Boys Life

you’re tryin’ to put me between a rock and a hard place, ain’t you?”
    “I wouldn’t dream of such a thing, Mr. Jackson.”
    “Oh, you sly old fox you!” the Jazzman said when he saw the simple but deadly trap Mr. Cathcoate had laid open for him. “Gonna skin me up and serve me for dinner, huh? Well, I’d be mighty tough to chew on!” He made a move that for the moment got him out of danger.
    Mr. Dollar was short and stocky and had a face like a contented bulldog. His gray eyebrows stuck out everywhichway like wild weeds, and his hair was shaved to the sandy scalp. He could make the neatest parts of anybody I’ve ever seen. He knew all there was to know about the history of Zephyr. Because he had been the only barber in town for over twenty years, he had his finger on the roaring pulse of gossip and he could tell you everything that was going on, if you had an afternoon to sit and listen. He also had a nifty collection of tattered comic books, Field Streams, and Sports Illustrateds, and I had heard from Davy Ray that Mr. Dollar kept a box of Stag, Confidential, and Argosy magazines in the back for adults only.
    “Cory?” Mr. Dollar said as he cut my father’s hair. “You met the new boy yet?”
    “No sir?” I didn’t know there was a new boy.
    “Came in here yesterday with his dad to get a haircut. Got good hair, but that cowlick about blunted my scissors.” Snip, snip, they sang. “He just moved here last week.”
    “New family rentin’ that house on the corner of Greenhowe and Shantuck?” Dad asked.
    “Yeah, that’s them. The Curliss family. Nice people. All of ’em got good hair.”
    “What’s Mr. Curliss do?”
    “Salesman,” Mr. Dollar said. “Sells shirts for some company in Atlanta. The boy’s a couple of years younger than Cory. I set him up on the horse and he didn’t squirm a bit.”
    The horse was a carved golden palomino that had been salvaged from a doomed merry-go-round somewhere; now it was bolted to the floor next to the regular barber’s chair. Only babies got their hair cut while sitting on the horse, even though there were times when I wished I might be able to sit on that horse again and put my feet in the stirrups while my hair was being snipped. Still, the fact that the Curliss boy-at nine or ten years of age, say-wanted to sit on the horse told me he must be a pansy.
    “Mr. Curliss seems like a decent fella,” Mr. Dollar went on, following the scissors across my father’s scalp. “Quiet, though. Kinda timid for a salesman, I’d say. That’s a hard row to hoe.”
    “I’ll bet,” Dad said.
    “I got the impression Mr. Curliss has moved around quite a bit. He told me all the places he and the family have lived. I guess, bein’ a salesman, you’d have to be prepared to go where the company says go.”
    “I couldn’t do that,” Dad said. “I’ve gotta have roots.”
    Mr. Dollar nodded. He left that topic and wandered through others like a man through high grass, not seeing anything but the next step. “Yessir,” he said. “If them Beatle boys came in here, they’d sure ’nuff leave lookin’ like men ’stead of women.” His eyebrows squeezed together as he wandered on in a new direction. “Communists say they’re gonna bury us. Gotta stop ’em while we can, ’fore they get to our country. Send our boys to bust their tails in that place over there… y’know, where they grow all the bamboo.”
    “ Vietnam,” Dad supplied.
    “Right. That’s the place. Kill ’em there and we won’t have to worry no more.” Mr. Dollar’s scissors were getting up to speed. A new thought was being born somewhere between Mr. Dollar’s ears. “J.T. ever figure out who went down in Saxon’s Lake, Tom?”
    I watched my father’s face. No expression registered there, but I knew this question must be stabbing him. “No, Perry. He never did.”
    “He was a federal man, is what I think,” the Jazzman ventured. “Must’ve been lookin’ for stills. I think the Blaylocks killed him.”
    “That’s what Mr. Sculley believes, too,” Dad said.
    “The Blaylocks are bad news, that’s the truth.” Mr. Dollar switched on his clipper and worked on Dad’s sideburns. “Wouldn’t be the first man they’ve killed.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Sim Sears used to buy whiskey from the youngest boy, Donny. Oh-” Mr. Dollar looked at me. “I’m not talkin’ out of school, am I?”
    “It’s all right,” Dad told him. “Go ahead.”
    “Well,