My pa always said I was ornery ‘cause I liked playing in the creek, watching cattle being driven by, and climbing trees with my goats. But back in the early months of 1867, I was six and I was sick. When a boy so full of piss-and-vinegar spends the winter stuck in a drafty Texas cabin because he’s feeling lower than a snake in snowshoes, you can bet your boots he’s spent too many hours thinkin’ of ways to make up for lost time.
As the days got longer, Ma decided that I needed some sunshine and figured some wagon rides into town would do me good.
Today was my third trip in two weeks. Now, I’d never paid much attention to the townsfolk, more concerned with whether or not I was gonna get a piece of candy, but having been cooped up for so long, I found these strangers more interesting than usual.
On my first trip, I saw a fellow walking out of a certain brown and blue door holding a bloody rag at his mouth. Stunned me, it did. So much so that on my second trip, I kept my peepers trained on that same door. I wasn’t disappointed.
After the newest bleeding man hurried off to the saloon, I pulled my ma’s sleeve and asked, “What kind of place is that, behind that brown and blue door?”
“That’s the barber’s shop, Colt.”
I didn’t know about hair cutters then, as ma trimmed my and my pa’s hair. But I did know about the barbs on a wire fence, and my young mind imagined some mighty scary possibilities about why people were a-leaving there with bloody mouths. Of course I probably wouldn’t have envisioned such wild ideas if Ma had enlightened me as to what a barber does, or bothered to add the fact that the local barber also dabbled in dentistry… but then she would’ve had to explain about teeth as well, I suppose. And at that time, I felt mighty sensitive about my teeth.
You see, I had a loose one. My first. She’d told me the tooth fairy would give me a penny if I yanked it out and left it under my pillow. But I couldn’t stand the thought of losing part of myself, much less selling it to some tiny winged woman whom my parents didn’t mind breaking into our home at night.
But things being as they were, by that third trip, Ma had noticed the attention I paid to that particular establishment. Worse, she’d decided that maybe I ought’n to visit that there barber…
“Don’t wanna,” I grumbled. My tongue pushed at the loose tooth.
“Colt Tanner, you want me to tell your pa you made a fuss?”
Chin dropping down, I kicked at a little stone. “No.”
I stepped onto the boardwalk and held her skirt tight as I followed her through that dreaded brown and blue door, eyes wide as a barn owl’s. The first thing I noticed was the pale and stooped man behind the counter. The second thing I noticed was the dark drops staining the floor. I reckoned I knew a bloodstain when I saw one, so while ma spoke with the man, my single thought was: escape.
Ma had properly shut the brown and blue door. She grabbed me before I could get it open and out. She pulled me around to face the narrow room with its big ol’ chair in front of a large square mirror. Beyond that seat was another room, and at the back of it, an open door and freedom beyond its window. I was ready to run—
“Jump up in the seat, son.” The barber’s voice was a husky rasp. He patted a plank he’d slid across the arms of the chair. “It’s up so high; won’t that be fun?”
My toes dug into my worn shoes like the roots of an oak.
“Go on, boy,” Ma said. She leaned down and whispered, “You didn’t pull your tooth so the fairy couldn’t leave you a penny, but be good and I’ll get you a candy when you’re done.”
That sweet word loosened my “roots,” and I walked stiffly toward the big seat. Halfway into the chair, I gandered up at the barber and went stock-still. The man was sleight with gangly arms as long and thin as willow branches. His dark eyes sat too close, and his nose protruded from his face like a sharp beak, but he had the smoothest shaven chin I had ever seen on any grown man. And on the subject of hair, this barber had none on his head, but there were bushes poking out of his ears that sparrows could have nested in.
“Well come on.” The man patted the plank. “You’re a-burnin’ daylight.” Then he grinned.
From my low angle I could see what others couldn’t. This man’s mouth had more teeth than any person I’d ever seen—as in a whole second row behind the first. With a gasp I backed out of the chair.
Ma scooped me up and plopped me on the board. “Stop acting the fool.” Her tone conveyed all the fury of a mule chewin’ up bumblebees, so I stayed put.
There was a blur of white and the snap of fabric as the barber threw a cloth around me and tied it behind my neck. When he turned away to reach for his scissors, I was gobsmacked by the size and shape of the hunch on his back and the knobby shape of the man’s head. I glanced at the mirror and saw him notice how I was looking him over. He spun back, holding the shiny scissors open like two silver knives. Menace gleamed in his eyes.
I ain’t ashamed to admit it. I started to shake.
“Sit still.” The barber gave the scissors two quick snips, and they sounded real sharp.
Unable to help it, I shook even more. I cast a look at ma, but she was studying the trinkets on the front counter. I was about to cry out for her, but the barber leaned closer, gagging me with a stink like rotten eggs, and whispered, “I learned to cut hair in prison, son. You know what that means?”
I shook my head side-to-side.
“It means if you don’t sit still, you’ll be taking one your ears home in your pocket.”
I blinked once, twice, and decided this wasn’t worth the candy. I dived off the seat, got hung up in the white cloth, twisted, and rolled across the floor. Ma squealed. The barber stomped on one frayed end of the cloth, and it ripped even as I threw a hand between my neck and the cloth, forcing the tied end to let loose. I rolled twice more and clambered to my feet.
Evading the barber’s long, spindly arm, I raced through the back room and, heedless of Ma hollerin’ for me to get my ornery ass back in there, I sprinted through the open back door.
I ran like the homestead was on fire, faster than I thought I could after having been sick so long. But it felt good to run, and since my only thought was keeping away from that barber, I made a straight line across the prairie. When I came upon a creek, I leapt over the embankment. My feet splashed in the shallow water and slid forward off a slimy stone. Arms flapping, I threw myself backward trusting the embankment to catch me.
But it didn’t.
Though my hands slapped against dirt, the rest of me kept going into a giant hole. It started about even to my knees, widened outward and rose up past my head. My fingers dug in, but I couldn’t hold myself up.
I fell, screaming, then lost my breath as I hit rock two feet down. I bounced and began sliding, headfirst, down a steep slope. My chest hurt, and I hadn’t the air to shout anymore or I would’ve. Twisting onto my belly, I threw my arms and legs around, trying to stop or slow down, but this wet and muddy surface had soaked my clothes, and I was as slick as the greased pig at the county fair. Then, finally, I plopped into a thick mud puddle and stopped.
I clawed into a sitting position and wiped the crud from my face. It was all dark around me. Darker than night.
When I’d recovered my breath and my heartbeat stopped roaring in my ears, I could hear Ma yelling from far above.
“I’m here! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.” I tasted something funny in my mouth, pushed my tongue at the spot. “My tooth’s gone!”
“That’s okay, boy.”
Realizing that I was tasting blood, blood like that on the rags of everyone leaving that brown and blue door, panic tried to set in. Then Ma shouted, “Can you climb up?” It gave me purpose that fought off my fright.
I tried and tried but couldn’t climb. “I can’t! It’s too slippery.”
“Stay right there. I’ll get your pa.”
For the first few minutes I listened to water dripping somewhere far away and remained perfectly still. Except for my tongue, that is, which kept flicking over the spot where my tooth had been. It’s gone.
Gone!
I felt my chest, then all around me. Mud, more mud, and even more mud. My eyes adjusted so I could detect my hand in front of my face now, but I couldn’t find the tooth. Without it, there’d be no penny from the little winged woman, and now that it was out, I reckoned I ought to have given her a try.
I shed a few tears, but it was cold as a frog’s butt sitting in wet and mucky clothes, and soon I was thinking how this wasn’t so different from how I started getting sick before the winter came. I’d played in the creek near the cabin, found a baby bear and followed it until its momma found me. I’d run across the creek, fell in the water, and come up with a mouthful of moss and a crawdad pinching my nose. After yanking it off, I ran and ran… going farther up the creek than I’d ever been. When I’d lost the momma bear, I’d stopped. The creek bank was high and slick, and I couldn’t climb out, so I’d rested on a rock until I was ready to head back.
Ma said that spending most of that afternoon and evening with my feet wet and cold, with maybe a belly full of crawdad water, was what made me get so sick.
The last thing I wanted was to spend another season in bed, missin’ out on all the fun I could’ve been havin’, so I kept feeling around, determined to find some way of getting out of this cold mud. I discovered a ramp of smooth stone angling upward a few feet away from the thick mud puddle. Crawling onto the edge of that slope, I sat and scraped the mud off as best I could, then wiped my hands on the walls around me, thereby realizing this tunnel was smooth and round.
Every other cave I’d been in—and I’d been in several—was jagged and irregular. Only people made things like this. And if someone had made it smooth and round, there had to be a reason.
That was when I realized, I wasn’t in a hole in the ground. I had discovered a secret place.
The distant dripping sound seemed louder and caught my attention. In moments, it became clear that it was not dripping but small splashes, like steps.
Someone’s comin’!
Facing the sound, hopeful and frightened, I spied a dim glow. Despite having just cleaned myself off, I crawled across the mud pit I’d landed in and learned that I sat in a hole high up on the wall of a great stone room. A few inches down from the hole sat a fancy platter. Beyond, it was a long way down to the floor.
As the light grew brighter, I drew back from the edge so I wouldn’t be seen. But I couldn’t see who had come in with the light. Just as I dared to peer out, the platter was jerked away, and the barber hurried to the table, examining it.
Spinning around he shouted, “Come out of there, you little rat!” He dragged a chair closer to the hole. The barber’s lanky arm lunged into the hole and flopped around like a fish out of water. “Come out! You’ve ruined everything!”
I didn’t dare say a word. I scarcely breathed.
“I know you’re there, boy.”
Throwing myself out of his reach and across the mud puddle, my fingers scrubbed along the shaft I’d fallen down, hoping to hear Ma and Pa above. “Hurry,” I whispered.
“I know you’re bleeding. I can smell it. Reckon I’ll have to come get you.”
Unable to reach me, the barber’s arm slithered from the hole, and he began to moan and groan and mumble to himself. Little by little, I eased toward that edge again, curious but wary of being tricked. I noticed three flat-topped pegs in the wall just under the opening. The platter had been resting on these. Below, the barber wandered about the stone room like a blind horse in a pumpkin patch, struggling to remove his jacket over the hump on his back.
On the table sat the platter. With the barber’s candle beside it I could tell it was like the offering plate at church. It had little puddles of dark blood on it, and a handful of small white stones.
With a gasp, I realized why I’d seen men holding bloody rags at their mouth. The barber had pulled their teeth!
Why bring them down here?
A pain-filled cry drew my attention back to the barber. The man had fallen but managed to remove his jacket. He tore a padded shirt over his head, revealing an inhumanly thin torso underneath, and a wad of bandages upon his back. “Got to fit in that hole,” he grumbled.
His talon-like fingers plucked away the bandages, revealing two stumps sticking up from his back like another pair of arms cut off above the elbow. The skin was a mess of scabs, bruises, and dark blotches. I didn’t much want to have sympathy for the barber, but it looked like it hurt a lot.
“What are you, and happened to you?” I asked, horrified. “What do you want people’s teeth for?”
The barber sneered up at me. “Why does anyone want teeth?”
“To chew food.”
The barber growled in frustration. “Why does anyone want teeth that aren’t in your head?”
“To get candy money from the tooth fairy?”
The barber’s eyes locked on my mouth. With a sudden shout, he put one flat foot on the floor and clambered onto the table. “You’ve lost a tooth.”
He looked mean enough to hunt bears with a hickory switch. I scurried backward, fast.
“Where is it? Give it to me!”
Clinging to the edge, the barber used the pegs to pull himself up. “I need it!” One hand punched into the hole, then the other. “Give it to me now!” The barber pulled himself forward until those two stumps stopped him. He grunted and gnashed his many, many teeth and tried to flatten himself so as to fit into the hole.
“She imprisoned me, boy. I broke out and she took my wings to punish me.” His voice had gone all whiny and sad. “Now she comes for the teeth, comes down this tunnel to collect them… but all I get are the teeth of old men.” He looked pathetic. “Take me a hundred years to pay my debt with those rotting teeth… but if you’ll just give me your tooth, maybe a few more, it’ll be over.” His eyes begged me.
But he wasn’t gonna euchre me; I was no ninnyhammer. “No!” I shouted.
At that, his wicked expression returned, and I swear that peck o’ trouble would’ve fought a rattler and given it the first bite! He strained his twiggish arms so hard something snapped loud—one of his stumps. The barber screamed. I covered my ears.
“Your teeth,” he growled, “are young and new.” Another snap. Another scream. “So white.” Panting loudly and filling the space with a horrible smell, he wriggled forward. “I must have them. Just three or four. You’re young enough others will grow in!”
“Can’t have ‘em.”
“I’ll give you a bag full of candies…”
“I said no!” I grabbed a wad of mud and threw it into the barber’s face.
“You wretched guttersnipe!” He growled and tried to wipe it away, but his gangly arms were too long to bend in this cramped space. He had to move his head against his upper arm to wipe the muck from his eyes.
I threw clump after clump into the barber’s face until I heard, “Colt! You there, son?”
“Pa! Help me!” I squirmed up into the shaft as far as I could.
“Ropes a-coming down. Put the loop under your arms, and I’ll pull you up!”
I clawed desperately around the shaft. “Hurry Pa!” I felt the edge of the coarse rope.
The barber’s fingers snatched around my shoe. “You’re not going anywhere ‘til I get those teeth!”
I jerked the rope down and around me with one hand and dug another handful of mud to throw with the other—but I felt something small scrape between my fingers. Searching the thick stuff, I found my lost tooth.
The barber’s one clean eye widened. “Mine!”
Then Pa pulled.
I was hauled a few feet up into the shaft, but the barber held tight to my shoe.
“You’re heavier than I thought, boy,” Pa shouted down into the tunnel.
I kicked at the barber with my other foot, keeping him from moving his grip higher.
“Hold on, boy,” Pa shouted. “Need a break. Good Lord. Shoulda hooked the rope on the saddle. Ma, bring ol’ Nellie over here.”
“Don’t stop, Pa!” I pushed the tooth into my shirt pocket and twisted onto my stomach, trying to climb up the rope. The weight of the barber kept me from it.
“Give me that tooth!” The barber pulled himself up and wrapped the tail of my shirt in his fist.
In that moment, I got so angry. Far angrier than I was scared. I was determined to fight like Kilkenny cats and keep this skeersome snap-perhead from getting my first tooth.
I rolled to my back again and shouted, “You can’t have it! If she wants teeth, you’ve got plenty to spare!” and thrust my heel against the barber’s mouth. I felt teeth break.
The hole filled with the barber’s shout as he slid backwards, but his grip on my shoe stopped him.
I pushed the toe of my free foot at the heel of the clasped shoe.
“No! NO!” the barber cried.
My shoe slipped off and the barber raged as he fell away.
I was quickly hauled up and into Ma and Pa’s arms.
I clutched them so hard. “Sorry I ran. I promise to do my chores every day, just say you’ll never take me to a barber again.”