THE FEAST
And then came Saturday, the Feast at Fish’s Barber Shop. That’s when I met Gastro, a big guy who came from Cuba as a baby, and fought in the Vietnam War as a kid. He walked around with a big grin all the time. Most Vietnam Vets I had known were, excuse the expression, really fucked up and over from that War, but Gastro was three hundred pounds and happy. Of course he wore his hair in a DA, and he had a big furry beard. He was a cross between Ricky Ricardo and Fidel Castro, with a Carolinian accent, always smoking a cigar and drinking mead from a Styrofoam cup when he cooked the Feast at Fish’s. Fish had filled me in on everything beforehand. That first Saturday there was to be a big pot of gumbo and smoked pork butt.
After feeding Toots across the street in the truck the first thing every morning I practiced my tai-chi in a vacant lot to help my healing process. I was startled to see smoke pouring from behind the outside fence of the barbershop. Fish was off on his Saturday morning run of yard sales. I walked over to the back gate and peeked over the fence. Gastro, with a cigar in his mouth and smoke engulfing his entire body, carefully turned large chunks of meat with his big beefy hands.
“Good morning,” I said.
His head turned toward me. Sure enough, he had this big grin on his face with a cigar between his teeth and hot meat in his hands.
“Butt,” he said. His attention turned back to his work and the ash fell from the cigar onto the meat as he placed it back on the grill. He brushed it off and chuckled. “Heh, heh, heh. A little piece of ash ain’t never hurt nobody.” He put the lid back on the smoker then rubbed his hands briskly together, adding with a smile, “If yer careful, heh, heh, heh.”
Fish pulled alongside the fence in his old pickup truck with the day’s booty in the bed. He turned off the engine and sniffed the air, filling his chest, smiling.
“EHHHHH! Butt,” he exhaled.
My foot throbbed just thinking about it. The pork sure did smell good. Fish climbed from the truck and we began unloading air conditioners onto the lot in the back of the shop. They were in a variety of sizes and dismantled stages. The little red convertible pulled up to the front of the shop, and Brent came limping around the corner, sniffing the air. He had a perky little grin on his face. He raised his eyebrows.
“But when?” Brent exclaimed with his finger pointed at the sky.
“Noon!” Fish answered with a rigid gruffness.
“Give him meat.” Brent said squinting, and handed me a small stack of 3×5 cards with the other hand, turned and limped, with his finger shaking in the air to a boogie only he could hear, back to the car and pulled off.
I riffled through the cards quickly, slid them into my back pocket and continued unloading air-conditioners, sore back, burning toe joint and access to a couch to sleep on.
Fish opened the shop promptly at noon. I was next door, attempting to put Brent’s cards in some type of order. I was working on a three act system, since my leaning was toward the dramatic content of the story, though it be a documentary. Alva set up shop in the corner of the yard for nails and Gastro held court at the oversized butcher-block table in the back. The regulars drank beer from long neck bottles and ate bowls of gumbo and butt, while sitting at wire spool tables on wire spool stools.
Saturday was Fish’s customer appreciation day. The food was free, but the cigar box was stuffed. Only the regulars were allowed in the back and that’s where the beer stayed when the tourists were in town. There was only mead and coffee in the front. If someone should ask about the beer in the back, they were told that people had brought their own beer, but that certainly wasn’t allowed. Fish was a businessman.
“I appreciate my customers much more when they give me money,” Fish said.
Gastro cooked the food and drank free mead, but he paid for his beer and cigars. Fish did pay for the food, though customers occasionally brought other things for the feast.
Chips, Fish’s new lady, worked and lived about four hours away. I hadn’t met her yet with the exception of a few phone conversations. Fish spoke to her everyday, but when he wasn’t close to that skin for awhile he got a little testy. That ain’t good for someone who gives close shaves. She was coming in for the rest of the weekend. No one took a shave until after she arrived and Fish took lunch, which was a Saturday ritual in itself.
“Fish, ya gonna eat wit us?”
“Uh-huh,” he replied brusquely while working on his last head before four o’clock. I had been forewarned so I was sitting in the shop with Brent and a few others to watch. I was told he probably would have thrown me out of the apartment bodily when Chips arrived.
At one minute to four Gastro walked in the shop with one large bowl of gumbo and a chunk of butt. “Your butt’s here, heh, heh, heh.”
Fish looked at the wall clock. “Can’t you see I’m still cutting hair.”
“It’s lunchtime,” Gastro said.
“I know it’s lunchtime.” Fish replied looking out the front window, and there she appeared right on time, a cute little bulldog with a DA, Chips. Fish was almost giddy. “It’s time to eat! Brad, take over.”
The haircut wasn’t finished and the tourist customer looked around in bewilderment. Brent was already past his third cup of mead. He was willing. Fish handed him the comb and scissors. The tourist looked rather frightened, but Brent simply climbed into the other chair as though it had been rehearsed, announcing “It is time to eat, I am in command here.”
Gastro said, “What about this food?”
“Eat it!” Fish exclaimed, and he was out the door in a flash, joining Chips, gone.
The tourist looked over at Brad, questioning and pointing to his head.
“Don’t look at me. I’m here to guard the cash register. GRRRR!” he said, holding up the scissors and comb.
Gastro shoved the bowl of gumbo into the tourist’s hands. “Eat it.” he said. He turned and walked out the door. It was almost like a lottery.
A few minutes later, a full-dressed Harley pulled up to the front of the barbershop and parked. The rider was wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket, gloves, black leather pants and boots, and a black helmet with a rooster painted on the side. He dismounted, removed his helmet, brushed his hair and walked straight in the front door.
“Ahwant ma hare cut.” he announced. His voice was like coarse sandpaper wearing a dirty southern diaper. There was a large scar at the base of his Adam’s Apple. He strained for volume but commanded attention. He looked over at Brad. The tourist sat tight in his chair, munching on his butt and gumbo.
“How’s yer bug?” he asked.
“Harmless,” Brent said.
“Mon ain’t. Kilt off ever fren Ah thought Ah had. God damned rednecks, scared of somethin called by litters. Fish is the only barber I know that gives a good duck’s ass and don’t care what cha got. Where’s ee? Tellim the Rooster’s here.”
The tourist laughed and blurted out, “He’s having lunch.”
Rooster glared at the tourist. “You got the bug?”
The tourist looked down into his bowl. “What bug?”
“H-AH-V. Ah do,” he said nodding at Brad, “he does.” Rooster looked at me. “Ah know all about you. Fish told me.” He turned back to the tourist. “Ah don’t know about you. What’re ya eatin’?”
The tourist looked at him meekly. “Gumbo,” he hesitated, “and butt.”
Rooster coughed a laugh and smiled. “Well, kiss ma ass. BUT WHAT!” Rooster slapped the tourist on the shoulder, laughing. “You musta hit the lottery. Gastro makes the best gumbo this side ada street. Let me know when a chairs empty.” Rooster walked through the shop and out the side door to the back.
The tourist looked over at Brad. “You have AIDS?”
Brad lowered and shook his head. He raised his glare and his eyes got real big, staring directly at the tourist. He held the comb and scissors and pushed himself out of the chair. “I have something called HIV and I’m ready to cut your hair.”
The tourist removed the apron from around his neck and stood from the chair. He held onto the bowl of gumbo. “I like it the way it is,” he said.
“Good. Pay for it then,” Brent said.
The tourist looked over at me and I smiled. He scrambled in his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, placed it on the counter. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought I was in North Carolina.” He dropped the bowl of gumbo into the plastic lined, covered trash can, turned and walked out the door.
Brad limped over to where I was sitting and picked up his cup of mead. He looked like an angry Jersey hood. “That’s the problem,” he said. Then he limped back to the chair and sat like a King.
A woman with long frizzy hair and the skin texture of a worn sunbather walked through the front door. She wore a long cotton dress and large loop earrings.
“Gumbo in the garden,” she announced on her entrance. Her voice had the deep texture of pecans eaten from the pie. She stopped and looked through the window at Alva who was eating a bowl of gumbo, and then spread the fingers on both hands like a cat baring its claws. “Oh, GOD, she’s free.” She ran out the side door and pretty soon plopped herself down in front of Alva with her fingers spread wide, almost holding her head.
I looked over at Brad.
“Evita—the shrink.”
A six foot surfboard came marching through the front door, pulling a skinny blonde man. “Is that chair taken? Where’s Fish?”
“He’s having lunch, Rollo.” Brent said.
“Chips is in town!” Rollo yelled. “GUMBO!” He wedged the surfboard into the empty barber chair and raced out the side door.
“Rollo—Evita’s patient.”
Fish and Chips walked in the front door. “Did I see a surfboard walk in here?” Fish spotted the surfboard. “Jesus—-Rollo!” Fish went charging out the side door.
I stood up and introduced myself to Chips and casually eased back on over to the solitude of the apartment. I was worn out.
I continued to go through the papers of the German retrovirologist. It was interesting, but it just didn’t make any sense. It made sense to Brad, and if I had been in his shoes, it might have made sense to me. The suicide doctor made sense to me, this was 1995, when it’s time to go, go. But why would anyone continue to argue, in this age of the electron microscope, that a virus, which by now had been witnessed and tested and shown to be the cause of the suppression of the immune system, was harmless. I mean there was a lot of money out there working on this thing, and Dr.Duesberg didn’t have any. Anyway, neither did I. I took the cards of information that Brent had given me and began to compose a proposal. Brent’s humor and cynical point of view of history was so interesting, it was easy to stay focused on the hemophilia, especially since he perceived HIV more as life-interfering than life-threatening. Everyone in my family died of heart attacks and lung cancer, environmental reasons, cough. This was nothin’ but a Blood Thing, focused with a flow.
I made my way back over to the barbershop to see if any gumbo was left for dinner. Fish was cutting Rooster’s hair. Brenda had joined Brent and Chips at the front, sipping mead from Styrofoam cups, so I sat with them for a few minutes. Brent handed me a few cards and then left to use the restroom.
“This movie’s good for him, he’d lost his enthusiasm,” Brenda said to me. But this was only the beginning. I wondered how long she was going to feel that way. I knew what I was getting into. I wanted to do features, that is what I had been practicing writing. The reality of the situation was that I thought it would probably be easier to raise a hundred thousand or so for a documentary film, than millions for a feature—I had a hard time getting anyone to read my scripts.
The hemophilia community was small in numbers, with only 25,000 estimated in the U.S., though hemophilia did cover the world. It is, however, a multi-billion dollar a year industry in this country. Brent’s company C.H.A.P.S Concerned Hemophiliacs Acting for Peer Strength, sent out a newsletter to 3,000 people, he told me. He was financed by a pharmaceutical company, Armour Pharmaceuticals. He was the executive director of the organization for hemophiliacs which he had founded. It was a natural. It was insane.
I moved to the back, where Gastro was still presiding. It was dusk. I sat at a table where Evita was reading Tarot cards for a blonde with frightened blue eyes. The multi-colored Chinese lanterns strung around the perimeter of the yard were lit and Evita looked like a gypsy. Alva had done Evita’s nails in midnight blue with white crescent moons and stars. The blonde had hers done with blue and white unicorns and a pink foundation. Alva was an artist. The blonde was a babe. Gastro passed me a bowl of gumbo and butt, and then he left. The deal was that I would clean up—and I did—
after a little
gumbo and butt.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:35 am
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