Ryan Donahue
Jeremiah’s small barbershop in the center of town was the primary destination for most residents. Although primarily intended for men’s and boy’s haircuts, the shop catered to the town’s women and girls as well, especially in the warm summer months. Because of this, Jeremiah had plenty of experience in working with the hair of the female gender. Two of his regular clients were the Wainwright twins, Alyssa and Ashlynn, who had incredibly long and beautiful light brown hair. Though the twin sisters came to Jeremiah’s shop every few months for trims, their long tresses, most often tied in two braids, hung around their knees in graceful waves.
At these quadannual trims, Jeremiah would seat the twins next to each other in his two barber chairs, and then, one at a time, he would carefully cut around one inch of soft locks off of Alyssa’s and Ashlynn’s magnificent manes. Frequently, Jeremiah would then carefully braid the twins’ hair into two plaits each, tied off with bright silk ribbons. Their mother Mrs. Wainwright would look on from the waiting bench and engage in conversation with Jeremiah while he worked. This ritual continued through Alyssa’s and Ashlynn’s adolescent and teenage years without major interruption.
But one day, just a few weeks after the regular trim, Jeremiah heard the bell on his shop door ring. Turning to greet the incoming customer, Jeremiah was surprised to Mrs. Wainwright and the twins, the latter of whom were standing unusually close together and appeared to be wincing in pain.
“Mrs. Wainwright, I didn’t expect you and Alyssa and Ashlynn for a few more months.” Jeremiah said in confusion. Mrs. Wainwright sighed and gestured to the twins.
“Well, Jeremiah, this is an unusual circumstance. The twins had an…incident this morning. Girls?”
On queue, Alyssa and Ashlynn stepped apart, revealing Alyssa’s left braid and Ashlynn’s right braid tangled and fused into a solid mass about a foot from their scalps. As they stepped, the knot tightened and the twins both flinched at the same time. Jeremiah looked closely at the braids and noticed the strands of the braids looped together and matted, likely from attempts to separate the plaits. Jeremiah grimaced with sympathetic discomfort.
“How did this happen?” Jeremiah asked. Mrs. Wainwright glanced at her daughters as if she wanted a suitable explanation as well. Alyssa and Ashlynn both looked sheepish before Alyssa answered first.
“We were sleeping last night, with nothing out of the ordinary. When we both woke up this morning, our braids were somehow entwined.”
“We kept our sleep braids too,” Ashlynn added quickly.
Jeremiah stroked his chin, thinking. “Did you have any unusual dreams, perhaps involving your hair?”
The twins shook their heads, their loose braids swaying back and forth across their knees. Jeremiah shrugged.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter how it happened,” Jeremiah said, “what is important is what we do now.”
Mrs. Wainwright sighed in exasperation.
“We have tried everything, Mr. Finch, as you can see. Brushes and combs just worsened the snarl, and we dared not go any further without your professional opinion.”
Jeremiah stepped forward and held the tangled braids in his hands, examining the situation. He felt the silky coolness of the hair and the elegant twists of the braids. Aside from the obvious knot, the twins had incredible hair in excellent condition. But with the complexity of the knot, there was only one solution to the problem.
“Well, Mrs. Wainwright,” Jeremiah concluded, “it seems that the only thing I can do is cut off the offending braids and even out the remaining hair as best I can.”
Mrs. Wainwright looked horrified, though likely not surprised by the verdict. Interestingly, the twins themselves looked nonplussed, as if they had anticipated Jeremiah’s decision. Absent-mindedly, Alyssa and Ashlynn stroked their free braids.
Mrs. Wainwright sighed and nodded.
“If that is what must be done, Mr. Finch, I defer to you. Girls, sit yourselves down.”
With extra care, Alyssa and Ashlynn approached their normal positions on the barber chairs, sitting with just enough space to avoid too much stress on their knotted braids. Jeremiah stood between the twins, Alyssa to his right and Ashlynn to his left. Unable to effectively cover their slender frames until the first incision was made, Jeremiah immediately retrieved his sharpest shears and approached the two chairs. Jeremiah noted that the twins seemed awfully calm about the whole affair, almost as if they were willing to have their braids shorn off. Taking a deep breath, Jeremiah held Alyssa’s left braid below the matted section, positioned his shears above the knot, and began to cut.
The sound of the hair being chopped was much different than the endless trims of years passed, much more of a crunch than a snip. The Wainwright twins had such thick and luxurious hair that the shears had a difficult time in cutting through the twists of the first braid. As Jeremiah sliced into the braid, Alyssa’s expression changed from one of pain to one of relief as the weight of the offending plait was removed. After several more spirited snips, the last strands were severed, and Alyssa’s late braid, still attached to its erstwhile sibling, fell toward the floor. The braid was so long that it brushed the floor before it settled, still held in place by the knot; Ashlynn winced as the weight strained the roots of her hair. Soon, however, all of that weight would be gone as well.
As Alyssa was left with a messy, half-done shoulder length style, Jeremiah seized Ashlynn’s right braid, still attached to Alyssa’s left braid, and he began to cut.
The process was repeated, and in less than a minute, Jeremiah successfully lopped off the tangled plait. This time, instead of letting the shorn hair fall to the floor, Jeremiah kept the braid held tightly in his fist. Setting down the shears, Jeremiah held both braids in his hands and lifted them up for Mrs. Wainwright and the twins to view.
“Well ladies, the deed is done.” Jeremiah announced before throwing the two foot long double braid knot on the counter in front of him. “Now I just have to clean it all up.”
The twins grinned with anticipation, while Mrs. Wainwright touched her hand to her face in seeming despair.
In the next twenty minutes, Jeremiah covered the twins in striped barber capes, amputated the remaining braids with ease, and placed the shorn plaits in the laps of the respective twin sisters. With their hair now reduced to below their jaws, Alyssa and Ashlynn asked for shingled styles. Jeremiah obliged, having had previous experience with shingles on some of his female clients. Wielding his shears and a comb, Jeremiah started with Alyssa, reducing her thick, light brown hair to a fine pelt in the back and long locks on the top and sides. A heavy carpet of silky tresses littered the floor under the right chair, which was soon followed by a nearly identical pile underneath the left door.
When he was finished, Jeremiah threw the capes off the twins, sending snippets of hair falling to the tiled floor. The twins clutched their shorn, untangled braids in their hands, all while playing with their new shingled hair. Alyssa and Ashlynn began to tease each other by using the frayed ends of their cut braids to tickle their exposed necks and cheeks. The twins giggled as they admired each other’s shingles and stroked each other’s braids with fascination. Jeremiah guessed that the twins had likely planned to tangle their braids to fabricate an excuse to abandon the plaits and shingle their hair. In any event, it worked.
Mrs. Wainwright, shellshocked from the experience of watching her twin daughters be shorn in short order, paid Jeremiah for the haircuts while Alyssa and Ashlynn continued to admire each other’s shingles and play with their shorn braids, wrapping them around their necks and feeling the soft plaited twists. The three clients promptly left the shop, leaving Jeremiah to sweep up the cut off hair from the tiled floor and collect the shorn hair into a pile in the corner.
Less than an hour later, as he was sweeping up the hair of an older gentleman who had gotten a small trim, Jeremiah heard the door of the barbershop open, and the bell jingled softly. There, in the doorway, stood three teenaged girls, all around the age of young Alyssa and Ashlynn. Each of the girls wore simple, ankle length dresses, and their hair was braided into two plaits each, tied with different colored ribbons and long enough to dangle past their hips. Jeremiah looked at the girls in mild curiosity, then a thought dawned on him.
“Hello, uh, ladies,” Jeremiah began, “are you here for haircuts?”
“Why yes, sir.” One of the girls responded, holding her braids in her hands, tugging on them in a likely compulsion. “Our friends just got theirs cut, right here in this shop. I believe those are theirs.”
Another one of the girls pointed at the knotted plaits on Jeremiah’s counter, the remnants of the Wainwright girls’ tonsorial adventure. Jeremiah glanced from the Gordian Knot of braids to the teenaged girls eagerly awaiting their own shearings. Nodding in resignation, Jeremiah indicated the open and waiting barber chair.
“Alright girls, who will go first.”
Sarah, one of the girls, climbed onto the barber chair and allowed the white cape to billow around her. The other two girls, Sandra and Sally, seated themselves on the waiting bench, stroking the ends of their luscious, thick braids. Sarah bowed her head as Jeremiah approached with the scissors, gripping one of their lovely braids and raising the blades to the roots of the plait, just below her ear. With a loud crunch, Jeremiah began to saw into Sarah’s braid. Her eyes closed, Sarah’s head was pulled every so slightly by the movement of the scissors until the braid was finally severed. Jeremiah proffered the braid to Sarah, allowing the ribbon-adorned end to brush the fabric of the cape in her lap.
“Would you like to keep this, young lady?” Jeremiah asked. Sarah looked at him in puzzlement.
“Why would I do that?”
Jeremiah was taken aback by the question. He spluttered a reply.
“Well, I, uh, some girls like to, um, keep their hair for various purposes, and, uh, there…”
“That is kind of you to offer, sir, but I will have no need of my long hair anymore. And neither will the other girls.” Sandra and Sally nodded in agreement, staring at the mangled spot where Sarah’s braid had until recently been attached.
Jeremiah shrugged, and without another word, he tossed the two foot long, sleek, chestnut brown braid of hair into the metal ashcan, where it landed with a loud thud against the cold bottom. Having deposited nothing of significance into the ashcan, save Sarah’s plait, the shiny tress of hair resembled a coiled snake in a pit. The shorn locks of previous customers, including the Wainwright twins, still lay on the tiled floor in a soft pile.
Jeremiah repeated the exercise with Sarah’s second braid, and after a few moments it joined its comrade at the bottom of the ashcan. Once Sarah’s shingle cut was all sorted, Sandra replaced her in the chair. Sandra’s own blonde hair was even longer than Sarah’s, and her soft braids approached the floor as they laid on the cape, awaiting the chop. SNIP SNIP SNIP went the scissors as Jeremiah dispatched Sandra’s golden locks, and THUNK THUNK both braids landed in the ashcan; Jeremiah had previously clutched one braid as he cut into the other, in order to save energy for the movement of tossing away the once glorious hair.
Sally’s dark brown hair was only slightly shorter than Sarah’s, but it was silky smooth and incredibly thick. Each braid was almost as thick as Sarah’s and Sandra’s, and it might have made more sense for Jeremiah to tie four braids instead of two. But, sensing that he had even more shingles to cut, Jeremiah decided to waste no further time. He picked up his new electric clippers and flipped the switch. The clippers roared to life, making Sally jump in surprise. Grasping one of her braids with a determined grip, Jeremiah quickly sliced through the thick dark coil until it was no longer attached to the young girl’s head. Away it went into the ashcan, landing on top of the other shorn plaits. The whirring of the machine heralded the death of the final braid, which joined the rest in the metal bin.
Once Sally’s shingle was in order, the three girls paid and exited the shop, admiring each other’s fashionable hairstyles. Jeremiah swept the snippets of cut hair into the corner with the rest, and he resolved to see how many braids he could collect in the ashcan before the day was out.
Several hours later, as the pink glow of sunset lit his shop, Jeremiah collapsed into his barber chair, exhausted by the day’s activities. By the time Jeremiah had closed the doors to his shop, an incredible total of 27 girls had had their braids lopped off and deposited into the ashcan. The Wainwright twin’s braids were the last to be discarded, resting on the top of the mountain. The coiled braids mixed with each other, writhing like inert cords of silk. Shades and hues ranged from the lightest blonde to coal black; two very long red braids shone like tongues of fire. A total of 52 braids (the Wainwright girls had only one braid each to contribute), the ashcan was heavy with the shorn hair of an entire class worth of young girls.
Jeremiah stared at the ashcan and became lost in thought. So much hair, so many years of growth, gone in seconds…it was almost too much to comprehend. Jeremiah recalled the expressions of the girls, the joy with which they submitted to the shears and allowed their beautiful braids to be sacrificed in the name of fashion. Only a few of the girls had cried, mostly out of anxiety, but many more smiled and grinned with glee. The events of the day had profoundly impacted Jeremiah, who would never see his job quite the same way ever again. He knew that by tomorrow, another horde of teenaged girls would be begging him to separate them for their long tresses, and he would oblige them. Sighing with purpose, Jeremiah lifted himself up from the barber chair and took the ashcan to the curb outside the shop, ready to let the braids be discarded forever, and awaited the next crop of willing customers…
