The Barber Chair Under the Feed Store Oak

The next morning I went in to work early. The feed store sits on the south side of the square, a two-story brick building with a loading dock on one end and a long green lawn out front where Hubert sets out mowers and gates for sale.

At the far corner of that lawn stands the biggest white oak in Casey County. Hubert’s grandfather planted it, or so the story goes, and its shade covers half the grass from the morning on.

I stood at the office window with my coffee and looked at that oak.

I looked at the shade under it, and the flat ground, and the square right there across the street where everybody in town would see.

When Hubert came in, I was still standing there.

“Hubert,” I said. “How would you feel about a barber chair on your lawn?”

He came and stood beside me at the window. He looked at the oak for a long time, the way he had the day before, and then he set his coffee on the sill.

“Bring the chair,” he said.

That was all. He did not ask how long, or what the insurance man would say, or whether the farmers would park on his grass.

He just said it, and then he went out front to unlock the gates.

The hard part was Grandpa. I went over at lunch with two pimento cheese sandwiches and asked him for one Saturday. Not forever.

Not to spite Ransom. Just one Saturday under the oak, for the men who had been coming to him their whole lives.

He chewed his sandwich slowly and did not answer right away.

“It’s not begging,” I said. “You’re not asking Ransom for anything. You’re just cutting hair where folks can find you. Hubert wants you there. He said so himself.”

“Hubert said that?”

“He said bring the chair.”

Grandpa looked at the red chair for a while. Then he looked at the empty one beside it.

“Ancil would have liked that,” he said finally. “He always said a barbershop was just a place for men to sit down.”

He agreed to the Saturday after next. He said he would charge the same twelve dollars he always does, and he would not take a penny more, and if anybody tried to make a fuss about Ransom, he would pack up and go home.

I said that was fair. Then I went back to the feed store and called my husband at the road garage and told him to find a sheet of three-quarter plywood and some lag bolts.

I told Hubert, and Hubert told every farmer who came across his scale that week.

I told the ladies in my Sunday school class, and they told their husbands. I wrote it on the chalkboard by the feed store register in plain letters.

The next Sunday, after the last hymn, our preacher stood up front and read the announcements like always.

Then he paused and said Elmer Grider would be cutting hair under the oak at the feed store on Saturday, and folks might want to bring a chair.

He did not say anything about Ransom. He did not have to. Half the church had heard by then.

Ransom and his wife sit three pews ahead of us, and I watched the back of his neck go red.

On Friday afternoon my husband backed his truck up to the shop. Hubert came across the square with a hand truck, and a young fellow who loads feed for him came along to help.