The Barber Chair Under the Feed Store Oak

By seven-thirty there were nine. By eight there were twelve.

The church brought over a stack of folding chairs from the fellowship hall in the back of a pickup, and somebody set them out in a row along the edge of the shade.

The men came from all over. Some were from Liberty and some were from out in the county, and a good many came from over in Adair and Lincoln and Russell, men who had moved off years ago but still drove back to Elmer every few weeks.

They came in their work caps and their Saturday caps, in bib overalls and pressed jeans. Some had hay on their boots.

One fellow came straight from milking with the smell of the barn still on him, and he apologized to Grandpa, and Grandpa told him he’d smelled worse.

I want you to understand that nobody made a speech. Nobody held up a sign.

Not one man said the name Ransom Coffey out loud the entire morning, at least not where I could hear it.

They just sat down in the shade and waited their turn.

They talked about hay and the price of calves and whether it was going to rain, and when it was their turn, they got in the chair.

Grandpa charged every one of them twelve dollars. He kept the money in a cigar box on a folding tray beside the chair.

A few men tried to hand him a twenty and walk off, and he called them back every time and counted out their change.

“Twelve dollars,” he would say. “It’s been twelve dollars since 2014, and I’m not changing it on a lawn.”

The men laughed at that. One of them said, “Elmer, you’re the only thing in this county that hasn’t gone up,” and Grandpa said, “Give me time,” and the whole line laughed again.

Around nine, Hubert came out with a cooler of ice water and paper cups and set it on the tailgate of his truck.

Then he went back in and came out with a box fan and an extension cord, and pointed the fan at the chair.

By ten-thirty I counted twenty-six men. Grandpa had been cutting for nearly four hours without a break. His hands were steady, but I saw him lean on the back of the chair once between customers.

“Sit a minute, Grandpa,” I said.

“I’ll sit when the line sits,” he said. But he drank the water I brought him, and he let me fan the back of his neck with a feed catalog while he cut.

He hummed while he worked. He always has. That morning it was “Shall We Gather at the River,” over and over, under his breath, the way Grandmother Nola used to sing it at the sink.

At about a quarter to eleven, a silver car pulled up at the curb.

A woman in her sixties got out and came around to open the passenger door, and an old man climbed out slow with a cane in one hand and her arm in the other.

It was Rollie Spears.

Rollie is ninety-two years old. He lives with his daughter over in the next county now, since his wife passed.

He had been getting his hair cut in Grandpa’s chair since 1965, since the very first month the shop was open.

His daughter walked him across the grass. The men in the line watched him come.