snarled at him, and he ran out of the john without washing his hands, and I saw Anna-Patrick there with all her makeup smeared looking hopeful like, ‘Ooh is this an opportunity where he’s going to catch the door and talk to me now?’ I let it swing shut.

  “Make sure them cemetery gates are open tomorrow at 4:00 a.m.,” I said. “Now go and leave my family alone. I don’t even know you. Scram.”

  When I finally came out of the john it was time to go, and everyone was asking me what the hell went on that made the tall girl cry and run out. Father John was laughing and Darron helped him get in the van. “That’s a prostitute,” he said, hiccupping all the way home and trying to spell “prostitute.” My mother said under her breath, “And a very nice one at that.” My brother mouthed to me, “Screw him.” I rolled my eyes and took out a toothpick.

  Darron and I hugged goodbye at the stairs to my attic.

  “I’m gonna come visit you wherever you go next,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I think you should give Wendy a second chance,” he said.

  “She only had sex with me cause she got paid,” I said. “By Father John.”

  “It’s pretty cool he never told you that, though. To make you think you lost your virginity on your own?” he said.

  “Darron! Quit bein’ so dumb!” I said.

  Darron shook his head and sighed long and heavy. “People grow. I can tell she really really likes you now.”

  “You smell like B.O.,” I said.

  “Well, I’ve been dancing for the past five hours,” he said.

  “It smells like you’re cookin’ somethin’ in your pits,” I said. “Damn it, Darron, I’m gonna cry tonight. That woman was somethin’ else.”

  He put a hand
on my shoulder, “You and her go together. You can just tell.”

  I saw Father John’s dusty workboot tracks pointing into his room from when he came home from being a man.

  “I spent all my money,” I said.

  “You did? I thought you were rich!” Darron said.

  “I was,” I said.

  “Is your art not that good?” he said.

  I said, “Ach! That’s enough with being around people! Get The Haircutter out of here!”

  I woke up at four in the morning and Patty was downstairs with two coffee mugs. We left the house and a wolf ran out of our bushes and into the streetlights, where it looked back at me before getting hit by a bus. We got in the Fair Fare van and it still smelled like Father John’s alcohol from before. We wove through the streets toward the highway that lead to the cemetery. I sipped on my coffee, but stopped when I realized it only made me more nervous. I was so nervous to see Anna-Patrick again, I almost farted the shit out of my ass. My mother rolled my window down and I saw myself in the side mirror reflection.

  I don’t need a girlfriend! I’d said. Scram!

  Anna-Patrick had opened the cemetery gates like I’d commanded.

  And she was nowhere in sight. She didn’t want to say goodbye.

  “Good,” I said aloud. “That’s right,” I said. “It’s me and the road, me and the opening, then me and my scissor,” I said.

  “Yeah, so what’s your plan, Junior?” my mother settled in snug thinking I was opening up.

  I walked toward my flatbed truck with my stupid art project on its back. The headlights gleamed in the dark as I crested a hill and saw it there. It radiated like an unchained bull waiting complacently for me to ride it.

  I climbed up into the cab, sat on the blankets that padded the bench. I started the engine and pulled out of the cemetery, my mother honking goodbye. I was ten feet off the ground. I spread my legs wider to grip the floor mat. Checked my mirrors to make sure all’s alright. Resisted the urge to drive past the Rodeo Inn. Made that now-familiar turn onto I-80 East.