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whole lot more. It’s like minus ten.”
    â€œI don’t bitch, all right? If it is thirty below where I’m from, everyone is dead anyway.”
    Texaco Joe never said exactly where he’d come from or where he was born. The odds were sixty to forty on Barbados, according to Jamie. Joe had tried to claim he was from Houston and even wore an Astros cap in the summer, but he had never crossed the border in the five years he’d worked for Don Henley at the shop. He couldn’t even name any other Texas cities besides Dallas and San Antonio. However, he did own three pairs of cowboy boots. Purple, green, and tan leather. His wife polished them for church on Sundays.
    â€œYou hear what happened to your little white-boy friends last night at the barber’s? They always skulkin’ round there. Bound to happen finally, little shits.”
    â€œAt the Triple K? What happened to them?”
    â€œYes, my friend’s place. He finally got rid of the—what are their names?”
    â€œSince when is he your friend? You can’t even remember his name,” Moses said.
    â€œYou see this new cut? He did this.”
    Joe spun in a circle. His hair was shaved almost to the scalp. Smoke from his cigarette gathered around the dangling lights.
    â€œYou aren’t supposed to be smoking back here, Joe.”
    Joe just waved a hand through the yellow cloud.
    â€œNo one will know. You might want to call someone. I will cover for you, little buddy. You really need to get those little skulls under control.
    â€œYou didn’t see the blood outside, eh? Down the street? I thought you rode your bike.”
    â€œI keep my head down when I ride.”
    â€œThe two little skulls got broken noses, I think. I was getting a shave too, you know. Couldn’t adjust myself to see exactly what was going on. A lot of whap, whap, whap was all I heard. ”
    Joe punched at the air. Moses sat down on one of the bone cans.
    â€œYou might want to call the one with the tattoo on his head. The one with the big mouth. He looks like he got the worst of it.”
    Joe strutted by Moses and back into the meat fridge, stubbing his cigarette out in the steel sink. Moses didn’t move. He knew hanging out at the Triple K had been a bad idea. Logan and B. Rex went there every day after school. Moses usually had to work.
    Klips, Kuts, and Kurls. The oldest barbershop on the south side of Larkhill, nestled in between Gerry’s Convenience and the local branch of the National Fears and Phobias Crisis Center. Established in 1923 by Luke Hofstadler and his three sons. The Hofstadlers were one of the few black families to set up shop on that side of town. The place had been burned down a few times in the past, though the first two were due to electrical problems and the third involved a drunken reopening party to celebrate the second restoration.
    Logan had brought it up when they were drunk and listening to some strange Hungarian folk music his dad had bought at a garage sale. It was two in the afternoon and they were skipping history with Mr. Wallburton, who smoked little Russian cigarettes in his Pinto at lunch while reading harlequin novels. He tore the covers off to hide the titles.
    â€œIt’s basically a provocation to everything we stand for, you know. Like, spitting in our faces. Collectively, as like, a collective of whites,” Logan said.
    â€œWe stand for what exactly?” B. Rex said.
    â€œBreak down the name, man. They can dress it up in purple letters all they want, but like, what else does triple K stand for these days? KKK.”
    Moses was sitting on Logan’s bed, staring at the David Bowie posters and the Star Wars figures lined up on the bookshelf, trying to figure out how they all fit into this new philosophy boiling under his skin every time he rode his bike past his old neighborhood. No, not a philosophy, more like a feeling, a vibration that made the hairs on his back stand