Her own clothes she had purchased earlier in the day from less expensive stores down the hilclass="underline" new jeans stiff and blue, a gray Orion man’s work shirt size 14½ neck and 30-inch sleeves, a camouflage war-surplus jacket, thick white cotton tube socks, short lightweight moccasin-toed boots. Her feet felt good in the socks and boots.
Her clothes had cost $49.23. For $4.98 she had also purchased from an army-surplus store an Italian NATO knapsack which was made of khaki and was nothing like the iridescent nylon backpacks but small and lightweight, just big enough to hold the smallest sleeping bag she could find plus a few other items such as a Boy Scout knife, a Scripto pencil, a pocket notebook, a comb, a can of neat’s-foot oil, a box of candles, and a small bag of food. Although there was a wine-and-cheese shop and a natural-food store down the street, she had gone to the supermarket and bought a wedge of American cheese and a small loaf of rye bread.
The pleasant encased feeling of the socks and boots on her feet made her think of something. This is the first time I have worn a shoe or a boot or anything but bedroom slippers in — how long? Three years, I think.
Many of the young people on the sidewalk wore T-shirts stamped with the names and crests of universities: Stanford, Ohio State, Tulane. Some of them seemed too young to be in college. Some too old. It was hard to tell. Were they fifteen or twenty-five? She felt like an old person to whom all young people look the same age.
As the jacket warmed in the sun, it gave off a pleasant smell of dry goods and gun oil. Perhaps it was the can of neat’s-foot oil, which she had unscrewed and taken a sniff of. From the deep pockets of the jacket she removed several articles and lined them up on the bench beside her: the can of neat’s-foot oil, five candles, the spiral notebook, her wallet, the calendar, her driver’s license, and a map (Picturesque Walks around Linwood). She looked at the calendar and the date of the expiration of her driver’s license. She made a calculation. Her driver’s license had expired at least three years ago, no doubt longer.
She gazed at the photograph on the license. She read the name. Earlier in the Gulf rest room she had looked from the photograph to the mirror then back to the photograph. The hair was shorter and darker in the photograph, the face in the mirror was thinner, but it was the same person.
She uttered her name aloud. At first it sounded strange. Then she recognized it as her name. Then it sounded strange again but strange in a different way, the way an ordinary word repeated aloud sounds strange. Her voice sounded rusty and unused. She wasn’t sure she could talk.
A youth wearing a Michigan State T-shirt sat down on the bench next to her display of articles. He looked good-natured and dumb. She decided to practice on him.
“Michigan State,” she said. It came out not quite as a question and not quite as a statement. “You—?” This sounded more like a question.
“Oh no. Linwood High. I play for the Wolves.”
“The Wolves. Oh yes.” She noticed the banner. “Yes, but is that permitted?”
“Is what permitted?”
“The Michigan State T-shirt.”
That was a slight blunder. For a moment she had imagined that there might be regulations preventing unauthorized persons from wearing university T-shirts, perhaps a semi-official regulatory agency. In the next instant she saw that this was nonsense.
But the youth did not see anything unusual. “You can get them for three and a half from Good’s Variety.”
“Are the Wolves—?” She paused. She was making two discoveries. One was that you didn’t have to talk in complete sentences. People didn’t seem to need more than a word or two to make their own sense of what you said. The other discovery was that she could talk as long as she asked questions. Making a statement was risky.
“If we win this one, we’ll be state champs, single A,” he said.
“That’s—” she said and stopped. But he didn’t notice. He must have been waiting for somebody, for suddenly he was up and on his way.
“Have a nice—” he said, but he turned his face away.
“What?” she asked in a very clear question. “Have a nice what?” But he was gone.
At first, after she had changed her clothes and sat on the bench, she had watched passersby to see if they noticed anything unusual about her. They didn’t or at least gave no sign of it. She had felt like Rip Van Winkle coming down into town after a twenty-year nap. Surely dogs would bark at her and children would hoot and throw rocks. But nothing happened. She began to feel reassured. Only her hair felt like Rip’s. It was heavy and long and still damp after the rain, weighing on her head and falling down inside her collar. It was too thick for her pocket comb. Her scalp itched.
Three women had gone into the barbershop and sat in the chair of the woman barber and got haircuts. One got a shampoo. When the third woman left, she felt confident enough to cross the street, open the door of the barbershop, go directly to the empty chair, and sit down.
“How you want it, honey?” asked the woman barber.
She had rehearsed what she was going to say. Or ask. “Could you cut it first, then wash it, then dry it?”
“Okay, honey. But how you want it?”
Brief panic. Then she saw something. “Like hers?” Though she had wanted to make a statement, her voice rose in a question.
“Like hers?”
She nodded toward the movie poster on the sidewalk. The poster showed an actress with blond hair pulled to one side. The movie was Three Days of the Condor. It must have been an old movie. The poster was faded and torn. Perhaps the theater was closed.
“You got nice thick hair. You’d be a honey blonde like her if you stayed out in the sun.” The barber was a big mountain woman. She said nahce for nice and hahr for hair. The strong hands felt good on her scalp as they grabbed her heavy hair. She felt better every time a hunk of it was sheared off and hit the floor. The feel of the woman’s fingers on her scalp made her eyes stare. A wall of glass bricks across the street glittered in the sunlight. A sign above the door written in script read Le Club.
When the woman barber finished, she swung her around to face the mirror and held a hand mirror behind her the way the man barber did for his customers. The steel base of the chair was ringed by windrows of dark blond hair.
Now she did look something like the actress except that her hair was cut higher in back, like a boy’s, and showed more of her neck.
“Nice.” She risked a statement. “Could you wash it now?” She noticed a basin.
“Come on over here, honey.” The woman’s eyes slid past her. “Don’t I know you? Have you been working here summers?” The woman barber couldn’t quite place her. Her unfashionable clothes made her look like a local. On the other hand, perhaps she talked like a tourist.
The woman barber’s eyes reminded her of something she had forgotten. Strangers often thought they knew her. Was it her ordinary good looks or was it a way she had of listening to people and following them like a good dancer that made her seem familiar?
“You from around here?”
“No, I’m from—” She stopped. “Oh, by the way, what is today?”
“Wednesday.”