The nobility of useful work

I stop in once a month for a haircut at a barbershop near our home.  The shop occupies one slot in a detached strip mall building.  Despite the relative newness of the building, the furniture and decor are mostly cast-offs.  There are only two barber chairs in the shop and a debris of dated magazines on a thrift store coffee table in front of four plastic-upholstered waiting chairs.  Straggly, thirsty-looking indoor plants in chipped pots, an old color TV that is always on, and a coat rack that looks like it has seen duty in a greasy diner define the rest of the space.  The owner is a man in his early forties from one of the "-stans," which one I am not certain, as his limited English gives him the choice of understanding or not understanding questions he would prefer not to answer.

His partner is a much older man who speaks the same language and limited English, when he talks, which is not very often either in my experience.   Every time I visit the shop, even in the heat of summer, the old gentleman sits slouched in his barber chair, a wool stocking cap of the type seen in pictures of Afghan peasants covering his melon-shaped, closely cropped head.  Most days a portable electric heater blasts away at his carpet-slippered feet, despite layers of shirts and a tattered cardigan sweater he wears like a uniform.  His pronounced slouch makes it appear that his head has been deposited like a pumpkin between his shoulders without the benefit of a neck.

If he is awake when I enter, which is not always the case, he opens one eye and regards me with a raised eyebrow like an aged hound dog whose nap has been disturbed.  Twice he has been alert enough to cut my hair, which he accomplishes very slowly but with obvious skill.  What conversation there is amounts to a few stock questions.  What you like?  Want treem eyebrows, moostash?   Is good?  If I answer no to an eyebrow trim, he does it anyway.

The haircut always starts with clippers and a guide comb to take off the first layer.  He mows off strips of hair, one even row at a time, and holds the clipper in front of his face for close inspection between strips.  If hair has gathered in the guide comb, he blows two or three times in quick puffs to dislodge it.  Most times his puffs are aimed at the back or side of my head, depending on his angle of work.  So I end up with wisps of my own hair pelting me in the neck or ear or sometimes the face.  His warm breath has no odor, but its humid rush always makes we wonder whether I'll be taking home more than a fresh haircut when I leave.

After the initial clipping, the rest of the cut is completed by hand with scissors and concluded with a soaping around the ears and back of the neck before a straight razor touchup.  The whole procedure takes upwards of 30 minutes.  But I never feel impatient because I know I am in the hands of an artist.  The cut is perfectly rounded, no stray hairs or uneven furrows.  My sideburns terminate in perfect horizontal symmetry.  When I examine my trimmed eyebrows in the shop mirror, a memory surfaces of my high school yearbook photo.  Like a sculptor who looks at a block of marble and sees the classic figure he will uncover with his chisel, my ancient barber scans my grizzled mop of hair and uncovers the perfect coif with his scissors.

Today the younger partner cuts my hair in less than 10 minutes, and only that long because I ask him to take a second swipe at the length on top.  The resulting haircut is fine, but I know that he looks on his job as something less than artistry.  He has a nine-year-old daughter and eight-month-old son to support.

The first couple of visits to the shop I assumed the old man was his father.  But, a subsequent visit revealed that theirs was apparently only a business relationship.  I think back to that visit.  The young barber is cutting my hair, the television is blaring something about sharks, and the old man is fast asleep in his chair in front of us.  The weather outside is dreary, the shop is empty except for me, and the young barber is grumpy.

Nodding his head towards his partner, he whispers, "I no know why he bother to come in."

"Is he your dad?"  I ask.

"No.  Partner.  Fifteen year.  Useless."  Not the answer I expect.  He continues, "Just come in.  Sits in chair.  Useless.  Needs to get up."  He reaches over to his barber's cabinet and picks up his cell phone.  "Watch this," he says.

He punches in a number and sets the phone back on his cabinet.  The shop telephone rings, an antique bakelite apparatus perched atop a jumble of combs and clippers and hair products on his partner's barber cabinet.  On the third ring, the old man stirs and pulls himself from his chair, painfully, slowly, and answers the phone in his native language, the "-stan" equivalent of hello.  When no one responds he says hello in English, and then again, and once more before pivoting his heavy head towards his partner and raising an eyebrow while carefully returning the phone to its cradle.  He shuffles back to his chair, settles himself slowly into position, and within a few heartbeats, his head has drooped forward onto his chest, whether in sleep or resignation I cannot tell.

"I wish he quit," whispers the young barber.

I keep myself from making a comment, afraid the old man will hear and maybe even understand what I have to say.  But I have the urge to grab my young barber by the shirt front and shake some sense into him.  "He's a good barber," I want to say.  "He's old.  And the worst thing about being old is having no purpose.  No way to contribute.  At least he gets up and comes in and cuts some hair now and then and does a great job, if you have the patience to appreciate it."

But instead I say, "He's tired."  And let it go at that.  My young barber friend, if he is granted a long life, will come to know what is means to be useless.