Short Fiction

"Just Lather, That's All"

by Hernando Tellez

"The town must have learned a lesson from what we did the other day," he said.  "Yes," I replied, securing the knot at the base of his dark, sweaty neck.  "That was a fine show, eh?"  "Very good," I answered, turning back for the brush. The man closed his eyes with a gesture of fatigue and sat waiting for the cool caress of the soap. I had never had him so close to me. The day he ordered the whole town to file into the patio of the school to see the four rebels hanging there, I came face to face with him for an instant. But the sight of the mutilated bodies kept me from noticing the face of the man who had directed it all, the face I was now about to take into my hands. It was not an unpleasant face, certainly. And the beard, which made him seem a bit older than he was, didn't suit him badly at all. His name was Torres. Captain Torres. A man of imagination, because who else would have thought of hanging the naked rebels and then holding target practice on certain parts of their bodies? I began to apply the first layer of soap. With his eyes closed, be continued. "Without any effort I could go straight to sleep," he said, "but there's plenty to do this afternoon." I stopped the lathering and asked with a feigned lack of interest: "A firing squad?" "Something like that, but a little slower." I got on with the job of lathering his beard. My bands started trembling again. The man could not possibly realize it, and this was in my favor. But I would have preferred that he hadn't come. It was likely that many of our faction had seen him enter. And an enemy under one's roof imposes certain conditions. I would be obliged to shave that beard like any other one, carefully, gently, like that of any customer, taking pains to see that no single pore emitted a drop of blood. Being careful to see that the little tufts of hair did not lead the blade astray. Seeing that his skin ended up clean, soft, and healthy, so that passing the back of my hand over it I couldn't feel a hair. Yes, I was secretly a rebel, but I was also a conscientious barber, and proud of the preciseness of my profession. And this four-days' growth of beard was a fitting challenge.

(Tellez, Hernando)

 

(Cutter's Barber Shop)

Reflection

...In this short fiction piece Torres is in a position of power. He is the captain of some sort of army fighting against the rebels. He and his army kill any rebels they find just because they are different in some way. In this paragraph, he captures and kills a group of rebels and hangs their naked bodies in the local school. He then forces the rest of the town into the school so they can watch his men torture the bodies of the rebels. This is an abuse of power because the rebels are already dead. There is no point of hanging their bodies up and shooting at them other than to punish the rest of the town's people. Seeing as the town's people have done nothing wrong there is no reason to punish them. This is just an example of the terrible things that can happen when power falls into the wrong hands...