Haircut

FOR TED AND JIM LAFRINIERE

Toby needs a summer haircut. Mom and Dad are busy—they’re always very busy—so Harvey says, “I can take him.”

Toby’s mom, Marissa, glances quickly to Toby. He’s a fair-haired, slender ten-year-old, all sharp elbows and knees, who takes after his mother; he’s a tidy, stylish kid who likes things—especially his hair—“just right.” At the moment Toby is madly thumbing a little “beeper game,” as Harvey calls them (a term which always makes Toby laugh).

“Okay if Grandpa Harvey takes you, Toby?” his mother asks.

“Sure,” Toby says, “as long as it’s Kara and not that Sue Ellen.”

“It’s Kara,” his mother confirms.

Toby nods. He’s the kind of boy—like his parents—who is always doing several things at once. But he makes time for Harvey; he loves his grandpa. When Marissa, and Robert, Harvey’s son, announced that Grandpa Harvey had sold the farm and was coming to live with them, Toby had clapped his hands, let out a whoop, and leapt into Harvey’s arms. That was almost a year ago. For Harvey, living in town with his son’s family has worked out all right. For the most part.

Robert and Marissa owned a large, ranch-style house in a nice neighborhood on the north side of Fargo; there was plenty of room (it seemed unlikely that Marissa and Robert would have more children—when would they have time?), and now that Grandma Helen was gone, it did not make sense—as Marissa put it—for Harvey to “rattle around in that drafty old farmhouse.”

So Harvey had sold the farm in western Minnesota (Robert would never farm, that was certain), and moved the seventy miles to Fargo. And it was Toby, all the things he and the boy did together—snap-together villages, wood carving, homework (Toby was impatient with math), yard ball, plus working his giant collection of baseball cards—that kept Harvey occupied and kept his thoughts off his old life. Off Helen, though she had been ill for so many years that her passing was a blessing; off the wide space and horizon of his wheatfields; off his little orange Allis-Chalmers tractor, his coffee buddies at the Koffee Kup Café on Main Street, his trusty Ford pickup. Some days, here in the city, his old life was like something he had watched on the History Channel.

“What time is Toby’s appointment?” Robert asked, sweeping into the kitchen, tying his red necktie with a quick jerk, then reaching for the coffee pot. He was stocky, strong in the trunk like Harvey used to be, brown-haired, and, in expensive and polished brown oxfords, the same height as Marissa.

“Ten this morning. I’ve got a showing—it just came up—or else I’d take him,” she said apologetically; in passing she straightened Robert’s tie and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. Harvey looked away. Marissa was a beautiful woman—and the driving force, the accelerator pedal of the family; though she had changed Robert into a full-feathered city man, Harvey believed she was probably worth it. He, too, would have had little power against a woman like her. It was to Robert’s credit that he held his own against Marissa in a tolerant, slightly amused, but steady kind of way. Their marriage seemed to work. It was their busy-ness, however—Robert, an attorney, was in several civic organizations, and Marissa, a realtor, was always on the go—that drove Harvey nuts. He got a headache just keeping track of them. They walked fast. Talked fast. Drove fast. How they did it, how they managed to live like that, was beyond him—but then again, most everybody rushed around nowadays.

“Where’s he going?” Robert asked. Both husband and wife had to be involved in every detail of family life; nothing could be left to just one or the other.

“The Hair Affair at the mall, same as always,” Marissa said as the two began their kitchen routine: bagels, coffee, wipe down the counters—no crumbs allowed on these counters.

“I’d take him but I’m headed the other way,” Robert said with a frown. Husband and wife paused to glance at each other, then to Harvey. “Dad, you okay with going to the mall? I know it’s not your favorite place.”

“Sure,” Harvey said. “I can get him there and back.” He was a good driver; for Robert and Marissa, it was not about his driving, but about family routines. Heaven forbid there be any changes.

“The West entrance, Dad,” Marissa said. “Near the blue flag in the parking lot?”

“Green flag,” Toby said, watching TV and thumb-beeping.

“Sorry! Green flag,” Marissa replied. “Toby knows the way. Listen to Toby.”

“I always do,” Harvey said. Toby smiled.

“And leave in plenty of time so you don’t have to rush,” Robert said.

“Take your cell phone along just in case,” Marissa said to Toby.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Toby said. “We’ll be fine.”

Short minutes later, Robert and Marissa rushed off in different directions, and, in the big, immaculate living room with its white brick fireplace, it was just Harvey and Toby. “Want to play, Gramps?”

“No thanks. Hurts my thumbs. And anyway, I’ve got to study the maps so we don’t get lost going to the mall.”

Toby giggled and kept beeping. Yet, deep down, he was a serious boy, one who did not like loud noises or scary movies on television. Well before it was time for the two of them to leave for the mall he put away his toys without being asked, went to brush his teeth, then returned having changed into different warmup pants and a bright tee shirt that advertised some kind of tennis shoe. Toby checked his watch against the kitchen clock. “We should leave in about six minutes, Gramps.”

In the car, Toby buckled his seat belt. Harvey was not a big fan of seat belts in general and the shoulder harness in particular, but he shrugged it on for the time being, or else Toby would nag him.

“Do you have money for my haircut?”

“Do I have money?” Harvey said. “Does your Gramps have money!”

Toby smiled. “Just making sure.”

Harvey backed the Honda Accord, Marissa’s old car that they had kept for Harvey’s use, out of the tidy garage and onto the bright summer street. It was a fine June day. Though he always felt guilty driving the Honda (what if one of his old coffee pals from farm days just happened to be in Fargo and saw him driving a foreign make?), it was a good little car and he could see why people bought them over Fords and Chevrolets. “Well Sonny, we’re off to the barbershop.”

“Barbershop!” Toby laughed wildly, like it was the funniest thing in the world.

“What?”

“Barbershop! You said barbershop.”

“Yes, what about it?”

“It’s a hair salon, not a barbershop.”

“Okay, okay, salon. Same difference: it’s a place you go to get your ears lowered.”

Toby giggled again. They rode along for a few blocks, past Oxbow Park, past tidy lawns and suburban-style houses. Behind them, to the east, lay the Red River, which separated Minnesota and North Dakota. Toby fell silent; his face turned thoughtful.

“Yes?” Harvey asked.

“Gramps, what’s a barbershop?”

Harvey tapped the brakes, not hard but distinctly, then released the pedal and drove on, though slower. “What’s a barbershop?” Harvey repeated.

“Yeah,” Toby said, “I mean, what are they like?”

He turned to stare at his grandson. “You mean you’ve never been to a barbershop?”

Toby shrugged. “Mom always takes me with her to the salon at the mall. Dad gets his hair cut there, too.”

Harvey concentrated on his driving. “I see.” And he did, of course: there was city and country, there were salons and barbershops.

“I mean, how are barbershops different?” Toby persisted.

Harvey scratched his head. “For one thing, in a barbershop a man usually cuts your hair.”

“A man?” Toby exclaimed. He had another major laughing fit; it was clearly the second-funniest thing he had heard his grandfather say that day.

Harvey turned again to look at the boy; the sunlight caught his blonde curls and glinted off his white, polished teeth. Harvey, driving south on Elm Street, approached Nineteenth Avenue, which would take them west to Highway 75, and around to the mall. At the last moment he did not turn.

“This is not the way to the mall,” Toby said quickly.

“I know.”

“Are we going a different way?”

“Sort of.”

Toby frowned and fell silent.

“Actually, we’re going to a barbershop,” Harvey said in his most cheerful voice.

Toby glanced at his grandpa. His brow furrowed. “I’m not sure what mother would say.”

“We could call her,” Harvey said; it was a huge gamble—he held his breath.

Toby took out his little blue phone, then paused. He frowned. “She really doesn’t like to be bothered during a showing. Unless it’s an emergency.”

“Is this an emergency?” Harvey asked.

“Not really, I guess,” Toby murmured.

“Okay then,” Harvey said, again in his cheerful voice, and turned the Honda left onto 75, which took them across the river and into Minnesota.

As he drove past the sewage lagoons and then into open farm country, Harvey entertained Toby with all the boy’s favorite stories about growing up on the farm—the pony with a broken leg, the crabby cat in the hayloft, the time a crazy old moose wandered into the hay shed—but Toby was not easily distracted.

“We’re heading back to your old farm,” he said.

“Not the farm. Somebody else lives there now. We’re heading to town to the barbershop,” Harvey said.

“It’s a long way,” Toby said. He looked across the open fields.

“Fifty minutes or a bit more and we’re there.”

Toby glanced at his cell phone, then to his grandfather. “I’ll miss Little League practice. My coach will be mad.”

“We’ll play yard ball all afternoon,” Harvey answered. “I’ll wear you out.”

Toby fell silent and watched the highway. His gaze scanned the farms, the tiny towns and their rusted grain elevators, the highway behind them; he clutched his little beeper game but did not play it.

Harvey told him stories all the way and soon they arrived on the main street of town. Beyond, five miles north, was the homeplace, but that was for another occasion. When Harvey was more ready.

Louis and Tom Courbette’s barbershop sat a half block off Main Street on Second Avenue, kitty-corner from the American Legion Hall, just up from the feed mill, next to a furniture store with “Everything-must-go” signs in the window; behind the barbershop were the weedy railroad tracks and the abandoned Burlington Northern Terminal. The faded, candy-striped barber pole was the brightest color on the block. Harvey parked the Honda well down the street. They got out, Toby slowly. Harvey came around and tousled his hair. “Here we are!”

Toby looked over his shoulder, then all around him. Approaching the shop, Harvey could see nothing much had changed. Behind tall window glass Louis and Tom, wearing dark-blue shirt smocks, stood, arms in motion, beside two barber chairs; two very old men sat in the chairs. Another man read a magazine as he waited.

“Looks full,” Toby said.

“They move pretty quick here,” Harvey replied. “Besides, it’s summer. We’ve got all day.”

Toby glanced at his cell phone, then slipped it into his pocket and trudged after Harvey. A tiny bell jingled on the door. Inside, country music played behind buzzing electric clippers and the snick-snick-snick of scissors. It smelled of cigarettes, aftershave, and the woody odor of hair that lay thick and horseshoed around the barber chairs.

“Hey, sailors,” Louis Courbette called. He was a short, sturdy man in his sixties with a full dark crew cut and a bent, boxer’s nose. He was active in the community and coached Golden Gloves boxers from the reservation. Louis looked again. “Harvey! I’ll be damned.”

Toby flinched.

“Morning, gents,” Harvey said.

“Good to see you. Getting along all right in the big city?”

“So-so.” Harvey kept his hand on Toby’s bony shoulder and steered him toward the line of customer chairs. Louis kept his clippers moving around the old man’s ears; his gaze fell to Toby.

“And who’s your first mate?”

“My grandson, Toby.” Harvey touched Toby’s warm, small neck. “Son, say hello to Mr. Louis Courbette.”

Toby managed a little smile.

Louis nodded and kept clipping. The old men under the chair-cloths looked sideways at Harvey by moving only their eyeballs; Harvey nodded to them, old men with hardly enough hair to bother.

“Find yourself a chair, Harvey, Toby,” said the younger barber. Tom Courbette was the same general size as his father, though with a straight nose, smooth cheeks, and bit rounder in the face. He had been a three-sport athlete in high school. “Be just a few minutes.” He gave Toby a brief smile before his eyes returned to the television.

“If Albert here had less hair I’d be done already,” Louis said, winking at Toby. Albert, stiff-necked beneath the clippers, grinned over milky yellow dentures.

Harvey took a chair. Toby took the one beside his grandfather and closest to the door. A thin, younger Native American man gave them the faintest nod, then turned his eyes to the window, toward the street. The chairs had glassy-eyed cigarette burns on the varnished wood arms; beside them was a tall ashtray with a forest of butts stuck in white sand. A chipped cribbage board shaped like a walleyed pike, a well-thumbed pile of golfing and other sporting magazines on a three-legged table, some dog-eared Playboy magazines at the bottom of the pile. In the far corner a kerosene space heater left over from winter. Above, perched in the corner, a slightly purpled TV screen tuned to Country Cable and Tanya Tucker, whose mouth and blouse were both significantly open. Toby seized an ESPN magazine and ducked behind it.

“You okay?” Harvey murmured to him.

Toby, ever so slightly, nodded.

Harvey leaned back. It had been a year—right before Helen’s funeral—since he had been to the barbershop. At floor level Albert’s fine white clippings sprinkled the ring of darker hair—powdered sugar sifted onto chocolate. Above the heavy, filigreed iron footrest the barber chairs rose up curving, green-leathered and high-backed as fancy saddles. On the side of each chair dangled a leather strop; Tom’s strop was several shades lighter and far less shiny than his father’s. Behind the chairs the counter hung with squat, chrome clippers; on top, tall glass jars where combs and scissors stood in dusky alcohol solution. Near the till, catching window light, a jar of bright, translucent lollipops: orange, yellow, red, and green.

“So what’s new over in Fargo?” Louis asked Harvey.

“Construction everywhere. Lot of young people. It’s a college town now.”

“Never used to be,” Albert the old-timer mumbled. “Used to be just a railroad and cattle town. They went and ruined it.”

“Over at the college, I hear they hand out rubbers,” Tom Courbette said to Albert, with a wink toward the other men.

At the word “rubbers” the half-smile on Toby’s face shrank to a frozen blankness. He raised his magazine an inch higher; his gaze flickered to the door, the street beyond.

The old-timer in the second barber’s chair snorted, and nearly took a cut to his ear. “There’s too much damned immortality among kids nowadays,” he muttered.

“Immortality?” Tom Courbette laughed at the word choice. “Those young kids sure seem to think so,” he said, his scissors never missing a snick-snick-snick.

“Well that, too. I remember feeling immortal when I was that young,” Louis added, without missing a beat.

“And television. Take somebody like that Christina Aguilera,” the old guy said, not listening. “Why she’s no more than a damned cheap whore.”

Toby’s eyes widened.

“Now Emery,” Louis Courbette said, “don’t be getting your blood pressure up.”

“Well he’s right,” Albert interjected, glaring straight ahead, “Like Madonna and those other girls, all they’re selling is pussy—their own.”

Toby tensed up like a runner at the blocks.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Tom Courbette drawled. “But I do know that those girls aren’t dumb. They’ve got way more brains and talent than I’ll ever have.” He slipped on the scalp massager, a buzzing, electric vibrator that strapped to the back of his hand, and gave Emery’s skull a good working over. Harvey worried that the old man’s dentures might pop out of his head. “There you go, Emery,” Tom Courbette said, switching off the massager, sweeping off the chair-cloth. “Now take it easy on the those retired gals.”

Emery, recovering his humor, smiled and began, very slowly, to thumb through an ancient wallet stuffed thick with greenbacks.

“Who’s next?” Tom Courbette said.

Toby glanced to the Indian man with the long braid, who waited. His eyes were fixed on some unknown but interesting thing outside.

“Billy’s just hangin’ out,” Tom Courbette explained. “He’s a regular here.”

Billy smiled. He had pure white teeth.

“So which one of you sailors is it going to be, then?” Tom Courbette waited beside his empty barber’s chair.

Harvey looked at Toby. “Me. I guess,” Harvey said.

He settled into the chair. Tom Courbette flipped out the chair-cloth and it swirled and settled over Harvey. He snapped the collar tightly around Harvey’s neck.

“What do you need today?” Tom Courbette asked, glancing up at the TV.

“Just a trim.”

Tom Courbette nodded, his eyes on the new Ford Taurus commercial. The electric shearers buzzed sharply in Harvey’s ears. He flashed a smile at Toby, then closed his eyes. He kept them shut and listened to the country music.

“There you go,” Louis Courbette said to Albert in the adjoining chair; Harvey opened his eyes to a fine snow of hair, a blue swirl of another chair-cloth, and then, beside him, an empty barber’s chair. It was Toby’s turn.

“Ready, son?” Louis said as he took Albert’s money.

Toby swallowed.

Harvey nodded, ever so slightly, to his grandson.

Slowly Toby stood. Came forward. Climbed stiffly up into the chair.

“So how about those Twins?” Louis said as swept the blue sheet over Toby. “Who’s gonna win twenty this season?”

“Brad Radke,” Toby answered.

“No way,” Louis said, beginning to comb out Toby’s curls with short jabs of his stubby black comb. Toby’s head jerked with each stroke. One of Louis’s meaty hands was bigger, nearly, than Toby’s face.

Louis reached for a scissors. “Radke pitches too much over the plate. Hitters just swing away on him.” He began to cut great sheaves from Toby’s head. (He did not ask Toby what kind of haircut he wanted.)

“So what do you like then, a lot of walks?” Tom Courbette threw back at his father. “At least Radke don’t put runners on base.”

“Nobody’s ever on base with Radke,” Louis said, “’cause they’re doin’ a home run trot around the bases.”

Toby smiled just a bit.

“You play ball, son?” Louis asked, his eyes on the television.

Toby nodded quickly.

“Hold still,” the barber said gruffly.

Toby froze.

“What position?”

“They make us rotate,” Toby said cautiously, moving only his jaw this time. “Kind of every position.”

Nothing was said for awhile. Billy, in the chair, turned to look out the window, but he was listening, Harvey knew.

“So which position do you like best?” Louis asked.

“Pitcher.”

Louis nodded. “All the young boys want to pitch.”

There was comfortable silence but for the TV, the scissors, the country music. Billy, the listener, said softly, “Louis used to be a catcher.”

“In the old days,” Tom Courbette added, with a sly glance at his father.

Louis shrugged. “It’s true. In 1952 I played Double A ball in the Cincinnati Reds organization. The Tulsa Oilers, down in the Texas League.”

Toby started to lift his face to look up at the barber, then caught himself in time. He looked into the mirror back toward Louis Courbette.

“The Reds gave me a good look,” Louis said, keeping his scissors, his big hands moving. “But the Korean War was going then and I got drafted. When I came back, three years later, I’d missed my chance.”

“He hit .288,” Billy said to the window glass.

There was silence in the shop except for Reba McEntire and the electric clippers.

“Yes I did,” Louis said.

Tom Courbette added. “My old man’s even got his own baseball card. Not that it’s in real high demand these days.”

“That’s pretty good—.288!” Toby said.

Louis paused and looked down at Toby. “Nowadays they’d pay me a million bucks a year to catch and hit .288, wouldn’t they, pal?”

Toby nodded his head vigorously; Louis did not call him on it.

“But is he complainin’?” Tom Courbette said of his father, his eyes on the TV. “No-oooooo, I’ve never heard him complain.” He turned and winked at Billy.

“And you never will,” Louis said, bending to clip closely around Toby’s right ear. “It was just a matter of timing. I did my duty. I served my country. I came back and I’d missed my shot. It didn’t work out, and here I am.”

By now Toby’s yellow hair was mostly gone. He and Harvey got simultaneous, buzzing, scalp massages. “There you go, son,” Louis said as he unfastened Toby’s chair-cloth.

“That do it for you, too, Harvey?” Tom asked, spinning him around to face the mirror. Harvey stared. His entire skull, all its bumps and bones, stared back at him. Toby, with wide white sidewalls above prominent ears, looked like a kid escaped from 1950s, black-and-white-television days. He was staring at Louis Courbette’s big battered hands.

“Sucker?” Louis Courbette said to Toby, as Harvey paid for the haircuts (twelve bucks total, fifteen with tip).

“Sure.” Toby took an orange one.

“Gramps?” Louis asked.

“Why not,” Harvey said.

Billy the watcher, smiled, then caught himself and looked away out the window.

Harvey and Toby soon found themselves outside on the sidewalk in the June sunlight. Toby had not yet thought too much about his hair—what there was left. By the Honda, he bent to the window glass; he squinted at his reflection, then leaned into the side mirror for a closer look. He tilted his face one way, then another.

Harvey held his breath.

“Wow,” Toby said, turning back to his grandfather, “that’s the best haircut I’ve ever had.”

They were hardly buckled in the car when Toby’s phone rang. After glancing at the tiny screen, he looked to Harvey. “It’s Mother.”

“Best answer it,” Harvey said. He listened to Marissa’s voice, tiny but increasingly faster and louder, and was glad he couldn’t make out the words.

“Yes, mother. Yes, mother,” Toby repeated. Afterward, he shut off his phone. He looked at Harvey.

Who kept driving.

“We’re sort of in trouble,” Toby said.

“I see,” Harvey answered.

“When we missed our appointment at the salon, they called my mom’s phone and she just now checked her messages. I told her where we were.”

“In other words, we’re ‘busted.’ As you would say.”

“Yeah. Big time.”

They were silent for awhile.

“Well then, I guess there’s no hurry in getting back,” Harvey said. Ahead was the Dairy Queen, and Harvey turned the Honda sharply into the lot. Toby smiled for real now; it was like something in his face and his eyes breaking open; some weight loosening, falling away.

The Dairy Queen had a new drive-through line, but he and Toby went inside and ordered at the counter. They sat in a booth and gurgled their straws and poked fun at the old-timers in the barbershop and did tricks with napkins—nearly all the napkins in the little table dispenser—until the manager came over. “Is there anything else I can get you?” he said, looming over their booth.

“Nope. All done, thanks,” Harvey said. Back in the car they headed west to Fargo. Toby kept the window down to let the warm wind blow on his scalp. His little beeper game lay forgotten on the seat.

“When we get home I’m going online and find Mr. Courbette’s baseball card,” Toby called out. “Then do you think we could come back and get his autograph?”

“Maybe. After we’re out of trouble,” Harvey said.

Toby laughed like this was the funniest thing his grandfather had ever said, then returned to airplaning his skinny arm against the warm summer wind.