Malcolm Fremont's Barber Shop

We ain’t got a barber shop in Deerflat.  Well, that’s not good English.  What I mean is, we got no barber shop.  If you was to want your hair cut you had to get your momma to do it or visit Miss Vinney.  Miss Vinney can do some hair cuttin’.  Problem is, she only knows one way to cut it.  Sort of one size suits all.  Everyone comes away from a Vinney haircut lookin’ like an escapee from Devil’s Island.  Shaved on the sides with a few sprouts on top.  Trust me, you want to stick with your momma if at all possible.  If you wanted a store bought haircut you had to go about eight miles toward Nashville to Malcolm Tremont’s Barber Shop.

Malcolm Tremont is an unusual character to say the least.  I know him well and I’ve known his folks since I was just a little fella.  He’s probably one the most excitable individual you’d ever care to run across.  Not exciting, excitable.  Malcolm’s always fired up about somethin’ or other and never hesitates to let you know ‘bout it.  Deerflat men like to drop in at Fremont’s Barber Shop even when they don’t need a cuttin’ just to see what Malcolm’s fired up about.  Another thing, even though Malcolm’s shop ain’t in Deerflat he’s considered one of us.  All the Tremonts still live in Deerflat and they like to think of themselves as one of the original founding families even though they ain’t.  The Tremonts came ‘bout ten years after the original six families settled Deerflat valley and I think it’s always galled ‘em cause they got here late. 

Malcolm loves to argue.  About anything and it didn’t matter to him which side he was on.  To him it’s the process not the results.  My daddy says you could hold up a turtle and Malcolm would tell ya it weren’t no turtle and give ya ten reasons why it weren’t.  He’d elevated arguin’ to an art form, as they say.  It’s pretty interestin’ and entertainin’ just to sit in Malcolm’s shop and listen to the goin’s on but you don’t want to be sittin’ in the chair when the argument gets started.  Once Malcolm gets hisself fired up he tends to forget everything else includin’ the head he’s cuttin’ on.  I learned this the hard way when I was seventeen.  Matter of fact, that was the last time Malcolm cut my hair and just to show how that haircut effected me, that was thirty-eight years ago.  Oh, I’ve been back to the shop but Malcolm ain’t touchin’ my head.

My momma had sent me down to Malcolm’s for a real haircut just before my Senior Banquet at Ripley High School comin’ up the following weekend.  She wanted me to get my hair cut a week early so’s when it came time for the banquet I wouldn’t look like I’d got a fresh haircut.  Women think that way so there I was at Malcolm’s, readin’ an old magazine and listenin’ to the talk.  On this occasion it happened to be football.  The University of Tennessee Volunteers against the Vanderbilt Commodores, two instate teams that played each other twice a year.  Just so happens that this year the underdog Commodores had whupped the Vols and Malcolm wouldn’t hear nothin’ but that the Commodores would do it again come the next time they met.  I don’t think another soul in the state believed the Commodores could do it again, not even the Commodores but Malcolm was sure this was Vanderbilt’s year.  The hotter Malcolm got the better the Commodores were gonna do.  Eventually he had them winnin’ the SEC conference championship and goin’ to the Orange Bowl.  See, Malcolm, for some reason, wanted folks to think he’d been to Vanderbilt though everyone in the county knew he’d graduated from United Barber College over in Lebanon and probably ain’t ever even set a foot on the Vanderbilt campus.  Malcolm even wore a Vanderbilt ring cause I saw it once when he was pickin’ his nose.  Nobody ever called him on it but we all knew he was puttin’ on and he knew we all knew.

When it come my turn in the chair Malcolm had worked up quite a lather.  He was foamin’ at the mouth like one of those Baptist preachers ya see when they really get the spirit.  The last thing I wanted to do was to set myself down in that chair with Malcolm havin’ access to scissors and clippers or any sharp instrument but I couldn’t go home without that haircut.  Momma would have just sent me back.

I shoulda known what was comin’ as soon as I got in the chair but Malcolm had quieted down some but when he popped that cape and cinched it around my neck so tight I couldn’t catch a breath I was in trouble.  Malcolm picked up his scissors and the first thing out of his mouth was them Vols cain’t run against the Commodore defensive line.  Now I watched that first game myself.  The Vols had gained 289 yards on the ground so I didn’t for a minute think runnin’ the ball was gonna be a problem but I kept my mouth shut.  About the same time as old man Paramore says Malcolm, your plumb crazy, I feel them scissors take a pretty sizable hunk outa the back of my head.  I tried to lean forward and sorta ease out of that chair but Malcolm pulled me back and kept right on cuttin’ and arguin’ with equal enthusiasm.  Must have been about ten minutes when I noticed the shop had got quiet.  Not only that but everybody was starin’ at me or rather, they was starin’ at my head.  Ya know why barbers always cut your hair with the chair turned so your backs to the mirror?  I do. 

It was dead quiet for about a minute before Malcolm cleared his throat and said let me get the clippers and sorta even ya out a little.  He run them clippers over my head for what seemed like a long time ‘fore he cut ‘em off and whipped that cape off me.  He didn’t spin me around for a good look in the mirror nor asked me how I like the cut.  Fact is, he tried to stand between me and that mirror as much as possible.  Runnin’ my hand over my head I realized why.  I didn’t have no hair left.  Well that ain’t exactly true.  I had about an eighth of an inch of fuzz over my whole head.  When I got home my momma said I looked like that Sinead O'Connor girl singer what got in trouble with the Catholic Church for somethin’ she did on a late night TV show.  After she had a good laugh she said the same thing all parents say when they know somethin’s really bad but they want you to feel better about it.  Don’t worry ‘bout it.  No one will notice.  The only person in Deerflat that weren’t gonna notice this haircut was maybe Poke Paramore’s Uncle Frank.  He’s blind ya know.

I was takin’ Poke’s cousin Marcey to the banquet.  When I picked her up that Friday the first thing she did was offer me the use of one of her mother’s wigs.  After she had a good laugh as well she told me to relax.  Nobody would notice.  I got a lot of looks when we got to the Mason’s lodge where they was havin’ the banquet but everybody kept their mouth shut.  Poke and Dinnie Russell had threaten to beat the first one to make a crack about my condition as they called it.  I thought the night might turn out okay until our principal, Mr. Lucas, got up to make a few announcements, including how happy he was I’d got out of prison in time to make it to the dinner.  The entire hall burst into laughin’.  Even me eventually.  I had to either laugh or cry and I ain’t cried since I came home from Malcolm Fremont’s Barber Shop and took a close up look in the mirror that first time.

My momma’s eighty-one years old.  She still cuts my hair.