Chapter 2 (January 1945)
Doc Lundborg and the Boys
Poonrod’s first customer of the day in the barber shop would be Doc Lundborg. He could see the old Swede approaching through the storefront window. It was almost always Jesse Meade, and his boys, or Doc Lundborg, his father-in-law, as the first customers on Saturday mornings. Today it was Doc. He worked on Fort Des Moines as a eugenics specialist for the US Army selection board and doubled as the town doctor on Saturdays. His duty was cerebral and relaxed on the physical labor. The Army standards still required a military regulation haircut and he always satisfied the first item on his list for Saturday’s duties at Penrod’s barbershop. After his haircut he would don his surgical scrubs and perform half a dozen different vasectomies and hysterectomies at Des Moines General Hospital. Sundays were reserved for father and daughter time in the early days. Now they were spent upstairs of Penrod’s barber shop playing cards and gambling on sports with the fellas while they listened to the radio.
Doc was born a twin in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1880. He was the son of a sea captain and a local girl. Johan and his twin brother, Matte, lived comfortably on their father’s salary even though he was often at sea for much of their youth. Both boys were intelligent, accelerated in school, and skeptical of both religion and politics. Both boys attended college in Uppsala for their secondary education in the sciences. Sweden was a neutral country and had been since before the first war; they did not participate in either. This fact allowed the adult twins to complete their medical studies and receive their doctoral degrees from Uppsala University in 1920. Matte stayed on at the university as an academic, and Johan began his professional career in the Swedish navy instead of migrating to America initially.
The Swedish navy was keen on building out a modern, steel-hulled fleet to protect the Swedish archipelago and extend their capabilities into the Baltic and beyond. This meant harnessing the technology of the industrial boom across the globe and keeping a generation of skilled Swedish workers in Sweden instead of flooding passenger and cargo ships bound for America. Workers needed to be organized and focused on the modernization of Swedish society in general. The solution spawned at the University of Uppsala was considered the next practical step from the discoveries of Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin. Mendel’s genetic studies of pea pod characteristics proved hereditary traits existed in botany. Darwin’s theory of natural selection proved evolution was real.
King Gustav of Sweden accepted the challenge of keeping his country at the forefront of industrialization. Sweden’s neutrality in the first war allowed its foundries and factories to continue to remain in operation throughout the duration of combat years. Politically, the Social Democrats were in power and meant to keep that advantage throughout the 20th century. An educated workforce and stable family lives were paramount to a successful society in their greater vision. The Social Democrats believed the best platform for delivering this ideal society was a model based on both the writings of socialist founder Karl Marx and the Scottish economist Adam Smith. Their ideal society would emerge as a combination of state regulation providing the necessities of life, education, voting rights, women’s rights, health care, and pensions for the population. Workers unionized, and industry owners had the freedom to innovate.
At Uppsala University, the medical department had a branch dedicated to studying the human brain. There were clearly differences in intelligence in citizens and humans in general. Intelligence could be demonstrated in art, music, business, science, architecture, and literature. At the core of their research was to discover the most ideal Swedish citizen. This would be accomplished by eliminating the ability of the most non-ideal Swedish citizens to reproduce by force if need be. They theorized that almost all of the major discoveries of the world were also made by white men. The entire world had been conquered by white men. The sun literally never set on the British Empire. The Roman Empire stretched from Britain to Iran and North Africa. Yet, the entire continent of Africa in 1945 had still had yet to produce a single negro engineer capable of constructing a legitimate three-story building in any country on the continent. The negroes did not become slaves and slave traders because they were the smartest humans on the planet. After a couple of millennia, Africa was still full of millions of broke, black, barefoot, illiterate masses. Most of the continent’s infrastructure developments came from various architects serving in the French, Dutch, German, Italian, English, or Belgian militaries. The European overlords all reported back to the powers in their respective home countries that the Africans themselves were barely capable of feeding themselves. They followed illiterate tribal leaders and were subjected to the authority of jungle warlords. Europe and America, on the other hand, built the entire modern world and everything important in it. It was from this perspective that eugenics began.
Initially, the pseudo-science of phrenology gained traction as a physical study of the exterior shape of the head, potentially alluding to intelligence predictability. Most of the Africans had a larger brow, bigger lips, noses, and penises on the males. These physical observations had been displayed in art and sculpture for centuries. These were the peoples that got their asses kicked across the planet by the white man for centuries. Even the great Italian artists and stone carvers of the Renaissance depicted their biblical stories and great battle scenes with their victorious archetypes with small cocks. This was because they too believed the long cocks of the blacks indicated stupidity in the age of the Renaissance. This belief stemmed from the Muslim North African Moors who invaded Sicily roughly a thousand years previously. Eventually, Italians reconquered the island and since depicted Italian males with small penises in their art and sculpture throughout the Roman Empire. From Sicily forward, the negroes lost every battle they were ever in against the more clever white foes. In fact, the vast majority of Africans never made it out of Africa unless they were captured slaves.
What phrenology could not account for was what happened within the brain. There were also smart Swedes with big heads, lips, noses, or large penises. Eugenics was a competing, and more compelling, path to developing the ideal society. It was a philosophy that could also explain the intelligent outliers in Swedish society with big heads, noses, and penises.
The Social Democrats’ philosophy was to tax the wealthy to support a healthy middle class that could continually produce productive members of Swedish society. The country was facing hundreds of thousands of its citizens emigrating to America for opportunity. Life in Sweden had to improve to keep their best talent within the country. This also meant implementing legislation to promote the emerging science via the Swedish Society for Eugenics. This entity would identify who exactly was the ideal Swedish citizen and who needed to be scheduled for sterilization surgery. The government began their research with the medical records of conscriptions into the Swedish military. Dr. Johan Lundborg’s first task as a commissioned officer in the Swedish navy was to isolate the military and medical records of those who had been rejected, disqualified, or removed from service for disciplinary infractions. These individuals could be tracked through their personal identification number to see what they were doing post-military. Along with several prisoners, prostitutes, and patients in mental institutions, the military rejects were the first candidates unwittingly sterilized.
Doc Lundborg toiled in his work for about six months when a group of US Navy officers visited neutral Sweden and the University of Uppsala. They were inquiring about the eugenics studies and how they may pertain to improving the American military’s performance in the war. The university allowed the Americans to interview professors and to sit in on a few lectures and discussions, one by Dr. Matte Lundborg. Intrigued by the eugenics studies, the American officers were given Dr. Johan Lundborg’s contact information in Stockholm. The Americans were looking to implement the program in their own military recruiting efforts. After meeting Dr. Lundborg and discussions with the Swedish navy, Lundborg was allowed to come to America in one of the first Swedish and American naval exchanges.
Doc Lundborg, as the Americans called him, was sent to Great Lakes Naval Station in Chicago, Illinois. This was the US Navy’s recruiting depot, and his job would be to design a curriculum to begin sorting out the recruits based on their intelligence. The results of the first war in Europe were devastating. Trench warfare was rapidly being replaced by mechanized war, chemicals, and airplanes capable of bombing from above. This required a more intelligent military and retooling of military training for all countries. At Great Lakes, the US Navy put Doc Lundborg to work creating a list of names of men that had been both drafted into the first war but rejected by the draft boards. This list was compared to the police arrest records in the greater Chicago area and the current Illinois state prison roster. The government’s suspicion was that the majority of men rejected for military service later went on to become criminals, alcoholics, and burdens to society. These individuals that were currently sitting in jail or prison were the first to be surgically sterilized in Illinois. The prisoners were told they needed to complete physicals to stop the spread of contagions within the jail. Hundreds were given powerful sedatives to render them unconscious in Cook County Hospital while Dr. Lundborg performed vasectomies on the men and tubal ligations on the women. When they awoke, they were never informed of what actually took place. The women would still menstruate, and the men would still ejaculate post-surgery.
What began as scientific observation after the first couple of procedures evolved into daily surgeries severing the child-spawning capability of hundreds of mostly men over the years. Eliminating the ability of the dumbest, degenerates, and disabled from reproducing easily solved the societal problems they caused within a single generation. The news of these procedures being performed rose through the ranks of the Department of War, and the decision was made to implement an eugenics program in each state. Dr. Johan Lundborg was offered a commission in the United States military and American citizenship if he accepted. He had little remaining in Sweden and accepted the offer. He was given the rank of a captain and sent to Fort Des Moines in nearby Iowa in the summer of 1919. His task would be to assist in developing a plan for intelligence testing for all Iowa recruits into the Army. The information collection repeated the same process he was trained on at Great Lakes Naval Station. The conscripted draft rejects’ names were to be saved in a log and compared against rosters within the Iowa’s state prison system and those incarcerated in the Polk County jail in Des Moines.
It was during these years that he met a young local nurse named Agatha. After a brief courtship, the two married, and Agatha Lundborg gave birth to a single daughter, Rose, a year later. Unfortunately, she died tragically on the operating table. Rose was one of the first children in Iowa to be raised off of baby formula instead of breast milk. Dr. Lundborg leaned on the assistance of various nannies in the early years to raise, educate, and entertain Rose while he worked on the base during the day. This arrangement lasted until Rose was old enough to enter school. She was later enrolled in the Catholic St. Joseph’s Academy for Girls in Valley Junction. Although Dr. Lundborg himself was an atheist, he wanted Rose to have the best education and to keep her distance from the boys of the fathers working on the yard. They went to Valley Junction High School. There was a better pool of genes outside the rail yard.
“Looks like I am the first customer today, Verne,” Doc said as he opened the door and greeted Poonrod.
“Indeed you are, Doc. Feels like winter is catching right up to us too.”
“Yes, it does,” Doc replied as he hung up his coat. “Where is Roofus?”
“He is over at the pawn shop with Domino. He usually rolls around here after he has been fed in the morning. He likes to shit in the neighbors’ yard on the other side of the alley first.”
“That is funny,” replied Doc in his thick Swedish accent.
“What is new in the Army, Doc?” Poonrod asked as he fitted the apron around Doc’s neck.
“I heard they have almost 10,000 nazis in Camp Algona now.”
“Holy shit. Are you serious?” Poonrod asked as he turned on his electric clippers and began trimming up Doc’s hair.
“Yes, it is true.”
“What in the hell do they have them doing up there?”
“Picking vegetables, living in barracks, and doing farm work pretty much from what I have read.”
“That is bullshit. I can almost guarantee you those Nazis aren’t treating the boys that good,” Poonrod was pissed. He liked to keep up to speed on everything. He was an avid reader and listened to the news on the radio daily. He felt cheated but understood why it was not being broadcast.
“You are probably right on that account, the Japs neither.”
“Hey, Poonrod,” Skeeter and Willie said as they walked in the front door one behind the other as customers two and three of the day.
“Morning, boys,” answered Poonrod.
“Morning, Doc.” Skeeter said after Willie nodded as they made eye contact with Doc Lundborg.
“Good Morning, gentlemen.” Doc smiled as they hung their coats on the coat rack in the corner. He had the pleasure of sterilizing both of them when they were teenagers. Willie had a touch of cerebral palsy that left him partially retarded with one leg underdeveloped that he gimped along with in life. He grew up an unwanted child in an orphanage and Doc performed the procedure on him when he was a teen. Like most, they were told their tonsils needed to be removed or a minor surgery and given an injection of Pentothal rendering them unconscious. Skeeter, on the other hand, was sterilized a couple of years previously after he got syphilis, twice, from the same Des Moines hooker he fell in love with. He was a habitual liar and was noted as feeble-minded by the Army during his indoctrination physical. Doc smiled because he knew he did the world a good deed not allowing these two to reproduce.
Willie and Skeeter shuffled toward the back, looking for the newspaper and magazines while Poonrod worked around Doc in the chair. Poonrod always had magazines and the newspaper lying around for customers to read while they waited. There was always a copy of the Saturday Evening Post or Life Magazine out on the table along with the Tribune for the waiting customers.
“Why, don’t you make some coffee, Willie? Doc came in right as I opened up, and I didn’t get a chance to make some yet,” asked Poonrod.
“You even know how to make coffee, Willie?” Skeeter was doubtful.
“I know how to make coffee, Skeeter. Two scoops and two cups of water. Then two fingers up my asshole to rub around the rim of your coffee cup.” Willie snickered as he got up and shuffled over to the coffee maker in the corner. The boys worked from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., or they were scheduled to. They clocked out early and humped it across Railroad Ave. and down 5th Street for a beer and a haircut at Poonrod’s.
“You do that, and I’ll beat your ass right here.”
“I doubt it,” Poonrod looked at Skeeter. “Just make the coffee, Willie.”
Domino opened the front door next, carrying a case of beer as he shuffled in.
“Hey, fellas.” Domino said as he sat the beer down to close the door.
“There is the man,” Skeeter said as he looked in the refrigerator for a beer.
“Jesus, Domino, close the damn door already. I got a customer in the chair.” Poonrod shouted as the wind blew the smoke from his cigarette swirling in the air.
“You need some fresh air anyways, Pappy,” replied Domino, wearing only a sweater vest and a tee shirt underneath, exposing his muscular arms as he carried in a new case of beer.
“Domino, you get bigger every damn time I see you. You look like Joe Louis now. Jesus, Poonrod, what in the hell are you feeding him?” asked Doc Lundborg as he sized up Domino from head to toe and laughed.
“Hey, Doc. How are you?” Domino replied as he closed the door behind him and carried the beer towards the refrigerator. Indeed, Domino had grown into a stout young man and built like boxing champ Joe Louis. He was a heavyweight and right around 200 pounds, Doc assumed. Poonrod showed Domino how to wrestle and punch as a kid. He practiced on the other boys in high school, which was excellent training. None of them wanted to get beaten by the negro boy in the school days. Eventually, all of them were, or knew better not to tangle with him in the first place. The training with Poonrod, playing football and wrestling with the other boys on the playground in the early days, was later parlayed into boxing with men in Castanza’s Gym on Vine Street. This too helped immensely when dealing with drunks, deadbeats, debtors, and dumbasses around town. It was never one of the locals who already knew Domino that tested him. All knew he was Poonrod’s adopted negro boy in the neighborhood and was known to be polite, well-spoken, and lighthearted in conversation.
“I ate a lot of Pappy’s chicken, bean, and egg concoction last night,” Domino laughed as he closed the door behind him with his foot.
“Damn, Verne, you must be a hell of a cook.” Doc was stunned by Domino as he walked by. He was an outlier. He was nothing short of remarkable in his intellectual and social transformation. He seriously considered mentioning to Poonrod in the very beginning to have him sterilized at a young age but did not because Poonrod adored the little kid.
“It ain’t nothing but chicken, beans, peppers, onions, eggs, and tomatoes. Domino should use a shovel when he eats just about anything,” Poonrod added.
“Except sauerkraut. I won’t eat it. That stuff is just wrong.”
“Don’t care for that too much myself,” Doc said as he looked in the mirror, and Poonrod began clipping what was left of Doc’s gray hair with his scissors.
“Skeeter and Willie. What have you boys been up to? Still got the night shift?” Domino said as he opened the refrigerator.
“I’ll take a beer, Domino.”
“Hell, yeah. Me too,” said Willie as he lit up a cigarette and continued making the coffee.
“Here ya go, fellas.” Domino popped the tops on two bottles of Schlitz and gave the guys each one.
“Thanks, man.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Skeeter responded after Willie.
“I’ve been working nights for two years now. Skeeter is about the same.” Willie replied. He was harmless and the smarter of the two.
Unfortunately, for Domino, there were also a lot of other uneducated folks around Valley Junction. Poonrod had made a small fortune off of them. It was a lesson he would not forget. The idiots were always the same way, however. There would be a white or Mexican guy from out of town on the rail yard, sometimes a drunk serviceman, even a drunk train passenger from time to time, that would see him in town and call him a nigger or a monkey. Domino would smile or sigh and turn the other cheek. The maneuver was just long enough for the offender to let their guard down. Usually, Domino would quickly punch them in the stomach or slap them across the face with enough force that they would collapse to the ground. Sometimes he even pulled out his pistol and pointed it right in their face. He never shot them. He didn’t need to. Some pissed their pants and others ran for their life. They would never forget it. Pappy was right, there were a lot of stupid white people. If the offender was a member of the union, they were done. Domino explaining what transpired to Poonrod would suffice. Justice would be served quickly.
“You sure about that, Willie?” asked Domino.
“Sure as this fart doesn’t smell like Skeeter’s fuckin’ breath.” Willie said as he lifted his leg and ripped a huge fart that resonated loudly off the wooden chair he sat down in after he finished with the coffee.
“Jesus, you fucking pig. Did you just shit your britches?” Skeeter said loudly from the opposite bench. Domino burst out laughing. It was loud. Doc laughed and shook his head in disgust.
“It was just a little kiss for ya, Skeeter.” Willie quickly countered.
“Oh, my god, Willie. That stinks. I am out.” Doc laughed, stood up, and removed the barber’s apron. He didn’t have much hair to cut anyways. He was more confident the world of the future would be better off without replicating Skeeter and Willie. He grabbed his coat from the coat rack. “See ya, Verne. Thanks for the haircut,” and out the door he went. Doc Lundborg hadn’t paid for a haircut in years.
Poonrod was annoyed and fanned the fart smell back towards Willie with a towel. “Willie, you goddamn dirtbag. This ain’t your mom’s house. You can’t do that outside for shit sake?” Poonrod said as he pointed to Skeeter and motioned for him to be next in the chair. Skeeter donned the apron and sat in the chair. “You goddamn boys can suck each other’s farts in that bunk house with the other intellectuals in there. But do not think you are going to start singing with your assholes in my barber shop. No, sir, boys, wrong guy.”
“It slipped.” Willie snickered as he looked over at Skeeter.
“Bullshit,” Skeeter laughed. “You know what is wrong with you, Willie.”
“Really, what is that, Skeeter?”
“You know you got beat up again by a hobo down the line last night. Look at your dirty damn dungarees. He pulled down your britches, stuck his dirty cock in your hairy ass. It turned you into a goddamn retard. I wonder how long you got left to live?” Domino and Poonrod laughed. Skeeter was comically stupid. It was non-stop insults between the two.
“Skeeter, shut the fuck up. At least I get the ladies,” boasted Willie.
“Ladies, Willie? What ladies?”
“You wanna come over here and smell my finger, Skeeter?” Willie shot back.
“The one you stuck up your ass? You do it every day. I see you walking down the line with your hand jammed down the back of your britches. When you think no one is looking, you start pulling dingle berries off your asshole. Try wiping your ass with something other than your hand, Willie?”
“What? Don’t even try it, Skeeter. I will jump out of this chair and brush your teeth with my goddamn finger,” Willie couldn’t drop it. If he ever got a hold of Skeeter, it would be lights out for Skeeter.
“I know you are not talking to me, Willie. You must be talking to Domino, because you put that finger anywhere near me, and you die right there.”
“You boys are a special kind of stupid, you know that right?” Domino said as he laughed. “Still, I don’t care what the others say about you. I like you both.”
“Still no high school diploma requirements on the night shift, I see,” Poonrod said to no one in particular but louder than the clippers shaving Skeeter’s head to 1/4’ in length. He knew both Willie and Skeeter were apprentices in the Brotherhood of Local Firemen and Enginemen. They were two jokers in their early twenties rejected by the draft board. The government was smart to realize they better served America in the rail yard…and far from the front lines.
“No diplomas required for (M&L). Both of us got switched over to (M & L) Line a couple of weeks back. They are light on guys again,” replied Skeeter as he finished his beer and belched.
Poonrod reached over and extinguished his cigarette in the ashtray. “Yeah, I heard you lost a couple more boys to Pine and Dixie last month too.”
“Those were switch and brakeman guys. The ladies won’t do those jobs because of the dark,” Willie said as he went for another Schlitz.
“I don’t blame ‘em’. Ya never know who rolls in off the rails sometimes.” Poonrod offered up as he swung Skeeter around in the chair to look at his new haircut in the mirror. “Skeeter, what do you think?”
“Looks good, as usual. The ladies say I look a lot like Feller or Kinnick,” Skeeter should have known better to make the comparison. All three guys in the barber shop started laughing. Nile Kinnick was the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback for the 1939 Rose Bowl-winning Iowa Hawkeyes before the war. Bob Feller was the prodigal high school pitcher from Van Meter, Iowa, who played professional baseball for the Cleveland Indians three years earlier while still in high school. Both were drafted into the Navy when the war broke out. Kinnick died when his plane crashed into the ocean during training. Feller was still alive as far as anyone knew.
“Ladies? Those aren’t ladies looking at you, Skeeter.” Willie spoke up as Skeeter ran his hands through his hair from the chair.
“What are you talking about? I almost was the ‘Heater from Van Meter’. It is where they got his name. It used to be Skeeter from Van Meter and…” the place erupted in laughter. It was a legendary line of shit even for Skeeter. “I used to play with them boys a few years back when…”
“Not that bullshit again, Skeeter?” interrupted Domino, who opened the refrigerator and reached in for a beer. “You couldn’t scrub the shit out of Feller’s shorts.”
“The hell I couldn’t,” Skeeter ignored Domino and continued. Domino looked at Poonrod, who raised his eyebrows and smiled. Most of Skeeter’s paycheck was spent in the operation. He was a fantastic customer without ever knowing it. Domino sighed and looked at the floor. Poonrod was great like that. Skeeter continued, “We were in the same American Legion league. I could throw a pitch faster than a speeding car, so can Feller. Feller is younger than I am. Anyway, he is lucky I graduated and got married right off like that, or I would have kept on pitching. He just took my name because the major league scouts heard about the legend of ol’ Skeeter from Van Meter first. Kinnick? Yeah, he was actually a catcher in high school before all that college football fame. He was just a kid.” It was impossible for the average citizen to discern which sentences were ridiculous lies that had been well rehearsed from the impromptu embellishments. In the end, it didn’t really matter.
“Faster than a car? Bullshit, Skeeter. Maybe faster than a horse. Feller can suck my ass too. He played for the Indians and will again when he comes back. You?” retorted Willie. He could never let it go either. He at least was physically disabled with a club foot. His life was harder in every way imaginable because of it. Skeeter was a pathological liar because he was illiterate. Willie didn’t have a lot of friends, and Skeeter was one of them.
“Exactly, he stole my fame. Trust me, Skeeter the Heater could have been huge,” replied Skeeter. He was a hero in his own mind.
“What are you talking about, Skeeter? The huge heater? Are you talking about that fart you just sucked on? Even the damn governor shook Feller’s hand when he came back to Iowa after stunning the big leaguers. That is no bullshit. That was before he was even finished with high school. Now he is out killing Nazis and Japs for America. What are you killing, Skeeter?” Willie knew Skeeter fantasized about being a war hero. It was Willie that read the Tribune aloud in the bunkhouse so Skeeter and some of the others knew about the war and local news when one was lying around.
“Me? What are you killing, Willie? Flies in the bunkhouse shitter?”
Willie quickly shot back “Me? I got a bad leg or I would be out there. What is your excuse, Skeeter?”
Skeeter fired back, “The recruiter asked me if I knew you. When I said I did, he rejected me too.” Domino and Poonrod looked at each other and rolled their eyes. No one believed him, as usual. “It’s just temporary. They will be calling me back pretty soon, I suspect. Was the recruiter in here looking for me, Poonrod?” Skeeter asked and looked at Poonrod in the mirror. Poonrod just shook his head and placed the clippers on his table behind the chair. Everyone knew Uncle Sam was never going to call. It was everything the Army draft board could do not to tell Skeeter he could best serve his country by enlisting in the enemy’s ranks.
Willie stood up as Skeeter jumped down from Poonrod’s chair. “Yeah, bullshit, Skeeter. Get out of the chair already.”
“I’ll probably be fighting Japs and Germans here in a few months. For now, I just need to look good for the ladies.” Skeeter tried to sound confident. No one replied. Uncle Sam, like most, made his mind up about Skeeter long ago. The personality disorders created poor soldiers and sailors as they easily ruined unit cohesion with no morals, constant lies, theft, and graft. Skeeter was not a thief and had no real hustle in his game. He was an orphan who felt insecure about being illiterate. The stories were an intentional distraction away from his inability to read and write. Most would catch on quickly that he used more words than necessary to explain something. His bullshit about “a man’s handshake is his word” being the reason he didn’t sign contracts or agreements fooled next to no one.
Willie and Skeeter both lived in one of the rail yard bunk houses along Fuller Rd. It was half white men and the rest Mexicans, blacks, and mixed. Three bunk houses for white, one for the negroes, Mexicans, and everyone else not white. The bunkhouses were set up in the twenties just on the other side of Jordan Creek when Valley Junction was still building out the final sections of the rail yard. Each bunk house was an open bay barracks with bunk beds, lockers, hot showers, laundry service, and one meal a day in the mess hall for roughly fifty men. There were two hundred journeymen in the union bunk houses on any given day. Equally as many more married men lived in town. Because of the war, the quality of prospects being recruited into the union plummeted. Skeeter and Willie were just two of a motley but dependable bunch of dropouts, rejects, and deadbeats. Half of their pay was docked for their quarters before it was pissed away. The workers were bussed back and forth to the rail yard around the clock. Half the bunkhouses worked the night shift, and the others worked days. The mess hall and public showers sat in the center of the fenced-in property. It was a steady survival for guys like Willie and Skeeter that did the tough jobs on the cold nights like last night. It was a cheap source of labor for all the train lines in Valley Junction. All the men in the bunk houses also knew that part of the union membership meant that fighting for the jobs was sometimes required. There was no coincidence the bunk houses were located on Fuller Road just down from the tracks. If there were trouble, a hundred extra men could be bussed in with bats, pipes, and chains within minutes. It sounded like a good strategy a couple of decades ago. There had been no labor issues since the twenties, and the Brotherhood’s presence in Valley Junction had a reputation for being rowdy. Guys like Willie and Skeeter would be loyal to the very end. The rail yard was their entire lives.
“Yeah, or maybe you will still be here. Not in the Brotherhood, of course. You’ll be busting up rocks with a sledgehammer at Pine and Dixie all damn day. You’ll still be shitting in an outhouse and sleeping in a bunkhouse. You won’t be sleeping with a wife. No, just enjoying the snoring and the sweet sounds and smell of my ass, your supervisor, drifting up to your bunk.” Wille spoke the truth.
Skeeter ignored him. He focused on Poonrod’s display of cologne, aftershave, and shampoo.
“Did you say something, Willie? I was distracted by the old woman here out on the sidewalk. I think it is your mom. Is she still sucking cock in the alley for ration cards or is that your grandma?” Skeeter shot back.
Domino put his face in his hands to stop laughing, and Willie even laughed. “No, you always mix that one up, Skeeter. That is the old woman you banged that gave you the clap you never got treated for, and it made you a retard. She is coming back for seconds,” Willie shot back as he sat in the chair. Poonrod and Domino just shook their heads in astonishment. Roofus barked at the laughter too. He knew what they were talking about. Skeeter’s bogus marriage was bullshit. Skeeter might have been a loser, but it was a stunt more common than people wanted to admit. Men were exempt from the draft if they were married. There were several guys marrying their high school sweetheart shortly after graduation and before the draft notice showed up. Men that were single, over twenty-one, and under forty-five were all eligible for the draft. Skeeter tried to tell guys he was rejected because of his marital status. The problem was, of course, he was just never seen with a woman. Willie, on the other hand, probably would have been a great soldier or sailor if not for the obvious club foot, drug slowly behind the other as he hobbled along without assistance. He had a large and muscular torso for a young man with an unfortunate disfigured extremity. He knew Skeeter just wanted to fit in somewhere and needed a friend like himself. They were loyal to the union that finally gave them both an identity.
“Alright, Skeeter, you’re done. Fifty-five, my man. Unless you are getting aftershave and shampoo.” Poonrod had heard it all before. A little of Skeeter went a long way.
“You got change for a dollar? I am feeling lucky.” Skeeter chugged the rest of his beer and belched.
“I do.” Poonrod replied in his routine. Customers might have a couple of quarters in their pocket but usually not three. They would ask for change, and Poonrod would always give it out in nickels. The shampoo, shaving cream, and aftershave were all fifteen cents each. By offering change in nickels, he laundered the money from the pinball machines upstairs through his patrons. Skeeter accepted his change and walked through the door in the back of the barber shop to the staircase leading upstairs to play some pinball.“Next man!” Poonrod announced loudly.
Willie shook his head, hung his coat up on the coat rack, and sat in the chair. It never ended with the insults and retorts between the two. They were two peas in a pod. Willie sat down and said, “The usual.”
Poonrod wrapped the apron around his neck and adjusted the chair back so his head rested on the edge of the sink. Willie changed the subject as Poonrod sprayed his head in warm water and lathered him up with a dab of Clubman’s Country Club Shampoo. “You hear there is going to be a memorial for the Sullivan boys from Waterloo at the Val Air?”
“I did. Heard it on the radio this morning.” replied Poonrod.
Domino turned his attention back from the window. “That was just about the saddest news of the entire war. They should have never put all those boys on the same ship.”
Willie spoke up while staring at the ceiling. “They were true heroes. VFW is doing a fundraiser for the family and selling war bonds again. They said they will be bringing in some national acts for the show but didn’t say who.”
Poonrod dried off Willie’s head with a towel. “Let’s even up this neckline here, Willie. Put your chin on your chest, and I’ll shave that hairy neck of yours first. Let me get the right head on my clippers here,” said Poonrod, raising Willie higher up in the chair with his foot pump. He fumbled around behind the chair with his clippers as Willie faced Domino. The clippers began to buzz in his hand when he flipped the button, turning the apparatus on. “OK. Here we go.” Poonrod touched his neck lightly with the clippers and then ran them from the back of his neck to his eyebrows in one quick shearing motion.
The clippers left a straight line down the center of his head, no longer than an 1/8th of an inch. Willie jerked away too late. The look in his eye was terror. He was the victim of catastrophic barber shop fail.
“What the fuck, Poonrod!” exclaimed Willie as he checked his look in the mirror.
“It slipped, like your fart. I didn’t mean it. No charge for the haircut,” replied Poonrod.
“Haircut?”
“Nice one, Pappy. Wow, yeah, that one is rough, Willie.” Domino laughed.
“Damn it, Poonrod. What am I going to do now?”
“You are starting a new look in town, Willie. The Indians used to wear their hair like that. It was called a Phoenix. The Phoenix was the great eagle in the sky with a huge cock. You can see him carved on totem poles. He would fly around during mating season with a huge bird boner looking to mark his territory. He would swoop down on unsuspecting Indians and grab them by the ears with his talons and shit on their heads to warn them to stay away. The shit burned their scalps, and their hair fell out right down the middle. It was a badge of honor to have survived an attack of the Phoenix. It meant you were a strong warrior.”
“Bullshit, Pappy,” Domino laughed. “Looks like an Indian scalped your head though, Willie.”
Willie began to anger. “Phoenix? You did that intentionally.”
“You farted in my goddamn barber shop, Willie. We all make mistakes.” Poonrod confirmed.
Willie was stressed as he looked at his ridiculous reflection in the mirror and Domino laughing at him. “What am I supposed to do now?”
“Well, Phoenix, I would wear your hat today. Tomorrow, you might like it.”
“I can’t believe you did that,” Willie looked like he was about to cry.
“Yeah, me too. We all make mistakes. But we learn from them.”
“I can’t have it look like this. You gotta shave the rest of it,” Willie whimpered.
“The Phoenix would change your whole look, Willie. No one will know it is you.” Domino teased the obvious, Willie’s gimp walk could be detected from a couple hundred yards away.
“Damn it, Poonrod. Do it already.”
“Sit back down in the chair, Phoenix, and I will get you taken care of. I need to change out these clippers first. The head on them ain’t working too well.” Poonrod said to an angry Willie who scowled at him and sat back down in the chair. Instead of fixing the clippers, Poonrod grabbed a handheld Kodak from the small desk drawer below the mirror next to his gun. Poonrod fiddled with the buttons and knobs on the camera for a moment and then walked around the chair with his back to Willie. He turned around and took a quick picture of Willie in the chair.
“Is that a camera? Did you take a picture of me?”
“Indeed it is, Phoenix. And, yes, I took your picture. I will get you a copy of the picture when it is developed.”
“Phoenix? I am not a goddamn Phoenix. I don’t want a picture of me with this haircut either.”
“Well, a picture is worth a thousand words. If I use it, I will give you half the proceeds, Phoenix.”
“Stop calling me Phoenix, already. Can you just shave the rest of my goddamn head already, Poonrod?” an irritated Willie was desperate.
“Sure, no problem.” Poonrod walked back behind his chair as an angry Willie knew better than to say more to him. Poonrod turned on the clippers and quickly shaved the rest of Willie’s head.
“Shit, you’ll look like a war hero now.” Domino said to Willie.
“Yeah, whatever. How about some nickels for the pinball, Poonrod?”
“Sure, try your luck. Skeeter might be winning.” Poonrod said as he counted out 10 nickels for Willie’s two quarters. Willie gimped back towards the back of the barbershop and up the staircase to check on Skeeter. Domino and Poonrod looked at each other and smiled.