Stacey, the seventy-year-old shoeshine “boy,” popping his shine rag across a young brother’s new platforms, the MOQ station beaming out jazz for sisters and brothers, a few early gambling men heading into the back room to get their third race bets down, Pauline the manicurist sitting in the window of the shop doing her own nails and flirting with the occasional, potential customer, Marvin, O.D. and Home cutting hair. Elijah nodded cooperatively as Home chattered into his ear and snipped his Afro. “I don’t care what y’all say … George Wallace is awright with me, at least you know where he is. What y’all thank about that, home?” Elijah nodded, using his head to stay in tempo with Home’s monologue. He never really needed any consensus, just an audience … and with a barber’s apron around a customer’s neck, that’s what he had. “Now you take somebody like that li’l ol’ rich boy from Massachusetts … what’shisname? the one with all the teeth ’n hair? Kangstiddy!
