Throwback Thursday: ‘The Night Stylist’ by Peter Norman

A tire blew out. A motor died in the cold. A wrong turn off the 17 got you lost. Or maybe you just got confused, like most of us do, somewhere down the road. You need help, a hand, someone with jumper cables, know-how, kind words. Someone who can snip away the shroud of confusion, tidy things up into a shape you understand.

One way or another, if you ever wind up on the streets of Rayburn late at night — later, say, than two in the a.m.  — winter gnawing your extremities, you’ll peer around for someplace open. Windows will be dark, the neon dead above the old Chinese restaurant. The city office closed, fire hall in hibernation until a volunteer unlocks it next alarm. That wind, insidious like bad gossip, will poke around the hems of your clothes, wedge a way in. Maybe a haze of snow will make everything gauzy, or a full-on blizzard will cuff you around.

And then, down the dull, uncaring stretch of Main Street, you’ll see the only light. Thin, multicoloured, spinning. Like the desert traveller lured by false oases, you’ll stumble forward, hope sparking and sizzling in your gut. Until you see it’s only a peppermint pole. Just some damn barber, you’ll mutter to yourself, forgot to unplug his lights.

Thing is, he didn’t forget. He’s in there. Open for business. Waiting for the next client to saunter in, no matter the hour. Unless it’s daytime, that is; this practitioner doesn’t operate then. Harold Heckel, say the letters on the glass door. Men’s Hair Stylist. Open Late. 
 
At this, you’ll rejoice. Who cares he’s just a barber; the point is he’s there. The point is the mat outside his door saying Welcome. You’ll rejoice, and then you’ll go inside.

Just ask Danny Day.

Two-thirty a.m., a midwinter’s night in the early twenty-first century. It doesn’t matter exactly when; news transpires around the world, wars and reprisals and men with bombs. But TVs in Rayburn are switched off for the night, and anyway Harold Heckel never even owned a TV. Doesn’t like all those signals coming through the walls, he’ll say, throwing in a lighthearted laugh so you realize he’s not as crazy as he’s talking. Snow has embraced this northern Ontario town like a pair of earmuffs. No way the world’s noise is getting in.

The door jangles and Harold Heckel looks up from his book. Tall gent, Harold is, hair dark and shiny with a perfect part three-quarters along the scalp. Above the scooped neckline of his barber’s apron is a collar done up tight and a tie knotted just so.

Danny Day’s heavy boots pound up and down on the welcome mat. A fierce breeze scuttles in at floor level, sweeping over the checkerboard tile and disturbing the little patterns the hairs make there. Like sand rippled by tides, the hair forms dunes and peaks and eddies and swirls. All the sweeping in the world, Harold will tell you with a sigh, won’t get that hair fully gone. Barber’s curse, he’ll say, and laugh.

“Hello, stranger,” says Harold Heckel.

“Well hi,” Danny Day replies. Behind him the door shuts. He relaxes his hands, which have been gripping his winter coat tight around him. “Boy, am I glad to see you’re open.”

“What can I do for you?” Harold asks. “Cut, style, shave?” It’s hard for Danny to tell, but maybe in Harold’s voice there’s just a hint of an acknowledgment that, come on, we’re neither of us fools here — who in their right mind’s out for a haircut in Rayburn at this hour? Then again, maybe Harold’s voice contains no such hint at all. Who’s to say he doesn’t anticipate some business?