All American Horror of the 21st Century

Steagal's Barber Shoppe and Smoke Emporium. Jay Bonansinga

STEAGAL’S BARBER SHOPPE AND SMOKE EMPORIUM

by Jay Bonansinga

Davy Marsh was in such a state that day he could hardly remember how he got down to Steagal’s, not to mention how he got home from the Middle East.

The barbershop was in a gentrified part of town, on a side street just off Taylor, sandwiched between a Korean dry cleaners and a foreign auto body shop. The front of the shop hadn’t changed since Nixon was in office—a broken-down little candy-striped pole planted in concrete by the door, whiskered in weeds, a window covered with chipped black paint and sun-faded photos of Sears catalogue models with hairstyles that had gone out of vogue some time around the hey day of the hula hoop—styles such as the flat top, the brush cut, and “the Princeton.”

Davy pulled his S-10 up to a meter right front of the place—the vacant spot a miracle in itself—and yanked the stick into “Park.” For the nearly two decades Davy Marsh had been getting his hair cut at Steagal’s, he had never seen an open parking spot right in front of the place. But that’s just the way that day had been going.

Like a waking dream.

Davy twisted off the ignition and climbed out of the pick-up. He was a big kid, and he seemed to unfold himself to his full six-foot-four lank as he got out of the truck, arching his back and squinting up at the high blue sky. His blue chambray shirt was damp under the arms and sticking to his back. It was late summer in Chicago, and the afternoon was heating up, but it was nothing like Iraq-heat. Nothing like that devil’s furnace that pressed down on you and matted your field gear to your back and turned your sweat to glue. Davy loped up the cracked sidewalk to the glass entrance door.

A little bell jangled overhead as Davy entered Steagal’s Barber Shop and Smoke Emporium.

“Scorcher of a day out there, ain’t it?” came a voice from the cool shadows in the rear of the place. The air inside the barber shop was musky and fragrant with hair tonic blown around the old linoleum and plaster walls by squeaky, rotating ceiling fans. It was a smell that immediately wrenched Davy back to his childhood, and all those sticky visits for crew cuts and suckers. There was an old Naugahyde sofa on one wall strewn with well-thumbed magazines (‘men’s magazines,’ Davy’s mom used to call them): Police Gazette, Swank, True Detective, Argosy, and Dude.

What was he doing here?

“Yeah, it’s pretty hot,” he murmured, looking around and surveying the cluttered shop. Jesus, that little greasy display case was still there with the cheap cigars and stale European cigarettes. And the comic book spinner was still over in the corner with the Tales from the Crypts and the Vault of Horrors. The memories made Davy’s stomach clench. You’d think the old man would get some new comics over the years.

“Hold the phone! Hold the goddamn phone!” The little troll in the powder blue barber’s tunic shuffled out of the shadows and approached, holding his broom, looking the tall young man up and down. Burdette Steagal had to be a hundred years old if he was a day, but Davy was damned if the old man didn’t look the same as always. That pug-dog face and bald head shaped like a fat missile, those little sausage fingers that played scissors over the heads of neighborhood kids like Paganini. “I’ll be a cross-eyed son of a b***h—is that Davy?! Davy Marsh?!”

“How ya doin’ Burdette,” Davy said.

The little man set his broom against one of the swivel chairs and trundled over to the lanky kid. Davy tensed as the barber embraced him. It was like getting hugged by an ape. Davy could smell Brylcream and a faint trace of BO on the portly little barber.

“Your old man was in, few weeks ago, told me you were in the service,” the barber said, holding Davy by the shoulders. The little man’s eyes glittered with emotion. “Told me you were over in the Middle East. Jesus. Jesus, look at ya.”

“Yeah, well.” Davy didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what the hell he was doing here.

“Come in for a cut, huh? For old time’s sake?”

Davy shrugged and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the chair. His narrow, gaunt face was topped with the regulation buzz cap of a seasoned jarhead. In civilian life, Davy Marsh wore his wavy blond hair long, in a ponytail, bound with a rubber band—perhaps as compensation for all those childhood buzz cuts. But now you could hardly tell he was blond. He could still feel the sand in those bristles.

“Not much to work with up there, huh?” the barber grinned.

“I guess not.”

“Tell you what,” Steagal said, waddling over to the closest chair, spinning it toward Davy, snapping a towel across the seat. “Let’s see if we can’t make you look a little more suave for them neighbor girls.”

Davy shrugged again and sat down.

“So when did you get back?” the barber wanted to know, turning toward a glass canister filled with combs suspended in blue fluid. His portly little body moved with a dancer’s grace. He flung the liquid from a comb, grabbed a pair of scissors, then whipped a black plastic protective gown around Davy to catch what little hair there was left. Then the fat man started lavishing attention on Davy’s cranium. “What’d your ma think when she saw you?”

Davy listened to the snip-snip-snipping against his ears, which were hot with nervous tension. He wondered how to answer. He wondered how to explain what was going on inside him. How he had gone over there fresh out of basic at Fort Benning, all full of piss and righteous rage, wanting to get back at those goddamn zealots for 9/11. Davy Marsh—the guy they used to call Big Bird at Senn High School, the geek no girls would go out with because he was so gangly on the dance floor and wore braces until he was eighteen—making it all the way to technical sergeant, the youngest non-com in the 7th Air Cav. But how in God’s name was Davy going to explain that first fire fight? How was he going to explain what had happened to him that night—riding shotgun on that Apache attack chopper a hundred feet above the sand, firing 30 millimeter tracers into cities boiling like cauldrons with anti-aircraft fire?

“I haven’t ... haven’t been home yet,” Davy said finally.

“No kiddin’. Jeez.” Snip-snip-snip.

“Thought I get cleaned up first. Get the stink off me.”

“I’m honored, kid. You comin’ in here. Always said you were a special kid.”

“Thanks, Burdy.”

Snip-snip. “You see some action over there?”

Davy stared at himself in the mirror. He watched the glimmer of the scissors, the little plump pink fingers flexing, the comb flicking and teasing at the bristles, and the strangest thing occurred to Davy: There’s no hair being cut. Is he just pretending? Is the fat man just humoring a shell-shocked kid, just snipping at the air around Davy’s ears?

“You don’t gotta talk about it, you don’t want to,” the barber said.

“It’s not that, it’s just—”

“That’s okay, kid.”

“I just don’t–”

“That’s okay. Don’t gotta say a word. Just gonna make you look real dapper, real suave. For the girls.”

“The girls, right.” Davy closed his eyes, and saw the crackle of mortar fire streak across his vision, those same awful shooting stars that had been ruining his sleep. When he opened his eyes they were wet.

Snip-snip-snip-snip.

Minutes passed with neither man saying a word.

Davy could barely see his reflection in the mirror, could barely see the bizarre optical illusion materializing before him, obscured by his tears like shapes behind a raindappled pane of glass. It looked as though the barber was painting his scalp instead of trimming it, each little flick of the scissors dabbing a brush stroke of ginger-colored hair back onto his head instead of shearing it off. It felt odd, too, like warm goose bumps spreading across his scalp. It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant feeling either. Maybe the first pleasant sensation he had felt for months.

A tear tracked down Davy Marsh’s face. “Girls,” he murmured, his voice breaking. “Pilot I got shot down with was a girl. Can you believe that? Native American woman. Big fat gal, looked Hawaiian.”

“Davy, look ... uh.” The barber paused. “You don’t gotta—”

“Chief Warrant Officer Irma Goode. You believe that? Old Irma. I can’t believe the fire we went through. I mean, you coulda walked on top of it, it was so goddamn thick, like we had gone and stirred up a hornet’s nest or something. It was—it was right outside of Basrah, and they just opened up on us, the whole goddamn Republican Guard. I mean, they just hit us with everything they had. I saw two other Apaches buy it, you know, right off the bat, and I was—I was—I was just like screaming and shaking and laying down suppression fire, and, aw Jesus, it was bad. I wasn’t ready for it. You know? 57 millimeter flak chewing us all to hell, sparking and pinging off our belly, those goddamn S-60’s, like dragons on our ass, and we’re—we’re—we’re ducking left and right, and breaking our pattern, trying to throw ‘em off. And I’m shaking, right? Like I’m having a seizure. Firing every which way, and I’m flash-blind now, and I can barely see the Longbow blasting the leaves off trees and the sand off the roof tops, and we’re like May Day now, I mean, we’re like going in, we’re going down. And we belly flopped in the sand, and it was like—it was like—an elephant landing on me but we didn’t blow—thank Christ we didn’t blow—‘cuz I got thrown ... landed on my back in the sand but Irma—aw Jesus—Irma bought it—I saw her face in the tracer flash her face ... The flak took her face away—took it right off—sweet gal—Irma from Bakersfield, California ... had two kids ... one of ‘em was a cheerleader. One of her kids was a cheerleader. You believe that s**t?”

Davy laughed then. It sounded alien in his own ears, like the bark of a hyena.

He began to cry.

“Aw Jesus ... what good is it ... what good is it ... you see a good person like that get ... and you’re just sitting there on your ass in the ... and the rotor’s still spinnin’ and kickin’up sand in your teeth and you’re ... and you’re just sittin’ there shaking and staring at some lady with a cheerleader daughter and no face ... face just gone ... just—”

The barber laid a hand on Davy’s shoulder, and Davy clammed up.

The silence crashed down on the barbershop. The fat man didn’t say anything.

Another moment passed.

“It was a miracle these Special Forces guys got to me,” Davy said at last. “I mean, I don’t even remember gettin’ e-vac’d outta there ... but I guess I did ... ‘cuz look at me now. Sittin’ here sitting in this ... sitting in this barber chair.”

“And thank God for that,” Steagal said, returning to his work. The scissors continued snipping. Davy felt that humming sensation again.

“I’m sorry,” Davy finally said.

“Don’t be silly, kid.”

“I don’t know what—”

“Forget about it,” the barber said, busily flicking the comb, pinching the scissors.

Davy glanced up at the mirror and his stomach seized up again. He was seeing things. And why not? They say you hallucinate when the string’s finally come undone. God knew, he was due. He was due for a major breakdown. But who would have guessed it would come like that: watching scissors paint hair onto his head?! Like a spatula frosting a cake, the gleaming metallic tips of those things kept extruding swath after swath of wavy golden curls along each contour of Davy’s scalp. There was already a good couple of inches feathering down over his ears, fringing along his neck line. And that warm, buzzing sensation of honey dripping over his scalp was intensifying.

“Must seem like another world over there,” the barber was murmuring.

“What?”

“Iraq. The Middle East. Must seem like a whole ‘nother universe.”

“Oh—yeah. I guess.”

Snip-snip-snippety-snip.

“Funny thing is,” the barber said, coaxing strands of blonde locks down the young man’s back, “it ain’t really like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“The world, the planet. You know. It ain’t made up of different kinds of places—it’s all one. We’re all floating on the same boat, if you follow my meaning.”

“The same boat.”

“I’m tellin’ ya, kid. I got the inside track on this thing.”

“Um ...”

“What I’m saying is, I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut they got a few of these dumps over there in Baghdad, Ramalah, whatever they call it.”

“A few of these what?”

“Barber shops, for Chrissake.” The fat man was going like crazy at that point with the scissors and the comb, the razor tips spewing lovely cascades of flaxen waves down Davy Marsh’s back. The hair shone in the mirror, lustrous locks of blonde parted down the middle, almost as long as it had been in his 1999 graduation picture. And that electric warmth. It poured across his scalp and down the cords of his neck like a sympathetic note strummed on his nerve endings.

“It’s like when you were just a little squirt,” Steagal droned on with that weird enthusiasm glinting in his eyes. “Used to come in here and read the comics while your dad got a shave. Used to sit for hours in the chair next to your old man, listening to the locals shoot the breeze, soaking everything up like a little sponge.”

“Burdy, I don’t—”

“Later, you know ... You’d drop by. With all the hair, drove your dad crazy. Never wanted a cut in those days.” The fat man chuckled so heartily his paunch shook under his tunic. “Never a haircut! Just dropped in to read some comics. Get away from it all, I guess. Take a little vacation from the world. You remember that?”

Davy glanced across the shop. That couch, that couch—that shopworn, imitation leather couch with those rusty metal arms—it had to be older than Steagal. And yet. It sat there with that same spray of junky magazines across its ratty seat that had cluttered the thing when Davy was a kid. Wouldn’t they have moldered and yellowed into powder by now? And that spinner rack with its chipped white lacquer compartments. It looked as though it had been pickled in time. And the comic books were mint originals. Superman #1. The original E.C. Tales from the Crypt for God’s sake!

Davy looked at his reflection again.

“Oh no.”

“Kid?”

“Oh no, no, oh no.”

“Now they said this would happen,” the barber muttered, gently folding the scissors closed. He was done. Davy’s hair was completely restored to its original, heavy metal, shoulder-length AC-DC glory. “It’s nothin’ to worry about. Okay? Just the initial shock of the thing.”

“Oh my God,” Davy looked down at the black plastic protective gown draped over him, his new, lustrous hair falling across his face. There were no tiny hairs on the plastic. Only a long metal zipper bisecting down its middle. Davy had seen other

soldiers—not many, thank God, but a few—cocooned in the same exact kind of plastic bag while being loaded onto C-130 Hercules transport planes.

“Take it easy, kid—”

Davy jerked forward with a start. He grasped the edges of the black plastic shroud and yanked it apart with a single spasm. The plastic tore in half, the zipper tumbling to the floor like a fillip of skin shed from a snake. Davy gazed down at his chest where the chambray shirt had buckled enough to expose skin.

“Oh God.”

“Now don’t be gettin’ all riled up, kid.” The barber placed a tender hand on Davy’s shoulder, steadying him, keeping him in the chair. “Like I said, it’s just the initial shock of the thing. Happens to the best of us sooner or later. Just take a deep breath.”

Davy stared at his chest. The entry wound was small. A tiny starburst between his n*****s, crusty and black around the edges but fairly clean. Probably fired from one of those 5-56 millimeter carbines used by the Republican Guard in their fox holes on the outskirts of villages. “I never—I never—I never made it outta there,” he panted, looking up at the chubby barber through tears. “Did I?”

Burdette Steagal just smiled then—that same crooked grin with which he always graced his customers at the end of a long, dirty joke. “Like I said, kid. Just a place to get away. Relax. Shoot the bull for a while before movin’ on.”

Davy felt himself fall back into the spongy confines of the barber chair.

He started to say something else when Steagal suddenly called out, “Next!”

There was movement in the corner, and Davy swiveled in time to see Big Irma Goode rising from an armchair, setting down her magazine. She was smiling, her face restored to its olive-skinned, earnest beauty. Her hair was spiky-short, but looked as though it would be a wondrous black mane if allowed to grow out a little bit.

Davy smiled through his tears.

“C’mon sweetheart,” Steagal urged, grabbing another comb from its sapphire bath, and turning toward an open seat. “We got two chairs. No waiting.”

* * *

Sadness. Irony. Inevitability. Those terms seem well suited to the war stories we remember. They also seem well suited to describe many of the best Twilight Zone episodes. They seem no less suited to Jay Bonansinga’s tale of war – and regret.