O.Henry Ending

The Short Cut

Shorn but not forgotten

By Cynthia Adams

In the flush of youth, Don loved having  his thick hair tugged and pulled whenever watching one of his educational TV programs. As the narrator droned on about the mating habits of sloths (sloth foreplay alone could fill an entire program), I admired his mane’s manly thickness. Mr. Burgess, his barber, actually thinned it. 

Don was a regular, returning with a G.I. Joe haircut and tales of Mr. Burgess and his investments. The Burgess portfolio was a thing to marvel over when you are young and have only a full head of hair in the credit column. Then, Mr. Burgess hit 100 and closed shop. 

Don was accustomed to sitting in the company of unhurried men who let stories fall out of their mouths as clipped hair fell around their draped shoulders. He and his fine head of hair were adrift after Mr. Burgess hung up his clippers. 

The only thing to do was to patronize a walk-in shop. Don grew experimental, gradually letting his hair grow out when a persuasive female barber convinced him it was more stylish. Stylish was a new possibility! Then Don snagged an interview with a conservative firm. He purchased an interview suit, tie, shirt and wing-tips and returned to the single stylist he trusted. But she was vacationing.  

He shrugged, deciding to fly unshorn to the interview early Monday morning. As Don polished his CV, I fretted that he would look unpolished. I got to thinking. We had recently bought clippers and plunged into grooming our mutts. Admittedly, our dogs looked a bit off. Mottled skin shone through unfortunate places on their ears, rumps, tails and legs. Both had wriggled and protested throughout. 

But humans sat still.  

I eyed Don’s hair, deciding I could not allow him to go off on this job interview looking shaggy. He relented, and perched tensely on the bathroom toilet seat. 

“Just a little overall,” he cautioned, as I aimed the razor attachment on the clippers at Don’s forehead. The razor thrummed against my palm, ticklish and heavy. A two-by-two-inch swatch revealed pinkish white skin behind the razor’s trajectory. A fat swatch of black hair fell to the floor before I jerked the razor back. “Hunh!” I said, my heart galloping.  

Don’s eyebrows flew up. “What did you do?!” he shouted, rising up.  

“Sit back down,” I reproached. “You would never jump up like that if Mr. Burgess was giving you a cut.”  

Don had the beginnings of a reverse Mohawk.  

“It’s just a little short. For you.” (It was short by anyone’s standards, unless, say, you were a skinhead.)  

“How short?!”  

“A little shorter than Mr. Burgess cuts it.”  

At that, Don vaulted off the toilet seat. “Oh. My. God,” he uttered. My hand began shaking, but not from the vibrating razor. When something goes tragically wrong I am prone to laugh. He touched his scalp tentatively. “Wait, let me fix it! Something is wrong with this razor! It’s just the first base line cut,” I protested. “This thing didn’t cut that close with the dogs,” I argued— the only true thing I said that Sunday afternoon. 

Don rounded on me, snatching the razor. “You turned it the wrong way!  You turned it downward to shave and shaved a strip of hair in the very middle  of my forehead!” The gash atop his forehead now matched the spreading pink of his face. 

“But I like it,” I lied instantly. What a fantastic lie this was. 

He scowled. 

“You could wear a hat!”  

“To a job interview? Seriously?” Don was apoplectic. We discussed barber options on a late Sunday afternoon. I sprinted to find the phone book. Only one salon was open. 

Cowardly and embarrassed, I waited in the car as Don went inside. He returned unrecognizable. His fine, thick hair was now a few centimeters long. What would the interviewer think? That Don had head lice? That he was sporting gansta chic? 

So I lied again. “I love it!” I exclaimed. Don glowered.  

On Monday morning, Don wore his new suit, crisp shirt and Windsor-knotted tie as he departed for the Big Deal Interview. But he looked twenty years older with no hair. His “I’m game!” gait was off. But when he returned on Tuesday, a smile wreathed his face as he dropped his bags.  

“No big deal,” Don said. “I don’t think I’m actually a very good fit for that place.” He did not say the obvious: I had undercut him. Short cut him.  

Could I ever make this up to him? 

Fifteen years passed. Don eventually developed his father’s receding hairline in the very place where I permanently scared his follicles to death. He isn’t bald, but his hair is no longer dark nor lush. Of late, though, he has been growing it a bit. Last Sunday, I eyed him as he shaved. 

“I could even that up, just a little,” I ventured, touching his graying sideburns. 

“No,” Don flatly replied. 

“Just with scissors,” I added. 

“Noooooooooooo. Nope. Never.” Don repeated.  

“Well, that was an unfortunate thing about the razor,” I mumbled; a final, stupefying lie.  

“You know,” Don added, kindly searching my face, “I was wrong for that job. I wouldn’t have liked it.”  

But we both understood, standing inside the sweet silence filling the bathroom, that sometimes half-truths are the only way to Super Glue a relationship back to the sticking place.  

And we smiled.

Birdwatch

Pileated Woodpecker

The big, beautiful sovereigns of the forest are doing well in North Carolina

By Susan Campbell

One of the largest and most distinctive birds of the forest, the pileated woodpecker is unmistakable. Its dark body, white wing patches and red crest make it seem almost regal, and it wouldn’t be wrong to call it the king or queen of the forest. 

As with most of our woodpecker species, they are nonmigratory. In search of food, however, they do roam widely, sometimes in a footprint several square miles in size. Pileateds can be found across our state, anywhere there are large, old trees. Whether you pronounce their name PIE-lee-ated or PILL-ee-ated may depend on what part of the state you come from. Webster’s says either is correct, with PIE-lee-ated being more common. 

However you say it, such a sizable bird is bound to make a loud noise. Indeed pileateds do get your attention. You’ll most likely hear them foraging or calling. But you’ll also hear the distinctive booming echo that comes when they work on a hollow tree or the thudding that comes as they pound their way through thick bark. Although pileateds do not sing, they make a distinctive piping sound, similar to a flicker, which tends to end in a crescendo. They may also employ a sort of “wuk” call as a way of staying in contact with one another as they move about the forest. Although males are the ones that typically make the most racket, both sexes let intruders know when their territory has been compromised. Pairs are monogamous and raise a set of up to five young in a season. 

When nesting, pileateds create oblong cavity openings in trees that are quite distinctive. Males choose the dead or dying tree in late winter and do most of the excavation. Females will help especially toward the end of the process. The nest is unlined: consisting simply of a layer of wood chips at the bottom of the cavity. Deep holes that pileateds create are not reused once the young fledge. So these openings into dead or dying trees provide key habitat for not only other species of woodpeckers but also for snakes, lizards and mammals that require holes for some part of their life history. Pileateds, of course, are happiest when feeding on insects and other invertebrates in dead and dying wood. But they are opportunistic, taking fruits and nuts as well. In the fall, it’s not uncommon to catch a pileated hanging upside down on a dogwood branch, stripping it of berries. Given their large appetites, adults may divide the fledglings for the first several months as they teach the youngsters to forage. It may take six months or more before the young birds are on their own.  

If your bird feeder is within a pileated pair’s territory, you may be lucky enough to attract one or more to a sunflower seed or (more likely) to a suet feeder or mealworms. As long as they have room to perch or have something to cling onto, they may not be shy about becoming a regular visitor, especially during the late winter or early spring as breeding season gets under way and insects are less abundant. 

These big, beautiful birds are, from what we can tell, doing well here in North Carolina. Sadly their extinct cousins, the ivory-billeds, who were more specialized and inhabited only bottomland forest, suffered a sad fate. They did not fare so well with the arrival of Europeans and the associated clearcutting of their habitat early in the last century. But that is a different story for another month . 

Susan would love to hear from you. Feel free to send questions or wild life observations to susan@ncaves.com.