Free Saul and Patsy by Charles Baxter Page B

tried not to hear. After the woman had paid for her son’s haircut and left, Saul sat himself down in Harold’s chair.
    “Hey, Saul,” Harold said, covering him with the white cloth. “You always come in when she does. How do you do that?”
    “Beats me. Her name Louise?”
    “That’s right. The usual trim, Saul?”
    “The usual. Torture by Mr. Harold of Paris. Harold, this time try to keep it the same length on both sides, okay?”
    “I try, Saul. It’s just that your hair’s so curly.”
    “Right, right.” Saul saw his reflection in the mirror and closed his eyes as a reflex. He felt like asking Harold, the Lutheran, a moral question. “Harold,” he said, “do you ever wonder where your thoughts come from? I mean, do we own our thoughts, or do they come from somewhere else, or what? For example, you can’t always control your thoughts or your impulses, can you? So, whose thoughts are those, anyway, the ones you can’t control? And another thing. Are you happy? Be honest.”
    The scissors stopped clipping. “Gosh, Saul, are you okay? What drugs have you been taking lately?”
    “No drugs. Just tell me: Are your thoughts always yours? That’s what I need to know.”
    The barber looked into the mirror opposite them. Saul saw Harold’s plain features. “All right,” Harold said. “I’ll answer your question.” Then, with what Saul took to be great sadness, the barber said, “I don’t have many thoughts. And when I do, they’re all mine.”
    “Okay,” Saul said. “I’m sorry. I was just asking.” He tried to slump down in his chair, but the barber said, “Sit up straight, Saul.” Saul did.
    Days later, Saul is asleep. He knows this. He knows he is asleep next to Patsy. He knows it is night, that cradle of dreams, but Earth’s mad lovelorn companion, the moon, is shining stainless-steel beams across the bed, and Saul is dreaming of being in a car that cannot stop rolling over, an endless flip of metal, and this time Patsy is not belted in, and something horrible must be happening to her, judging from the blur of her head. She is being hurt terribly thanks to the way he has driven the car, the mad way, the un-American way, and now she is walking across a bridge made of moonlight, and she falls. The door, Saul’s door, is being kept open for Elijah, but Elijah does not come in. How will we recognize him? Saul’s mind is not in Saul’s head; it is above him, above his yarmulke, above his prayer shawl, his tallis. When was Saul ever Orthodox? Only in dreams. Patsy is hurt, she lies in a ditch,
and he has done
this damage to her.
Deer and doubt mix with the milky roar of mild lust on the Scrabble board. And here behind the barber chair is Giovanni d’Amato, sage of Cincinnati, saying, “You shouldn’t flunk people out of school if you’re going to get drunk and roll cars.” The sage is using his scissors to cut away Saul’s clothes. Saul the child is speaking to Saul the grown-up: “You’ll never figure it out,” and when Saul the adult asks, “What?” the child says, “Adulthood. Any of it.” And then he says, “Saul, you’re pregnant.”
    Saul woke and looked over at Patsy, still asleep. He groaned audibly with relief that she hadn’t been hurt. What an annoying dream. He had never even owned a tallis or known anyone who had one. His parents had been relentlessly secular. After putting on his shirt, jeans, and boots, he went downstairs, and, after taking the keys off the kitchen table, he went outside.
    The motorcycle felt quiet and powerful underneath him as he accelerated down Whitefeather Road. He had ridden a motorcycle briefly in college—until a small embarrassing accident—and the process all came back to him now. This one, Patsy’s new machine, painted pink and blue, 250 cc’s, was easy to shift, and the machine gave him the impression that he was floating, or, better yet, was flowing down the archways of dark, stunted Michigan trees. His eyes watered, and bugs hit