Chapter 2
That night I met with the town council. They unanimously voted to buy the shop and give it to me to operate. I could buy it with no money down and give them a percentage of the gross every month. But since old Tom Haley, the former barber, had never grossed more than three-hundred dollars a month, it would take me one helluva long time to pay back one-thousand dollars for the building, the equipment, and the good will.
The good will angle made me laugh. You can't buy good will. You have to earn it and build it. Yet I was having to pay two-hundred dollars for good will. I only hoped that I would get value received. But the logical way to increase the gross was to raise the prices. Old Tom was still charging fifty cents for a haircut and twenty-five cents for a shave. Since I was not limited by my contract as to my prices, I decided to charge three times that much.
Nearly one-hundred people were in the Town Hall that night. So I knew that they would spread the word. Since the meeting broke up at eight o'clock everyone would probably be cranking their telephone and telling a neighbor about mc.
I had my own jackets and tools. Old Tom never wore a jacket or a smock, I was told. He wore boots and jeans and chambray shirt like the rest of them. I decided to dress like the rest of them, but to wear a jacket in the shop!
During my first afternoon in town I had gone into the general store. And there I met Seth Miller, who ran the place. He showed me around and showed me what he had. I bought a pair of boots, some jeans, and some blue chambray shirts. So that night at the Town Hall meeting, I was dressed like the rest of them. But I still smelled like a dry goods store. And my duds were not as faded nor were my boots as worn.
That night I stayed wtih Sy Perkins and his wife. Sy ran the filling station. And he was on the Town Council.
But I was up at daybreak, along with Sy. It was cold. And the water from the pump was even colder. But I pumped it into a basin and carried it to a bench on the back porch. My hands were numb, but I managed to get my face washed.
It's beautiful in the mountains at daybreak in May. Sy's back porch faced to the east. And as I rambled around his barn lot, I kept watching the bloody sky to the cast. The dim light got stronger and stronger. The chickens came out from their hiding places and began scratching for their breakfast. The birds awakened and began bursting into song. And the rabbits were still scurrying around. And as I stood there watching the sun suddenly shot up over a distant peak, I thought of the poor devils in L.A. cutting up the smog and eating it for breakfast. And I was glad that I was in Slocum.
In L.A., where I was born and raised, I never ate breakfast. But that mountain air woke me up fast. So when breakfast was called, I was as ravenous as a starved coyote.
Sy came out and leaned on the corral fence, watching me make friends with an old mare. He was a tall gangling man with iron-gray hair and a face that looked like an old boxing glove. But he was a quiet and kindly man, and called his wife, Mother.
"Mother has breakfast ready," he said. "Are you very hungry?"
"I'm starved," I told him.
I went over to the gate and went through it. We walked slowly to the house, enjoying the beauty of the morning.
The kitchen was fragrant with the odors of perking coffee and hot rolls in the oven. In Slocum, everybody eats in the kitchen. But I didn't mind. It was warm there, with the range glowing red.
Mrs. Perkins was a short dumpy and motherly woman, with white hair piled high on her head. She wore a simple calico dress with a pink flowered apron. And she bustled around the kitchen like a hornet was after her.
I put away six fried eggs and a slab of ham with umpteen hot rolls and three cups of coffee before I called it quits. And as I left the table, I wondered if I would be too big for my jeans in a month.
They invited me to stay with them until I got settled. There were living quarters behind the shop, where old Tom had lived. Sy told me they were not very fancy, but that everyone would pitch in and help me clean it up and paint the entire place. And that it would not cost me anything.
By seven, I was at the shop door, trying the key in the lock. The door swung back. And stale musty air swept out to greet me.
I walked around the shop. Everything was covered with dust. I tried to jack up the chair, but it wouldn't work. They had told me that old Tom was six feet tall. So I wondered how he had cut a kid's hair.
The linoleum was worn and faded until there was no pattern. The walls were grimy from years of soil. The wall cabinet behind the chair needed repainting. The mirror was old and needed to be resilvered. In other words, it was a dump. And it sure as hell wasn't worth any one-thousand dollars. But I was stuck with it.
I went through a pair of twin dirty drapes. I was in a small living room and kitchen combined. There wasn't enough room to swing a cat. Hell, a house trailer was a ballroom compared to that. There was an old beat-up oil stove in one comer. And a battered old cabinet in the opposite corner. The sink was scabbed iron, with most of the porcelain gone. I tried the pump and water gushed into the sink. That was about the only thing that worked. There was a small kitchen table that shook and trembled when I put my hand on it. And two chairs beside it were wired together.
The postage stamp living room had a threadbare rug and a couch and a chair with the fabric torn and faded. A rickety table along one wall had old magazines on it. If the shop was a dump, the living quarters were a tenement.
I looked around me and I wanted to bawl. Hell, this wasn't worth any one-thousand dollars. I had been taken. I had a notion to pack up and shove off. All I had as assets were an ancient car and the clothes on my back and my tools. So let them sue me and be damned.
I stormed through the drapes into the shop. And I bumped into Sy.
"Whoa, Nellie," he said with a smile. "What are you so steamed about?"
I waved my arm around the room. "Look at this dump. It isn't worth any thousand dollars. The building is ready to fall down. That chair doesn't work. There's a new mirror needed. Everything needs to be repainted. In the back, everything needs to go to the junkyard. Hell, it'll cost me another five-hundred to a thousand dollars to put this place into shape so I can work and live in it."
"Now simmer down," he told me. "Now take it easy. We know what it's like in here. As for that thousand dollars, old Tom's boy came up here and he saw a good thing. It would cost a thousand dollars to put up a new building somewhere else in town. So I suppose that's why he chose that figure. And he knew that the town was advertising for a barber. So he stuck to his price. We tried to knock it down, but couldn't. So the town paid a thousand dollars for this. You didn't. If you want out of your contract, we'll tear it up right now."
I stared at him for a moment and then I began to bawl again.
He took me into his arms and patted my shoulder. "There, there. I don't blame you for being upset. But it isn't as bad as it seems. After you called, the women got together and came in here and looked around. They were just as ready to bawl as you. So we had a meeting in the Town Hall. And the women read us men the riot act. They got busy, and so did the men. It's all settled. Everybody donated something. There's new linoleum and paint throughout the building. There's a new carpet and furniture. Samantha Lewis is even making new curtains for you. And Seth is throwing in the window shades. Oh, we'll have you fixed up real pretty here in a few days."
And that's the way it turned out. Everybody pitched in. Jed Hodson, who had a ranch down the grade, had a brother who was a barber over in Broken Tree, the county seat, fifty miles away, and ten miles before you started climbing the mountain. I had stopped there for some gas and a rest when I was headed for Slocum.
Jed called his brother. Yes, he had a four-chair shop with only two barbers. Yes, he wanted to remodel. Yes, he would donate a practically new chair and wall cabinet and mirror.
Jed came into the shop one morning to tell me about it. I damn near kissed him right there in front of everybody. And Jed said he was going over in his livestock truck to pick up the stuff.
So a week after I hit Slocum, my shop looked like an ad in a barber's trade paper. The linoleum looked like red tile. The new chair was gleaming chrome, green leather, and had a black frame. It was one of those new square modern jobs. It was a beauty. The wall cabinet was natural wood. Jed said it was birch. The mirror was plate glass and slightly tinted. Your face had a healthy rosy hue when you looked into it. And Jed's brother had even thrown in some fluorescent tubing to frame the mirror.
The walls were now pale green. There were fluorescent lights. And through Jed's brother, the Town Council promoted tubular chrome chairs with green leather. And there was a tubular chrome table with a black onyx top. Everybody contributed the latest magazines to put on it.
They created a miracle in the back, too. I had a modern electric kitchen with all the trimmings. The ceiling was white and the walls were also pale green. The linoleum looked like hardwood flooring. There was a small beige rug on the living room portion. Somewhere they had rounded up maple furniture. And behind the living room the bedroom was now colonial, with ruffled curtains, pale green walls, and a colonial rag rug. It looked like a living room and bedroom such as you might have found when they dumped the tea into Boston Harbor.
I had a gala opening. Everyone had gathered wild flowers and it looked like a funeral parlor in there. But it smelled heavenly.
Abigail Dawson wanted to do it right. So she dreamed up a ceremony. They even stretched a ribbon across the front door and I cut it with a pair of gold-plated scissors her grandmother had used.
Yes, it was quite a day. In fact, there wasn't any work done in the shop until that afternoon. Because after the ceremony we all went over to Cynthia Peters' for a big breakfast. Yes indeed, Slocum had really taken me to its heart.
Since the members of the Town Council were the leading bigwigs in the town, they were to be my first customers. But not for free. Abigail saw to that. Because, she said, if they got free haircuts, so should all the other men in the mountains.
So Abigail suggested, as a means of giving me my start, that every man pay five dollars for his first haircut. There was quite a hubbub over that. Old Simon Longstreet grumbled and growled. Everybody said he had his first nickel and that moths flew out of his billfold when he opened it. But Abigail made so much fun of him, that he said he would kick in ten dollars for his first haircut. And so it went.
At one o'clock, I was in my shop, powdered and perfumed and with my curly red hair freshly shampooed. My jacket was gleaming white and freshly ironed, thanks to Mattie Myers.
Promptly at one, I went to the window and raised the shade. There was a big crowd in the street waving at me. I waved back. I went to the door and raised the shade on it. And there stood Sy Perkins, as my customer. And behind him stood Abe Jethrow.
I unlocked the door and swung it back.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen," I said. "Welcome to Connie's Salon."
Sy came in and climbed into my chair. Abe took the first chair.
I was busy all afternoon. There were six chairs along the wall. Fortunately, some of the men were bald and didn't take too long. So I emptied those six chairs two times. And by five o'clock, I was getting tired.
Tim Murphy was my last customer. As I hit the cash register for the last time that afternoon, I glanced at the sunburst clock that Maude Pritchard had lugged in one afternoon, telling Sy Perkins to put it up in the middle of the back wall and above the level of the door to my living Quarters.
Tim had given me ten dollars, telling me with a big grin that cattle had gone up a dime a hundred while his steers were headed for the market. And the day after they had been sold at the stockyard, the price had fallen twenty cents. So Tim was lucky and happy and wanted to share his good fortune with me.
The cash register was a present from Mortimer Greenback. Oddly enough, he was a banker in Broken Tree. He had a weekend place near Slocum and vacationed there. The day before my grand opening, he had come striding in and announced he had something for the shop, too. It took two men to carry it in from his car. It was as modern as 1980, and was trimmed with chrome and had light yellow buttons.
So that afternoon, at five, after Tim had left, I hit the No Sale button and the drawer slid open. It was full of greenbacks. Hell, I had probably taken in as much or more that afternoon than I made in a week in L.A.
I began counting bills. There were fives and tens. But the last five didn't feel right. It was too thick. So I gave it the once-over. And I found that two bills were pasted together.
I carefully peeled the bills apart. I stared. There was a one-hundred dollar bill glued to the back of the five spot. I grinned. That was probably Mortimer Greenback's work. But maybe not, either. I wondered if I had a secret admirer.
I stood there smiling and feeling proud of myself. Everyone had told me it was the best haircut they'd ever had. And I was holding two-hundred and ten dollars in bills in my hand, thanks to the generous guy who had slipped in the extra hundred. The Town Council would get twenty-five per cent of it, since it was over two-hundred dollars. But if I turned it in as one-hundred and ten dollars, as it really was, I would pay only ten per cent. I frowned and struggled with myself. Hell, that one-hundred dollars was an extra gift. Why should I pay percentage on it?
So I suppose that's why I didn't hear the screen open and close, as I was stuffing the money into a sack. "Are you closed?" I whirled around.
He was tall and tanned and had curly black hair and big smile. But on him the smile didn't quite come off. It looked like it was pasted on. Because his eyes were cold and calculating. His face was grim, even when he was smiling. He wore a white linen jacket with green shirt and pale yellow tie. His slacks were black and his shoes were ox blood.
"Yes," I said, "I'm closing now."
He shrugged from his jacket. "I just got back to town. I heard that you had opened today. I need a haircut."
Talk about horning in and making yourself at home. He didn't care if I had closed. He needed a haircut and he was going to have one.
I wondered who this big lug was. He certainly didn't belong in these mountains. I wondered what he was doing up there.
He went over to the window and pulled down the shade. "Leave that up," I said.
He turned and gave me a lecherous grin. "You're closed, aren't you?"
"Yes. But that doesn't mean that the shades have to come down."
He walked over to the door and pulled down that shade. By then I was steaming.
I went over to the window and grabbed the shade. I let it fly up and whirl around the roller.
"Now see what you've done," he said.
"That can be fixed. But my reputation can't."
I went over to the door and grabbed that shade. It flew up with a snap.
I went over to my chair. "I told you I was closed. And I am. If you want a haircut, go to Broken Tree."
He continued giving me his big grin. But his eyes were not smiling. I didn't like what I saw in them.
"Aw, baby," he said, "don't get so hot. In fact, there's nothing like money to cool a woman down. So how about fifty bucks for a haircut?"
I stared at him. This guy must be nuts. Sure, he looked like he might be a Rockefeller. But L.A. was full of four-flushers and con men, and I had seen most of them.
But this guy had made me mad. And when I'm mad, I'm not very logical. So I said, "Okay, fifty dollars it is. Now lay it right over there on the cash register before I start work."
He frowned at me and lost his smile. "Do you think I don't have it?"
"I don't know, and I don't give a damn. But I go only for sure shots. So if you've got fifty dollars, lay it on the register, and climb in the chair. Otherwise get the hell out of here."
Still frowning at me, he pulled his billfold. From it, he pulled a wad of greenbacks thick enough to wedge a door open. He peeled a fifty-dollar bill and laid it on the register. He climbed into the chair and sat down with a thump.
I threw the cloth over him and wrapped a tissue around his neck and tucked it in. Then I pinned the cloth.
"Do you want it Hollywood?" I asked.
"How would you know about that?"
"I've worked all the best shops in Hollywood and Beverly Hills," I told him. "You name it, and I can do it."
"I want a razor cut."
I nodded. "And that is always ten dollars more than a regular cut."
"You mean you want sixty dollars."
"You said you'd pay fifty dollars for a haircut. That's okay by me. And now you're wanting a razor cut. Well, I don't give a razor cut for the price of a straight haircut. So what do you want?"
He glared into the mirror at me. His hand went behind him. He pulled his billfold and yanked out the wad. He grabbed off a ten and handed it to me.
"There, now give me a razor cut. And it had better be good, or I'll take care of you but good."
I stuck the bill into my jacket pocket. "Threats don't scare me," I told him. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."
I stropped my razor and went to work. It was like old times. But never before had I made sixty dollars doing a razor cut.
It was nearly dark outside when I yanked off the cloth and shook it.
"There," I said, "get over to the mirror and look at that."
He went over to the mirror and squinted at his image. He ran his fingers through his curls. He finally nodded. "Good job," he muttered.
As he was shrugging into his jacket he turned and looked at me. "What's a doll like you doing up here?"
"Making a living," I told him.
"How long have you been here?"
"A little over a week," I said.
"Then you should be fed up with this wild life. So how about running down to Broken Tree with me for dinner?" I shook my head. "No thanks. That's not for me."
"Why not?"
"Because it's not. And I don't have to give you any reasons."
I walked over to the register and picked up his fifty-dollar bill. I pulled the ten from my pocket and shoved them into the sack.
"I'm closing now," I told him. "Will you please leave?"
He shrugged and started for the door. "I don't give up easy. I'll be back. In time, you will be overwhelmed by my charms. And you'll be only too happy to go to dinner with me.
"Don't make book on it," I told him. "Now get out of here."
That was the first time I met Johnny Blake. Sy Perkins came in as he went out. Sy told me about him. His father was Abner Blake, a millionaire rancher and mine owner. Johnny was his only son, and the apple of the old man's eye. Johnny could do no wrong. And Johnny had always had unlimited funds and big cars and wild women. He ran with the jet set, and roamed the world. But occasionally he came back to Slocum to see his father.
Johnny had given me the big rush. But I didn't rush worth a damn. I had seen too many of his kind in L.A. He was rotten to the core. So if a woman gave him the brush and refused to be laid, Johnny went all out to bowl her over. That's what Johnny tried to do to me. It didn't work. And not because Johnny didn't try. He was buzzing in and out of Slocum for over a month, and barging into my shop every day that he was in town.
So the night of Johnny's death, I did a foolish thing. I went to a box supper alone out at the Bear Creek Church, three miles from town. Coming back, my car broke down. I had to hike it. So I took a short cut through the woods below Lem Padgett's place. I should have known better.
Because Johnny Blake was at the box supper. He tried to get next to me, but I told him to get lost.
I should have known that Johnny would follow me home. In fact, as I was hiking down the road, he went by in his big convertible. Then I saw him no more. But he must have gone cross-country and circled back. Somehow, he saw me cut through the woods. He had followed and grabbed me.
You know the rest. Johnny wound up dead. But as I lay there on that dirty mattress I wondered who and what had killed him. I most certainly didn't. The doc who had examined me must have been scared of the Blake millions or he would not have lied. I wondered who else could be bought or frightened by the Blake fortune.
So now what was to happen to me? Old man Blake probably had the district attorney in his pocket. I would probably be railroaded to the gas chamber. Since Johnny Blake was internationally known as a playboy, Broken Tree would probably be overrun by reporters from all over the world. My trial would be a circus and a farce. And, broke as I was and as unimportant as I was, no lawyer would want to go to bat for me and buck the Blake empire.
So, as I finally drifted off to sleep, I knew that I would never see my barber shop in Slocum again.