Jayber Crow. Wendell Berry
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was his real name or not.
Maybe a lot of people could say the same—I think they could; the squeak between living and not living is pretty tight—but I have had a lucky life. That is to say that I know I’ve been lucky. Beyond that, the question is if I have not been also blessed, as I believe I have—and, beyond that, even called. Surely I was called to be, for one thing, a barber. All my real opportunities have been to be a barber, as you’ll see, and being a barber has made other opportunities. I have had the life I have had because I kept on being a barber, you might say, in spite of my intentions to the contrary.
Now I have had most of the life I am going to have, and I can see what it has been. I can remember those early years when it seemed to me I was cut completely adrift, and times when, looking back at earlier times, it seemed I had been wandering in the dark woods of error. But now it looks to me as though I was following a path that was laid out for me, unbroken, and maybe even as straight as possible, from one end to the other, and I have this feeling, which never leaves me anymore, that I have been led. I will leave you to judge the truth of that for yourself; as Dr. Ardmire and I agreed, there is no proof.
Anyhow, I told Skinner Hawes that I could start right then. There was little enough work to be done—one haircut all afternoon—but I put in the time cleaning the place up. Skinner had fallen into the habit of putting things just anywhere and then letting them lie until he wanted them again, if he could find them. The only dusting that had been accomplished there in a long time had been done by the seats of the customers’ pants. The big front window was about as transparent as an old bed-sheet.
So I carried out a big pile of old newspapers and Police Gazettes and dusted everything and washed the windows and mirrors and swept the floor and mopped it. When quitting time came I went back to the trotting track and retrieved my box of possessions from where I had hidden it. On the way back I invested my haircut fund in a pretty good supper.
For two or three nights I slept on the floor of the shop, and then I found a poor old widow lady in a poor old house with a room to rent for the little that I thought I could afford. The room was just a little longer and wider than I was. It had an iron cot, a table, and a chair, and a few nails driven into the wall for hanging things up. It was the first room I’d ever had in my own right, paid for by me, with my own door that I could shut and lock. As long as the rent was paid, it was my room, and I liked the feeling. I came and went through a side door. The landlady was a nice woman who would have taken me to raise, as the fellow says, if she had seen enough of me. But even when I was there I was never much in sight and made no commotion. I could have been a mouse in the wall.
At the shop, I saw right away that we would have to do something to stir up business. Skinner’s old customers had fallen away, partly, I thought, because they didn’t like the way he and the shop looked. Cleaning up the shop and keeping Skinner shorn and shaved would help, I thought, but we’d have to get the word out. So I got some paper and lettered out a few little signs. They said: SKINNER’S BARBERSHOP. 2 CHAIRS AT YOUR SERVICE. GOOD PRICES. PLENTY OF SITTING ROOM. And then I listed our “special prices” for the next two weeks, knocking a nickel off of everything. I didn’t even ask Skinner; I just did it. And then I tacked up my signs on some trees and barn doors over at the trotting track, and I advertised a little too by word of mouth.
All that I had done didn’t amount to much, really, but it seemed to help. The place looked better, and people began to drift in from the trotting track and other places, either to loaf or to get a shave or a haircut. We made them feel welcome, whether they were loafers or customers, hoping that the loafers would become customers, which sooner or later they mostly did. It wasn’t long until we had enough regular customers to keep us going.
They were a mixed lot, I will have to say. We had people from the shops and stores in the neighborhood, people who lived nearby—decent-enough working people, most of them. We also had several second-string touts and gamblers from over at the track, a pimp or two, and maybe worse than that. I was pleased, for it seemed to me that I was getting a good look at city life and hearing talk and learning things I probably couldn’t have learned anyplace else. And I did learn a good deal. For a barber, I never was very talkative. Mainly I listened. At Skinner’s Barbershop I heard people taking things for granted that I had never even imagined before. And I mean several kinds of people, talking about several kinds of things. But we never did get any of the famous horsemen Skinner continued to brag that he had barbered in the old days.
We were doing all right. I don’t mean to say we were getting rich, but we were getting the things we needed and paying for them. I was eating my meals with the comforting thought that in several hours I was almost certainly going to eat again. And I had gone back to saving my money. I would go to the bank to change my small bills into bigger ones, so as not to accumulate too big a wad in my jacket lining or my shoes. But I never opened an account. I knew I was being reckless with my money, risking losing it or having it stolen or burnt up, but it was my money and I didn’t trust anybody to take care of it but me. A bank account just didn’t appeal to me. I was too standoffish and sly. I never deposited a dime in a bank until about three years after I set up shop in Port William. And even now I like to have a few bills stuck here and there, where only I know where they are.
I assumed that since I didn’t have the religion of Pigeonville College I didn’t have any religion at all. That seemed a big load off my mind. I felt as light as a kite. Anybody who had been to The Good Shepherd and Pigeonville College knew very well what was forbidden and what was not. I was well acquainted with the unforbidden, but now that I was accumulating a little money I invested some in the forbidden. Wherever I could locate the forbidden—and with our clientele, it wasn’t hard—I went and tried it. Wherever the sirens sang, I went ashore. Wherever I heard the suck of whirlpools and the waters gnashing on the rocks, I rowed hard to get there. It’s a little bit of a wonder that I didn’t get cast up from the depths in several pieces, or at least contract a foul disease.
Why I didn’t, I think, was stinginess and my wish to read books. I never shirked or shorted my work, and I never was free with my money. I found that I could experience the forbidden just as well on a tight budget, probably, as by squandering every cent I had saved. This was another of my good discoveries. I didn’t settle on any final terms with the forbidden. I just floated in and floated out. I was a cut-rate prodigal.
When the fall semester started at the university in the middle of September, I did what I had told Skinner Hawes I was going to do. I went over and paid the tuition fee and signed up for two courses. Looking back now, I can see how noncommittal and stealthy I had become. The official forces were there, seeing to the process of registration, and with them I was like a fox at night, passing through with as little commotion as possible. I can sort of see myself as I must have been that day, looking about for fear I would run into somebody who had known me before, filling out the papers with false information or as near none as possible. I said that my name was J. Crow, that I was from Diehard, Kentucky, that I planned on becoming a schoolteacher. Parents? None. Religion? None. National origin? Diehard. Race? Lost. Sex? Yes.
I didn’t come clean about anything, really. What I wanted were courses in book-reading, and I wasn’t particular which. Once I got over there in the actual presence of the classroom buildings and the library, it seemed to me that I hungered and thirsted to hear somebody talk about books who knew more about them than I did. I didn’t mean I wanted to be a schoolteacher. I just made that my pretense to be there, for I had never heard that anybody ever went to a university just to read books. There had to be a real reason—namely, something you wanted to do later. Anyhow, I never took any courses in the college of education. I signed up for literature courses.
And I thoroughly liked them. I could say I loved them. When the time came I would leave the shop and walk across to the campus and through the between-classes mobs of students to McVey Hall and climb the steps up to the classrooms and sit down. I would get there a little early if I could. I would stroll past the professors’ offices full of books and look in at the doors, and then wait in my seat in the classroom while the students sorted themselves out of the passing crowd and came in and took their seats. And then the professor would come in and call the roll and begin talking. This was what I longed for. I just sat and took it in. Even though