The security guard held the card between two fingers as if it were made of glass. It was a small rectangle of yellow cardboard, soft at the corners, with a faded handwritten date. He is a broad, quiet man of about fifty named Mr. Pruitt, and he had been standing at the edge of the reception hall all afternoon, behind the senator, with his hands folded. Now he stepped forward, and the room, which had been laughing at a joke of the senator, went still. He said, “Senator, with respect. May I say something?”
Reginald, the state senator and my brother in law, turned with his champagne flute in his hand. He is a tall, handsome man with a perfect smile. The smile slipped. He said, “Pruitt, this is not the time.” Mr. Pruitt said, “No, sir. I believe it is the only time.” He held up the card. “Eleven years ago I was homeless in Mobile. I slept in a car behind the bus station for most of a winter. I had lost my job, my wife, and my self respect. I walked past a barber shop on Dauphin Street every day, and I never went in.”
He turned the card over. “One morning, the first Monday of the month, a young man standing in the door called out to me. He said, Sir, haircuts are free today. Come on in. I said I could not pay. He said, That is the point. I said I looked terrible. He said, Everybody looks terrible until they sit in the chair.” A small laugh rippled through the room and died. the voice of Mr. Pruitt thickened. “I sat down. He wrapped a cape around me and cut my hair. He shaved me with a hot towel. He talked to me for forty minutes like I was a man.”
A free haircut for a stranger on a cold Monday may be the first kindness he has been given in a year, and he will carry it in his wallet for the rest of his life.
My son Darius, who had been standing near the buffet in his good gray suit, stared at the floor. I could see the muscles in his jaw. He has never once mentioned it, the free haircuts, or the thousands of men who sat in his chair on the first Monday of each month over twelve years. We knew only that he gave something back. We did not know how much. Mr. Pruitt went on, “When I stood up and looked in the mirror, I did not know myself. I looked like a person someone might hire. And he told me, There is a job fair on Thursday. Here is a card for it.”
He held up the yellow card. “This is the card he gave me. It has a date on it, and the number of a man who runs a security company. I went to the job fair in a borrowed tie. I got hired that Thursday. Within three years I was a team supervisor. Four years ago I was assigned to the protective detail of a state senator.” He looked at Reginald. “I have kept this card in my wallet for eleven years. I have never told you where I got my start, because I did not think you would care.”
the face of Reginald was a study. He lowered the glass slowly to the table. He said, “Pruitt. I had no idea.” Mr. Pruitt said, “No, sir. And I am not telling you to shame you. I am telling you because you said a barber is a man with a pair of scissors. Senator, a barber is the reason I am standing here protecting you. A barber is a man who looked at a stranger sleeping in his car and saw a human being.” He turned to my son. “Darius, I owe you my life. I should have said so years ago. I was ashamed.”
My son crossed the floor. He was crying openly now, and so was I. He put his arms around the older man, who wept into his shoulder. The room had begun to murmur, and then someone began to applaud, and then everyone did. My brother in law stood among them like a man who had walked into a wall. After a long time he approached, hesitantly, with his hand extended. He said, “Darius, I am sorry. I have been a fool.” My son took it. He said, “Uncle Reggie, come see the shop sometime. The first Monday. Bring your own comb.”
He did come. In November, on the first Monday, in a plain shirt, without a driver. He sat in the waiting area among forty men for two hours and watched my son work. He did not give a speech. He swept the floor when it needed sweeping and fetched coffee for an old fellow in a wheelchair. At the end of the day he asked Darius if he could have a cut himself. Darius wrapped the cape around his shoulders and said, “Same rules as everyone, Senator. It is free, and you have to say thank you.”
Mr. Pruitt stayed after the party and helped us carry chairs to the cars. At the curb he took out the yellow card once more and held it up to the porch light. He said that he had thought for years about writing a letter, but that he never knew where to send it. Then he laughed, a deep warm laugh, and said the answer had been standing in front of him all along, in a gray suit, eating a plate of potato salad. My son laughed too.
Reginald introduced a bill in the spring, a small one, to provide a tax credit for barbers and stylists who give free services to the homeless. It passed unanimously. Mr. Pruitt stood behind him at the signing, in his black suit, with the yellow card in his breast pocket. When the cameras came, the senator stepped aside and pulled the guard forward, and told the reporters to take his picture. Then he put a hand on the shoulder of Mr. Pruitt, and said, loud enough for the room, “This man is a hero. Write that down.”
