Dexter and Eugene

What do you do with your life, when you have all the money you will ever need? Now in some cases that doesn’t mean it’s a lot of money. Sometimes folks are happy with a few coins here and there, because a roof above their heads, a warm bed to sleep in and food in their stomach is all that is required. However, in the case of Dexter Foster it was about all the money in the world. 

He was a dollar millionaire by the time he was nineteen years of age. He never knew his father and he didn’t take this as a great loss in his life. By the time he was twenty-five, he was worth over half a billion. Shrewd investments, and his helping in the development of a new way of thinking with computers put him at the top of the tree.

He’d had partners, but most were after his money and his power – so he found he became cynical in his belief with the souls of others. Money couldn’t buy love but it could buy companions, and he made do with that for a few years. When Dexter hit fifty, he went through a kind of mid-life crisis – he realized that he was rich, lonely and had lost the hunger that had put him where he was.

One sunny Saturday morning, he took a few thousand dollars from his wallet and went down to the streets below his penthouse and gave a hundred-dollar note to every homeless person he could find – not that they were hard to find in this city.  

Some smiled, some got up and shook his hand, a couple used it to light their cigarettes – and then he came to Eugene, and he was different.

Eugene didn’t want Dexter’s money, no sir, not a cent interested him. What he wanted was a favor. He wanted Dexter to cut Eugene’s hair.

“Why can’t you take the money and get a barber to do it?” Asked Dexter.

“Because I would have to pay them, and I want you to do it because you want to. You don’t get much kindness down here on the streets,” said Eugene.

Dexter felt that was a fair comment and so nodded that he’d do it.  He bought a bottle of water, some shampoo and scissors from a near-by Seven Eleven store, and sat Eugene on the wall and began to cut his hair.

Now this is where Dexter shocked himself because he was actually really good at it. Eugene was content at the job he had done and so was Dexter, and that was what started it all. 

Every weekend, Dexter would set up a hair salon in the back of a yard off Eight Avenue and he’d spend the Saturday and Sunday cutting the hair of homeless folks. He got to know all about their lives and stories. Some had been professors, some soldiers, one a ballerina and several had been doctors; all of them had fallen on hard times, mostly through no fault of their own.

Then one Saturday, a few years later, Dexter failed to show at the little yard at the back of the building. Scott, a younger guy, who had recently started getting his hair cut by ‘Dexy’ (as he called him) grew concerned and went to talk to a cop who always stood on the corner.

The cop sent someone around to Dexter’s apartment on Fifth Avenue where they had to break into the place. ‘Dexy’ had suffered a stroke and had probably been lying there for a while. Dexter never got his ability to speak back. He lay in the hospital for several weeks before he died, but at night the nurse would let some of the homeless folks in to sit by Dexter’s bed. One of the girls, Evelyn, would make sure his hair looked neat and tidy and would cut it when it was needed.

By the time  Dexter died, he had given away most of his money to charity and after his funeral, he instructed a lawyer to give every homeless person in the area a hundred-dollar note.

He also left a little store to Eugene, who used it to let folks sleep in the upper floor and in the shop below Eugene started a salon to cut hair for any homeless person who wanted it.

They still talk about Dexter around this way – ‘the man who had cut poor people’s hair’.  It was just a little kindness in a world that so badly needed it.

Bobby Stevenson 2018