EMANCIPATION DAY

Wayne Grady

William Henry

William Henry Lewis, of W. H. Lewis & Sons, Ltd.,
Plasterers, Willie to his wife, Will to his brother and
friends, the Old Man to his sons, Pop to his daughter, William
Henry to his mama who was living in Ypsilanti or Cassopolis,
no one was certain where or even if she was still alive, she’d be
in her nineties, and also William Henry to himself, sat regally in
his father’s ancient barber chair, his hands spread across his knees
under the blue pinstriped barber’s bib, and watched himself in
the large wall mirror while his brother, Harlan, shaved his chin.
Harlan had owned this barbershop off the lobby of the British-
American Hotel since the death of their father, Andrew Jackson
Lewis, who fell dead from this very chair onto this very terrazzo
floor on a hot Saturday in July of 1911, thirty-two years ago
now, after a longer than usual bout of drinking during which
he had taken to sleeping in the barbershop rather than going
home to his wife and family. Harlan lived upstairs in one of the
hotel’s smaller rooms, and kept two chairs going even though
there was just the one barber, also worked as night watchman
at Lansberry’s Pharmacy across the street after six p.m.,
also played Stepin Fetchit for the hotel’s white manager, also
shone shoes out in the lobby if anyone asked him to. There was
nothing William Henry loved more than being shaved by his
brother Harlan.
William Henry had been coming to the shop every day to
have his morning shave and occasionally his hair trimmed since
the day after their father’s funeral, a habit that had not altered
with his marriage to Josie the year after, nor upon the birth of
their three children, despite the many times it would have been
more convenient, because of work or the drink, to stay home
and shave himself or not be shaved at all. William Henry was
vain about this, he knew it, others knew it, too, and said so, but
all flesh was vanity, and he liked the routine of it, it was like
going to church except that church cost money and his brother
never charged him a nickel, nor so much as mentioned money
even to remark upon the absence of it. His coming here was a
comfort to them both. They’d been doing it too long now for
him to say he looked forward to it, it would be like saying he
looked forward to breathing, or to the Detroit River flowing
past. Thirty-two years was a long time. He tried to think of
something he could start now that would go on for thirty-two
more years, but he couldn’t think of a thing. Maybe something
his son, Benny, could do with him every day, but what? When
you came to think of it, there weren’t many things in life you did
every day and liked doing.
Harlan talked and William Henry mostly listened or read the
Detroit Free Press or the Windsor Daily Star, even though, as
he would say if there were another customer waiting, “the Free
Press ain’t free and stars don’t come out in the daytime,” now
and then grunting when he agreed or disagreed with something
he read or his brother said. There was always something new
to listen to or read about. These days it was the war. The many
coloureds who were migrating north to work in the Detroit
armament factories. The many whites who were moving out
of downtown Detroit for that very reason. The war was none
of his or Harlan’s concern, except that it did affect business.
Folks had worn their hair long during the Depression, Harlan
said, almost over their collars, but now that the war was on they
seemed to prefer a more military cut, even the civilians, and not
just the coloureds. Everyone wanted to look like they just been
called up, or would be any day now, or else just got back and
wanted everyone to know it. William Henry countered with
how the plastering business had picked up, too, what with everyone
wanting little one-room apartments in their houses to rent
to the new workers, or for when the soldiers returned. He liked
the smell of the toilet water Harlan used, and the talcum powder
that he sprinkled on the brush before whisking the cut hairs off
the back of a customer’s neck. His own hair was thin and wavy,
not wiry like some, his brother had no trouble getting even a
fine-toothed comb through it, and his skin was light enough that
when he did go to church he sat right up at the front and did not
look around. He could have been called up for service, but he
was too old. Fifty-two. Old as a poker deck.
“What’s that boy of yours up to today, Will?” Harlan said, finishing
up a cheek. He lightly touched the underside of William
Henry’s chin with the tip of his forefinger, and William Henry
tilted his head back so that his brother could get at his throat.
“Benny?” said William Henry. “Same as usual, I guess.
Business is slow.”
“I meant Jackson. He helpin’ you out?”
William Henry grunted. He saw Harlan stop and look at
him in the mirror, the razor poised in the air like a bandleader’s
baton. Harlan favoured Jackson, always had. So did his mother.
Jackson was her heart. It was always Jackson this and Jackson
that. A person would think Jackson was Harlan’s son, not
William Henry’s. The truth was, Jackson was a disappointment.
Worse than that, a disgrace.
“He helps some,” William Henry said. “His heart ain’t in it,
though.”
“That so.”
“Some people ain’t cut out for hard work.”
“Barberin’s hard work,” Harlan said, as though William
Henry had been referring to him. “On your feet all day, breathin’
in little bits of hair. Remember how Daddy got so he couldn’t
close the scissors no more, his fingers were so swole up?”
“Yours gettin’ like that?”
“Startin’ to.”

Excerpted from Emancipation Day. Copyright © 2013 Wayne Grady. Published by Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.