J.D. and the Great Barber Battle

by J. Dillard

  CHAPTER 7

  The Grand Reveal

  Jordan seemed extra amped when he saw me show up in my ball cap again at the bus stop. I wanted my new hairline to be a surprise to everyone.

  “What you got going on under there today, J.D.?” he asked. “Fake dreads? Did you dye them yellow like Lil Wayne?”

  He knocked my cap off like I knew he would.

  But when he saw my head, he said nothing.

  Ah, the sweet sound of silence.

  “Wow, your hair looks really good today,” Jordan finally said. “Who did it? Did your mom take you to Henry Jr.’s?”

  “No,” I told him. “I did it myself.”

  Jordan smirked.

  I rode the school bus in peace.

  I changed classes in peace.

  “I like your hair today,” Jessyka told me at lunch.

  Even better, when I got my Reading test back from Ms. Scott, not only did I get an A, but she said, “Did you get a haircut recently, J.D.? It looks nice!”

  I was in heaven.

  CHAPTER 8

  My First Client

  Day after day, my hair looked amazing. No one could crack on me anymore. The more I cut my own hair, the more I had fun with it. I tried all kinds of new things: fades, Caesars, baldies, I even cut parts into my head. And my hairline was always perfectly straight.

  One Saturday, I was in my bedroom giving myself a new haircut when I heard a loud knock on the back door. My door led to the porch, and it had a screen that let me see outside without others being able to see in.

  That meant I could always pretend I wasn’t home if I didn’t want to be bothered or let people in without anyone else knowing.

  “Hey, J.D., let me in!”

  It was Jordan.

  I turned off my clippers, opened the back door, and we snuck into my nearly empty bedroom.

  “What else do you need besides a bed and a mirror?” Mom always responded when I tried to ask for new things.

  Seeing Jordan here was strange. He never wanted to hang at my house. He always said there was nothing to do and it was too hot.

  “What’s up, Jordan?” I asked.

  Jordan took off his red-and-black Chicago Bulls snapback.

  His hair was a jagged pile of mess. He looked like someone had put a bowl on his head before doing a lineup, and then a tiger came along and smacked the bowl off with its claws.

  My first instinct was to make fun of him, like he had done to me.

  BUT.

  My mom and grandparents made sure I had what they called “home training,” and I just couldn’t make fun of Jordan. Instead, I sensed an opportunity.

  “Wow, Jordan, what happened to your hair?” I asked.

  “My brother’s out of town, and I tried to do it myself, like you,” he said. “I can’t go outside like this!”

  Jordan paced around the room like he expected that tiger to come back and finish the job.

  “You’ve got to fix it, J.D.”

  I inspected his head. Jordan really had no idea what he was doing. His brother Naija might have had skills, but Jordan clearly didn’t.

  “Why don’t you just go to Henry’s?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Because I wouldn’t leave until nighttime!” he shrieked. “I need to fix this before the football game comes on TV at four.”

  “Sit down in the chair,” I told him. “Your hair is jacked, but I can fix it.”

  I picked up my clippers and went to work.

  Hmm, it was one thing to cut my hair or Justin’s hair. Even though Jordan was my friend, I felt kinda nervous. I knew I had to concentrate extra hard not to make any mistakes.

  “J.D.,” Jordan said, “you are always good with things in your hands. Pencils, footballs, game controllers, now clippers!”

  “Yeah, well, not everybody has every toy like you, Jordan, so sometimes pencils are good enough.”

  “You know what’s not good enough?” Jordan asked.

  I kept cutting his hair, listening.

  “I just can’t stand going outside if I don’t have on new clothes or if I’m not chopped up,” Jordan said. “I gotta look good all the time.”

  I liked Jordan’s style, but sometimes it felt like he took it too seriously.

  “If you got your clothes out of a box, you’d forget about that stuff,” I said. “Clothes just get dirty anyway.”

  Jordan sighed. “Want to know the truth?” he asked.

  I nodded because I was curious.

  “At least you know people like you for you, not your things!” he said. “Sometimes I wonder if anyone would care about me if I didn’t have the newest video games.”

  Jordan and I were quiet as I kept working. Sometimes being a good friend was about talking, but other times it was about listening.

  By the time I was finished, Jordan had a perfect baldie with the logo of the Chicago Bulls on one side and a Jumpman on the other, just like I’d drawn in my notebook hundreds of times before.

  It was a masterpiece.

  “Wait,” I said, “one more thing.”

  I pulled out a set of art pencils my grandmother had brought home from the rec center. I traced Jordan’s designs with one black pencil and one red.

  Jordan couldn’t help but give me my props.

  “Yo, J.D., this is dope,” he said. “You’re even better than my brother. I owe you!”

  I hadn’t thought about this part. If Henry Jr. and Naija got paid, why shouldn’t I? Especially when my work was dope.

  “Well, why don’t you slide me three dollars for the job? Less than half of what they charge at Henry’s,” I said.

  Jordan placed three crisp bills into my hands.

  I couldn’t believe I got Jordan to give me money!

  I thought about all the things you can do with three dollars in Meridian, Mississippi. Even though Meridian was a town of ones—one mall, one barbershop, one high school, one middle school, and one elementary school—three dollars could get you far. You could:

  Buy thirty pieces of ten-cent candy from the candy store!

  30 x $0.10 = $3.00

  Go to Miss Sweetie’s House and buy her candy when the corner store was closed.

  Go to the matinee and see a movie!

  Three dollars was a lot of money, and I was RICH!!!

  CHAPTER 9

  The Start of a Business

  Jordan’s Chicago Bulls design got a lot of attention at school on Monday.

  “Oh man! Did your brother do that?” Xavier asked.

  “Nope, J.D. did,” he said, throwing me a solid. “I only paid three dollars. He’s open on Saturdays.”

  Hmm. More money. Two clients times three dollars each was six dollars. The newest Spider-Man comic cost $4.99. I just had to keep up with Jordan, Xavier, and Jessyka. Me and Jordan were super into the graphics, but Xavier and Jessyka had ALL the storylines memorized.

  Six dollars would even leave me with one extra dollar for candy.

  One dollar divided by ten cents was ten. I could buy ten pieces of candy with my extra dollar.

  When Eddie, the quarterback on my peewee football team, saw Jordan’s designs at lunch, he said he wanted his hair cut by me, too. He always went to Hart and Son.

  “I’m tired of waiting all day when I go!” he complained.

  It didn’t take long before I had a lot of clients. All the kids I played sports with and all the regular neighborhood kids wanted that fire I had with my clippers.

  That very weekend, I set up my shop. It was really warm one day (like most days in Mississippi), so I put out a folding chair on the back porch. The rest of the time, I cut hair in my bedroom. I didn’t have the kind of equipment you’d find at Henry’s, so I improvised: I put a piece of toilet paper around my clients’ nec
ks and an old bedsheet over their clothes to keep the hair off. The sheet kept slipping, so I attached a hanger clip on the back to keep it in place.

  Justin was my assistant barber. He swept up hair, collected money, and sometimes served as my hair model.

  My mom and sister barely seemed to notice my growing empire. The only complaint I heard was from my grandparents, who told all of us to stop using so much toilet paper. They knew I was cutting hair at home, but they didn’t want me to cost THEM money while I was doing it.

  “Do you think toilet paper is free?” my grandmother said.

  I couldn’t worry about toilet paper. My mind was busy counting money.

  If I did ten haircuts a day, that equaled thirty dollars.

  10 haircuts x $3.00 = $30.00

  I imagined what I’d buy with all that cash: my own video game console, a television set, and all the candy I could eat.

  Soon I would have every Marvel comic, except the Captain America ones. I didn’t like those.

  My bedroom would be the most tricked-out kids’ barbershop ever!

  * * *

  »»««

  Peewee football practice was always during the week, so I had all day Saturday to cut hair. One day, after I’d closed up shop, me and Xavier, Jordan, and Eddie were in my room talking about everything from the newest videos on House of Highlights to what plays Coach Sidney had tried to teach us for next week.

  “Yes, next week I’m going to stop pitching it to the running back so much. Coach said I can practice some quarterback sneaks,” Eddie said.

  “Why don’t you throw the ball to me more?” Xavier asked.

  “Because Jessyka is a better wide receiver!” Eddie laughed.

  Mom was out with Vanessa at her track meet, Grandma was at the studio center teaching a kids’ ceramics class. The only one home was Granddad, who was practicing piano before he headed out to sell burial insurance. He’d leave as soon as Grandma and Mom got back home.

  I could hear Vanessa and Mom burst through the door and then I heard an extra voice. It was Jessyka. She must’ve come home with Vanessa today.

  “I have to help Mom bring in the laundry,” I heard Vanessa say. “Just wait for me inside a few minutes,” she told Jessyka.

  I heard footsteps down the hall and saw a shadow approaching my doorframe. That’s when Jessyka appeared in her warmup suit.

  “What are you all doing in here?” she asked.

  “This is my barbershop,” I said. “It’s where I’ve been cutting all the guys’ hair.”

  “Yeah, Jessyka, NO GIRLS ALLOWED!” Xavier said.

  I turned to Xavier and gave him a look.

  “No, Xavier, Jessyka can be here,” I said. “It’s my room anyway.”

  Jessyka jogged in and looked at my barber station.

  “Can I sit in your chair?” Jessyka asked.

  “Sure.” I turned to Eddie and said, “Get up, Eddie.”

  Eddie looked annoyed.

  “You’re not done with my edge up, J.D., and I never saw a girl at Henry Jr.’s place. Maybe I should go back there,” Eddie said.

  I had to let Eddie know that this was MY shop.

  “Well, this isn’t Hart and Son!” I said. “I make the rules.”

  Eddie got up and Jessyka sat down.

  “Sometimes I wish I could cut bangs, but my mom won’t let me,” she said, pulling at a strand of her hair and fake cutting it with her fingers.

  “I bet I could do it,” I said. “But your mom might get mad, so why don’t you ask her first and come back next week?”

  Jessyka grinned the way she did when she caught the ball on a crossing route, broke a couple of tackles, and was off to the end zone. The sideline, the coaches, and the crowd always screamed EXTRA loud when she scored.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” she said.

  Jessyka stood up and got out of the chair and looked at all of us.

  “I’ve got to go, but I’ll see you all on the field.”

  We heard Jessyka walk down the hall. When she reached the end of it, she yelled back, “I’m so fast, they won’t be able to catch me!”

  Jordan, Eddie, and Xavier all groaned, but I laughed. Jessyka could teach all of us about throwing shade.

  CHAPTER 10

  Henry Hart Jr. Has a Problem

  I loved everything about peewee football. There were lots of kids on it who went to both Douglass and Catholic school.

  Since I was cutting the hair of most of the guys on my team, Meridian’s Mighty Mice looked extra clean. We came up with a plan for everyone to take off their helmets after a touchdown and show off their haircuts. Jessyka even got my sister to style her hair different. It was obvious that all the guys were getting their hair cut somewhere that was not Henry’s. He never took special requests. No parts, no color, no hi-tops and no dreadlocks. I don’t think he hated these styles, he just didn’t know how to do them, especially not on a kid.

  “Check this out, Dad,” my friend Xavier said after he scored a touchdown. He took off his helmet in the end zone. I had cut a picture of Mighty Mouse into the back of Xavier’s head, which was always in his normal hi-top fade. I had even colored it with my art pencils.

  I usually recognized most of the people who came to my games. But this time I had the weird feeling of being watched. Whenever we scored a touchdown or made an exciting play on offense, all the parents and friends in the bleachers would stand up and cheer. I played linebacker, so I was not on the field when we scored and could see one person in the bleachers who kept his arms crossed and stayed seated. He was wearing a knit cap and sunglasses—it was Henry Jr. I was sure of it. What was he up to?

  His kids were little, so he had no reason to be there. What else could he have been doing except trying to find out where all his kid clients were getting their hair cut?

  “J.D.!” Eddie yelled to me after the game was over. “That dude Henry Jr. from the barbershop was asking me who cut my hair . . . I told him it was you.”

  * * *

  »»««

  After the game, I waited for my family to find me to avoid Henry Jr. in the bleachers. My grandparents, Justin, and Vanessa were the only ones who came to my games, but Mom had taken a night off from studying for her exams to watch me in action.

  “Another win, Mom!” I said. My whole family caught up with me on the sidelines.

  “Yes, and I can see you’ve been cutting a lot of hair while I’ve been out of the house,” Mom said as she squatted down and hugged me.

  “Yeah, J.D., not bad. But I bet you can’t do girls’ hair,” Vanessa said. “Did you see how good Jessyka looked out there?”

  She always had something to say!

  We piled into our car and as it rolled down the street, I could only think about Henry Jr. and what he wanted.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Visit

  Everyone in Meridian knows everything about everyone else. And even if they don’t know, it’s easy enough to ask a friend, a neighbor, or a fellow churchgoer the right question to get any answer.

  So it wasn’t that big of a surprise when one Saturday night, long after I’d closed up my bedroom barbershop, I found Henry Jr. knocking on the back porch. Of course he figured out how to find me.

  Even though it was getting dark outside, he still had the same knit cap and dark sunglasses he had worn at my football game.

  “Hello, Jay Jay,” he said.

  No one except my family called me James. Definitely not “Jay Jay.” He was trying to get me mad, and it was working.

  “I know what you’re up to with your little underground barbershop,” Henry Jr. said.

  This was unbelievable! Why was Henry Jr. at my house worried about what I was doing?

  “Hi, Mr. Henry Jr.,” I said to him. “What can I help you with? Should I get my mom?” />
  It seemed like Henry Jr. was sweating. I couldn’t really tell. He always seemed kinda out of breath, but today it was worse. It was almost as if I could see smoke coming out of his ears!

  “Don’t worry about your mom right now, but if you don’t knock it off,” he said in a louder voice, “I’m going to call the authorities and get you shut down!”

  Could he do that? How?

  “You don’t have any type of license to do anything!” he said, as if he could read my mind. “Your mom worked at the hospital; she knows about the Department of Health!”

  Before I could even respond, he stormed off.

  He had to be kidding. Who would believe an eight-year-old kid had his own barbershop? And how could it be illegal anyway? Half the kids I knew got their hair cut at home.

  Henry Jr. was just a big hater. I didn’t have time for haters—I had a business to run, money to make, and clients who depended on me!

  CHAPTER 12

  Henry Jr. Makes Good on His Threat

  I went about the rest of my week as usual—school, football practice, and church. There was no sign of Henry Jr. anywhere. No one lurking in the bushes, no strange people at the football field or standing outside my house.

  On Saturday morning, I was prepping for Xavier as Justin played with his Lightning McQueen toy from the movie Cars.

  Xavier stood right beside my workstation. This week, he wanted an edge up with a small ’fro like Steph Curry, and I was ready to try it.

  “I grew my hair out for two weeks just like you said,” he told me as he sat in my chair.

  I grabbed my clippers.

  “Man, I wish I had caught the winning touchdown last week instead of Jessyka,” Xavier said.

  “It’s not fair, why is Jessyka on our team anyway? She’s the only girl!”

  Xavier loves to win, and I could tell this had been bothering him.

  “She’s good, Xavier. She’s been in sports from the time she could walk, I think. Plus her dad played football in college and they practice catching the ball and running routes ALL THE TIME!”