Sharon L. Schwenk

Vignette

#7

In July, Dad's barber shop attracted more tourists than

loggers. Up and down the walls snapshots of little boys wincing or

giggling during their first haircuts told the story of forty years in

business. The town of Forks was a logging town, and my father made a

living listening to the gossip of that town while he snipped hair.

During summer though easterners stopped in on their way from Seattle

going down to the Oregon coast on Highway 101.

One visitor who wasn't an easterner slept on an army cot in the

attic above the shop. His name was John. He had one leg and shuffled

along leaning on a forked cudgel. He wore a red and blue flannel

shirt with blots of grease stain, and his beard hairs lay matted onto

each other. His cousin was Dad's second cousin so Dad let John keep

his cardboard box of belongings in the attic and let him sleep there.

At one time, the second cousin's husband drank a bottle of rum and

turned on the car motor inside his closed garage. It was about that

time when John disappeared.

Dad didn't know where John had gone but said that I could look

through the cardboard box. In the box I found a deerskin shirt with

fringe, an army blanket and a family Bible. I felt sad that John was

gone, and Dad said I could have the shirt and the Bible if John didn't

return within four months. During that time, I often climbed the

attic stairs and opened the Bible marked in the margins. After four

months, John had not yet returned so I put on the deerskin shirt over

my head and made it mine. Forty-five years later John's Bible is in

my own boxes of belongings, and John is surely dead.