As I began another week of work at the station, my legs no longer ached from the concrete. My arms were tanned coppery from sunlight off pavement. The veins in them felt more pronounced and my shirt was tighter: fitting tires, lifting heavy rims, torquing down lug nuts, hammering away rusted muffler clamps—all of it had given me the beginning of muscles. I had also developed, from the continual glare off the yellow metal face of the station, a squint that I fancied was not unlike Elvis’s. My hair was thicker and fuller. Yellow curls fell down my forehead and on the back of my shirt collar.
“Would Paul like a hair trim soon?” my father asked. My mother usually cut my hair, though a couple of times a year, as a gesture to the local economy, she took me to Elmo’s Barbershop on Main Street.
“I can get one in town,” I said casually.
“See that you do,” my father replied. “Soon.”
On this Monday, not long after I arrived at work, Peggy drove in. Her father’s station wagon still gleamed. “Have you seen Dale?”
“I don’t work weekends,” I said, leaning toward her window, getting an excellent look down her blouse. Then
I squatted beside her door, eye level; I had not yet lost all principles.
“Damn. The marching band was gone again,” she said. “I should quit. Why do I still help with the damn band? I’ve already graduated.”
“Because of your father,” I said.
“Because he pays me,” she said. “Otherwise I’d have to be a carhop or do some other embarrassing job.”
I sometimes forgot that the Leikvolds were not rich. Their handsome good looks—mother and father and daughter alike—were their main capital. “Good assistant bandleaders are hard to find,” I said.
She smiled a little, glanced up at me, then toward the intersection. She bit her lower lip.
“If I see Dale, is there a message?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She toyed with her keys. “He kind of scares me.”
I was silent.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“He scares me, too.”
She laughed briefly. Then her face turned serious as she looked back to the intersection, to the stoplight. “I shouldn’t be doing this. Fooling around when Stephen’s gone.”
I shrugged.
“It feels like all the other goings-on in this town.”
My gaze slipped sideways to Kirk’s blue Chevy.
“Everybody knows about him,” she said.
“But you and Stephen are not married,” I replied, “so it’s not the same.”
She turned back to me. “True.”
I was silent.
“Objectively I know what it is,” she said. “It’s summer, it’s hot, I’m in this phase right now.” She looked down at herself—looked down at her body. “Sometimes it’s like I itch all over,” she said, staring at me.
I swallowed.
“Do you know what I mean?” she said.
“Sort of,” I mumbled.
She paused. “Why am I telling you this, Paul?”
“This is a full-service station, miss,” I said, standing up and saluting.
She giggled, pleased, then looked at the endlessly clicking stoplight. “Probably because you don’t really have any friends.”
I was silent.
“I mean, none that my friends know,” she said quickly. “Friends in town, that’s what I meant.”
I shrugged.
She paused. “I can’t tell any of my girlfriends. I can’t tell my parents. And I sure as heck can’t tell Stephen.”
“When’s he due back?”
“The Fourth of July.” The stoplight clicked green. “Which gives me two weeks.”
“Twelve days, actually.”
She looked up at me—suddenly put her hand on my arm. “You won’t tell on me, will you, Paul?”
“Never. Poke a stick in my eye.”
She let out a breath. “Call Dale,” she said urgently. “Right now.”
Dale arrived in his Chevy at five minutes after noon. Everyone was gone for lunch except me. I had secured Peggy’s station wagon in the back room, put the hood up for effect. Busy on the driveway, I saw Dale slip into the back room, and a few minutes later he came out to the pumps. There was color in his neck. He smelled of chain-saw exhaust overlaid with aftershave—he’d clearly come straight from the woods.
“Sutton,” he said hoarsely. “The warehouse. Is it open?”
I nodded.
He turned away quickly.
“At one Kirk and Bud will be back,” I called after him.
Traffic continued through the lunch hour, more and more tourists now. It was hotter, too, ninety degrees inside on the office thermometer. I accidentally shorted a man a dollar and he swore at me. I was barely able to keep up with the gas, let alone windshields, radiators, batteries, tires. Certainly I gave no extra service. I no longer thought much about Mr. Shell. His arrival in Hawk Bend seemed as likely as snow in July.
Quickly it was five minutes to one. Dale’s Chevy still sat along the side of the station; Peggy’s station wagon remained in the back with its hood up. On Main
Street I saw Kirk stroll out of the café, his right fist raised to his mouth.
“Excuse me,” I called to the woman in a Ford, “I’ll be right back.”
I hurried to the back room, which was empty, then went through the back door to the warehouse. Its door was shut and partially blocked from the inside. “Dale?” I whispered. “Dale! Peggy!”
I could hear faint noises. I pushed on the door, and a short stack of tires moved with it. I stepped in, let my eyes adjust. And there, in the corner, impossibly contorted, on a pile of new Goodyear four-ply tires, were Dale and Peggy. Her bare, brown legs poked up like a peace sign, and there were flashes of Dale’s surprisingly small white butt.
I cleared my throat and pretended to inspect a tire.
“Dale! It’s Paul!” Peggy said, looking at me. She was wild-eyed and ashamed but still hung on to Dale.
“Okay, okay,” he breathed—and also did not let go.
“Almost one o’clock!” I said to my tire, and carried it toward the door.
Where I could not stop myself from looking back. Dale called out suddenly, and slumped forward. Peggy lay there, panting, her eyes crossed slightly, her face shiny with sweat. I tasted salt in my mouth. Felt the hardening heaviness of my body.
At four-thirty Tim arrived, and I walked uptown for a haircut. I thought it might clear my head. I kicked a
pop bottle, which clattered across the street. In the crosswalk at the stoplight someone had dumped an ashtray out his car window; a nest of yellow butts lay on the hot asphalt. I kicked at them, too. I’d had enough of the public for one day. I was looking forward to Elmo’s big, deep, green barber’s chair, his cool, dim shop. I hadn’t been there in months.
Elmo’s was a one-chair shop with a small black-and-white TV and a pile of well-thumbed Argosy and Field & Stream magazines stacked on a cribbage table. I had come here occasionally ever since I was a kid, beginning when Elmo was stout and brown-haired.
Today Elmo Pederson wore a white, eighth-inch-high flattop and white pencil mustache; he seemed old and shrunken. He stared up at the television along with three other older men, two with canes. There was some news on about antiwar protests in California. Lower, and to the right of the television, was a picture on the wall framed in red, white, and blue ribbon of Frank Pederson, Elmo’s son, who had been killed in the Korean War. The colors were faded and there was dust on the ribbon.
“Sutton, is it?” Elmo nodded via the mirror. He got up and gestured to the empty chair.
“Hello, Mr. Pederson.” I settled in—the chair was warm from his body—and Elmo reached back and spun me around toward the television, taped my neck with the narrow white paper, then floated the blue sheet over me all without looking away from the set. Tear-gas canisters
arced and bounced and blossomed white, after which police moved forward and began to swing their sticks.
“Crack ’em good,” one of the men said.
“Whack their skulls, those damn commies,” said another of the old-timers.
“Why not shoot the sonsabitches!” a third said.
Then Walter Cronkite’s face and his deep, serious voice came on.
“That Cronkite, he’s a commie, too.”
Elmo watched in silence, then reached up and turned off the sound. He spun me silently, on the great bearings of the chair, back around to the street.
“Just a trim today, Elmo,” I said.
In silence, looking out at traffic on Main Street, Elmo stropped a razor.
“Draft-dodging commies,” one of the older men said to no one in particular.
Elmo set aside the razor, reached to the side, to the tall jar of scissors in alcohol solution. He caught a finger loop and drew a pair out and along a towel—one swipe, two swipes—then rapped a wet comb on the counter, all without looking at my hair yet.
“Should put them in the marines,” an old man said. “Send them through Parris Island.”
“That’d straighten them out,” another agreed.
“I didn’t cry in my beer for Kennedy, believe me,” one of them said.
“We don’t stop the commies there, we gonna have them wading ashore in California.”
“With a welcoming party of those hippies from Berkeley.”
“Lucky we don’t have any of those commies in this town,” one said.
“You never know,” another said.
Elmo began to clip my hair. He pinched sheaves of hair between his fingers and clipped away. My head kept tilting as he pulled it toward his scissors. He watched a farm pickup pass by. “What do you think, Sutton?” Elmo said.
“Just a little off all the way around,” I said.
“About the war,” Elmo said. “About those protesters.”
I took my time. “I don’t know,” I finally said. “It’s a tough one.”
Elmo tilted my head toward his shears, kept cutting.
“Leave me a little on the sides, Elmo,” I said pleasantly, glancing up in the mirror.
“I’ll cut your hair, Sutton,” Elmo said.
I was silent.
Elmo kept clipping. “Are you a barber?” he said.
“No.”
“So I’ll cut your hair, right?”
I was silent for a while.
“Have you been fishing at all?” I ventured.
“No,” Elmo said. “Tourists got the lakes all fished out. I got to keep working to make a living. Up at the beauty shop they take men now. Women cutting men’s hair.”
“Never catch me at no beauty shop,” an old-timer said.
“What about you, Sutton?” said Elmo. “Do you think women ought to be cutting men’s hair?”
“I dunno,” I murmured.
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“I’d have to think about it,” I said.
“You think about it and I’ll cut your hair, all right?”
“Sure, Elmo.”
“After I got out of the army I went to barber school on University Avenue in Minneapolis,” Elmo said. “I already knew how to cut hair. I did it in the army. But you had to have a license, so I got one.”
The old-timers nodded.
“You need the piece of paper to hang on the wall,” Elmo said, gesturing with his scissors, then homing back in. My yellow hair tumbled down the blue smock and began to build up in my lap.
“Not real short, Elmo,” I said softly.
Elmo stopped cutting. He went to the wall and squinted at the framed certificate. “Well shiver me timbers, what does this say?”
The old-timers looked.
“It says Pederson here,” Elmo said.
The old-timers grinned at me.
“Does it say Sutton? No, it says Pederson, Elmo Pederson. Right there. That means I’m the barber.” He put the point of his scissors on the glass and tapped it
sharply. Then he looked for a moment at his son, at the dusty ribbon, before returning to the chair.
“I was just telling you what I wanted,” I said softly.
“What you want?” Elmo said, beginning to clip again. “What you want?”
I was silent.
“Whose barbershop is this?”
I shrugged. “Yours, Elmo.”
“You’re damn right it’s mine. Now sit still—I don’t want to nip your ears.”
I sat stiffly in the chair. The scissors flashed at the side of my vision.
“Hard to tell the girls from the boys nowadays,” one of the old-timers said.
“Ain’t that the truth,” the other old-timers said in unison.
Elmo brought out the electric clippers and began on my neck. I tried to swivel my head. His hand atop my skull kept me staring straight ahead.
“Elvis, he was the start of all this,” one of the old men said.
I felt the clippers buzzing on my head.
“Listen, Elmo,” I said. “Maybe I should—”
“Sit still. You came here for a haircut. I’m giving you a haircut. I’m the barber here, remember.”
The clippers whirred above my ears. Hair kept falling like yellow leaves in September. Elmo finished, as usual, with the straight razor—a sudden splash of hot
foam on my neck and a few quick swipes. I closed my eyes. Then, with a swirl of towel I was done. My head felt chilly and small. Elmo swung me around in the chair. I stared into the mirror.
“I said a trim,” I said. My voice trembled with anger.
“I heard you.”
“A trim. This is a flattop. At least twice I said a trim.”
“Oh dear, I’m sorry if it’s too short. Here, maybe this will help,” Elmo said. He picked up a handful of my hair from my lap and reached to put it back on my head. I leaned away The old-timers laughed uncertainly. Elmo kept at it, and I stood up and jerked off the blue smock.
“Take it, Sutton. It’s yours. It’s your hair.” Elmo held out handfuls of my yellow hair. His eyes were the same color yellow—but poisoned, full of bile.
I jerked out my wallet and with shaking hands found two dollars. “Here, damnit!”
“No, no, no! This one’s on the house, Sutton. It’s a free haircut—like the kind they’ll give you in the army, Sutton, not that you religious types will ever see a uniform.”
So that was it. Always the religion. The long-necked old-timers were grinning again like buzzards. Elmo kept staring at me with his yellowed eyes.
“Go to hell, Elmo!” I said. Trembling, I threw my money on the counter and left. Outside, Main Street was a glaring, heat-baked blur. A car honked at me—braked
sharply—I swore at the driver, flashed him a middle finger, and stalked on.
At the station my mother was waiting for me. As I approached she leaned forward to stare.
“Goodness, Paul! What happened to your hair?”
“Elmo.” That was all I trusted myself to say.
“You got a haircut uptown?”
I nodded.
“Well, why? I’m happy to cut your hair. I always do a good job—at least I think so.”
“Yes, fine, you do—but I just wanted to do something on my own, for once. By myself,” I said angrily. My eyes felt hot and overly large—like they might spill over.
She stared now at my face, my eyes. I looked out my side window, caught sight of myself in the glass. My face was blotched red with anger; my hair looked like Kirk’s. I touched its flat, sharp top. It felt like the face of a stiff new broom.
“I just wanted a trim, that’s all.”
“Elmo. He did this on purpose?”
I shrugged.
Her own jawline sharpened and she started up the engine and she pointed the truck toward Main Street.
“Where are you going?” I said.
“He can’t do that to you,” she said. “I hear he’s had some troubles lately, but nobody should be able to do that.”
“We had it out,” I said. “I took care of it.”
“It’s not taken care of until I speak to him!” she said.
“For God’s sake!” I said. My voice broke with anger and humiliation.
She braked before Elmo’s shop and got out. I followed her, trotting to keep up. Just inside the door she halted. Elmo sat alone in his chair with a shaving mug in one hand and a brush in the other. He was staring at the dusty photograph of his dead son. The other old-timers were gone. He sat there in his single chair, staring. Around him, clippers, combs, towels, and lotion lay scattered on the floor. A pair of scissors was stabbed into the wall. Across the long mirror, scrawled in shaving soap, were the words “I am the barber here.”