Barber shop blues

GEORGE MILBURN

How a tonsorial artist discovered in himself a strange power that disturbed his clientèle

Hart Summers didn't know that Marty Titsworth was like that when he hired him to work at the De Luxe Barber Shop. Hart didn't find out for a month or so.

Marty was a farm boy who had gone to a barber college in Wichita, Kansas. When he came back to town he was so dressed up people hardly knew him. He helped out at the De Luxe one Saturday. Hart was needing a man, so he hired Marty.

There was drilling for oil going on around town at that time. Hart Summers had rented out a little desk space up in the front part of the barber shop to an oil stock salesman.

One day this oil man was standing by Marty Titsworth's chair, talking. It was raining outside, and the oil man was getting ready to go out. Business was quiet. Marty was lying back in his barber chair, reading a paper and talking along with the oil stock salesman. The oil man started to put up his umbrella. Marty Titsworth jumped out of his chair like he was shot.

"My God, man!" he shouted, "don't raise no umbrella over my chair!"

The oil man was surprised and a little scared by the way Marty acted, so he said, a little sharply, "All right, I won't. But I'll go up in front and raise my umbrella. I've got that space up there rented, and I guess you won't have nothing to say about that."

Marty said, "No, I ain't caring what you do up in your own space, just so long as you don't raise no umbrella over my chair."

Not long after that, word got around among the small boys that the new barber at the De Luxe paid a cent apiece for warts. It wasn't long before the barber shop swarmed with small boys coming in to sell Marty their warts.

Marty was proud of his wart-charming power. "I ain't never saw it to fail," he said. "I give them younguns a penny apiece for their warts, and by two weeks all the warts is gone. I don't claim to say what makes it. The warts just go. It's a gift I got. I ain't never saw no one else with it."

Hart Summers didn't like to have the De Luxe cluttered up with kids all the time. He didn't like the way Marty would go over and get the pennies out of the cash register. Some of those little boys would have fifteen or twenty warts.

Talking about it later, Hart said, "I thought then that he was a little off, but I thought, 'Well, I reckon everyone has got a right to his own superstitions,' and so I didn't say nothing."

One Saturday afternoon Old Man Cobb came into the De Luxe to get his weekly shave. Saturday was a busy day. The De Luxe was crowded. When his turn came, Old Man Cobb got in Marty Titsworth's chair.

He said, "Well, you got a big trade today, Marty."

"We sure have, Mr. Cobb," Marty said, working on the lather. "We have to turn 'em out fast on a day like this. These other barbers caint work quick like I can, though. That's what education does for a man. I'm a college-trained barber. I don't reckon you ever have had a barber to shave you with five swipes of the razor, did you? I didn't think you had. Well, I'm going to show you how it's done right now in just a second."

Old Man Cobb made as if to get up out of the chair. Marty Titsworth put one hand down on Old Man Cobb's chest and motioned with the one he held his razor in.

"Now don't go to jumping around like that, Mr. Cobb," he said, "or you're liable to get cut. I ain't never cut nobody yet, and I don't aim to cut nobody, but if you jig around like that I caint he'p it."

Marty began stropping his razor. He went on talking: "I learnt this little trick of shaving a man with five strokes of the razor up in Wichita. If I leave any hair on your face, the shave don't cost you nothing. They's some real barbers in Wichita, but they all give up I was the first barber they ever seen that could shave a man in five licks. It's a gift I got. Now you get a good holt on your water, 'cause this is right scary till you get used to it."

Marty turned his back to put hot water on a towel. Old Man Cobb had been lying there trembling. He couldn't stand it any longer. He sprang out of the chair and landed out in the middle of the floor.

"Get that man out of here! He's plumb crazy!" Old Man Cobb yelled, blowing out little flecks of lather.

Everyone in the shop looked at Marty Titsworth. Marty commenced to laugh. "Ha, ha, ha! He took me serious! What's the matter, Mr. Cobb? You didn't take me serious did you? Well can you tie that?"

After that few people dared to get in Marty Titsworth's chair. Old customers at the De Luxe began slipping out their emblematic lather mugs. They took them around the corner to the O. K. Barber Shop. Hart Summers saw that Marty was ruining his business. He wanted to get rid of the fellow, but he was afraid to come right out and fire him. There were too many razors lying handy around the De Luxe.

On a Sunday, two weeks after Marty had offered to shave Old Man Cobb with five strokes of the razor, the Campbellite Sunday school had a picnic down at Record's grove.

Marty Titsworth was a Campbellite. He went along on the Sunday school picnic.

Marty was helping some of the girls spread the picnic dinner when he heard a mother call out to her little boy, "Watch out for that there vine! That's poison ivy!"

"Hey, what's wrong with poison ivy," Marty called. "If they get any I'll charm it right off'n them."

"I bet you wouldn't risk it on yourself," Mable Roberts said.

"I wouldn't? Well, you just watch me. Poison ivy caint hurt me none. I'm the seventh son of a seventh son."

Marty Titsworth ran over to the poison ivy vine and began to strip off leaves in big bunches. He smeared them over his face and arms.

Before the others were ready to go home from the picnic, Marty was feverish. His face had started swelling. But he wouldn't admit it.

"Poison ivy caint hurt me," he kept saying. "All kinds of things like that don't take on me. It's a gift I got."

He was in bed for two weeks, and he lost one of his eyes.

As soon as he got out of bed he came around to the De Luxe Barber Shop.

He said to Hart Summers: "I guess you think I'll be wanting my old job back again, don't you? Well, I don't. I been reading in the paper about a rattlesnake farm down in Texas, where they make this snakebite medicine. I'm going to get me a job down there. A man with a powerful charm like I got ought to be out he'ping mankind instid of wasting his time in a barber shop."