?I read that Dr. King thought about it a lot. For him, it seemed to be a means of guaranteeing his legacy. I doubt he looked forward to it, though, as some have written.
?I saw James Meredith get shot in person. Nineteen sixty-six, in Hernando, Mississippi. He was shot in the stomach. He had on a striped short-sleeved shirt and it literally turned red down the front. Meredith crawled to the side of the road on his hands and knees before anyone could help him. It wasn?t inspiring for me to watch.
?I?m more fatalistic about it now though. I try to deal with it openly, even within my family. I can joke about it going into some big rally outside of Nashville or out of state. In Nashville itself, I feel pretty safe.?
?Fear is the one thing that has kept the blackman down so long in the South.
?My grandmother used to tell us a story?and she was a strict, card-carrying Baptist lady who didn?t exaggerate, much less lie?she said that in plantation days, the people were so terrified of whites that they put their heads in cooking pots or the wood stove before they would dare to pray out loud.
?I remember too, there was always this phrase around when I was growing up??What if the white people find out??
?And that?s why, above all, a black leader cannot show fear? Of course I?m a lot braver with my thirty-seven- year-old body than I was with the one I had when I was twenty-five or so. (Laughs.) You know me, Ochs.?
But I didn?t really know him. Not really.
Nashville, June 25
Marblehead Horn, a sentimental small businessman (greengrocer), had cultivated four, proud, jungle-thick inches of hair directly over his son?s skull. He cared for it like a private gardener for thirteen years, then gave his young son the choice of whether or not to keep it. Jimmie Horn kept it.
This haircut wasn?t the modern, natural look, but an old-time style from the early days of Reconstruction Nashville. From the unpromised land days just before Tennessee passed the very first of the Jim Crow laws. It was near the shape of a kidney bean; but singular-looking; and somewhat impressive on Jimmie.
People generally liked ?the burr,? as it was called. I did.
One eastern political consultant named Santo Massimino didn?t like it at all. He told Jimmie it would lose him all of eastern Tennessee, and be was right. He asked him to get it barbered before he started his campaign for the United States Senate. He assured the mayor that he knew how hard it would be for him, and Jimmie Horn assured him that he didn?t know any such thing.
Barber Robinson was cute in a bizarre way. Like an old, old blackbird, close up, with its little gray-black crew cut.
He played his razor strap with an ancient but gleaming straight razor. He rocked the spindly knees lost somewhere in his baggy trousers. Gummed his old yellowbone teeth over and over. ?Yesss indeedee,? he finally spoke. ?My main baby is back in Nigeria.?
Jimmie Horn smiled a crooked smile and slapped the old-timer?s butt as they passed like familiar dancing partners in midshop. ?Your baby is getting old before his time.? The mayor affected another friendly grin. ?I have gray hair ? uh,? he was setting up a punch line or sad truth, ?on my balls.?
The old man roared and tossed his little head back as an afterthought. ?If you be old, Jimmie Horn, I mus? be daid.?
He hustled over to his money drawer, and brought back shiny black-handled scissors to trim the mayor?s hair. He smiled with his tiny black-bird?s head low to the red leather of the barber?s chair. ?Regular trim??
Horn shook the burr in reply. He fluttered his lips. He coughed into his fist. ?Have you ever heard,? he asked the old man, ?of a political consultant??
Barber Robinson gave the question some thought. ?Nuh, I haven?t,? he finally concluded.
Rarely looking up, preferring to watch ambitious weevils crawl walls in a lidded mayonnaise jar, the mayor told his barber about Santo Massimino?s request.
When the ?bulljive? was completed, Horn watched the barber shuffle away to sit in a straight-backed chair by the door. He looked out to the street. He looked over the backs of two autographed photos of Horn on display in his front window. Over the back of an old Vitalis poster. Over a new Afro-sheen one. And a new red, white, and blue basketball reputedly autographed by the Memphis Tams.
The old man relit a Camel stub off his countertop and smoked as if it was stinging him.
Potbellied little boys were playing stickball past his face out the door. It was buggy summer. Jimmie Horn thought that the feel of the room was like a veterans? hospital.
Rubbing his palm back and forth over his short peppercorn hair, the old man said, very softly, ?Shee-it.? Then, flicking his butt to the middle of the dirt sidewalk, he said, ?Fuck me in the rear end.?
Still ignoring the mayor, shaking to the naked eye, the old barber stood rigidbacked and began patting talcum powder up and down his skinny, knobbed arms. He started another Camel.
Then quickly saved it, back on the counter by the Morobine. He carefully turned on the Zenith and the protruding orange tubes blinked, blinked, then caught.
He swiped at a pin-striped bib and faced the mayor with a fierce, smothering look about his eyes. With redness and tears. ?Shee-it in my pants,? he said.
Jimmie Horn nodded. Then he looked straight ahead at the chalky mirror.
He saw the burr. The familiar, friendly burr. Not a kidney bean. Not a vote obstructor.
He recalled photographs featuring the burr. Reflections of it. Its shadow at night: his furry hat.
