Safe from the Neighbors

by Steve Yarbrough

  I wrote the date in my pad. “What made you leave Loring, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Don’t mind at all. I finally got my hands on a little bit of money and decided to go into business for myself. They had a shop over here for sale. I done real good for a long time.” He pointed at the article on the wall above my head. “I noticed you taking a look at that,” he said.

  “Top barber in Pine Bluff. That doesn’t surprise me one bit.”

  “To be a good barber, the main thing you got to do is listen. You got to hear a man out when he tells you how he wants his hair cut, then you got to figure out how to make it look just a tad better than he imagined. That’s why Parker never was no good. Only person he ever listened to was hisself.” He took another slug. “Way things worked out over here, though, I finally run into debt and had to sell the place. Wasn’t because I didn’t do a good job. Even drunk I cut hair just fine, didn’t nick nobody’s ear or nothin’ like that, but there’s some folks that don’t care for the smell of whiskey. I spent the next twenty-five years workin’ in a chemical plant. Around there, it stunk so bad nobody could smell the fumes comin’ off me.”

  I used to love how he smelled and suddenly felt like I needed to say so, and did.

  He laughed. “That was talcum powder you smelled on me,” he said. “See, I’d rub a little bit of it into my hands after I washed ’em—and maybe you didn’t notice, but I always washed my hands after each and every haircut. That’s just standard practice, but you’d be surprised how many folks get in a hurry and quit doin’ it. You remember what it was like on Saturday morning at Sturdivant’s?”

  “Yes sir,” I said. “Sometimes it seemed like half the town was in there.”

  “Absolutely. And old Parker’d come in with fertilizer on his hands, grab them clippers and set to work on folks’ heads. If you’d dropped a few cotton seeds on their scalps, they’d of took root.”

  I posed several questions about Sturdivant’s, asking how many haircuts he’d give in an average week, whether or not the price changed dramatically during the time he worked there, how often he had to renew his license and what that cost, how frequently his clippers had to be replaced. I hadn’t come to get answers to any of them, yet they were interesting in and of themselves, and I noted each one in my pad. Then I said, “Now could I get you to talk a little bit about the paper route?”

  “You sure enough could. Let me just get another little drink.” He got up, poured himself another one and sat back down. “What you want to know?”

  “Well, to begin with, do you remember how many subscribers you had?”

  “Seems like by the time I moved away, I must’ve had close to three hundred. Where you say you lived?”

  “Out near Fairway Crossroads. James May’s my father.”

  “Tall, skinny fellow that liked a crew cut?”

  “Yes sir. That was him.”

  “His hair, unless I misremember it, was naturally oily. Some fellows, you put your hands in their hair and it’s like dippin’ ’em in Crisco. Nothin’ they can do about it, that’s just how it goes, and washin’ it all the time just makes it worse. Anyhow, when it come to the paper route, Fairway wasn’t but a small part of the picture for me. See, I had all the folks that subscribed on Route Two, but I had them that lived on Route One as well. My territory stretched from south of Choctaw Creek all the way up to the county line. Now, you may not know it but there was a little bit of a war goin’ on in them years between the Commercial Appeal and that rag down in Jackson.”

  “The Clarion-Ledger?”

  “Yes indeed. And when I started, the guy delivered that Jackson paper had the edge.”

  “Do you remember who that was?”

  “Fellow name of Buzz Dirken. Buzz was short for Buzzard, and they called him that because he looked like one. Now, he didn’t have my main liability, because he never took a drink in his life, but he couldn’t throw worth a damn. See, folks don’t want their paper wet and they don’t want it muddy and they sure as God don’t want it hittin’ the front door like a goddamn brick at two or three in the mornin’. He pitched ’em in the ditch, under folks’s trucks, even throwed one right through somebody’s window one night. Time I quit, I had old Buzzard beat to shit.”

  “If I recall right,” I said, “the barbershop opened pretty early every day, didn’t it?”

  “Nine a.m. And I never unlocked the door late one time. Not one damn time.”

  “Yet you delivered those papers in the middle of the night. So what was a typical day like for you back then? Did you ever sleep?”

  “Well, I closed up every day at five, so I’d head on home, usually have a drink or two—never more than three or four, except come Saturday—and then I’d lay down about seven or seven-thirty and sleep till twelve-thirty or one. Get up, have a little coffee and eat me somethin’, and I’d be waiting at the bus station when that Greyhound dropped ’em off. Sometimes the bus was a little early, sometimes a little late, but I’d usually throw the first paper around two or two-fifteen. Most days I’d pull back into my own yard by five o’clock. Jump out, run in and lay down on the couch, grab two or three hours and start all over.”

  I couldn’t help but express amazement that he’d borne up under that kind of schedule. “How’d you survive doing that for five years?” I asked. “A week would plumb kill me.”

  Is there anything more beautiful than a smile on a time-ravaged face? “Them was the best years of my life,” he said. “I couldn’t wait to start my day. I loved cuttin’ hair and I loved bein’ by myself late at night throwin’ papers. My drinkin’ hadn’t got out of control yet, my wife hadn’t left me, and I still had my dream. See, I’d always wanted to own my own shop. I had a goal, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  I did—even though it’d been a long time since I had any specific personal ambition myself. If you’d asked me to identify the exact moment I lost it, I wouldn’t have been able to. I figure most folks just wake up one morning and understand that it’s gone. My goal now, if I had one at all, was to keep sleeping with Maggie as long as I could without getting caught. I tried not to think about next month or next year. I only looked forward to the next Wednesday.

  “Speaking of owning your own shop,” I said, “you mentioned coming into some money that made it possible. Would I be prying too much if I asked if you earned it by working two jobs? I’m especially interested in entrepreneurial activity, and it sounds like you busted your butt and made your dream a reality.”

  He laughed and took another swallow. “I busted my butt all right,” he said, “but I would’ve had to bust it a good bit longer to make the money to open my own shop. Naw, I got lucky for once in my life and found me an investor.”

  “Someone here in Pine Bluff?”

  “Naw, actually it was somebody over in Loring.”

  “Mind if I ask who?”

  He fell silent and shifted in his chair, looking down into his cup as if maybe it held the solution to this particularly vexing problem. I knew he was trying to decide whether to lie or tell the truth. Finally, he lifted his head and said, “If I tell you, you ain’t gone put the answer in no book, are you?”

  Since there would be no book, it was easy enough to say, “No sir. I give you my word.”

  After he told me, I knew I’d been right to wonder if Ellis Buchanan possibly could’ve forgotten Andy Owens.

  Half an hour later, after promising to send him a copy of my book if it ever got published, I rose to leave. As if he were a shy boy about to ask the prettiest girl in town for a date, he ducked his head and wondered wouldn’t I like a little trim, free of charge. So I told him yes, and he went off down the hall and returned a moment later with his clippers and a pair of scissors and a yellow bedsheet.

  I straddled the chair he’d been sitting in, and he draped that sheet over my lap and chest and gave me the best haircut I’ve had since 1962.

  THE PUBLIC RECORD, in the form of a marriage certificate on file at the Mi
ssissippi Department of Vital Records, can tell you that Nadine Annalou Bevil married Arlan Baker Calloway before the justice of the peace in the Gulf Coast town of Willis on December 15, 1950. Her parents’ names—Annalou Patrick Bevil (deceased) and Hardy Bevil, of Hard Cash—are duly noted on the certificate, as are those of his parents, Norma Kay Calloway and John Bell Calloway, of Loring. The document is illegibly signed by the justice of the peace, whose name is typed below: A. E. Reno. The witness was one Josephine Melton.

  From the Loring County Register of Deeds, you can learn that Ellis Buchanan officially assumed ownership of the Weekly Times on August 25, 1960. If, like me, you enjoy looking through old newspapers, you can quickly determine that the first issue with Ellis’s name at the top of the masthead was published on September 7, 1960, and that in his first editorial he introduced himself to his new audience, telling them that he had previously owned and edited the Clearwater Gazette, over in east Mississippi, that he was the husband of Olivia Buchanan, née Wadsworth, originally of Winona, and the father of a three-year-old son, Wilbur Cash (Will), and a two-year-old daughter, Alexandra Olivia (Allie). You can learn, from this same editorial, that Ellis intended to stake out a progressive position on “the most important issue facing the Delta, not to mention the state and the nation: civil rights.”

  The public record won’t tell you a single thing, though, about how Ellis Buchanan bumped into Nadine Calloway in an aisle at the Loring Piggly Wiggly in the fall of 1961.

  Around 2:00 p.m. on the day I went to see Andy Owens, I got back home, made a peanut butter sandwich and washed it down with a glass of beer. Then I went back outside and walked down the street.

  Ellis came to the door in his bathrobe. I’d never seen him like that before. His hair hadn’t been combed, and he had what looked like a fever blister on his upper lip.

  “Hey,” I said. “I hope I didn’t get you out of bed.”

  “No, not really. Though I was taking a nap.”

  “So I’ll drop by another day.” I started to turn away.

  He reached out and grabbed my arm just below the elbow. He didn’t do it gently either. “You might as well stay,” he said. “I’d just as soon answer your question now rather than tomorrow or the day after.”

  His fingers stayed locked around my forearm. His hand was big and, given his age, surprisingly strong. I remembered him telling me once that he could palm a basketball. “What question?” I said.

  He let go, pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe and blew his nose. “The one you convinced yourself you didn’t come here to ask.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You thought we’d talk around the subject, I guess, and you’d gradually steer the conversation in a certain direction, like Perry Mason, I suppose, and then you’d say, ‘Oh, and by the way, I drove over to Arkansas today and interviewed Andy Owens for a book I’ll never write.’ Is that how you imagined this would go?”

  Of all the people I knew, he was the only one who’d never once spoken to me in anger. For more than thirty years he’d maintained the same ironic stance, suggesting with every word and glance that if I wanted to live a long and happy life, I needed to regard myself and all my actions with a measure of skepticism and a heavy dose of humor. Now he was dead serious, and mad.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “He called you, I guess.”

  “Yes. He may be a drunk but he’s loyal, and the two of us reached a bargain that you got him to violate today.” Finally, his face displayed a trace of the old familiar smile. “You see, he was dying to give somebody a haircut, and along you came.” He turned towards the kitchen. “I’m drinking bourbon. What about you?”

  “I was already persona non grata when I met her,” he told me, balancing a glass of whiskey on his knee. The bottle—Knob Creek—stood on the coffee table. I’d taken one sip, and it had burned worse going down than anything I’d ever swallowed. “One of the first things I’d done at the paper was to editorialize against Mayor Finley for holding a Citizens’ Council meeting at City Hall. I said it was his business if he wanted to host meetings of such a shameful outfit at his own home, but that if he held any meetings on public property, they ought to be the business of all our citizens, the majority of whom, he might not have noticed, happened to be black. That caused a big ruckus. Then, after Ross Barnett spent three hundred thousand dollars in state funds installing gold-plated faucet handles on all the bathtubs at the governor’s mansion, I wrote that the stink of his racist policies would still cling to him. That kind of thing. They all thought my behavior was thoroughly outrageous, and began to cross the street when they saw me coming down the sidewalk.”

  In a short time, he told me, he made quite a name for himself. One day a Time reporter who was writing an article about Tut Patterson, a Citizens’ Council founder, showed up at his office, and a week or so later, when the piece ran, Ellis got quoted: “Tut’s aptly named. He’s a kind of pharaoh lording it over the most reactionary elements of Southern society. And I personally look forward to seeing him entombed.”

  That line resonated. Dead animals began appearing in his driveway—a skunk here, a possum there, the occasional exotic creature like a porcupine or an armadillo. He made mean sport of the perpetrators. “Thanks to some of our friends and neighbors,” he wrote, “I’ve been sending a lot of business to a certain taxidermist over in Greenville. Before long I’ll be putting the results on display in an exhibition that I plan to title ‘Pets of the Citizens’ Council.’ An art critic at the New York Times has announced his intention to attend the grand opening.”

  That’s what was going on in his life when he turned around one afternoon in the Piggly Wiggly and saw an absurdly tall woman with frizzy auburn hair staring at him. He’d noticed her around town before—always from a distance—but didn’t bother to ask anybody her name. She wasn’t news. Why should he care?

  He had his kids with him. They’d come in search of ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise, for a cookout later on that day.

  “You look,” she said, without introducing herself or saying hello, “like you could still ring one in from thirty feet.”

  It had been years since anybody said anything to him about his exploits on the basketball court. The only sport that matters much in Mississippi is football. “Believe me,” he told her, “I never hit from thirty feet in my life.”

  “I’d love to trust you,” she said, “but in this instance I don’t. I used to listen to your games. I heard you hit from thirty a bunch of times.”

  “You heard Stan Tinsley telling lies. You know what we used to call him?”

  “Mouth of the South?”

  He nodded. “Did you go to Ole Miss?”

  “No, but I played basketball.”

  “Where?”

  “Hard Cash High. They don’t have a team anymore. The town chose not to exist.”

  “It’s a pity more towns don’t make that choice, isn’t it?”

  “This one, for instance?”

  Rather than answer, he told me, he snapped his fingers. “Hey, wait a minute. You didn’t play on that state championship team, did you? Back in Forty-nine? Wasn’t that Hard Cash High? Beat Jackson Murrah by two in overtime?”

  This time, she was the one who didn’t answer. Because before she could reply, his son grabbed his hand and jerked it. “Daddy! Come on.”

  No single emotion, she’d tell him later, would account for the look that flitted across his face. Annoyance was certainly part of it, she said, but she detected traces of guilt, confusion and resignation, too. All sensations with which she’d forged an intimate acquaintance.

  “We probably ought to head home,” he told her. “Their mom likes to eat at six sharp.”

  She stepped closer, as if to measure his height and let him measure hers. Six feet, he guessed. Maybe even six-one.

  “Want to shoot a few sometime?” she asked.

  “A few what?”

  She almost died laughing. “Baskets,” she said. “What�
�d you think I meant? Kids?”

  “South of the tracks,” Ellis said, “there used to be a basketball court. Really, it was just a patch of mud packed hard by all the bare feet that had played on it. Near the end of Church Street, behind what used to be called the Negro Masonic Building. We went down there because both of us knew that while a few eyes might be watching us through parted curtains, what they saw would never make it across the tracks. White people could meddle in black people’s business all they wanted, but we took it for granted they’d never meddle in ours.”

  The hoop, he said, had been welded to a rusted deck plate that looked like it was lifted from a cotton gin, and the deck plate was bolted to a telephone pole. Which was odd, when you thought about it, because in that part of town, at that time, few people had phones.

  Dribbling idly with his right hand, he used his left to point at the goal. “If I drive and dunk on you,” he said, “at least we won’t have to worry about the backboard falling on us. That thing’s really up there.”

  “What makes you think you can drive and dunk on me?”

  He didn’t really think he could. He’d never dunked in his life, though he’d once had the bad luck to play against the Oklahoma A&M center Bob Kurland, who’d park himself beneath the basket and stuff them in all day. Threatening to dunk on her just gave him something to say. His legs didn’t feel springy, they felt shaky. He felt shaky all over.

  He’d felt no different the day before when he called her house. He’d jogged back to his office and dialed the number after seeing her husband walk into the Western Auto. When she heard his voice, she laughed and said she’d been wondering when he’d call. A real ballplayer, she told him, couldn’t resist a challenge.

  “I might drive and dunk on you,” he said, continuing his dribble. “You’re a girl. I’m a boy.”

  It was cool out, but she wore yellow shorts along with a pair of red Keds and a black worsted pullover. He had on an ancient pair of sweats, the same ones he’d worn years earlier at Ole Miss.