Rion Scott - Insurrections

They trotted circles around the statue of our founder as if to menace the dead white man. The ghosts followed that by circling the flagpole, which held a fluttering Old Glory along with the town flag — the book and the sword that make up the Cross River crest in a square of white set against a field of red at the top half and a field of blue at the bottom.

It surprised me how frozen the ghosts made us; I include myself in this. If they tore down our town pride — the banner our ancestors held as they hacked limbs to wrench themselves free — perhaps we’d dash into confrontation, but absent that we became cowards. The Klan members pulled at their reins and some of the horses stood on their hind legs and whinnied and they all then galloped off. For the first time in ten minutes, I released the air I held deep within my chest.

When I started at Freedman’s, during orientation, a speaker who was an alumna and board member talked of sitting in economics class next to a shy young man with a thick West African accent. They struck up a friendship, she said, pausing to wink and nod, which I took as an insinuation of a more intimate relationship. The woman ended the story with his name, and I recognized it as the name of the warlord-turned-dictator-for-life of a small African republic. We were supposed to be impressed by the prominence of our alums, and at the same time we were encouraged to wonder what sort of world-shaker sat beside us.

One day the dictator will be overthrown and executed or tried in The Hague for crimes against humanity.

I thought of all this today because Malcolm Bailey began our job interview by reminiscing about the Klan ride. He remembered seeing me bloodless and terrified, and at this he chuckled. All I recall of him is the humanities class where we met and how he wept over Okonkwo when things finally did fall apart.

I didn’t mention that, of course, even when he told me of the deal he made with the warlord to acquire cheap gold for the electronics we manufacture. I say we because it was clear then that I had the job if I wanted it.

The last thing he said to me — leaning in real close and whispering — was, They never caught those Klan members, huh?

I don’t believe so, I replied.

Psychology class, brah, he said. Psychology 302: Special Topics in Race and Something or Other . Don’t tell nobody, but that got me an A. Changed my life, too. He tapped the desk three times, and it sounded to me like the clopping of white horses across the Yard. Changed my life.

My head — the briar patch it had become — was like the Wildlands, host to all sorts of mythical beasts, for instance Br’er Rabbit, who each night for a month or so untangled himself from my locks and leapt across the living room, leaving to enjoy an adventure or two before returning to the thicket of my dome. That’s according to my wife, who during the Great Hair Crisis of ’05 took it upon herself to become, at my expense and before no audience, the stand-up comedienne she had always dreamt of being.

Her routine irritated me because of the truth in it. I did look ridiculous with my misshapen Afro. Powdery white dandruff dusted from it whenever I turned my head, and knots like asparagus spears burst in all directions. The Barber — everyone referred to him as The Barber except for those that hadn’t had a cut from him — once a great artist, was no more. Sure, he existed. Breathed. Bled. Farted. But he no longer lived. It must be torment for a god to wake up mortal. Not even an exceptional mortal, but a barely competent one.

But then I’d see a head cut with The Barber’s exquisite touch. The sharpness of the hairs. The crispness of the lines. Those sorts of haircuts reminded me that no one else was capable of a perfect cut, and once you’ve had perfection, who could settle for mediocrity? Even excellence? When I saw he was still capable of such heights, I imagined the crisis had ended and everyone would return to The Barber to get cut like we did in the glory days.

I sat in his chair that night knowing this wasn’t one of those times. I was under no illusions that I’d get a good or even a mediocre cut. But I could no longer stand the mockery. Not just from my wife but from strangers. Children on the street. Whispers at work. Mocking eyes. Mocking laughter. Though it was the woman I married who mocked most maliciously.

I was taught to laugh with a bully. That way the harassment loses its appeal. An overrated strategy, especially when a bully is as determined as my wife.

Buckwheat, she would cry. Get a haircut!

O’tay, I replied.

The Barber frowned when I walked in that night, but quickly he corrected his face and greeted me with a head nod. He could be a grumpy son-of-a-bitch sometimes. After the door shut behind me he flipped a switch to his right, shutting off the glowing blue Open sign in the window; he walked to the door and locked it, leaving a cascade of keys dangling at the entrance.

A customer sat in The Barber’s chair and three people waited ahead of me. Uncomfortable black seats sat pressed up against the wall, and on either side of the chairs messy stacks of magazines overflowed on small tables. Digging in for a long wait, I snatched a wrinkled copy of my favorite music magazine, Riverbeat Currents , from the top of the pile and leafed through it. After some time I realized that it was the same issue I always seemed to pick up during these excruciating waits, giving every visit a distinct sense of déjà vu. I tossed it aside and picked another.

The exchange between The Barber and his customers shifted from football, which I cared nothing about, to the coming weekend’s fight — which again, like all sporting events, mattered little to me — and I sank lower in my seat, hoping no one asked my opinion. The week before a haircut I always did enough research to fake my way through a sports conversation. I cursed myself for forgetting to research the coming weekend’s fight.

The Barber removed the black cape from his customer and shook the excess hair from it while arguing that the champ’s time was done. The customer stood, his head a mismatch of two different hairstyles. He peered into the long rectangular mirror on the wall behind the barber chairs. It hung above several tables that all stayed cluttered with bottles of baby powder, shampoo, rubbing alcohol, and a motley assortment of aerosol cans. The man sighed, handing over his money. I wanted to drop the magazine and dart from the shop. The other customers looked on, solemn and wide-eyed. The nearly bald man who had been sitting to my right shuffled slowly to the hotseat as if walking to the electric chair. He had little to lose. The other customers and I would have to wait two embarrassing weeks for our heads to fully recover.

A silence descended upon the barbershop. A man at the far end wept a bit. Nobody noticed but me. The guy sitting nearest the door announced that he had forgotten his wife’s birthday and slipped out, promising to return the next day.

The Barber changed the channel from ESPN to the nightly news. It was nothing but heartbreak. A terrorist had made another bold audio-taped announcement full of mockery and threats; a woman’s life had become a smoldering wreck, a public tragedy only because she had once been a pop star; a war dragged on, taking the lives of four more soldiers; and right here in Cross River a mysterious case was still unsolved: the death of an undercover cop from a neighboring town, killed several weeks ago on the bad side of our city, a few blocks from where I now sat. The killer had fled into the night and was no longer a man but an idea to puzzle over.