Page 14 of Boy Blue
“Let’s get you out of those wet things.” I pulled him into the kitchen and reached into the bathroom to grab a towel. His hands stayed clamped on my wrists.
As I buffed his hair, my fingers came up against knots in his hair at the base of his skull. Blue hadn’t had access to a comb in years, or, as seemed more likely, I’d failed to get all the blood out, failed to undo the tangles before letting him spend two days sleeping on the couch.
It’d been so long, maybe forever, since I’d been responsible for the care of another. Yes, one time after Sunday School, my cousin Blake and I had taken a long walk by the river, and he had cut his calf wide open. I’d used my t-shirt as a makeshift bandage and half carried him back to my aunt’s house.
Then, in prison, my cellmate had gotten his head busted wide open in a fight in the yard, only he didn’t want the guards to know and cancel his upcoming visit from his wife. I’d spent ramen packets on bandages and super glue, patched him up, rinsed away the blood from his face and the floor and the toilet, and he’d been my friend for life. Or at least the rest of my sentence. He was still on the inside, still fighting. Still getting his head busted open.
None of that, where I could hand over the responsibility to someone else, resembled this moment. This time, it was all on me, though I knew the time had come to make a call to the doctor at the clinic in Billings, who’d once sewed up my hand after I’d cut it open on a stray wire in my truck. I’d only met him once, but he seemed like a guy who could keep his mouth shut. But not quite yet.
As I peeled off Blue’s wet top, I thought about the jeans I’d narrowed the waist on, but realized he needed something soft to wear right now, not hard-edged denim. While I buffed his arms and his torso, he leaned into me, like I was his last refuge. I had him step out of the thermal bottoms and buffed his legs, his hips, his waist. He stood there, teeth chattering, shivering, but shivering was good. I’d build a fire and tuck him into the easy chair, then call the doc.
Blue didn’t seem to mind being in the altogether in front of me. After a quick glance all up and down him, at the fading bruises, the remains of scrapes and bumps, at his narrow hips, the bones jutting beneath his skin, the dark gold hair between his legs, I looked away as I led him into my bedroom and dug through my tall bureau.
The jeans were on the top, where I’d left them, but I gathered up clothes of mine: boxers, sweatpants, a thick flannel shirt. Thick wool socks. And helped him dress, his hand on my shoulder as he stepped into the boxers and sweatpants, his chin lifted as I buttoned the flannel shirt.
He made a kind of laugh as he sat down, and I put the socks on his feet.
“Better?” I asked, looking up at him.
“Yes, thank you,” he said, the polite air once again firmly in place.
“Look, you’ve got blood matted in your hair,” I said, my hands on his feet. “I need to check that cut to see if it’s still bleeding, and I think I should cut those mats out.”
“No!” His breath caught in his throat, his hands going to his head as though I’d threatened him with the most dire of treatment. “Nobody cuts my hair.”
“I won’t make it shorter,” I said. I stood up slowly, then sat next to him on the bed, oddly intimate, as the bed was a rumpled, exposed mess of sheet and blanket. In prison, younever left your bed open. “Just cut away the tangles. Can you feel them?”
I lifted his hand to the nape of his neck, on the left side. “See? It’s just knots. I’ll cut away the knots. Just that. Will you let me?”
He shuddered as though he’d been crying and was trying desperately to stop. And looked me up and down. Not as though he was afraid of me, but as though he was trying to push back his fear of what I’d suggested. I’d seen this in prison: secret hurts and old wounds pushing to the surface because of something a guard had said, even something as innocuous asGet in line.
Before he could change his mind, I sat him in the kitchen chair, grabbed scissors from the drawer, the comb from the bathroom, and draped him in a towel to keep the hair from his neck.
He settled into the chair as though resigned to his fate as I began to comb. His hair, up close, felt personal, thick, and fine, and flyaway. I tipped his head to one side and drew the scissors close to his skin, cutting at the crazy-eight shaped knots. I squinted at the cut, which was healing, but slowly. Then I combed at the tangles that remained, and drew in a breath because now his hair was lopsided at the edge.
“Blue,” I said. “Can I just even this out?” I wouldn’t if he said no, but it would kind of drive me crazy if he said no. He deserved to look his best, not walk around like a half-shorn animal. I lifted his hand to the back of his head, then drew his fingers along his hair. “See? The knots are out, but it’s all ragged.”
Blue drew his hand away, then placed both hands in his lap beneath the hair-flecked towel. Another fate. Another resignation.
“Okay,” he said, then drew in a breath to blow it out slowly as though he was preparing himself for a blow.
I kept his hair as long as I could, carefully combing through before trimming. I kept combing because it seemed to relax him,his eyes half closing, a soft flush on his cheeks. He was healing, though I didn’t know how long it would be before he got his memory back. I needed to call the doctor.
When I was finished, his hair was even, curling along the nape of his neck and his jawline, easing into waves with the weight of the tangles gone. He turned his head to look up at me as he felt through his hair. A flick of eyelash, a flash of blue eyes, terror easing, gratitude in its place.
“Thank you, that feels better,” he said. His family had raised this boy to be a gentleman, only to push him to the point where he wanted nothing to do with them. It was their own fault they were missing this, this moment, where, dressed in my old clothes, well, swimming in them, actually, he was as polite to me as if I’d been a visiting dignitary.
“Let’s get us something to eat,” I said as I wiped the scissors and comb with a towel. “Starting with hot tea, I think.”
I made tea, and Blue found the broom and swept up from the barber session, which I thought was nice of him, considering he wasn’t feeling his best. I started a pot of oatmeal, and while that was going, I checked the weather on my phone.
“Look,” I said to Blue, showing him the weather app. “They think it might slow down tomorrow. I’ll be able to start shoveling out.”
“Can I help?” asked Blue. He looked at me, completely unaware of what the question did to me, what his expression, so hopeful but so totally naïve as to exactly how much snow was out there. He didn’t know, didn’t have proper footwear, had received a terrific bang to the head, didn’t know who he was or where he was, and yet, he was still willing. Maybe, had we been in prison together, he would have had my back and I his.
“Maybe,” I said. “You can certainly keep the tea going.”
We drank tea and had oatmeal with gobs of butter and cinnamon sugar, as well as the slices of bacon I quickly fried up.If the storm was ending soon, I wouldn’t have to worry too much longer about feeding two mouths rather than one. We could stuff our faces, nap, and be idle. It was Sunday after all, and even though I’d lost my faith, the faith of my family, Sunday still felt like a day of rest to me.
