Another sky another morning another smokestack belching smokestack smoke, one after the other until an entire lifetime is spent awaking to another sky another morning another smokestack belching smokestack smoke. In the mornings the man in the hat could smell the belching smoke. When he was a boy his father took him to the barber’s every Saturday for a trim. On the barbershop table were copies of Penthouse and Playboy, Popular Mechanics and Reader’s Digest, National Geographic and yesterday’s newspaper, all neatly piled one beside the other (‘fucking cunts, I wanna see cunts damnit’).
The barber’s glasses were too small for his face. The too-small glasses made his too-fat face look even fatter. His fingers were fat as sausages and his clothes smelled of peppermint and aftershave. While the barber trimmed the man in the hat’s hair he was busy talking to his father, who was sitting in a chair next to the sink. He was telling his father about a leprosarium he visited in Ireland made from limestone and bog-shims with an incinerator ‘for burning the leper’s clothes’ he said, behind the kitchen where the pigs and chickens were penned.
‘They’d find ends of fingers and toes, and once even a whole ear, mixed in with the feed and slop. One time they found the part of a leg from the ankle to the kneecap under the belly of a sow, wee piglets at suck on her teats’. The man in hat tried not to move his head (not an inch) less the barber shear off one of his ears or knick him with the straight-razor he kept sharp with a strop that hung from the back of the barbers’ chair.
The barber’s glasses were too small for his face. The too-small glasses made his too-fat face look even fatter. His fingers were fat as sausages and his clothes smelled of peppermint and aftershave. While the barber trimmed the man in the hat’s hair he was busy talking to his father, who was sitting in a chair next to the sink. He was telling his father about a leprosarium he visited in Ireland made from limestone and bog-shims with an incinerator ‘for burning the leper’s clothes’ he said, behind the kitchen where the pigs and chickens were penned.
‘They’d find ends of fingers and toes, and once even a whole ear, mixed in with the feed and slop. One time they found the part of a leg from the ankle to the kneecap under the belly of a sow, wee piglets at suck on her teats’. The man in hat tried not to move his head (not an inch) less the barber shear off one of his ears or knick him with the straight-razor he kept sharp with a strop that hung from the back of the barbers’ chair.
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