The Last Haircut at Rayburn’s
Rayburn Cole had been cutting hair in Briar Glen for fifty-three years, and on the morning of his last day, somebody had the nerve to be early.
At 7:43, Rayburn stood inside the front door of Rayburn’s Barber Shop with his keys still in his hand and stared through the glass at Steve Mercer, who was staring right back.
The CLOSED sign hung between them.
Steve tapped his wrist.
Rayburn looked deliberately at the clock on the wall.
Then he looked back at Steve.
Then at the sign.
Steve tapped his wrist again.
Rayburn unlocked the door.
“You aware we open at eight?”
Steve stepped inside. “You were standing right there.”
“That does not change the operating hours.”
“It’s your last day.”
“It is.”
“Thought you might want to get an early start.”
“I've been getting an early start since 1973. That's part of why I'm retiring.”
Steve took off his cap.
Rayburn looked at his head.
“What exactly am I supposed to cut?”
Steve rubbed the thin gray patch above his ears. “Shape it up.”
“Shape what up?”
“The sides.”
“You've got seventeen hairs, Steve.”
“I've got more than seventeen.”
“You want me to count them?”
Steve put his cap back on. “You’re in a mood.”
“I haven't had coffee.”
“You got a pot right there.”
“It isn't done.”
“Well, that explains it.”
Rayburn pointed toward one of the three waiting chairs beneath the front window. “Sit down and don't speak until eight.”
Steve sat.
Rayburn turned the sign to OPEN seven minutes early, mostly because there was no point pretending anymore.
Outside, Briar Glen was beginning to wake.
The mountains beyond Main Street were still blue with morning, their tops caught in a low bank of clouds that had settled into the valley overnight. Across the street, the courthouse lawn shone wet with dew. A delivery truck was backed up beside the pharmacy, and farther down the block somebody was dragging a sandwich board onto the sidewalk in front of Jack’s Ice Cream.
Rayburn had watched that same stretch of street wake up thousands of times.
Not exactly the same, of course.
Nothing stayed exactly the same.
The pharmacy had changed owners four times. The hardware store had changed its sign twice and its name once. There had been a dress shop where the dog groomer was now, and before that, if Rayburn remembered correctly, a little grocery where his mother bought flour during the war.
Harper’s Chicken didn’t exist when Rayburn opened the barber shop.
Neither had half the people who now acted like Briar Glen had been built specifically for them.
Rayburn walked behind his chair and switched on the old red-and-white pole outside. The motor caught with a tired hum.
Fifty-three years.
He had replaced the motor twice.
The chair once.
The floor never.
The black-and-white tile was worn pale around the base of his station from decades of boots turning beneath a striped cape. There were grooves in the wooden armrests where nervous boys had dug their fingernails. A long crack ran across the lower corner of the mirror from the afternoon in 1987 when Charlie Beasley sneezed during a beard trim and Rayburn threw a comb hard enough to miss him by six feet.
Charlie had told that story for thirty-nine years.
The distance grew every time.
By last Christmas, Rayburn had apparently thrown a straight razor directly at his head.
Rayburn had quit correcting him.
Some stories got better when the truth stopped interfering.
The coffee maker gave a final wet cough.
“Now?” Steve asked.
Rayburn turned.
Steve pointed toward the pot.
“You're like a child.”
“I've been sitting here seven minutes.”
“Five.”
“Feels like seven.”
Ra:yburn poured two cups.
At 8:03, the bell over the door jingled and Tammy came in carrying a white paper bag from Harper’s Chicken and a gallon jug of sweet tea.
She stopped when she saw Steve.
“Lord, Rayburn. Starting with the hard cases?”
“He was waiting outside.”
“I wanted to beat the rush,” Steve said.
Tammy looked at his head.
“For what?”
Rayburn smiled into his coffee.
Steve pointed at both of them. “See, this is why people don't support local businesses.”
“You've been coming here thirty years,” Rayburn said.
“And this is how I'm treated.”
“Thirty-two,” Rayburn corrected.
Steve frowned. “What?”
“You started coming here in ninety-four. Before that you went to Jimmy's.”
“How do you know that?”
“You told me Jimmy cut your sideburns crooked.”
“He did.”
“For six months.”
“Exactly.”
“And you continued going.”
“He was two dollars cheaper.”
Tammy set the bag on the counter. “Biscuits. Donna said to tell you she would have brought them herself, but somebody must work since apparently half the town has decided Rayburn retiring is a municipal holiday.”
“It should be,” Steve said.
Rayburn opened the bag. “Tell Donna I said thank you.”
“She also said don't eat them all because she's coming over later.”
“Then she should've kept one.”
Tammy smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes.
Rayburn noticed.
People thought barbers learned secrets because customers talked.
That was only half of it.
Mostly, Rayburn learned people because he spent fifty-three years looking at them in mirrors.
A mirror showed things people didn't realize they were saying.
The way a man's eyes dropped when he mentioned his wife.
The way a boy tried not to smile when Rayburn asked about a girl.
The way somebody stared at the floor when Rayburn asked how work was going.
The way Tammy was looking around the shop now, taking inventory of things that had been there longer than she had been alive.
“You really doing it?” she asked.
“Doing what?”
“Closing.”
Rayburn took a biscuit from the bag. “That is generally what retirement means.”
“I thought maybe you'd change your mind.”
“I did.”
Tammy brightened.
“Last Thursday. Changed it right back Friday morning.”
She swatted his arm.
Rayburn laughed.
The bell rang again.
Then again.
By 8:30, there were six people in the shop and only two of them needed haircuts.
The third person who claimed to need one was Paul.
Rayburn looked at him.
“You got one Tuesday.”
Paul removed his cap. “Just clean up the back.”
“Your hair hasn't grown since Tuesday.”
“You don't know that.”
“I cut it.”
Donna, who had arrived five minutes earlier with another bag from Harper's and no intention whatsoever of returning to work anytime soon, leaned around Paul to inspect the back of his head.
“I see something.”
Paul brightened. “See?”
“Age.”
Tammy nearly dropped her coffee.
Rayburn pointed toward the door. “Both of you go back to work before somebody over there realizes Harper's is operating without adult supervision.”
“Ms. Bobbi's there,” Donna said.
“That is not what I said.”
The bell over the door jingled again.
This time it was John Prescott.
Rayburn knew John was coming before he saw him. He recognized the reflection first: tall frame in the doorway, one hand still holding the door, eyes making their automatic sweep of the room before settling on anyone in particular.
John had been doing that since he became a cop.
Probably didn't know he did it anymore.
“Well,” Donna said. “Speaking of adult supervision.”
John looked at her. “Why aren't you at work?”
“I am on break.”
“You've been here twenty minutes,” Tammy said.
Donna frowned at her. “Whose side are you on?”
John smiled and stepped farther inside.
He wasn't in uniform. Jeans, work boots, dark blue button-down with the sleeves pushed halfway up his forearms. No badge that Rayburn could see, although with John Prescott that didn't mean there wasn't one somewhere.
Rayburn looked at the clock.
“Little early for you.”
“I've been up since five.”
“That's not what I meant.”
John understood.
For years, John had come to Rayburn's every third Thursday at four-thirty. Never made an appointment. Never needed one. He'd walk in, sit down, and wait his turn like everybody else.
Same as always.
That was what he'd say.
Rayburn could have cut John Prescott's hair blindfolded.
John nodded toward the crowd. “Looks like I've got competition today.”
“You need a haircut?” Rayburn asked.
“Not particularly.”
“Then you're part of the problem.”
“I came to see you.”
“I'm right here.”
John laughed.
Tammy slid over in her chair. “Sit down. We're trying to convince him this retirement thing is stupid.”
“No, you're trying to convince him,” Steve said. “I'm supportive.”
“You showed up before he opened.”
“I wanted a haircut.”
Rayburn looked at his head again.
Steve put his cap back on.
John took the empty chair beside Tammy.
Not the one by the window.
Rayburn noticed that.
He wished he hadn't.
There were three chairs in the waiting area of Rayburn's Barber Shop. Brown vinyl, chrome legs, bought as a set from a beauty supply warehouse in Asheville sometime in the eighties. The middle one had a strip of silver duct tape covering a split in the cushion. The chair nearest the door rocked slightly if you leaned too far to the left.
The one by the window had nothing wrong with it.
Never had.
Rayburn looked away.
John's attention moved to the photographs above the mirror.
There were dozens of them.
Little boys holding certificates for their first haircut. High school football teams. Men Rayburn had known young who were now old. Men Rayburn had known old who had been dead twenty years.
One showed John at seventeen with enough hair to embarrass him for the rest of his life.
John pointed at it.
“That better not leave this building.”
“Oh, it's leaving.”
“Rayburn.”
“Thinking about blowing it up.”
Tammy stood to look.
“Oh my God.”
“Sit down,” John said.
“You had a mullet.”
“It was not a mullet.”
Donna came running.
John closed his eyes.
“It is absolutely a mullet,” Donna said.
“It was 1989.”
“That doesn't make it less of one.”
“It actually does.”
Rayburn watched them argue.
Then his eyes moved one photograph to the right.
And stopped.
The picture wasn't framed.
Just an old four-by-six tucked behind the corner of the mirror, its edges curled slightly with age.
Two young men stood in front of the barber shop.
John was one of them.
The other was Austin.
Rayburn hadn't put that photograph there for his last day.
It had been there for years.
Long enough that most people didn't notice it anymore.
John did.
The laughter faded.
John stared at the photograph.
Tammy followed his eyes.
“Is that Austin?”
John didn't answer immediately.
“Yeah,” he said.
Rayburn set his comb on the counter.
Austin Prescott had been nineteen when the photograph was taken.
He had been different from John.
Everybody said the brothers looked alike because people liked finding similarities, but Rayburn had never thought they did. John had always carried himself like he was headed somewhere. Even as a boy, there was purpose in him.
Austin wandered.
Not in a bad way.
He just seemed to notice things along the route.
He'd stop halfway down Main Street because somebody's dog was tied outside the pharmacy. Spend twenty minutes talking to an old man on a bench. Drive out toward Cedar Run because somebody told him the trout were biting and come home six hours later without ever putting a line in the water.
Austin had been easy to like.
That was part of what made it so hard for Briar Glen to stop looking for him.
And harder still when, eventually, it did.
Donna's voice was softer when she spoke again.
“I haven't seen a picture of him in years.”
John stood.
He walked to the mirror and touched the bottom corner of the photograph with one finger.
“Ninety-five,” he said.
Rayburn nodded.
“Austin came in here most Fridays back then.”
“I know.”
“No,” Rayburn said. “You don't.”
The room changed.
John turned around.
“What do you mean?”
Rayburn wished immediately that he hadn't said it.
Not because it wasn't true.
Because he had spent years deciding there was no reason to bring it up again.
Then more years wondering whether that had been cowardice dressed up as common sense.
“Austin came in most Fridays,” Rayburn said. “Usually around four. Didn't always get a haircut. Sometimes he'd just sit.”
Rayburn glanced toward the chair by the window.
There it was.
Empty.
Austin's chair.
“He'd read whatever newspaper somebody left behind. Talk when he felt like talking.”
John looked at the chair.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
There was the detective.
Clean question.
Precise.
“Friday.”
“The Friday before he disappeared?”
Rayburn nodded.
Austin had vanished the following Wednesday.
For months afterward, Wednesday had almost stopped being a day of the week. It became a dividing line.
Before Wednesday.
After Wednesday.
The last person who saw him Wednesday.
The gas station receipt from Wednesday.
The truck found Wednesday night.
Rayburn's Friday had never mattered.
It was five days earlier.
Five ordinary days.
Except Rayburn remembered that haircut.
“What happened Friday?” John asked.
Rayburn looked toward the front window.
Main Street moved along outside as if nothing had changed. A woman pushed a stroller toward the pharmacy. Somebody was parallel parking badly beside the courthouse. The clouds had begun lifting from the mountains.
Same Briar Glen.
Same street.
Same chair.
“He was late,” Rayburn said.
John waited.
“Usually came around four. That Friday it was after six. I was fixing to close.”
“What did he want?”
“A haircut.”
“Same as usual?”
“No.”
John's face changed.
“How was it different?”
“He wanted it short.”
“How short?”
“Short. Said he was tired of fooling with it.”
John said nothing.
“But that wasn't the strange part.”
Rayburn could hear Austin's voice now.
Clearer than it had any right to be after thirty-one years.
“What was the strange part?” John asked.
Rayburn looked at the empty chair.
“He asked me if I'd ever thought about leaving Briar Glen.”
John waited.
“I told him every Monday morning.”
Nobody laughed.
Rayburn swallowed.
“Austin didn't laugh either.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘No, Rayburn. I mean leaving so nobody knows where you went.’”
John's eyes stayed on him.
For several seconds, nobody in the shop moved.
Then Steve shifted in his chair.
The old vinyl squeaked beneath him.
John looked at Rayburn.
“You told the police that?”
“Yes.”
The answer came quickly enough to surprise everyone.
John frowned.
“You did?”
“Deputy came by the week Austin disappeared. Young fellow. Can't remember his name now. Asked when I'd last seen him. I told him Friday. Told him what Austin said.”
“What did he say about it?”
“Asked whether Austin seemed depressed.”
John's jaw tightened.
“I said no.”
“And?”
“He wrote something down.”
“That's it?”
“That's it.”
John turned toward the photograph again.
Rayburn understood the look.
Somewhere in the Briar Glen Police Department sat boxes from 1995. Statements. Notes. Photographs. Reports written by men who had retired, moved away or died. Hundreds of pieces of paper describing hundreds of moments that had seemed important or unimportant according to whoever happened to be holding the pen.
Rayburn had given somebody his piece.
Whether anybody had understood it was another matter.
“There was something else,” he said.
John turned back.
Rayburn went behind the counter.
The bottom drawer stuck halfway, as it always had. He pulled harder until it opened with a wooden scrape.
Inside were fifty-three years of things he had intended to deal with later.
Old appointment books.
A deck of cards missing the seven of Clubs.
Two cuff links.
Three pocket combs.
A photograph of Rayburn's wife when they were young.
A little plastic dinosaur Charli Prescott had left there sometime around 2011 and denied owning despite her initials being written across its stomach in purple marker.
Rayburn moved everything aside.
At the back was a cigar box.
John stepped closer.
“What is that?”
“Lost and found.”
“You've kept lost property in a cigar box since 1973?”
“Apparently.”
Rayburn opened it.
Coins.
Keys.
A tie clip.
A St. Christopher medal.
A guitar pick.
And a small brass key with a faded paper tag looped through its head.
Rayburn lifted it.
The tag had once been white.
Now it was the color of old newspaper.
A single number was written on it.
214.
John stopped breathing for half a second.
Rayburn noticed.
“Austin left that on the counter.”
“When?”
“Friday.”
“The same Friday?”
“Yes.”
John took the key carefully.
“You gave this to the police?”
“No.”
John looked up sharply.
“Before you start,” Rayburn said, “I didn't know it was his.”
“How did you know later?”
“I didn't. Not for sure.”
Rayburn pointed toward the tag.
“Austin had it beside his money when he paid. After he left, I found it. Thought it belonged to him, but there'd been seven people through here that afternoon. Could've belonged to any one of them.”
“Did you tell the deputy?”
“Told him there was a key I thought might've been Austin's.”
“And?”
“He asked if Austin's name was on it.”
“No.”
“He asked if I'd seen Austin use it.”
“No.”
“He asked if I knew what it opened.”
“No.”
John looked at the key.
“So he left it.”
“Apparently.”
Tammy had moved close enough to see the number.
“What does 214 mean?”
John didn't answer.
Rayburn watched his face.
“You know?”
“No.”
But the detective was awake now.
Fully.
John turned the key over in his fingers.
A plain brass key.
Thirty-one years old.
Maybe meaningless.
Maybe not.
“Why'd you keep it?” John asked.
Rayburn shrugged.
“Same reason I've got Charli's dinosaur.”
John glanced into the drawer.
“Is that hers?”
“No.”
John almost smiled.
Almost.
Then his attention returned to the key.
“What else do you remember?”
Rayburn leaned against the counter.
“Not much. He got his haircut. Paid. Left.”
“Was he alone?”
“Yes.”
“Anybody waiting outside?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No.”
“Was he scared?”
Rayburn thought about that one.
The answer mattered.
“No.”
“Angry?”
“No.”
“Upset?”
“No.”
John waited.
Rayburn looked at the chair again.
“He seemed decided.”
John's brow furrowed.
“Decided?”
“That's the best word I've got.”
Rayburn could see Austin sitting there again, nineteen years old beneath a striped cape.
Hair falling around the chair.
Too much hair.
Austin had always worn it longer than John.
Rayburn remembered asking whether some girl had broken his heart.
Austin smiled at that.
Not much.
But he smiled.
No girl.
Then Rayburn had asked why he wanted it so short.
Just time for something different.
Nothing strange about that.
Not then.
Nineteen-year-old boys changed their hair.
They talked about leaving town.
They made dramatic declarations about starting over.
Thirty-one years later, everything Austin Prescott had said during his final week sounded like prophecy.
That didn't mean it had been.
Memory was dangerous that way.
It could take an ordinary sentence and sharpen it with everything that happened afterward.
“I don't know what it meant, John.”
John looked at him.
“I know.”
“I've gone over that conversation plenty. More times than I should've.”
“I know.”
“If I'd thought—”
“I know, Rayburn.”
Something in John's voice stopped him.
Not anger.
That would have been easier.
John closed his fingers around the key.
“You told them.”
“I did.”
“You told them what he said.”
“Yes.”
“And about this.”
“Yes.”
John nodded.
“Then you did what you were supposed to do.”
Rayburn looked at him.
“Didn't feel like enough.”
“No,” John said. “It never does.”
For a moment, Rayburn saw not Detective Prescott but the twenty-two-year-old brother who had walked Main Street with Austin's photograph in his hand.
Have you seen him?
He remembered John coming through this very door.
Remembered how tired he looked.
Remembered telling him no.
John slipped the key into his shirt pocket.
“I'll sign it into evidence.”
“After thirty-one years?”
“After thirty-one years.”
“You think it'll tell you anything?”
“Probably not.”
Rayburn nodded.
John touched the pocket.
“But I've spent most of my career learning that ‘probably not’ isn't the same thing as no.”
Tammy sniffed.
Everyone looked at her.
“Allergies,” she said.
“In August?” Steve asked.
“Shut up, Steve.”
The room loosened.
Just a little.
Rayburn looked at John.
“You still here for a haircut?”
John rubbed the back of his neck.
“I told you. Don't really need one.”
Rayburn slapped the barber chair.
“Sit down.”
John looked at him.
“Rayburn—”
“Fifty-three years I've been putting up with Prescotts. You're not ruining my last day by getting sentimental.”
That got a laugh.
John sat.
Rayburn shook out the cape.
The cloth floated once before settling over John's shoulders.
He fastened it at the neck.
Their eyes met in the mirror.
“Same as always?” Rayburn asked.
John looked at him.
Then at the photograph tucked beside the mirror.
Then back at Rayburn.
“Same as always.”
Rayburn picked up his clippers.
The motor buzzed.
Hair began falling.
For the next fifteen minutes, nobody talked about Austin.
Donna went back to Harper's after Tammy reminded her for the third time that employment generally required being present at the place that employed you.
Paul left after Rayburn refused to cut his four-day-old haircut.
Steve stayed because Steve always stayed.
Tammy swept even though Rayburn told her she was doing it wrong.
Outside, Briar Glen went about its business.
Cars rolled down Main Street.
The courthouse clock marked another hour.
Somebody walked past carrying flowers.
A dog barked at a delivery truck.
Rayburn worked.
Around John's ears.
Along the neckline.
A little off the top.
Same as always.
When he finished, he held up the mirror.
John inspected the back.
“Looks good.”
“Course it does.”
John stood and reached for his wallet.
Rayburn stared at him.
“What?”
“Put that away.”
“I'm paying you.”
“No.”
“Rayburn.”
“You gonna arrest me?”
John considered it.
“Depends what you did with the seven of Clubs.”
Rayburn looked toward the drawer.
“Get out.”
John laughed.
At the door, he stopped.
His hand went to his shirt pocket.
The key.
“Rayburn.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
Rayburn nodded.
John stepped outside.
He made it halfway down the sidewalk before Rayburn called after him.
“John.”
John turned.
Rayburn stood in the doorway.
“I never thought he meant it.”
John didn't move.
“What?”
“Leaving.”
Rayburn glanced toward the empty chair by the window.
“All these years, I've wondered whether Austin was telling me what he planned to do.”
John waited.
Rayburn shook his head.
“I don't think he was.”
“Why?”
“Because a man planning to disappear doesn't ask what disappearing feels like.”
John stared at him.
Rayburn continued.
“He asks how to do it.”
Something passed across John's face.
Then it was gone.
“You really waited thirty-one years to become a detective?” John asked.
Rayburn smiled.
“I charge by the haircut.”
John shook his head and walked away.
By noon, the story of the key had almost certainly reached Harper's Chicken despite Tammy swearing on three separate occasions that she hadn't told anybody.
By 2:00, somebody sent Rayburn a retirement cake.
By 3:00, the shop was full again.
By 4:30, Rayburn had cut eleven heads of hair, accepted two pies, one bottle of bourbon he intended to pretend he hadn't received, six cards, a fishing lure, and a framed proclamation from the mayor declaring August 28 Rayburn Cole Day in Briar Glen.
“Does this mean I can park wherever I want?” Rayburn asked.
“No,” the mayor said.
“Then what good is it?”
At 5:00, nobody left.
Rayburn stood behind his chair with his arms crossed.
“We are closed.”
Nobody moved.
“Go home.”
Tammy folded her arms.
“You go home.”
“I own the building.”
“For another six minutes.”
“That's not how property works.”
Donna was crying openly now.
Unlike Tammy, she did not claim allergies.
“You can't close yet.”
“Watch me.”
“You need a speech.”
“I absolutely do not.”
Steve stood.
Rayburn pointed at him.
“If you make a speech, I'll cut the other seventeen hairs off.”
Steve sat back down.
Finally, people began filing out.
Handshakes lasted too long.
Hugs Rayburn didn't ask for happened anyway.
Ms. Bobbi kissed his cheek and told him Harper's would keep his regular booth available.
Paul promised to come see him.
Tammy was last.
She stood at the door with one hand on the frame.
“You know we're still going to bother you.”
“I assumed.”
“Donna already has your number.”
“That concerns me.”
Tammy smiled.
This time it reached her eyes.
“Happy retirement, Rayburn.”
“Thank you.”
She hugged him.
Rayburn tolerated it for approximately four seconds.
“That'll do.”
Tammy laughed against his shoulder.
Then she left.
The bell jingled.
The door shut.
And Rayburn Cole was alone in his barber shop.
He stood there listening.
For fifty-three years, silence in the shop had meant something was wrong.
Now it meant he was finished.
The clock ticked.
The refrigerator in the back room hummed.
Outside, Main Street had begun settling into evening.
Rayburn walked to the door.
Turned the lock.
Flipped the sign.
CLOSED.
Then he picked up his broom.
There was hair everywhere.
Gray mostly.
Some brown.
A few white curls.
Eleven haircuts' worth of Briar Glen scattered across the same black-and-white floor he'd been sweeping since 1973.
Rayburn worked slowly.
Under the chairs.
Around the counter.
Beneath the barber chair.
He swept past the waiting chair by the window and stopped.
Thirty-one years ago, Austin Prescott had sat there with long legs stretched in front of him, reading the sports page and making fun of Rayburn's radio.
Rayburn could still see him.
Nineteen.
Alive.
Impatient.
Certain there would always be another Friday.
Rayburn rested both hands on the broom.
“Hope you're somewhere, kid,” he said.
The empty shop gave him nothing back.
That was all right.
Rayburn had spent enough years expecting answers from people who weren't there.
He finished sweeping.
Behind the counter, he found the empty cardboard box he'd been avoiding all week.
He looked around.
Fifty-three years.
Photographs.
Clippers.
Combs.
Razors.
Certificates.
A cracked mirror.
A dinosaur that absolutely belonged to Charli Prescott no matter what she said.
Rayburn picked up the dinosaur.
He put it in the box.
Then he took John's mullet photograph from the wall.
That went in too.
“Insurance,” he muttered.
The photograph of John and Austin remained beside the mirror.
Rayburn considered it.
Then he took that one down too.
Not because he wanted to forget.
Because he didn't need the wall to remember.
He placed it carefully in the box.
Outside, the old barber pole was still turning.
Red.
White.
Red.
White.
Rayburn walked to the switch.
He rested his hand against it.
In fifty-three years, he had cut a boy's hair before his first day of school and that same man's hair before his daughter's wedding.
He had cleaned men up before job interviews.
Before court dates.
Before funerals.
He had heard confessions nobody meant to make.
He had watched boys become fathers.
Fathers become grandfathers.
He had watched people leave Briar Glen.
He had watched some come back.
And he had learned that a barber rarely knew which haircut would be the last one until years afterward.
Rayburn flipped the switch.
The pole slowed.
Red.
White.
Red.
Then stopped.
For the first time since 1973, Rayburn Cole didn't have to wonder who would be sitting in his chair tomorrow.
He picked up the cardboard box, switched off the lights and stepped onto Main Street.
Across Briar Glen, Harper's Chicken glowed beneath its red sign. The courthouse stood quiet against the mountains. Somewhere beyond downtown, Detective John Prescott had a thirty-one-year-old brass key in his pocket and another question about his brother.
Rayburn locked the door.
Then he looked through the glass one last time at the empty barber chair.
“Same as always,” he said.
And went home.
(Stories From Briar Glen is an ongoing series set in the world of Briar Glen. Some characters, locations, and mysteries may appear in future novels.)