Only the Washed

     Charlie bounded through the barbershop door and stamped his galoshes on the rubber doormat inside. It was snowing, and he was bundled in a navy-blue sweater with a matching snowcap and mittens.  A blob of snow had collected atop the cap. It made him look like a fuzzy, blue snow cone standing in the doorway. He was humming Jingle Bells because it was almost Christmas. It was one of the few times during the year that he saw his father smile.  They were going to decorate a tree for the barbershop, and Charlie had looked forward to putting the tree up since October.

“Where’ve you been?” the barber demanded when Charlie came in.

“Just playing down the street,” the boy lied. “I was building a snow fort.”

The barber knew he had just come from playing in the park across the street.  He had seen him through the barbershop window.

“Have you been playing with those Mexican kids again?” the barber pressed.

“No, sir,” Charlie lied a second time.  He knew the trouble he was bringing on, but he couldn’t stop himself.  Tears had come into his eyes and his voice became shaky.  “I was building a snow fort.  I wasn’t even in the 
park.”

“You’re lying,” the barber accused.  “You know where liars go.  How many times do I have to tell you I don’t want you playing with those Mexican kids?”

Charlie stood in the doorway with tears in his eyes.  He had been caught in his lie, and he understood what would happen next.  The barber was a severe man whose stern, blue eyes and stark white hair gave testament to his belief in the axiom “spare the rod and spoil the child”.  His hands were large but moved with astonishing dexterity, whether using the razor strap or a scissors and comb.

“Come here,” the barber ordered.

Charlie crept forward as the barber took up a razor strap that hung from the chair’s armrest.

“Take off your mittens,” he instructed.

Charlie removed his mittens and then timidly held out his upturned palms. He knew what was expected already.  It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten the razor strap.

“Two for lying,” his father said, bringing the strap down across the boy’s palms twice and with full force.  “And two more for playing with the Mexicans.”

Charlie only cried out at the last stroke.  He knew showing weakness would cause the punishment to go on longer.

“Tonight you better ask forgiveness in your prayers,” the barber said.  “Now help me decorate this tree.”

Charlie’s father was the barber.  They lived alone in a two-bedroom house attached to the back of the barbershop because his father had bought the place cheap.  Charlie’s mother had left soon after.  She couldn’t bear the thought of living behind a barbershop the rest of her life.  The shop stood right smack on Main Street with First National Bank on one side and Tolbert’s Rx on the other.

The boy spent most of his days with his father. His job was to sweep up between haircuts.  Sometimes a customer would slip him a nickel on the way out, and when this happened Charlie would run next door to the Rx to buy himself some gum or a piece of candy.  On days business was slow, Charlie would sometimes be allowed to play outside.

At closing time Charlie and his father would slip through a little door that took them into a quiet dining room.  They would eat a little bread and soup together in silence. Sometimes, if business had been good, they would share a slice of cheese. After the meal, the barber would spout passages from the Bible across the table. The boy would sit in silence, listening to the clock ticking on the wall, until his father had finished his nightly sermon. Occasionally, he was allowed to watch television before bed.  His favorite show was the Lone Ranger, and it was one of the few programs his father let him watch besides the evangelists.

“Did you see the ornament for the top?” the barber asked.  He had started decorating the tree already.  O’ Holy Night blared from the radio behind the cash register.  It was nearly closing time.

Charlie found the misplaced ornament and pointed it out.  His father had placed the same ornament at the top of their Christmas tree for as long as he could remember.  It was a white lace and plaster affair that was supposed to resemble Jesus.  When you plugged it in, a tiny bulb lit up behind the head, illuminating the brass halo.  Charlie thought it looked a lot like a bearded baby, and he wondered why they couldn’t have a Santa Claus like they did at the bank next door.

“Have you ever seen a more perfect likeness of the True Redeemer?” the barber crowed, placing Jesus atop the tree.

“Can we get a Santa next year?” Charlie braved.

The barber gazed sternly at his child from two ice-blue eyes, his red lips pursed under a wisp of white mustache.  His shock of white hair trembled at the thought of replacing the All Mighty Savior with a Santa.

“Santa is nothing compared to the one True Redeemer, Charlie,” he admonished.  “You know Santa is a falsehood.  Jesus died to save us all.  That’s something a thousand Santas couldn’t do.”

Charlie still hadn’t figured out what kind of trouble people could get into that they would need someone dying to save them. He thought about the Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger rode around on his white horse saving people all the time, but he never died doing it.  Charlie couldn’t understand why someone would have to die to save anyone.

The barber stood back and was admiring his tree when the shop door opened and a stooped man in jeans, a bolo tie and a Stetson hat shuffled in.  He looked like an old turtle dressed up for a rodeo.

“Getting ready for Christmas?” the old man shouted.

“Yep. You a paying customer today or just here to shoot the bull?”

The barber always said this to his customers, but Charlie had never seen any of them actually shoot a bull.

“Need a little off the sides,” the old man said.  He took off his Stetson and coat, shook the snow from them and then hung them on the coat rack near the door.  Four or five coarse hairs bristled among the freckles on his head.  They appeared to be standing at attention while over each of his ears two white tufts looked to be making a hasty retreat.

“Well, set her down here, Buck, and we’ll see if we can’t lower those ears some.”

The old man shuffled to the chair, yanked up on his pant legs and sat down.  The barber swooped a white bib around his customer’s neck and draped it over his knees.  He took up his comb and scissors and began trimming what he could.

“Sure is a nice tree you got there,” the old man observed.

“Charlie and me picked it up last night,” the barber said.

“So what’s Santa bringing you this year?” the old man asked, craning his creased neck Charlie’s way so the barber could get behind an ear.  Charlie only shrugged.

“He don’t believe in Santa anymore,” the barber said.  “He’s getting too big to believe in that fairytale stuff, aren’t you Charlie?”

“My laws,” the old man guffawed.  “And I don’t suppose you believe in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy neither, do you?”

Charlie shook his head to indicate he’d outgrown them, too.  For a moment no one said anything.

“Time of year sure does remind me how lucky we are to be saved,” the customer clucked, suddenly.  Charlie’s father said amen and wiped some hairs out of his comb.  Charlie pretended to read a magazine.

“I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t of found Jesus,” the old man continued.

A heavyset migrant woman swaddled in a black trench coat marched past the barbershop window then. Five smaller bundles with legs scurried behind her, sloshing through the snow on their way to the Rx next door.  The old man had seen them and he whistled low through his teeth as they went by.

“One thing I can’t figure out, though,” he said in his best tone of perplexity. “Everything in heaven is supposed to be white and clean, right?”

“White as the pure snow,” the barber agreed.

“Well.  Then what becomes of people like that?”

“People like what?”

“You know, like that woman just walked by and her dark-skinned children.  If everything is white in heaven, what becomes of the likes of them?”

Charlie turned a page in his magazine and listened intently.

“That’s an easy one!” the barber exclaimed.

“Well, tell me,” the old man said.  “Cause I can’t figure it out for the life of me.”

Charlie’s father stopped working, the comb and scissors unemployed in his hands now.  “It’s like that story about the Indian chief,” he began.

The old man closed his eyes in order to listen better.

“It happened a long time ago down in Jackson County. A certain preacher converted the local Indian chief to Jesus. It took a lot of coaxing, but that old chief finally agreed to go down into the river to be baptized.”

“Laws! And a chief at that!” the old man exclaimed.

“Well, listen,” the barber said.  “Not long after that people started to notice something different about the chief.  At first no one could put a finger on it.  After a while there was no mistaking it, though.  The old redskin was turning whiter and whiter as the years passed. By the time he died and was laid to rest, they say he was as white as my little tow-headed Charlie over there, white as the pure driven snow.”

Charlie blinked at the reference to himself, but only his pale forehead and curly white hair revealed themselves from behind his magazine.

“Soon the rest of the tribe begged for baptism,” the barber went on.  “They all went into the waters of baptism, and what do you know?  One by one they all become white, too.  That’s what I think becomes of people like that.  All they have to do is accept Jesus and they’ll be made to fit right in.  Only the washed shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The old man sat with his mouth pinched shut and his eyes open wide as if the mysteries of the Universe had just been revealed to him. Silence ensued until the shink of the scissors at work in the barber’s hands could be heard again.

“Laws!” the old man finally blurted.  “Imagine that!”

The barber whisked the bib from the old man’s lap, careful to not let any stray hairs land on his clothes.  Charlie gave up his magazine and went for the broom.  Before he could begin sweeping, the old man stopped him and pressed a fifty-cent piece in his hand.

“Well, I know one thing.  Your tow-headed boy here is gonna have no trouble getting saved.  He’s as white as the Good Lord himself.”

The barber smiled in agreement, and the old man took up his coat and hat at the door and shuffled out.

“Well,” the barber said when his customer was gone.  “What do you think you’ll do with all that cash?”

Charlie stared at the money.  It was more than he’d ever held on to before.

“That’s your biggest tip ever, I believe. Why don’t you run next door to Tolbert’s and get you something.  Just don’t let me catch you playing with those Mexicans no more.”

*          *           *           *

Charlie bounded outside. The air was cold and snow crunched under his galoshes. He took long strides, clutching the half-dollar greedily. He was wondering what he could buy with so much money and didn’t notice the three migrant kids mulling about in front of Tolbert’s.  They were all older than Charlie by a few years, and they were punching and pushing each other around.  When they saw Charlie, they left off of each other to watch him go into the store.

Inside, a large woman in a black overcoat stood at the pharmacy counter, two small children huddled next to her, little brown faces framed in fur-lined snow hoods.  Charlie walked past them and went down the candy isle.  He poked around but couldn’t find anything worth spending his new half dollar on.  He wandered up and down the isles checking price tags whenever he saw something interesting.  He had almost decided to just save his money when he came across a shelf with little Christmas ornaments.

A plastic Santa caught his eye first.  The red hat and big black boots were painted on.  It was only forty-five cents.  Charlie thought he would get it until he saw the ornament on the shelf above.  This one was a plastic Jesus.  It cost as much as the Santa.  A small brass hook protruded from the Savior’s head where a little loop of fishing line hung, and Charlie decided his father would like it and want to hang it on their tree.  He carried it carefully to the register and handed his half-dollar to the girl behind the counter.  Then he scuttled out the door.

“What you got there?” a voice bawled when he stepped outside.  It was one of the boys who had been roughhousing outside.

“Yeah, what is that?” another one brayed.

Then all three boys swarmed him at once.  Charlie didn’t know what to say.  He was much smaller than them and he felt afraid.  Then he remembered what his father had said about Jesus and how the old customer had said he, Charlie, would have no trouble being saved on account of how white he was.  He imagined Jesus riding up on a big white horse, coming to his rescue, just like the Lone Ranger.

“It’s Jesus,” he suddenly blurted.

The boys looked at each other in wonder.  Finally one of them said, “Like hell it is.”

“It’s a Christmas ornament.  Of Jesus!” Charlie blurted again -- just in case they hadn’t understood him the first time.

“That ain’t no Jesus!” the bigger boy exclaimed.  He was darker than the other two and his eyes were small slits in a wide, brown face.

“It is so Jesus!” Charlie insisted.

“Jesus ain’t no white man,” another boy scoffed.  He pointed a finger in the direction of Charlie’s ornament.  “That is definitely a gringo.”

The three boys laughed, and Charlie laughed with them.  He thought the whole thing was a joke because everyone knew Jesus was white.  The bigger boy with the small eyes suddenly shoved him.

“Who told you Jesus was white?” the other boys asked in unison.

“My father told me,” Charlie said.  He felt he was about to cry. “My father says Jesus is white as the pure snow and only the washed can get into heaven.  You ain’t white, so you’ll have to beg Jesus to wash you and change you to white so you can get in!”

As soon as he said it, he knew he shouldn’t have.  The bigger boy threw him to the ground.  The other two pounced on him and they all began punching him.  Charlie was on his back.  If he tried to turn away from the barrage his face became buried in the snow.  He was crying and the boys above him were hollering and wailing: “Jesus ain’t no white man!  There weren’t no gringos where he come from!”

Charlie’s father heard the ruckus and stepped out of his barbershop. He looked toward the Rx and saw the three boys huddled in the snow, arms pumping up and down.  He trotted through the snow to see what was the matter and then saw Charlie under the heap.

“Charlie,” he called out.  “Don’t let them heathens get the better of you!”

Charlie only tried to curl up into a ball.

“Charlie!” his father screamed.  “Get up and show them boys a lesson.  Don’t take that kind of treatment from no dirty Mexicans.”

The migrant boys paid no attention but kept to their business of thrashing the kid who thought Jesus was white.  After a minute the large woman in the black overcoat stepped out of the Rx, her two smallest children clinging to her coattails.

“Dejen eso, ninos!” she cried and trudged over to the tangle of boys.  She hoisted the larger one up by the coat collar. “Stop that!” she cried again.  “Que estas haciendo?”  Then, turning to her oldest son, she said: “Paul!  What in the Lord’s name are you doing?”  When she had his attention, she dived back into the pile and hauled up another child. “Franky!  Has vuelto loco?”  The third boy, realizing he was now fighting alone, stood of his own accord.

“Do you three mind telling me what you are doing?  You’ve hurt him.  Pobrecito!”  She pointed to Charlie, who still cowered in the snow, arms crossed over his face.

“Poor boy?” her oldest son complained.  “You don’t know what he said, mamma!  He said Jesus was white!”

“Yeah. And he said we ain’t going to heaven ‘cause we ain’t white,” another boy whined.  “He said we’d have to get washed to get in.”

The woman shook her head and slapped each boy in turn.  “You boys know better than that,” she shouted.  “I’ve taught you better than that!  Now lets get home.  Apudense!  And not a word of this to your papa.”

She turned and slogged down the sidewalk.  Her children followed, the older boys hanging back, skulking.  When they were far enough off, Charlie sat up and brushed the snow from his hair.  His nose was bleeding and he saw his father standing over him. He picked himself up and they walked to the barbershop together.  The barber said nothing, and Charlie began to wonder if there even was such a thing as Jesus or the Lone Ranger.  He had been saved by a woman who would have to be washed to get into heaven.  No one else had come to help.

When they reached the barbershop, his father went inside. Charlie hung back on the sidewalk alone. He realized he was still clutching the little ornament he had bought, and he tried to make sense of what the boys had said about Jesus not being white.  He held up the ornament and gazed at it in wonder. Then he hurried down the street without bothering to tell his father where he was going.

*            *             *             *

It was getting dark when he caught up with them.  The bigger boys who had beaten him were running circles around their mother, throwing snowballs.  The smaller children followed close behind, little red galoshes stamping to keep up. Soon they all turned into a trailer park where many of the migrants lived.

Charlie followed them, careful not to be seen.  The family trooped up a set of porch steps and tumbled into a brown trailer.  Charlie waited in the street to make sure none of them would come back out.  When a light came on inside and glowed through a carport window, a sudden urge to look in overwhelmed him.  Charlie crept closer, quietly.  An old metal drum sat under the lit window, and he climbed up on it.  He was just tall enough to see inside.

Two boys sat at a kitchen table. An older man was with them. He was smiling and saying something to the younger ones that Charlie couldn’t make out.  The boys began to laugh and then they suddenly bolted from the table.  The man, who looked like an older version of the boys, leaped up and tackled them both in one sudden swoop.  Charlie thought the younger ones were in some kind of trouble until he heard them laughing.  He had never seen a grown man tickle children before.

“Dejen eso, ninos!” a woman’s voice called from another room.  Charlie couldn’t understand her, but the man must have because he stood and helped the younger ones to their feet.  Then the boys threw their arms around him and cried, “Papa!”

They all went into a different part of the trailer where Charlie could no longer see them, so he turned his attention to their kitchen.  A string of brightly colored vegetables hung from one wall. They were yellow and green and red.  Charlie had never seen such a thing before and he wondered what it could be.  After a minute, he noticed the portrait above their table.  It was a picture of a dark-skinned man with a beard.  A white halo hovered over the man’s head and his arms were extended out from his sides. His palms had red streaks painted on them. He was naked from the waist up and appeared to be floating in air, a wooden cross behind him.  The face appeared sad but familiar. It took Charlie a moment to realize that his father owned a similar picture, but in his father’s version the man was white and had fierce, blue eyes.

Charlie heard laughter from somewhere inside the trailer again.  Then he heard a woman’s voice, singing.  He couldn’t understand the words, but he thought the voice was beautiful.

“Feliz Navidad,” the woman sang while Charlie stared at the dark-skinned Jesus on the wall. Suddenly he felt an urge to climb through the window and become part of the family inside. He desperately wanted to be hugged by the man who had made the boys laugh. But when he leaned up closer to the window, the barrel under him tipped and he came crashing down.

Instantly a porch light came on and a face appeared at the back door.  It was the man who had been sitting at the table with the boys.  He saw Charlie lying in the carport.

“What are you doing?” the man demanded.  “What are you doing there?”

Charlie was crying, mostly from the shock of falling but also at being discovered.

“What are you doing there?” the man said again.  He approached Charlie, who had made it to his feet by then, and the woman came out of the trailer without her black coat on.

“What is it, Juan?” she asked.

“A boy,” he answered.  “He knocked over the barrel.  It’s just a boy.”

She joined her husband and they stood over Charlie, their dark eyes seeking some explanation.

“Who are you?” the woman asked.

Charlie couldn’t stop crying.  He had developed the hiccoughs now and couldn’t say anything.  He sniffled and wiped his nose and held out the little white Jesus in his hand. The woman recognized him then.

“You’re the boy from the store,” she said.  “Why are you here?”

Charlie continued to hold out the plastic Jesus because he didn’t know 
what else to do.  The man and woman stared at it for a moment.  Then Juan took it.  He handed it to his wife.

“He’s giving you a present,” the man said.

The woman took the ornament.  She held it up in the porch light and smiled. “We have to give you something,” she said.

“Wait here,” the man said to Charlie.  “I’ll get something.”

He went back into the trailer and returned a minute later, carrying a small statue.  He handed it to the boy.  It was another Jesus, but this one had dark skin and wore a brown robe.

“Merry Christmas,” Juan said to the boy.

“Feliz Navidad,” his wife said.

Charlie held his new Jesus and finally stopped crying.

“Now, let’s call your parents,” the woman said.

“No!” Charlie howled suddenly.

The man and woman looked at each other.

“I don’t live far,” Charlie lied.  “I just live around the corner.”

“Well, goodbye then,” Juan said.

“Merry Christmas,” the woman said.

Charlie walked home slowly in the cold night.  He wasn’t in any hurry to get there.  He knew his father would be angry, and he knew that he’d get the razor strap again.

As he walked, Charlie gazed at his new Jesus under the passing street lamps. He began to wonder what color Jesus might really be.  Then he wondered what he, Charlie, might look like if Jesus had to turn him brown before taking him into heaven.  It might be that way, he thought.  You might not have to get washed at all.  Charlie had almost made up his mind that it probably didn’t matter what color you were to begin with when he saw his father gazing from the barbershop window like some frightening mannequin, his shock of white hair glowing in the Christmas light from behind, his cold, blue eyes waiting.