“Now you sound like one of them super-woke brothers on YouTube in the kufu hat,” Lavell said.
“Look, I don’t care if they gay and shit, but why they gotta be all over the place with it? They getting out of pocket with that shit,” the man getting his beard dyed said.
“How they rubbing it in your face, Craig? They breaking in your house and putting lipstick on you in your sleep?” Lavell asked with a chuckle.
“You know you sounding real suspect, Lavell. You got some sparkly high heels under your bed?” Craig asked.
“Yeah, they yo momma’s,” Lavell said. Maurice brayed at that remark.
“For real, though, them boys up there, they the result of the government splitting up Black families. Made welfare more attainable than living on one income. Made women think they didn’t need no king in they life. That’s how you get niggas in wigs and makeup prancing around like goddamn Tinkerbells,” Craig said.
“I don’t think that’s how it works, man,” Lavell said. Craig snorted.
“Let my boys come home talking about that gay shit. They gone be living in a cardboard box down by the river. Nah, bump that, I’m a beat that shit out of them. Any man let his son grow up gay, he done failed. It’s like Chris Rock say, your only job is to keep your daughter off the pole and keep a dick out your son’s mouth,” Craig pontificated.
“I’ve watched a bunch of his HBO specials, and he ain’t never say that last part. And why you thinking about a dick in your son’s mouth? You need therapy, Craig,” Lavell said.
“Forget you, Lavell, that’s why I get Tyrone to cut my hair,” Craig said. One more round of laughter filled the shop as the conversation moved on to the Wizards’ chances or lack thereof against the Celtics.
Ike gripped the sides of his chair. A dull ache worked its way up from his hands to his forearms. He realized the chairs in the barbershop were similar to the chairs he’d seen in the police station. Ike used to like coming to the barbershop, before he started losing his hair and took to shaving his own head. The agile banter, the casual camaraderie, the give-and-take of friendly insults and jabs—it was all a part of the character and culture of the barbershop. Many times he thought of it as the last place you didn’t have to apologize for being a Black man.
This conversation showed him that there was another side to the barbershop. A side he’d always known was there but had dismissed. It could be a place of circular logic, where obtuse thinking was confirmed and reinforced by a pervasive groupthink. Yeah, you had some brothers like Lavell going against the tide, but for the most part everybody got in fucking line. Did they really think boys were gay because you weren’t a good father? He might not have been there for Isiah the way he wanted to, but even he knew that didn’t make his son gay. He didn’t pretend to understand Isiah’s life, but he understood that much.
Six months ago, you would’ve been laughing right along with them, though. Before they put a bullet in Isiah’s head. Before they killed your boy, Isiah thought.
“You alright, chief?” Maurice asked. He eyed Ike warily.
“What?” Ike said.
“You breaking my armrest there, chief,” Maurice said. Ike released the armrests and saw he had nearly pulled the hard-molded plastic off the iron frame. A brother with a clean-shaven head the size of a basketball leaned through the curtains. His skin was the color of obsidian.
“Come on back,” he said. It sounded like bricks in a washing machine. Ike got up and went through the curtains. He entered a storeroom set up to be an office, and a luxurious one at that. A large ornate wooden desk with a leather-bound chair under it. The floor covered in deep-pile brown carpet. A glass-top coffee table sat in front of a plush leather recliner. A tray with three half-gallon bottles of gin, bourbon, and rum sat on the right side of the recliner. In the recliner was a trim Black man in a pair of black dress pants and a gray T-shirt under a silk black button-up long-sleeved shirt. Tightly coiled dreadlocks fell down to the middle of his back.
The clean-shaven man stepped in front of Ike.
“You carrying?” he said.
“Just a knife in my pocket for work,” Ike said. The clean-shaven man patted Ike down with hands the size of car batteries. He pulled the knife out of his pocket.
“Get it back when you leave,” the man said. He went to the corner of the office and leaned against the wall.
I’ve heard that before, Ike thought.
“Been a long time, Ike. Thought you didn’t go by Riot no more,” Slice said. He spoke with a soft lisp and a hint of southeastern Virginia rolling around in the back of his throat. When Ike had gone inside Slice was a skinny seventeen-year-old kid taking over the North River Boys for his brother Luther. Now he was Lancelot Walsh aka Slice aka the Man in the Cap City. After Luther got hit they’d all retreated back to Red Hill. Slice had been in a bad place. The whole crew had been in a bad place. Romello Sykes and the Rolling 80s had killed Luther in retaliation for a scrap they’d gotten into at a house party in the middle of no-fucking-where. It wasn’t even business. Just some personal dick-swinging bullshit. The North River Boys had gone running back home to Red Hill with their collective tails between their legs. Romello had snatched off their masks and revealed them to be the wannabe gangsters they really were.