The Warden's Tale

The Warden’s Tale

A heat wave accompanied by a sandstorm in the middle of the summer is no joke, especially if you live in our small desert town in this God and government forsaken border state. The fact that I was breathing my unluckiest day in life wasn’t improving the situation a bit.

Sitting in a shop with a broken fan and windows which couldn’t be opened against the sea of sand soaring outside, you might say sleep was futile, yet the events of the day had taken their toll on me and before I knew it, I was dozing off on the swivel chair. What woke me up from my forty winks was the most unanticipated sound - the moaning of the door hinges.

At first I thought my ears were tricking me. Who in his right mind would choose this time and weather to have a haircut? But seeing the man, there was hardly any room for surprise.

There at the door, shaking the sand off his hat, stood the warden.

He wore exactly the same shy smile which he had given me twenty years ago when he stepped into the once stylish barbershop and asked for a crew cut.

‘Good day old friend, I hope it’s not too hot for you to give me a crew cut.’

‘Give me a comb and a German clipper and I’ll cut hair in hell,’ I said, taking his coat and hat.

He approved this with a nod and sat down. As I draped him I got the whiff of that familiar desert smell, a mixture of sand and dirt, the smell of elderly earth.

He waited without a word as I prepared my tools. Now I should confess here, rather shamefully, that as the barber of the town (coming in third after the local weekly and the coffee house in spread-the-rumor business) in twenty years time, I haven’t found out any more about the warden than I did on that first day. He is not of a chatty sort and his character plus his peculiar profession in that remote prison, has led to all sorts of bizarre tales going around behind his back among locals. While he can probably get his haircut for free where he works, for some reason, he has kept coming to my shop throughout all these years, so he is OK by me.

Actually, I feel peaceful in his presence. I’ve discovered a special tranquility about this man. A kind of relaxing aura which he brings to the shop with himself and leaves some of it behind when he leaves. Of course I haven’t talked to anyone about this mystic presence; I don’t want to add a new rumor about the crazy barber of the town to the already rich supply of the town folk’s gossips, but believe me on the account of thirty years of experience - it is there.

Halfway through the work in the stifling atmosphere of the shop, he unexpectedly pointed to the mirror corner where a slip of paper was sticking out.

“Is that a lottery ticket?”

“Well, the greatest misfortune of my life better describes it,” I said with a snap of the blades.

“How come?” He said, still looking at it.

I put my scissors down, pulled the ticket free from between the mirror and the frame and handed it to him.

“You see this number 6 in the last digit, if it had been 7 instead, yours truly would have been the richest man in the history of this town!”

His eyebrows rose. “How much is it worth now?”

“Not a damn thing,” I said crossly, picking up the accessories and continuing to cut away his left side. “But I’m going to frame it and hang it above the door, so that people see miracles can happen even in this decrepit old town”.

"Miracle?" he asked, eyebrows still high up.

His relaxed manner kindled me to go on. “I mean look, what are the odds of losing such a huge pot only by one number. It’s even more farfetched than having the winning ticket. What is it if not a miracle? What are the odds of it?” This last question has been circling around my head since that morning and it seemed likely to continue to do so in many years to come.

“But you are wrong,” he said abruptly.

“Am I?" I stopped with my hands hovering above his head. "How can you prove it?”

“Easily, for each winning ticket, there are two tickets which lose by only one number. Your chances are double.”

“Well, it still looks statistically improbable to me.” And I yanked the comb through his hair hard enough to tilt his head just to remind him where he was. We didn’t talk any more until half the work was done. Then as I was wiping the sweat from my forehead I heard him say softly : “Do you want to know how farfetched the things can really get?”

“I can't believe my ears, does our warden have a story to tell?"

He gave me a solemn look, which unsettled me since the customers always look at my reflection when addressing me and not straight in the eye as he did.

“Yes, and it is a story that I haven’t told anyone in my life and I must insist you keep it that way,” he said with a serious authoritative tone which left no room for discussion.

“You have my word, warden.” I cut the air with the scissors. “And I’ll even make you a deal. If what you have to say is more improbable than my story, your haircut is on the house.”

He agreed, but I could see he was already regretting his decision. However, it was too late to retreat. I snapped the blades encouragingly. Finally, with one last look at the door, looking for another customer to come to his rescue, and seeing no one, he started his tale…

“When I was a boy, my father used to drive me to a school in the nearby city. The road was a straight line between the two destinations. Twenty miles as the crow flies, without even one curve. The only things to see was the desert and an occasional farm truck coming from the other direction. Since my father didn’t talk to me very much and the radio was broken I tried to amuse myself in the only way I could find.”

I finished trimming his left arch with the clippers. I had to use the number six blade to leave the hair a little longer so that his large ears wouldn’t show.

“The only interesting thing in that road was this hill, located right in the middle of the way. It was one of those hills which are high enough to block the view of the rest of the road. Since I couldn’t see the traffic coming from the other side of it, I made up a little game. Each day as we approached that hill on our way to or from the school, I tried to predict if there was another vehicle coming up from the other side. I would have my answer when we reached the top. Some days I was wrong and some days I guessed right, and there were occasions where for quite a few days I would predict the presence of a car on the other side with great accuracy.”

“Hold on warden, if you want to tell me you won your game twenty or thirty times in a row, then you should think again. In order to beat me you must have guessed for almost… four million times straight!”

“Wait, that isn’t all of it," he said without irritation. "Years later, I got accepted in that town’s college. Had to go to the classes every day. Same road, same old truck, only this time I was behind the wheel. I faced the hill twice a day. But by that time, a very dangerous thought had crept into my mind. A very simple idea: What would happen if for once I climbed the hill driving on the wrong side of the road? Would I crash into a car coming from the other side, or would I continue my way untroubled?”

I picked up a Kleenex and mopped the sweat from the back of his neck. A gust of angry brown wind punched the windows from the deserted street.

“Did you give it a go?” I asked turning to his other ear.

“Every day as I arrived at the hill I had to face this self-inflicted dare; I held my breath and my heart would beat faster but I never dared drive on the wrong side. Then when I reached the top and saw miles and miles of clear road ahead, I would curse my cowardliness. But on a few rare occasions when there actually was a car coming from the other side, I would feel nauseated for a long time and actually forget about the whole thing for days, but…”

“It would always come back,” I finished his sentence for him.

“Yes. I told a few of my classmates about it, all of them called me chicken and loser, but my wife thinks even then I was the man of law.”

“And which one was the case?” I didn’t want to miss any chances of knowing this mysterious man better.

“Not sure. Probably both. Could you please wipe off the sweat around my eyes? Thank you. That’s better.”

“Years passed, I married and then was transferred to this town. Now, if you have driven down the southern road which I have to take every day to get to the prison, you must have noticed a similar hill in the middle of it.”

I tried to work through the remaining part of his hair as slowly as possible. Strangely the shop didn’t feel as hot as it felt just a few moments ago.

“It seemed to have followed me here. In the last twenty years, I have never reached the foot of that hill without the temptation to drive at full speed on the wrong side; to get over my stupid obsession once and for all."

He coughed and continued, “Do you remember three years ago? We almost had the same heat wave then.”

“How can I forget it? There were talks of evacuating the town! ”

“That summer my father got a urinary infection. It turned so bad that the hospital called us and suggested that we should be with him in his last days. It was the worst time of my life; I became ill myself, sitting next to him and watching his agony. Right then, I had a call from the governor ordering me to attend a pending execution at the prison. I explained my situation and tried to reason with him, but he said that my presence was more important than the criminal himself. Finally, he warned me that it was either my absence or my job. My wife advised me to go and attend the procession and come back as soon as I could. So I just ran to the car and drove to the prison under the scorching sun, driving mad and under the influence of alcohol for the first time in my life."

“When I reached the hill, fuming and covered in sweat, something changed in me. Don’t know exactly what it was, all I remember is that I floored the pedal and steered the car to the other line, a surprisingly easy maneuver.”

I had finished his haircut with no memory of doing it. I found myself sitting on one of the wooden chairs and listening with the comb and clipper dead in my hands.

“In a second I felt my heartbeat tripled, my body went as cold and rigid as ice, but I kept my right foot on the pedal. I was surprised to see the car was capable of gaining such a speed. I was rocketing up the hill when the jagged silhouette of the far ahead mountains suddenly came into view, but in my frenzied state of mind, I saw them as truck roofs, approaching fast – about to crush me. I was looking at the face of the death but I still held the pedal to the metal. Then I was at the hilltop… and it happened.”

He stared at his reflection in the mirror, lost in thoughts and continued only when he saw the look on my face.

“All it took was a fraction of a second. It went by so fast that I didn’t even notice its color, only the whooshing sound and the wind that almost knocked me off the road indicated that a car had just passed me."

“You mean that…” I heard my amazed voice.

“It was another driver." he said with a humorless smile, " ...pulling that same stunt, driving his car full speed on the wrong side of the road.”

“Speaking of probabilities,” he showed me his upward palms, “What do you say now?”

I stood up and took off his drape. “I hope you like your free haircut.”

He thanked me, received his coat and hat and started to leave. He was halfway through the threshold when I remembered something.

“By the way warden, what happened to your father?”

“He got over it. He is as right as rain now.” He said, this time with a genuine smile.

I watched him as he stepped out, keeping the hat on his head with both hands, and the storm swallowed him.