The Post Man slid into the chair with an apologetic manner, for the
barber's gaze was superior and scornful. He was so devilish, cool and
selfpossessed, and held the public in such infinite contempt.
The Post Man's hair had been cut close with the clippers on the day
before.
"Haircut?" asked the barber in a quiet but thoroughly dangerous tone.
"Shave," said the Post Man.
The barber raised his eyebrows, gave his victim a look of deep
disdain, and hurled the chair with a loud rattle and crash back to a
reclining position.
Then he seized a mug and brush and, after bestowing upon the Post Man
a look of undying contumely, turned with a sneer to the water faucet.
Thence he returned, enveloped the passive victim in a voluminous
cloth, and with a pitiless hand daubed a great brushful of sweetish
tasting lather across his mouth.
Then he began to talk.
"Ever been in Seattle, Washington Territory?" he asked.
"Blub-a-lub-blub," said the Post Man, struggling against the soap, and
then he shook his head feebly.
"Neither have I," said the barber, "but I have a brother named Bill
who runs an orange orchard nine miles from St. John, Fla. That's only
a split hair on your neck; it's growing the wrong way. They are caused
by shaving the neck in the wrong direction. Sometimes whiskey will
make them do that way. Whisky is a terrible thing. Do you drink it?"
The Post Man only had one eye of all his features uncovered by lather
and he tried to throw an appealing expression implying negation into
this optic, but the barber was too quick for him and filled the eye
with soap by a dextrous flap of his brush.
"My brother Bill used to drink," continued the barber. "He could drink
more whiskey than any man in Houston, but he never got drunk. He had a
chair in my shop, but I had to let him go. Bill had a wonderful
constitution. When he got all he could hold he would quit drinking.
The only way he showed it was in his eyes. They would get kind of
glazed and fishy and wouldn't turn in his head. When Bill wanted to
look to one side he used to take his fingers and turn his eyeballs a
little the way he wanted to see. His eyes looked exactly like those
little round windows you see in the dome of the postoffice. You could
hear Bill breathe across the street when he was full. He could shave
people when he was drunk as well as he could sober.--Razor hurt you?"
The Post Man tried to wave one of his hands to disclaim any sense of
pain, but the barber's quick eye caught the motion and he leaned his
weight against the hand, crushing it against the chair.
"I kept noticing," went on the barber, "that Bill was getting about
four customers to my one, even if he did drink so much. People would
come in three or four at a time and sit down and wait their turns with
Bill when my chair was vacant. I didn't know what to make of it. Bill
had all he could do, and he was so crowded that he didn't have time to
go out to a saloon, but he kept a big jug in the back room, and every
few minutes he would slip in there and take a drink.
"One day I noticed a man that got out of Bill's chair acting queer and
he staggered as he went out. A day or two afterwards the shop was full
of customers from morning till night, and one man came back and had a
shave three different times in the forenoon. In a couple of days more
there was a crowd of men in the shop, and they had a line formed
outside two or three doors down the sidewalk. Bill made $9.00 that
day. That evening a policeman came in and jerked me up for running a
saloon without a license. It seems that Bill's breath was so full of
whiskey that every man he shaved went out feeling pretty hilarious and
sent his friends there to be shaved. It cost me $300 to get out of it,
and I shipped Bill to Florida pretty soon afterward."
* * * * *
"I was sent for once," went on the barber, as he seized his victim by
the ear and slammed his head over on the other side, "to go out on
Piney Street and shave a dead man. Barbers don't much like a job of
that kind, although they get from $5 to $10 for the work. It was 1908
Piney Street. I started about 11 o'clock at night. I found the street
all right and I counted from the corner until I found 1908. I had my
razors, soap and mug in a little case I use for such purposes. I went
in and knocked at the door. An old man opened it and his eye fell on
my case.
"'You've come, have you?' he asked. 'Well, go upstairs; he's in the
front room to your right. There's nobody with him. He hasn't any
friends or relatives in town; he's only been boarding here about a
week.'
"'How long since he--since it occurred?' I asked.
"'About an hour, I guess,' says the old man. I was glad of that
because corpses always shave better before they get good and cold. I
went in the room and turned up the lamp. The man was laid out on the
bed. He was warm yet and he had about a week's growth of beard on. I
got to work and in half an hour I had given him a nice clean shave
that would have done his heart good if he had been alive. Then I went
downstairs and saw the old man.
"'What success?' he asked.
"'Good,' says I. 'He's fixed up all right. Who's to pay?'
"'He gave me $30 to send his folks in Alabama yesterday,' says the old
man. 'I guess your fee will have to come out of it.'
"'It'll be five,' I said.
"The old man handed me a five dollar bill and I went home very well
satisfied."
Here the barber seized the chair, hurled it upright, snatched off the
cloth, buried his hands in the Post Man's hair and tore out a handful,
bumped and thumped his head, shook it violently and hissed
sarcastically: "Bay rum?"
The Post Man nodded stupidly, closed his eyes and tried unsuccessfully
to recall a prayer.
"Next day," said the barber, "I heard some news. It seems that a man
had died at 1908 Piney Street and just a little while before a man in
the next house had taken poison. The folks in one house sent for a
doctor and the ones in the other sent for a barber. The funny part is
the doctor and I both made a mistake and got into the wrong house. He
went in to see the dead man and found the family doctor just getting
ready to leave. The doctor didn't waste any time asking questions, but
got out his stomach pump, stuck it into the dead man and went to work
pumping the poison out. All this time I was busy shaving the man who
had taken poison. And the funniest part of it all is that after the
doctor had pumped all the other doctor's medicine out of the dead man,
he opened his eyes, raised up in bed and asked for a steak and
potatoes.
"This made the family doctor mad, and he and the doctor with a stomach
pump got into a fight and fell down the stairs and broke the hat rack
all to pieces."
"And how about your man who had taken poison?" asked the Post Man
timidly.
"Him?" said the barber, "why he died, of course, but he died with one
of the beautifulest shaves that ever a man had.--Brush!"
An African of terrible aspect bore down upon the Post Man, struck him
violently with the stub of a whisk broom, seized his coat at the back
and ripped it loose from its collar.
"Call again," growled the barber in a voice of the deepest menace, as
the scribe made a rush for the door and escaped.
(_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 31, 1896.)