✂️ Part 3 – The Notebook Boy
The next morning, Carl was already sitting by the window when Will showed up, clutching a spiral-bound notebook and a pencil chewed nearly in half.
“You said to bring this,” the boy said, holding it up like it was a treasure map.
Carl nodded, amused. “Good memory. Come in, then. You’re late.”
Will glanced at the wall clock. “It’s only 7:45.”
Carl grinned. “Barbers open early. Late is anything past dawn.”
The boy climbed into the customer chair again, flipping open the notebook on his lap. “What story today?”
Carl tapped the countertop with the end of a comb. “Let me think.”
The room was quiet, save for the faint creak of the ceiling fan above them and the occasional bird making a fuss outside.
Finally, Carl said, “Did I ever tell you about the day the chair nearly got stolen?”
Will’s pencil paused mid-scribble. “Stolen?”
Carl nodded. “It was 1982. July. Hottest summer since ’54. The Fourth of July parade had just passed through town. Everyone was drunk on lemonade and nostalgia.”
He poured himself some weak coffee, mostly for the motion of it.
“That evening, I stepped out to help Mr. Kavanaugh push his stalled pickup. Gone ten minutes, tops. When I came back, the front door was wide open.”
Will leaned in, eyes wide.
“I walked in, and there were two teenagers—strangers—trying to wheel the chair out the front door.”
Will gasped. “Did you fight them?”
Carl laughed. “I yelled like a Baptist preacher at a poker game. They ran so fast they left a sneaker behind.”
The boy scribbled that part furiously, then looked up. “What’d you do with the sneaker?”
Carl gave a sly smile. “Hung it in the backroom for two years. Called it the ‘trophy of poor judgment.’”
Will snorted. “That’s awesome.”
Carl sat back, looking at the chair again.
“People think it’s just furniture,” he said. “But this thing’s a time capsule. You sit in it long enough, you start to remember who you used to be.”
Will was quiet. Then he said, “Do you ever sit in it?”
Carl’s eyes flicked toward the chair. “Not often. It wasn’t meant for barbers.”
He poured a splash of bay rum into his hands and rubbed them together. The scent filled the room. It smelled like every Saturday morning from 1963 to 2002.
Will breathed it in. “Smells like something important.”
Carl nodded. “That’s the smell of trust. Of a kid before his first date. A man before he buries his father. A boy trying to look brave.”
He paused. “You want to hear about one of those?”
Will sat up straighter. “Yes.”
Carl leaned against the counter, eyes distant now. “His name was Daniel Horton. Came in every other Saturday like clockwork. Grew up poor, shy, didn’t speak unless spoken to. But he listened. Always listened.”
He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the scissors.
“I watched that kid become a man. First haircut. First job interview. Wedding day. Then one day, he came in wearing his Navy uniform. Said he was shipping out.”
Carl’s voice grew softer.
“Next time I saw him, it was his younger brother sitting in the chair, holding a folded flag.”
Will lowered his pencil.
“He died?”
Carl nodded. “He did.”
Silence returned. This time it wasn’t awkward. It was respectful. Sacred.
Will whispered, “Did you cry?”
Carl blinked slowly. “I did. After he left, I locked the door. Sat in the chair myself. First time ever. And I wept.”
Will didn’t write anything for a long while.
Then he said, “I think you’re still a barber. Just a quiet one.”
Carl smiled. “Maybe.”
Will glanced around. “Can I… can I come back tomorrow?”
Carl hesitated. “Won’t your parents worry?”
The boy shrugged. “Mom says you’re not dangerous. Just sad.”
Carl laughed—a short, surprised sound. “That sounds about right.”
Will stood and tugged his backpack on. At the door, he turned. “Can I ask something weird?”
“Try me.”
“If the chair could talk… what would it say about you?”
Carl stared at the empty seat.
“I think it would say I was a man who stayed. Who listened. Who loved deeply and lost quietly.”
Will wrote that down before leaving.
The door jingled. The shop grew still again.
Carl walked over to the chair, hand brushing its back.
He whispered, “And maybe it would say I’m not done yet.”
Outside, the clouds parted. Just a little. Enough for light to hit the dusty mirror—and the face of an old man who looked, for once, like someone still waiting for something.
✂️ Part 4 – The Haircut That Wasn’t
The next morning, the rain came early.
It pattered gently against the front window of the shop, blurring the street and turning the sidewalk into a soft gray mirror. Carl sat inside, warming his hands around a mug that no longer held coffee, just the memory of it.
At exactly 7:26, Will appeared, soaked to the knees but smiling like someone who’d found buried treasure.
“You came in the rain,” Carl said, eyebrows raised.
Will nodded, unzipping his jacket. “Mom said I shouldn’t, but I told her stories don’t stop when it rains.”
Carl chuckled and stood up, slowly—his knees popping with a dull stiffness that had become familiar, if not welcome. He winced but masked it with a stretch.
“Come on, then. Wipe your feet. Don’t want the floor to get slippery.”
Will hopped inside and plopped onto the customer chair. He had a fresh pencil and a blue notebook now—last night’s had become “too full for the good stuff,” he said.
“I want a story about a girl,” Will said boldly. “But not like a mushy one.”
Carl leaned on the counter, tapping a comb idly. “Tough request. Most stories worth remembering involve a girl. Or the lack of one.”
Will smirked. “Tell me the one you don’t usually tell.”
Carl’s eyebrows rose. Then he sighed and walked to the back wall. He took down a faded, cracked photo from the edge of the mirror—one that wasn’t in a frame.
The woman in the photo wasn’t Elaine.
Her name had been Margo.
Carl sat across from the chair, knees stiff again as he lowered himself. “Before Elaine, there was a summer.”
Will nodded, solemn as a courtroom clerk.
“I was nineteen. Had just finished high school and was set to apprentice at Gilroy’s shop. That summer, I met Margo Dixon at the county pool. She swam like she belonged to the water.”
Carl smiled. “She had this laugh—loud and sudden, like thunder you didn’t see coming. She wanted to be a painter. Said she didn’t believe in staying in one town for longer than five years.”
Will’s pencil paused. “Did you date?”
“For a few weeks,” Carl said, voice low. “We’d walk by the river at night. She’d talk about New York and Paris, and I’d pretend I didn’t mind.”
He looked down at the photo.
“One night, she said she was leaving. Offered to buy me a bus ticket. Said she’d cut my hair on rooftops and I could be her muse.”
Will’s eyes widened. “What’d you say?”
Carl smiled faintly. “I said I couldn’t leave. That I’d made a promise to myself—to learn the trade, stay with Gilroy, open my own shop someday.”
He reached out and touched the photo. “She called me a coward.”
Will blinked. “Were you?”
Carl let the question sit.
“Maybe. Or maybe I just knew I wasn’t meant for cities and rooftop haircuts.”
The photo trembled slightly in his hand. He put it back on the counter, facedown.
“She sent me one letter, a year later. From San Francisco. Said she was painting houses and people now, but none of them stayed still long enough.”
Will wrote that part slowly, then looked up. “Did Elaine know about her?”
Carl nodded. “I told her after our second anniversary. She didn’t get jealous. Just smiled and said, ‘If she didn’t leave, I wouldn’t have met you.’”
He let out a breath through his nose.
“I think that’s when I knew I married the right woman.”
Will sat back, satisfied.
The rain outside had stopped.
The boy stood and closed the notebook. “Tomorrow, I want a story about the worst haircut you ever gave.”
Carl laughed. “That list’s longer than my arm.”
Will turned to leave, but stopped at the door. “Hey… Grandpa Carl?”
The old man turned toward the sound. The title caught him off guard.
“Yeah?”
Will hesitated. “Do you miss cutting hair?”
Carl looked at the chair. Then at the empty shop.
His back twinged slightly as he stood, but he masked it with a hand on the counter.
“I miss listening.”
The boy nodded, like he understood, though Carl knew he couldn’t. Not yet.
“See you tomorrow,” Will said.
When the door closed, Carl remained still.
He walked slowly over to the old chair, touched the headrest.
Then he turned on the ancient radio tucked behind the counter.
For the first time in years, the shop filled with soft jazz.
The chair didn’t move.
But Carl did.
He swept the floor.
