A cool wind jangles the bells on the doorknob. The wrinkled skeleton glances up from his tablet, unconvinced. When no one enters, he reclines back in the third of four black swivel chairs fixed to the floor, and returns his attention to the screen.
The barber’s eyes slide steadily back and forth. When he runs into a choice passage—this one, words from the opposition leader in the state house—he breathes a little more deeply and swivels the chair back and forth with his foot. The passage ends, he stops swiveling, and silence falls back on the shop.
The light turns gray for an hour or so, filtering through clouds before filtering through the frosted glass windows. A person walks past, casting a black shadow across the storefront, to the low whir of passing vehicles.
At two minutes to thirteen, the barber stands. He walks over to the booth, pulls a white apron from the third knob, and looks down at the day’s calendar. Appointment, one o clock. He slides his finger across another screen, and the name George DeNova turns green. The barber walks back to the chair, and gives it a little spin. As the chair enters its second revolution, the bell clatters again.
In walks George.
“Bom Dia, my friend.”
George has a slightly droopy left eye. His shirt looks new—a little plastic wire protrudes, translucent, from the neckline.
“Andres! My friend. I see you’re keeping the place spotless.”
The barber holds his grin. George has been saying this.
“Yes, yes. A clean shop, a happy customer! The usual?”
“Yes, of course! But perhaps a bit tighter on the sides.” George has also been saying this.
“Tighter still! The client is always correct.” He lays the bib gently across George’s neck and clips the cape just so, a finger of space between neck and fabric. Then the magical click of the electric razor, the buzz, and the hair begins to fly.
Working from the neckline, Andres sculpts. He knows the ripples of skin, reacts to them without conscious thought, and hides each irregularity with deft modulation of the razor. Left side to right, up toward the crown. They discuss George’s ailing sister.
“A true shame,” says Andres.
They talk over the media, the month’s releases, the new round of heavy handed nostalgia that seems to be animating Hollywood.
“Is there nothing new to depict?” Declaims George. “I’ve had it with airplanes and pickup trucks and wars.” The little plastic wire in George’s shirt collar wobbles with the wearer’s agitation.
Andres touches up the whorl on George’s crown, weighing his words.
“Perhaps soon there will be something new to say. But yes, I understand you.”
They fall into silence for a stretch. Then the barber, as is his trade, charges forward with the hanging thread in hand.
“Speaking of new,” supplies Andres, “that grandson of yours, Thomás. He must be almost a year old by now!”
George’s generally droopy face lights up in the mirror.
“Yes! Thirteen months, already. He has even started to type a few words.”
“No surprise there! Your son was precocious, too. I’ve no doubt Thomás will be as bright or brighter than George Junior.”
“Well, as you know, they didn’t get it from me!” Andres knew quite the opposite. George had built a successful career in the logistics industry, navigating disruptions brought on by new modes, new materials, and growing the firm at every step. Andres had followed his client’s story for nearly four decades, ever relishing his front-row view from behind the swivel chair.
“Well,” says Andres, in a voice steady and deliberate, “I imagine young Thomás is starting to see a little length on top now. At thirteen months!”
George’s smile, brought on by the mention of his grandson, remains fixed. Andres detects the drooping flesh around it seeming to harden.
“Ah. Yes. That has been a matter of dinner table discussion. And I have, Andres, I have of course mentioned it.”
“Of course!” Exclaims the barber.
“But I expect his father will move forward with the procedure.”
“And of course. Of course. It’s only normal, kids today.”
“The boys, the girls, they will all arrive for instruction with it taken care of.” George continues, “We can’t have him standing out, not at that critical time.”
“Of course. And the sides? These are tight enough?”
“Ah, yes!” George turns his face in the mirror, side to side, his face softening again. “You’ve done it again, my old friend. Thank you!”
The cape removed, a tap of devices, and George bows his way out of the shop.
Muttering formlessly to himself, the barber retrieves his broom and returns to the chair. With practiced wrists, he flicks the clippings into the handled bin. Spying a nice clump, a salt and peppered tuft, he bends over with a laborious air and swipes it up into his breast pocket.
The shop again spotless, Andres returns to the booth, and leans over his list. Today, the rare occasion: a second appointment.
In the intervening minutes, Andres paces. Never a hand-wringer, he catches himself clutching his own fingers and forces his hands to dangle at his sides. Back and forth across the shop floor, until two minutes to fourteen.
Then, possessed with inspiration, he leaps toward the handled bin. Stuffing his hands inside, he produces a wad of clippings. He holds them in his left hand and with his right selects pieces of black hair from George’s neckline, sprinkling these around the third swivel chair. When only grays remain, he leaps over to the second chair, and sprinkles them about. And, in a stroke of genius, he snatches up a cape and tosses it, rumpled, onto the fourth chair. Just as the cape lands in a heap on the chair, the bells at the door jingle again, signaling the arrival of three figures.
The first, a smiling woman, wears a purple pantsuit and a periwinkle scarf around her neck. Two men follow her through the door on its second swing, a suit each of black and gray.
“Mr. Campanha,” smiles the woman, “Have we caught you at the right time?”
“Yes, Senhora O’Keefe, I have our appointment here,” the barber gestures at the booth. “We should have fifteen minutes, I think. My client was very understanding.”
“Wonderful. Carl, Angel, you remember Andres Campanha?”
“Yes, of course, of course. The barber of India Point!” Carl extends a gray sleeve to Andres, who shakes the offered hand and smiles with more teeth than could be natural.
“Wonderful,” repeats the agent. “Carl, Angel, Mr. Campanha has assured me that all of the specifications are true to the listing. 864 square feet here, a single restroom with ample plumbing, no reported issues, and an office in the back at 212 square feet. Taxes up to date, and the roof replaced just four years ago. Isn’t that correct, Mr. Campanha?”
“Andres, please. And yes, all correct. Please feel free to look around. Excuse the mess, it has been a busy morning.”
“Yes, I see, I see,” says the agent. “Wonderful. Carl, Angel, please, take a look around.”
The men bound forward enthusiastically. Angel knocks on the drywall, frowns slightly. Carl runs his hands along the moulding.
“You know, we might keep one wall of mirror,” says Angel to Carl. “The dancers should like to see themselves in it. And it magnifies the space.”
“Yes!” Smiles Carl, and Ms. O’Keefe beams. “I think,” Carl continues, “It might be perfect. Can we see the office?”
“Of course! It’s wonderful, it has a large window,”exclaims the agent, adjusting her scarf. “Isn’t that right, Mr Campanha?”
“Andres, please. Yes, a large window. Please don’t mind the boxes. I’m storing some of my daughter’s belongings temporarily, but spacious nonetheless.”
The men stride to the back of the shop and open the office door. Andres stares, absorbed in the light glinting from their hairless heads, thinking of billiards and lost momentarily in a collegiate memory. He hears the clatter of pool balls, and in his mind’s eye, the two heads are bashed together—or better yet, struck from behind in a clean combination using the agent’s shining skull as a queue ball.
“Mr Campanha? Did you hear me?” The agent gives the barber a disconcerted glance.
“Yes, yes, of course. Constructed in 2021. After the highway was removed.” He shakes his head imperceptibly.
The agent, reassured, follows the men back to the office. A rumble of voices. They reemerge, glowing with excitement.
“Mr Campanha!” announces Angel, his eyes bright. “We’ll take it, at the asking price. No negotiations needed from our side.”
“Indeed,” the barber replies, again showing his teeth. “A good price. My clients will understand the need to downsize. I am getting old, after all. No need to putter such a distance from chair to booth.”
“Wonderful. And the date? Two weeks from today will give you enough time?”
“Yes, Senhora, quite enough. We can confirm the document tomorrow?”
“Or today! I will send it now.” She withdraws her device, taps smartly, then smiles. “Done!”
“Very well.” Andres shows the three to the door. With a tinkle of bells, the three bald heads depart.
The barber wobbles back to a swivel chair and slumps into it. In moments, he falls into a fitful sleep. The eyes bounce rapidly behind their lids. He murmurs a bit, saying nothing understandable, and then, “eight ball, left pocket.” His breathing slows as the sky outside turns a darker gray.
The barber of India Point, Andres Campanha, wakes with a start. He looks around the shop.
That coat rack—he had purchased it maybe two decades ago, at a time when he had two employees. The Madonna—he had hung that above the door the day he opened the shop. She had seen how many enter, shaggy and alone? She had seen how many leave, crisply formed and unburdened of their worries? How many invitations to weddings, to baptisms, had been dropped in that box by the booth? He can’t remember the last time he had opened it. He can’t recall even where he left the key.
Rousing himself, he sees the hair clippings on the floor. He makes no move toward the broom, but gazes at the filaments one by one. Each one a narrow vessel: a hollow wonder enclosed in its keratin wrapping. The barber was fond of telling children that the rhinoceros made its horn just the same way; and that each hair on a human head was as noble as the terrible tusks that once gored nomadic plainsmen on the hunt.
“There’s no such thing as a rhinoceros!” His own daughter once squealed.
“Ahah! Is that so, mi meninha? Were the plainsmen not also real? Did their hair not grow in great tufts, and bind in great locks? And chase them around the savanas, whipping their wearer’s waists where they hung so long? Did they not beget this life we lead with their trudging under the sun, their sleeping under myriad stars?” The barber stares at the flecks on the floor, and thinks.
He stares, next, at his own face in the mirror. The jaw, he had always been fond of. The aquiline nose his mother had loved in his father. The eyes, not nearly so weary as those of his now ancient schoolmates. He had lived well for so long, and had known a soft landing in old age. Where the stubbled cheek of late day met the crisp hairline at his ear, all was still a deep, honest black. Were he gray, he tells himself, he would do no masquerading.
His gaze lingers on his ear in the mirror. Some strange gravity presses down on his sight.
He drags his tall figure, instead, back to the office door. Peering around the edge, he sees it just as he left it. A neat desk, shelves of photographs both analog and revolving. The faces of his family and friends. His first car, and a smiling young man with inky black hair standing, with legs crossed, against the hood. A trip to the Okavango Delta with his daughter.
The stack of boxes, six each to the left and right of the window, make the room feel no smaller. Ample, just as the agent had indicated. He strides forward to the cartons, sets aside one from the top left, and deftly hoists a box labeled “D-F” from its place into the desk. Opening it, he rummages through labels.
“Davis, J. Davis, R. Deng, X. DeNova, G. Senior. Yes.”
He removes the lid, withdraws a crumpled paper packet from the box, unwraps the string from the clasp, and, popping it open with one hand, sticks the other into his breast pocket. Out with it comes George’s tuft of salt and pepper. Andres holds it up to the orange light. Rays dance through the clump as it wobbles before him, playing shadows that resemble men dancing around a bonfire.
After a long moment, he deposits the clump of hair in the bag, refastens the string, and restocks the two boxes against the wall.
Out in the shop, he strides over to the door, taps the locking interface, and slides his finger across the glass. The sign now reads “Closed” above “Walk-Ins Welcome”.
At the booth, he selects the notification marked “O’Keefe” and opens a long legal tab typed in minuscule block letters. He glides his way to the bottom, where a box asks for his finger print. He stares at the box a long time.
Andres runs his hands subconsciously over his forehead. The few whiskers that remain there slither between his fingers. One catches, and it leaves with his hand as he pulls away.
The barber regards the strand, expressionless. “Campanha, A.” He announces to the empty shop.
Skookum Atlas 