“Want to hold it?” He took it in both hands. He studied it the way he studies everything, from every angle, with his lips moving slightly. Then he found the switch.
On. Off. On. Off. On. Off. He did it six times, and I counted aloud with him, because counting is how my son makes a loud thing safe.
“This one is quiet buzz,” he said at last. He sounded surprised. “It’s a different kind of buzz,” I said. “And you’re the boss of it. You can switch it off any time you want. Even in the middle.”
He looked up at me with his steady gray eyes. “Even in the middle,” he repeated.
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“Even in the middle. That’s the deal.”
I think that was the whole thing, right there. Nobody had ever given him a say before. Not at the mall place, not at Ron’s, not at the dentist. The chair always came with one rule, and the rule was hold still. So I gave him another one. You are the boss of the buzz.
I had never cut a head of hair in my life, unless you count my own bangs, which are a crime. But I had watched Ron do it for four years, from the chair by the window, and I had paid attention the way a mother pays attention. I knew the order he used. I knew where Caleb flinched.
Neck last. Ears last. Never the clippers near the ears until he asked. I started on the long side, over the right temple. One slow pass, then I held up the clippers and showed him the little tuft of hair.
“Look at that. That’s from you.” He examined it solemnly. Then he leaned toward Pepper, who sniffed it and sneezed. Caleb laughed. It was a real laugh, short and surprised, and I had to blink twice before I went on.
Iris held the mirror up the whole time, even before there was anything to see. Her arms trembled from the weight of being important.
“Is it good yet?” she asked. “Not yet. Keep holding.”
“I’m holding.” “I know you are, baby. You’ve got the most important job.”
A meadowlark was working somewhere out by the pasture fence. The wind came across the bales and carried the smell of cut beans from the river bottom, that dry sweet smell that means harvest.
I worked slowly. Pass, pause, pass. Every few strokes I stopped, and Caleb said “Okay” or “Wait” and I waited. Twice he reached for the switch himself. Twice I let him turn it off and rest. Once he held it a full minute, humming along with the quiet.
The sweat ran down my back under my gray sweatshirt. My ponytail had come half loose and kept falling across my face. I did not care. I was in no hurry in the world.
For the first time in months, maybe the first time that year, nobody was waiting on my son.
“Mama?” Caleb said when I got around to the back of his head. “Yes?”
“The neck.” “Yes. I’m going to do it last, and I’m going to use the little scissors, not the buzz. Is that okay?”
He thought it over for a long time. “Scissors are quiet,” he said. “Scissors are okay.”
That was when I heard the combine. It was coming up the field road along the north fence, kicking up a thin plume of dust, sunlight flashing off the cab glass. Tom had spotted our truck in the yard from a quarter mile out, in the middle of a Saturday morning, and he had come to see.