Blotches and Flay

The midday sun cut a furrow in the man in the hat’s head, just below his hairline and above his brow. As it was ten past eight, he stropped his razor against the scabbard of his trousers, and holding his face in the palm of his left hand ran the razor a hairs-width from his face. When he was a boy a Jehovah’s Witness told him that shaving encouraged hair growth, so if he wanted smooth skin he best put off shaving until he was well into his twenties. The man in the hat, thinking this incurably stupid, and having little time for witnessing and handing out pamphlets, shaved until his skin was red, and then applied a balm that claimed to do away with irritableness, flaying and blotches. The Jehovah’s Witness left behind a Bible, a wooden pencil case and three dollars in nickels when he left to go witnessing again. He stayed in town for a fortnight preparing pamphlets and waiting for the shoemaker to remove a nail from the heel of his shoe. He had to shift his pamphleteer’s bag from one hip to the other, mindful of the nail in his shoe, leaving him little time for homilies and witnessing. He claimed that Birkenstocks with Mayflower buckles were for the modest, preferring a two-eyelet loafer with perforated wingtips and calfskin liners.