Jayber Crow ( CD)

Chapter One

The Barber in Port William

I never put up a barber pole or a sign or even gave my shop a name. Ididn't have to. The building was already called "the barbershop." Thatwas its name because that had been its name for nobody knew how long.Port William had little written history. Its history was its living memoryof itself, which passed over the years like a moving beam of light. It hada beginning that it had forgotten, and would have an end that it did notyet know. It seemed to have been there forever. After I had been there awhile, the shop began to be called Jayber Crow's, or just Jayber's. "Well,I'm going down to Jayber's," people would say, as if it had been clearlymarked on some map, though it was so only in their minds. I never had atelephone, so I was not even in the book.

    From 1937 until 1969, I was "the barber" in Port William. The shopwas at the bottom of the swag in the midst of the town. The road cameup the river from Hargrave; about a mile from Port William it climbedthe hill onto the upland, made a couple of dips and turns, passed thegraveyard and the houses opposite, passed the church and the bank andthe handful of business places, went by my shop and the garage down inthe swag, and then rose up again, going by more houses; at the top ofthe rise it passed the school, and then it hurried on. Except for the law,and the local habit of stopping in vehicles to talk in the middle of theroad, car drivers from elsewhere have never seen much reason to slowdown when they go through Port William. I still am the Port William barber,the only one it has got—though since 1969 I have not been in town.

    When I came there and set up shop in January of 1937, the place wasmaybe better off than I have seen it since. Thirty-seven was a Depressionyear, and I don't ask you to believe that the place was flourishing. But itwas at least thrifty. People didn't waste anything they knew how to save;they couldn't afford much new stuff, and so they hung on to what theyhad. There were a lot of patched clothes in those days. But all the commercialplaces in town were still occupied and doing business. The peopleof the town still belonged to it economically as well as in other ways.And we still had a doctor, "old" Dr. Markman, who was not then as oldas he was going to be.

    Except for Saturdays, when I would sometimes be at it from breakfastuntil midnight or after, the haircutting trade in Port William was, as youmight say, intermittent. When I had no customer, I would climb into thechair myself and talk to whoever was loafing, or if the place was empty Iwould read or take a nap. A barber chair is an excellent place to read orsleep. It tilts back and has a footrest and a headrest. Or (since you can'tloaf or read or nap all the time) I would keep an eye on the town. If theweather was bad, I would stand at the window and look; if it was good, Iwould carry a chair out and sit under the sugar tree at the edge of theroad.

    I always tried to keep faith with my customers—to keep faith, that is,with the random possibility that at almost any moment one or anotherof them might take a notion to come in for a haircut or a shave, or wouldneed a place to sit. And to tell the truth, I generally had need of the coinsthat wandered about in Port William pants pockets, and yearned to addthem to my collection in the cigar box on the backbar.

    I kept faith, but I confess that I kept it somewhat irregularly. Sometimes,when my clients were absent, I would be moved to stray about.My predecessor had left me a little cardboard sign with a clock face anddrooping metal hands that declared invariably: BACK AT 6:30. When I left,it would always be a good while before six-thirty, and so I had plenty oftime. If I got back before the promised minute, I counted it much to mycredit. I might walk up to see who would be loafing along the street or inthe stores. From there I might stroll out the road and into the woods onthe bluffs above the river. Or I might just cross the road to Mr. Milo Settle'sgarage, a place of often interesting work and sometimes ferociouspolitical debates instigated by Mr. Settle's chief assistant, Portly Jones,who had opinions he was willing to die for. If I wanted no company, Iwalked in the other direction, up the rise, past the schoolhouse, and outinto the country that way. Sometimes I might take off a whole day to gofishing with Burley Coulter or one of the Rowanberrys—always takingcare to get back before six-third. Of course, if I didn't leave until after six-thirtyin the evening, I had all night to get back. And since nobody wasapt to want a haircut at six-thirty in the morning, I could stay away untilthe next evening. My clock said I would be back at six-thirty, but it didn'tsay what day. And sooner or later, until the last time, I always got back.

    Port William repaid watching. I was always on the lookout for whatwould be revealed. Sometimes nothing would be, but sometimes I beheldastonishing sights.

    One hot summer afternoon, for instance, I saw Grover Gibbs passingalong in front of Mr. Settle's garage with a plumber's helper overhis shoulder. He saw, sticking out from beneath an automobile, PortlyJones's sweat-shiny big bald head, to the top of which, with a smoothand forceful underhanded thrust, he affixed the suction cup. Portly thenenacted a sort of seizure in which, with his feet and left hand, he tried tohurry out from under the car, while with his right hand he tried unsuccessfullyto detach the plumber's helper. It appeared that he was tryingto drag himself out by the head. He didn't get out very fast. Meanwhilehis assailant walked on up the street a ways and then turned and walkedcasually back to see the results of his inspiration. He walked with hishands innocently folded behind the bib of his overalls, a disinterestedlook in his eyes, his face rather tensely drawn around a small hole betweenhis lips, through which he was whistling a tune. He allowed himselfto be confronted by Portly, looking perhaps like a unicorn with a redface.

    "Grover," he said, "who done this? If it was you, I'll kill you."

    Grover said nothing, but solemnly, still whistling, tried to help Portlyremove his horn, which they were able to do only by boring a hole in thecup to relieve the suction.

    "It completely ruined my plunger," Grover told me later, "but ofcourse I couldn't've claimed it anyhow."

    And on an early morning, when I was almost the only one awake, Isaw Fielding Berlew in the middle of the road, dancing to "The Ballad ofRose McInnis," which he sang with deep feeling and tears in his eyes. Hehad spent the night in a lonely vigil in town—"three-thirds drunk," ashe would say—owing to his failure to see eye to eye with his wife. Hedanced with his arms held out like wings, in slow steps round and round,as gracefully as it could be done by a drunk man in a pair of gum boots.All of a sudden a trailer truck popped over the rise. It began to shudderand buck and weave; there was a great howling and hissing of brakes andthe tires shrieked on the blacktop. Only when the front bumper was virtuallytouching Fee's thigh did the driver manage to bring the truck to astandstill and then collapse with relief and thanksgiving. Fee, who hadtaken no notice of the late commotion, continued to dance and sing.The driver then reconcentrated his forces and blew the horn, a longexasperated bleat that disparaged Port William and all it stood for. Feethereupon took notice. He stopped dancing, and then as an afterthoughthe stopped singing. He regarded the driver. He regarded the truck. Helooked down upon it, insofar as a small man can look down upon a thingtowering many feet above his head. He looked back at the driver. Hesaid, "Get that sonvabitch out of the road—before I kick it out of theroad."

    Another morning, a fine Saturday in the late fall, I got a little breakbetween customers and went up to Lathrop's for the makings of a quicklunch. Some of the boys had started a baseball game in the empty lotnext to the church. Shorty Sowers, the banker's son, was on his way tothe church to take his violin lesson from Mrs. Alexander, the preacher'swife. As he was going by, a batter struck out. Shorty seized his fiddle bythe neck and stepped up to the rock they were using as home plate. Hetold the pitcher, "Show me what you got!"

    I came out of Lathrop's just in time to hear that, to see the pitch, andthen Shorty's little pop fly to third base.

    "After that," he said, "I knew her by the crack."

    Yet another sight I used to see—one that was more or less regular duringthe year or two that he lived after I came to Port William—was UncleAb Rowanberry shuffling by, carrying a rifle, a lantern, and a sack containinga chamber pot, a cowbell, a corn knife, and a long leather pursetied with a rag string. He would be on his way between daughters. Hehad five daughters all living in the neighborhood, and he stayed a whilewith each in turn, leaving each before he wore out his welcome. "Companyis like snow," he said. "The longer it stays, the worse it looks." Sinceone of the daughters and her family now occupied the home place, UncleAb carried with him all his worldly possessions, the terms of his independenceand self-respect: the rifle with which he provided a little meatfor the table and with which he could defend himself if attacked, thecorn knife in case he needed it, the lantern and chamber pot to preservehis dignity when he had to get up at night, the cowbell to ring if he felldown and couldn't get up, and his own hands with which he workedat whatever small tasks he was still able to do. He was something of theold life of the place. I observed him carefully and have remembered himalways.

    Other things too were revealed to me that were not so quickly ended.Poor old ramshackledy Fee Berlew, of all people and in his later years,was the only man I ever had to (so to speak) throw out of my shop. Hisnephew, visiting at Christmas, had slipped him a pint of whiskey, a dangerousitem to have lying about in Mrs. Berlew's house. Fee undertookto preserve it from all harm in the shortest possible time, with the resultthat shortly after supper he found himself unable to see eye to eye withMrs. Berlew. He came, of course, to my shop for such shelter and comfortas I could give. But his condition by then was just awful. He wascompletely sodden, bewildered, half-crazy, and full of the foulest kind ofindignation. I could neither quiet him down nor, finally, put up with him.And so I helped him out the door, not being all that happy to do so on acold night.

    But he didn't go away. He pecked on the front window, put his faceclose to the glass, and reviled me. He called me a "clabber-headed stray,"an "orphan three days shy of a bastard," a "damned low-down hair barber"—andmeaner names. This delighted the several big boys who werepassing the time with me that evening, but it did not put more joy intomy life.

    And then the next morning here came Fee the first thing, easing hishead in through the door as though expecting me to cut it off with myrazor. He had overnight achieved that state of sobriety in which, rackedby pain and sorrow, he wished to be unconscious or perhaps dead. Whenhe finally looked up at me his little red eyes filled with tears.

    "Jayber," he said, "Could you forgive an old son of a bitch?"

    "I could," I said. "Yes, I can. I do."

Maybe because I had been a good while in school myself, and had liked itand not liked it, and had finally failed out of it, the Port William Schoolwas a place I observed with a kind of fascination. The school had eightgrades. If it had taught the grades all the way through high school,maybe it wouldn't have interested me so much. The future presses hardupon a high school, and somehow qualifies and diminishes it. The studentsin a high school begin courtships; the next generation begins toassert its claims; people begin to think of what they will do when theyget out. But the Port William School, grades one through eight, seemedto house the community's almost pure potential, little reduced by anyintention on the part of the students themselves. They were there invarying degrees by interest or endurance, but not by purpose. Andalways, interested or not, they were there somewhat under protest. Thechildren in the lower grades, I believe, thought that school would go onmore or less forever, interrupted at dependable intervals by recess andlunch, Christmas and summer. By the time they got to grades sevenand eight, they knew that it would end and they would leave, but theythought they would leave only to go to the high school down at Hargrave,and their heads were full of innocent illusions about what theywould do there.

    I liked best the school as it was when I first knew it, when it servedonly the town and the immediate neighborhood, when the students gotthere on foot. Then the neighborhood seemed more freestanding andself-enclosed than it ever did again after consolidation. The town containedthe school, and the school, for a while at least, contained the children.

    To walk up past the school while it was in session was like comingnear a sleeping large animal. You could hear the enclosed murmurs andrustlings of an intense inward life, belonging, it seemed, to anotherworld, whose absence from the town made it seem otherworldly Whilethe children were in school, the town seemed abnormally quiet. Thequiet, by midafternoon, would sometimes seem almost entranced.

    And so I loved especially the time of day when school let out. Whatthe will of the neighborhood had managed to pen up all day in somethinglike order would all of a sudden burst loose and stream out bothways along the road. A rout of children would pour from the schoolhousedown into the quiet town—a cataract of motions and sounds:voices calling, shouting, singing, laughing, teasing, arguing; boys running,dancing about, hitting each other, sometimes fighting in earnest;girls switching their dresstails and hair in mock disdain and condemnationof the behavior of the boys. And often you would hear a boy's voicechanting above the rest: "School's out! School's out! Teacher wore mybritchies out!" Or something on the order of "Hey, booger-nose!"

    At such a moment, to the best of my memory, I first took actualnotice of Mattie Chatham—or Mattie Keith, as she was then.

    It was a spring afternoon, warm. I was standing in the open door ofthe shop, leaning against the jamb, watching. Mattie was walking arm-in-armwith two other girls, Thelma Settle and Althie Gibbs. I supposeMattie was to spend that night at Thelma's or Althie's house, for ordinarilyshe would have gone in the other direction; her home was down inthe river bottom, a mile and a half from town by the children's shortcutover the bluff.

    They had crossed the road to be out of the crowd, and they weretelling each other things and giggling. They were "older girls" by then,feeling themselves so, and yet unable to maintain the dignity that theyfelt their status required. This failure made whatever they were gigglingabout even funnier. They were being silly, each one tugging in a differentdirection, so that they had trouble even staying on the walk. They werenot aware of me until they were almost even with my door, and thenthey looked up and saw me—a tall, lean, baldish man, almost twice theirage, smiling down upon them from the threshold. This sight, so incongruentwith all they had on their minds, increased their merriment.They looked up at me, raised the pitch and volume of their laughter, andran past. But I saw Mattie Keith then, and after that I would be aware ofher. Seeing her as she was then, I might have seen (had I thought to look)the woman she was to be. Or is it because I knew the woman that I seeher now so clearly as a child?

    She was a pretty girl, and I was moved by her prettiness. Her hair wasbrown at the verge of red, and curly. Her face was still a little freckled.But it was her eyes that most impressed me. They were nearly black andhad a liquid luster. The brief, laughing look that she had given me mademe feel extraordinarily seen, as if after that I might be visible in the dark.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Jayber Crowby Wendell Berry Copyright © 2007 by Wendell Berry. Excerpted by permission.
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