American essays -- 19th century; American fiction -- 19th century; American poetry -- 19th century; Short stories, American
"My brother Bill used to drink," continued the barber. "He could drink
more whiskey than any man in Houston, but he never got drunk. He had a
chair in my shop, but I had to let him go. Bill had a wonderful
constitution. When he got all he could hold he would quit drinking.
The only way he showed it was in his eyes. They would get kind of
glazed and fishy and wouldn't turn in his head. When Bill wanted to
look to one side he used to take his fingers and turn his eyeballs a
little the way he wanted to see. His eyes looked exactly like those
little round windows you see in the dome of the postoffice. You could
hear Bill breathe across the street when he was full. He could shave
people when he was drunk as well as he could sober.--Razor hurt you?"
The Post Man tried to wave one of his hands to disclaim any sense of
pain, but the barber's quick eye caught the motion and he leaned his
weight against the hand, crushing it against the chair.
"I kept noticing," went on the barber, "that Bill was getting about
four customers to my one, even if he did drink so much. People would
come in three or four at a time and sit down and wait their turns with
Bill when my chair was vacant. I didn't know what to make of it. Bill
had all he could do, and he was so crowded that he didn't have time to
go out to a saloon, but he kept a big jug in the back room, and every
few minutes he would slip in there and take a drink.
"One day I noticed a man that got out of Bill's chair acting queer and
he staggered as he went out. A day or two afterwards the shop was full
of customers from morning till night, and one man came back and had a
shave three different times in the forenoon. In a couple of days more
there was a crowd of men in the shop, and they had a line formed
outside two or three doors down the sidewalk. Bill made $9.00 that
day. That evening a policeman came in and jerked me up for running a
saloon without a license. It seems that Bill's breath was so full of
whiskey that every man he shaved went out feeling pretty hilarious and
sent his friends there to be shaved. It cost me $300 to get out of it,
and I shipped Bill to Florida pretty soon afterward."
* * * * *
"I was sent for once," went on the barber, as he seized his victim by
the ear and slammed his head over on the other side, "to go out on
Piney Street and shave a dead man. Barbers don't much like a job of
that kind, although they get from $5 to $10 for the work. It was 1908
Piney Street. I started about 11 o'clock at night. I found the street
all right and I counted from the corner until I found 1908. I had my
razors, soap and mug in a little case I use for such purposes. I went
in and knocked at the door. An old man opened it and his eye fell on
my case.
"'You've come, have you?' he asked. 'Well, go upstairs; he's in the
front room to your right. There's nobody with him. He hasn't any
friends or relatives in town; he's only been boarding here about a
week.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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