assorted flies and other insects buzzed in to sniff the colognes and then fly out. There was no screen door, but somehow the insects didn’t bother us. Maybe they recognized larger insects in the general scheme of life.
“Berto, you want Moxie?”
Thomas reached into a wooden icebox at the back of the store and took out two cold bottles of Moxie soda pop. Talk about ambrosia nectar!
Again, my mind wanders. Do they still make Moxie? I used to read the label, looking at the white-coated doctor/pharmacist staring out at me with a pointing finger telling me to drink Moxie for good health.
We sat there, Thomas sitting in one of his barber chairs and me next to a pile of Police Gazettes. He laughed and pointed at the top magazine.
“Lady got big bazookas there, boy.”
The only bazookas I knew about were the ones used in the war, so what would a lady be doing with those? I just nodded.
“Mr. Putchenkov?”
“You call me Thomas, remember?”
“Yes, sir … uh … Thomas, how did you become a barber?”
“Why? You want to become barber?”
I had to admit that what he did seemed like fun: snip-snip click all day long. And this was before I met the lady under the bridge and began to hang around Dr. Agnelli’s clinic.
“Maybe.”
So many things fascinated me I barely had time to sleep. I spent a lot of hours at the library, too—by myself.
I know, I know. Today’s social workers would have to rescue me, because they would have tagged my parents as neglectful for letting me run loose at such a young age—and, heaven forbid, at a library.
“Okay, kid, Thomas tell you life story. You know Mother Russia?”
I shook my head then said, “There’s a big railroad there.”
I had just read about the longest railroad in the world. Railroads fascinated me.
Thomas’s face split in the biggest smile I had ever seen.
“Berto, I help build that railroad!”
He closed his eyes as he talked, and the little shop seemed to disappear, replaced by broad expanses of cold, open land.
“I born in Irkutsk, in Siberia, not far from beautiful lake—Lake Baikal. It twenty-fifth year of Tzar Alexander Nikolaevich Second.”
By my reckoning that would have been 1880.
“My brother and me, twins. I better looking and stronger, but it good to have twin—no need for friends. We hunt, run, cut wood for Papa. We even walk to lake.
“When I thirteen I meet Maria Ivanova. You got girlfriend, Berto?”
I shook my head once more. I didn’t want to mention Kate. Seven- to eight-year-old boys weren’t supposed to like girls. That, too, is another story.
He sighed. “She thirteen and have big bazookas, too.”
He laughed, and then his face creased. I couldn’t tell if it was sadness, anger, or both.
“Two years later Papa come to me and brother. He say son of Tzar, Nicholas Third, building railroad from St. Petersburg, capital city on western border of Russia, all way to Vladivostok in East—longest railroad in world! Papa said would be good jobs for two strapping boys.
“By then I love Maria Ivanova, want marry her. But Papa say go Lake Baikal. They start railroad bypass ‘round lake. I leave. Brother promise to follow. Railroads big things back then. Even Prince Nikolas, later become Tzar, came. He declare railroad open.
“I cut wood. I help carry cross-beams for track. Muscles get big. See?”
He flexed his arm, and a football-sized bicep leaped out.
“I also freeze my…”
He paused. He realized he was talking to a kid and didn’t want to get crude. It didn’t matter. Even at that age I knew what he meant. Mine got cold when the heat didn’t work in our tenement.
“No towns or pretty women, so hair get long. One day, other man hand me shears, tell me cut his hair. I cut. Terrible job. I cut more hair, get better.”
His expression darkened.
“Make much money cutting hair—more than railroad work. Go home to Papa. Give him money then go see Maria.”
His face fell, and his eyes moistened.
“You got brother, Berto?”
“No, Thomas.”
“Good! You lucky. I find out Maria now live with brother. So I leave Irkutsk. Travel Europe, emigrate Canada. Go Vancouver, work as logger. Muscles get bigger. Cut more hair. Go San Francisco...”
“Why’d you come here, Thomas?”
He smiled but said nothing. Whatever it was, it wasn’t pretty.
When we had finished our Moxies he cut my hair. Then I swept the rest of the shop and went home.
A year passed. Every six weeks I showed up at his shop. We didn’t talk about his family, but he did tell me more of his adventures helping to build The Great Siberian Railway—later called the Trans Siberian Railway and then just the Trans Sib. He described men freezing to death, getting crushed between railway cars, dying in fights, or being attacked by packs of wolves.
By then I was eight, and that’s when the dead lady called me. Soon after that I knew what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be. I started hanging around Dr. Agnelli’s clinic. But I kept showing up and sweeping up the barber shop, lulled by the snip-snip click of Thomas’s scissors.
I was sweeping up one Indian-summer day. As usual the shop door was wide open, the flies buzzed, and the fan rattled in a vain attempt to cool off the inside.
That was the day I first saw the butcher.
He walked in, white apron stained blood-red to brown—old stains covered by new ones. He held a large meat cleaver in his left hand. He said nothing. He just sat in an empty barber chair and waited.
Thomas also said nothing. He finished with his last customer, walked quietly over to the second chair, took a straight razor from the shelf near the sink, pulled out the razor strop attached to the chair, and began to sharpen it.
The butcher clenched his cleaver more tightly.
Thomas took a mug down, put a bar of shaving soap in it, took a lathering brush, and applied the white cream to the butcher’s face. As he brought the razor to bear on the man’s neck, the cleaver rose for a brief second then settled down once more.
Thomas didn’t even bother with the butcher’s scalp. There was no hair there to cut.
When
