The Walkaway

Book by Phillips Scott

This was the day the barber came to Lake Vista to give the old men haircuts, but Gunther wasn’t there to take advantage of it. If he’d been thinking about it he would have stayed around another day; as it was, he had become so preoccupied by the missed haircut that he decided he had no other choice but to part with the three-fifty or four dollars or whatever it was up to by now. Wincing at the thought, he touched his right hand to the back of his neck and pinched a lock between his thumb and forefinger to get a sense of its length. No, a haircut was the first order of business. Another week and it’d start to curl.

Walking west up the street, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his clothes damp and heavy with sweat, he saw very little that was familiar to him; most of the buildings he knew had either been torn down entirely or taken over by new businesses, and he was slightly cheered to see Ray and Cal’s battered old barber pole rotating placidly on the rough orange brick wall next to what had always been Simmons’s watch repair shop, occupied now by a forlorn and unhygienic-looking frozen yogurt store. He watched it turn for a minute, its red and blue stripes faded to pink and baby blue, then yanked open the door and stuck his head through it into the yogurt shop for a moment, startling the morose teen manning the counter.

The boy regarded him with mute wonder, as though the arrival of a potential customer was the most puzzling development of his day so far. Gunther looked the place over disapprovingly, the sweat on his face and neck and in his hair going cold in the breeze from the ancient box air conditioner buzzing and rattling in the window behind the counter. The yogurt store couldn’t have been there long, but with its bare walls and the worn-smooth Formica countertop left over from the watch repair shop, the air inside it was already thick with failure. He knew there would be no point in asking the kid what had become of old Simmons, so without a word he slammed the door shut and descended the half flight of concrete steps to the barber shop.

Inside it was way too bright. Half a story underground, Ray and Cal’s had always been gloomy, even by barbershop standards. Now the dark wood paneling had been pulled down, the walls painted a pastel yellow, and the dim incandescent lighting overhead had been replaced with fluorescent tubes, which were also mounted around the frames of the mirrors. Two women and one young man were stationed behind the chairs, and all three of the customers were women, their clothes protected by shiny plastic sheets of dark gray. Gunther had never seen a woman in Ray and Cal’s before. All six of them looked at him expectantly, and the young man’s eyes narrowed.

“You’re going to have to leave now, okay, sir? I’m very sorry,” he said, stepping out from behind his chair and, for the benefit of the women, making a show of taking charge of the situation.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m very sorry.” He was young, thirty or less, and when he put his hand on Gunther’s shoulder Gunther removed it calmly and deliberately, his eyes locked on the young man’s, gauging his resolve. The young man took a step away from him without making another attempt.

“Where’s Ray and Cal? I need a haircut.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about, sir. Now as I said, you’re going to have to go.” The young man’s voice was artificially low and soothing like a goddamn orderly’s, and the tone made Gunther want to smash him one right in the snotlocker.

“Wait a sec, Curt.” The older of the two lady barbers spoke up. Her face was pretty and her eyes friendly, but her graying hair was shaved close on the sides like a man’s, and the combination made Gunther vaguely uneasy. “Ray passed away a couple of years ago, sir.”

“Oh. Sorry to hear that.”

“Cal’s still around, though, out at the Masonic home.”

“Cutting hair?”

“I don’t think so. Just living there.”

“What do you know. So it’s a beauty salon now, huh?” He looked the young man up and down. He didn’t seem to Gunther like a fairy, but you couldn’t really tell anymore just by looking.

“No, sir, it’s unisex,” she said, and the word threw Gunther off for a second. “I’ll be glad to cut your hair if you like. I’m almost done here and my two-thirty canceled on me.” The woman sitting in the chair in front of her stared at Gunther, in curiosity more than annoyance at the interruption of her haircut. He took a good look at her for the first time, a tall, plumpish woman of forty or forty-five with large, dark eyes; short, wet hair; and a lot of makeup. Her legs were so long they stuck out from under the plastic sheet a good six inches above the knee, and she reminded Gunther of somebody he couldn’t quite place but was pretty sure he liked. He was staring back at her so intently he forgot to answer.

“Sir?” The lady barber’s voice was louder this time, but he still didn’t answer. He tilted his head to the left, trying to think of who she reminded him of. One of the nurses? An old girlfriend, maybe, or a teacher from school? No, he never saw any of his teachers’ legs up that far, not in those days. She sure had long ones.

“Oh . . . my . . . god,” said the other lady barber, stifling a laugh. “The old bastard’s getting a hard-on.”

Gunther looked down and was surprised to see that this was so.

“All right, pal, enough’s enough. Let’s go.” Curt’s voice had lost its unctuousness, and Gunther resented him a little less for it.

“I’m going.” He turned and pulled the door open. “Sorry I was staring at you, ma’am. You look like somebody I used to know.”

No one spoke as he left. Once the door closed he stood for a minute or so at the foot of the concrete steps, waiting for his erection to deflate. It was his first in a while and he was sorry to see it go.

A quarter mile or so up the road he stopped at a pay phone in front of a Stop ’n’ Rob. In the Yellow Pages under “Hair” he found a listing for Harry’s Barber Shop, which sounded like the kind of place where he’d be safe from any lady barbers or customers. It was about two miles west, close enough to get there before the end of the afternoon if he hurried, so he tore out the page and started walking again. He thought about going into the store for a soda, but his cash was tight and he hated to pay convenience store prices. He wasn’t all that thirsty anyway. It was humid without being overwhelmingly hot, the sky was a dark, orangy gray, and sniffing the warm afternoon air he could smell rain before sundown. If he made it to Harry’s Barber Shop in time he might be able to wait out the storm there.

It felt good to be outside and unsupervised. Earlier he’d been thinking how much simpler things would be if he were in a car, but he was happy now to be on foot and decided he wouldn’t even mind being rained on a little, as long as there wasn’t any lightning. As he got closer to the center of town the proportion of familiar, intact landmarks began to increase. He passed a used car lot where he’d once bought a 1946 Hudson Super Six with 35,000 miles on it that had ground to a permanent halt less than two years later as a result, his third wife had insisted, of his never having once changed its oil. Gunther had never known or cared much about cars, and he maintained that the postwar models didn’t need their oil changed all that often; the ensuing fight had been one of the marriage’s last. He wasn’t sure what had become of her after she remarried and he didn’t have to send her any more alimony. He didn’t know what had happened to his first wife either; the one in between them was the mother of his two daughters, and they’d kept in touch over the years through the girls and the grandchildren. She lived up north somewhere, he thought, or maybe she’d died.

A couple of doors farther west was a diner with thin plaques of fake marble mortared to its brick facade. Through the plate glass he saw a waitress he recognized, bored and loitering next to the cash register. She was a lot heavier now, her face gone round and slack with deep creases running from her nostrils to her mouth, but her hair was as thick and luxuriant and black as the last time he’d seen her. She gave a little start at the sight of him and beckoned him to come inside. Eager as he was to get to the barber shop before it closed for the day, he figured he had time for a cup of coffee.

“Gunther!” She had him in a bear hug as soon as he got through the door, and feeling her warm and soft against him Gunther couldn’t help thinking that her increased girth was probably a good thing. “How long’s it been? Long time, seems to me. Hey, Jimbo, get out here and see who it is.” When she turned her face away from him to yell at the kitchen he snuck a glance at the name tag pinned to the polyester above her substantial left breast: irma. That seemed right.

A tiny, wizened man, who looked decades older than Gunther felt, came out of the kitchen scowling and wiping his hands. He brightened at the sight of Gunther and held out his hand to shake.

“Well, I’ll be dipped in shit. What’s a penny made of, copper?”

It was only at the familiar salutation that he recognized the old man as the diner’s proprietor, about a foot shorter and thirty pounds skinnier than Gunther remembered him, as though a good part of his physical being had been siphoned off into Irma. “How you been, Jimmy?”

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