A thin thirteen year old boy named Ted walked into town, along the roadside at first, until the sidewalk began. He drew his finger across the pickets of a white painted fence. He read the bumper stickers on the parked cars in front of a large Queen Anne house: Goldwater, Romney, Rockefeller, AuH2O in '64. He approached a row of stores nestled together among the several homes that made up the town. He passed the drugstore and the hardware store, stopping in front of the bakery. It was closed on Mondays. If it had been open, the boy would have bought himself two chocolate eclairs with his quarter. He stared at his reflection on the bakery's darkened window. He looked at his hair. He slid his hand along his temple to his neck, fingertips brushing the back of his ear, knuckles stroking his hair. He smiled.

The boy walked on. The barber's pole didn't turn. The red, white, and blue no longer spiraled upwards. He stepped into the barbershop and immediately lowered his eyes to avoid the stares of the others. Each of the two barbers had a customer in their chairs. An old man waited, sitting in the last of a row of red plastic chairs with chrome legs. The boy sat in the first one. The old man appeared to be staring into the floor about four feet in front of himself, as if watching a scuba diver just beneath the surface. The boy glared at the worn black and white checkerboard linoleum. He cast a glance around the pale green walls, the color of a schoolroom or doctor's office. Why are all the nervous places the same color?

The boy leaned over and picked through the current and recent date magazines in the rack next to him. Most were already quite dog-eared and worn. He took a Motor Trend. "Nineteen sixty-five models previewed!" it proclaimed, even though it was still just the summer of nineteen sixty-four. This had excited him when the issue had arrived at his home, but now he only looked at the pictures of the cars he dreamed of owning, although he was but thirteen and not old enough to drive in this state. He held the magazine up in front of himself, considering a bright red 427 Shelby Cobra with flared fenders, shiny chrome mag wheels, and soft tan leather seats. This way he could easily glance at the barbers, in case one called him. The younger barber, near the window, wore a thin mustache and a well tailored white uniform. The hair surgeon. The other, slightly older, clean shaven and paunchy, wore the same barber's suit, only baggy. In the mirror behind them, the boy saw both barbers and their customers, the old man waiting, himself, and the mirror behind himself. In that mirror, the boy could see the barbers and the two men again, and a reflection of his own reflection. What could he do to see a row of himself, reflecting to infinity? The baggy barber was looking at him. The boy quickly dropped his eyes. He didn't turn the page. He stared at the Cobra picture. When the boy looked up again, the barber looked away, back to the haircutting. The boy turned the page, then turned it back. He hadn't really looked at the Cobra. Had the barber been watching him the whole time? This couldn't be true. The boy reconsidered the Cobra. The flared fenders lent the A.C. body a stronger yet still graceful stance.

When he raised his line of vision again, the two barbers were busy. The younger one with the mustache had already wet combed his customer and was clipping a few odd hairs. The baggy barber was still cutting his customer's dry mop. The boy watched as bits of defeated hair floated to the floor. The barber looked at him again. The boy's eyes darted to the younger barber, who was now at the cash register. His customer paid for his haircut and for a bottle that resembled Vitalis. The boy leaned forward. The old man got up. He was here first. The boy sat back. He picked up the Motor Trend, which he had dropped on the seat next to him. He opened once more to that same page. Why the baggy barber? The boy rested the magazine in his lap. He looked in the mirror. His straight hair was a paler blond in the fluorescent light, the color of unripened corn; about two to four inches in length, longer in front, shorter in back. With his finger he flipped his hair out from behind his ear. It covered almost half of his ear. He tucked it back, smiling. The baggy barber had looked at him. The boy picked up the magazine. He looked at the back cover, a large Autolite spark plug. He turned to the table of contents. He read from the top to the middle, pausing. Next, he read the lines above again. Finally, he skipped to the bottom line, reading each line above successively.

"Next."

The boy had not seen the other customer go out. The baggy barber stood by his empty chair. The boy jumped up. He sat in the barber's chair. His feet just reached the padded bar that was part of the chair. The barber put an apron around him, and tucked some scratchy, tissue like paper around his neck.

"What would you like?"

"What?" The boy knew what had been asked, and he certainly didn't want a crew cut, but even a regular haircut left one nearly bald on the sides and back.

"What kind of haircut?"

"Uh, just a trim."

The barber started with a scissors. "And what do they call you, my friend?"

"Ted," the boy replied.

The barber stepped back, saying "I am Angelo," and holding out his hand as he looked in the boy's eyes. The boy fumbled with the apron in order to get his hand out, then shook the barber's hand. As the boy placed his hand in his lap, the barber fluffed the apron out to cover the boy again, but the apron, collapsing like a deflated balloon, formed an unashamed peak above his zipper. The boy pulled his knees together, but the apron folded between them. He spread his legs again, but not as far. That helped. His hands grasped the chair's arms. The barber proceeded quietly. The boy looked down at the apron valley between his legs. The barber turned the boy's head to this side and then that. The barber lifted the boy's chin and looked at his face. The boy closed his eyes. The falling hairs tickled his nose. Some hair clung to the boy's long eyelashes. The barber gently brushed them away.

"Is your father balding?" the baggy barber asked.

"He is." the boy answered.

"And your grandfather?"

"A little."

"Then you should massage your scalp once a day and use a brush once a day at least," the barber said, "you don't want to lose any hair any too soon." The boy did not reply. "I'll brush you now, and I think you should have a neck and back, too. That's where the blood comes from. Lean forward."

The boy leaned forward, as told. The barber placed his palms on the boy's back, just above his blue jeans. His fingers firmly rippled and worked up the boy's back. The man's hands squeezed the boy's shoulders and kneaded his neck, and then they started at the small of his back again. The boy's shirt was becoming untucked. Cotton tingling, tickling, the cool sheets, sleeping unclothed on a hot summer night, the white sheets, mosquitoes buzzed, bit, itching, scratching, caressing, fluttering sheets from a window's breeze, body humming, vibrating, completely naked, hot starlight darkness, cotton tickling, shivering, whispering. There were goose bumps on the boy's arms.

"Goose flesh," the barber smiled. "Feel nice? Good, now I'll brush you. Would you like anything special, or just water?"

"Just water," the boy said. The boy's knees were clasped together. Are there goose bumps there, too, where the hair will, please, soon start to grow? The barber sprayed water from a bottle with an atomizer. As the barber brushed the water in, the boy's shoulders relaxed, settling back on the chair. Cool.

"There, how's that?"

The boy looked in the mirror as the barber took the apron and paper from around the boy's neck. The boy attempted to tuck his shirt back in as they walked to the register.

"Seventy-five cents." the barber said. The boy gave the man the dollar bill that had been given him, fingering his own quarter loosely in his blue jeans pocket. When the barber gave the boy his quarter change, the boy put his own quarter with it, as a tip, giving both to the barber, and quickly walking out. Outside, the boy breathed a lungs filling draft of sweet summer air, and turned to look at his reflection in the barbershop window. Of course, it looked like a new haircut, but it would appear more natural in a week or so. Suddenly the boy started at seeing the barber smiling back at him from under his reflection. He smiled too, but, embarrassed, turned and walked on, past the drugstore, where two small girls sat at the soda fountain, eating ice-cream cones. The boy's chin wrinkled and his lower lip stuck out. He walked on, shoving his fists deep in his empty jeans pockets. No ice cream for me. He kicked a large rock. The rock banged against a white fence in front of a house down the street, and a little gray squirrel scampered up a tree, out of sight.