Last Summer Boys(9)

Mr. Hudspeth’s barbershop ain’t open for business neither, strictly speaking, though his door is propped open with a brick, and if you really needed a haircut, I guess he wouldn’t mind giving you one. We go in and catch a whiff of aftershave and newsprint and listen to a ceiling fan hum somewhere above us while we wait for our eyes to get used to the dark. When they do, we see empty barber chairs in front of empty mirrors, and Dad and all the men gathered along the back counter.

Sundays after services, they come here to read baseball scores and trade talk. Behind his counter, Mr. Hudspeth watches them with a pleased sort of look. A wiry man whose vest and white shirts are always stained brown with tobacco juice, Mr. Hudspeth is bald except for a horseshoe of curly red hair that starts above one ear and ends above the other. He wears a mustache to match.

Dad fishes two nickels out of his pocket for us when we come in. I lead Frankie straight to the gumball machine, drop in the nickels, and give the lever a couple pulls. I let him have the cherry one, and then we climb into the barber seats to chew gum and eavesdrop.

“See you got an extra one with you today, Gene,” says Mr. Hudspeth, nodding toward Frankie.

“Seems I do.”

“Your nephew?”

“Effie’s boy. In from the city for a time.”

Hearing this, several of the men turn to Frankie, watching, curious.

“Effie married the policeman, didn’t she? I bet he has his hands full with all that bad business happening there.” Mr. Hudspeth leans forward and lifts his red eyebrows. “I heard it’s a war zone. People shooting each other on the streets. The kid ever say anything about it?”

“We don’t ask,” Dad answers, in a way that lets everybody know they shouldn’t ask either. Mr. Hudspeth lifts his hands and retreats across his counter as another man chuckles.

“Now why’d the boy know anything about a war zone when he’s sitting in your barber chair?”

“Unless he was getting his hair cut,” says another man, and even Dad laughs some at that.

The men carry on with their usual talk about the town, the weather, and the crops, but I see Dad cast a quick glance to us. To Frankie.

Next to me, my cousin is calmly chewing his gum.

“So I hear Crash Callahan and his boys stopped by to visit Sam Williamson last night,” says another man at the counter.

“Crash and his whole motorcycle gang,” says Hank Wistar, who owns the hardware store. Mr. Wistar’s stomach is a bowling ball behind his checkered shirt. Will says it’s because he drinks too much. “Them boys looped chains through the door to Sam’s chicken coop and rode off with it. Sam called up early this morning, asking if I’d open the store and get him some wire to keep his chickens in.”

“Where’d he put the chickens in the meantime?” one of the men asks.

“His trailer. I heard them clucking over the phone.”

More laughs.

“That Crash oughta have his ass kicked,” Mr. Hudspeth says, spitting a line of brown juice into a paper cup behind his counter. “Him and his whole gang.”

“That Crash is lucky he didn’t get killed,” Dad says. “Sam may be old, but he’s a deadeye.”

Dad’s words start somebody else on a story about Sam’s Fourth of July celebrations, how he lines up all his rifles against the porch railing, then, at the stroke of midnight, tears down the line firing each one lickety-split.

“Well now, what have we here, fellas, what have we here,” Mr. Hudspeth suddenly says, bending over the newspaper spread out on the counter. “Look at this.”

He sets his paper cup down and straightens up, bringing the paper close to his nose as he reads the headline: “‘Boston students stage hunger strike to protest draft.’”

Somebody swears then. Someone else hushes him, and the men go quiet while Mr. Hudspeth reads more.

“‘In protest of what they called America’s atrocities in Vietnam, students from Harvard and Boston University staged a public hunger strike in Cambridge on Saturday.’”

Dad pulls a cigar from his pocket and strikes a match as Mr. Hudspeth goes on.

“‘At a demonstration in which students spoke for several hours on topics ranging from colonialism to capitalism to segregation to feminism, student leaders declared their conscientious objection to the war in Vietnam and announced a hunger strike. Students then began burning draft cards.’”

The same man as before swears again, only nobody hushes him now. The men are quiet. All we hear is the ceiling fan’s chain clinking above.

The gum’s soft and chewy enough now, and I start blowing a balloon.

Mr. Wistar shakes his head. “Rich college boys,” he mutters, “refusing to fight their own war. Almost can’t believe it.”

“Almost,” says my father around his glowing cigar.

“It ain’t just rich college boys,” Mr. Hudspeth says. “It’s Hollywood actors too. It’s politicians, like that Kennedy boy, egging them on.”

I start blowing another balloon, knowing their talk will be boring and about politics now.

Mr. Hudspeth goes on, “When we graduated high school, the boys lined up outside recruiting stations. Actors and auto mechanics. Made no difference.”

Mr. Wistar splays his fingers and starts counting. “Clark Gable. Jimmy Stewart. Tyrone Power.”