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Some young people who live in a cave came in. They were Kyle and Jill Ingram and their children, Tony and Erik, and their friends, Donald Loenichen and Kimberly Kerr, who are engaged. "We're just basically into self-sufficiency," said Kyle.
"We're not nuts. We want to live in both worlds." He said the cave was an eighth of a mile long and had "nice vaulted ceilings."
Somebody asked how they had made it through the winter, and Donald said, "Well, we started with a kerosene heater.
That didn't work too well. We went to freezing to death, but that didn't last long.
Mr. Blackwell here built us a wood stove, and it worked out all right."
Don Blackwell washed and cut Kimberly's hair, and Jan Blackwell washed and cut Jill's. The men took the children out to buy kites. Across the street, old people were playing dominoes in the basement of the courthouse. An elderly man was walking round the square whacking headless parking meters with his cedar stick. He said he used to walk around whacking them when the meter tops were attached, but the city had the meters taken off because they cost too much to keep in good repair. "It used to make a bigger racket before they cut 'em down."
Sharon Caughron came back in and said she had a cow die "with the scours."
The scours are diarrhea. "I had some scour stopper in a bucket, but it was too late." Chester Hickle wandered back in, recalling a violent time, years ago, when a "man as innocent as you or me was over there in the cafe eating a bowl of soup or chili and they just shot him off the stool."
Chester did not go into details. Don Blackwell said that all the stories that are told in his barbershop are told time and time again. "It's a perpetual-motion thing."
At 5 o'clock, the Blackwells close shop and go home to tend their own cows.
The last thing they do is sweep the wood shavings separate from the clumps of clipped hair. They take the cedar home to their farmhouse and use it to start a sweet-scented fire.
— By Gregory Jaynes