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A parting of sweet sorrow

Longtime Hudson barber Jack Hickman fears he'll lose customers when he undergoes treatment for his throat cancer, so he plans to sell his business. He hopes to one day return to his perfect job.

HUDSON - Jack Hickman decided at age 15 to become a barber. It seemed the perfect job.

In most barber shops, there's friendly banter, political discussions, local gossip and the occasional off-color joke.

"Every day is different," he says. "Every haircut is different. I enjoy the talking."

But now cancer has closed in around his throat, grinding his voice to a rasp. It has made his neck, now swollen and red, throb day and night.

Doctors diagnosed the disease just three weeks ago, after Hickman complained that his throat had grown sore and his voice had changed.

They have already put a feeding tube in his stomach for when he no longer can swallow. It makes a bump under his shirt.

Hickman, 49, has cut hair in Hudson for 33 years, first in other people's barber shops until he opened his own - called simply Jack's Barber Shop - in 1984. Many of his customers have been with him for years, if not decades.

He had two other barbers at one time. One died. The other, Ralph Carr, retired after his hands began trembling with age. Those chairs remain empty.

"If I were able, I'd go back and help him out," Carr says from his home in Crystal River. "Jack Hickman is an all-right guy in my book."

For Hickman, the barber shop has been a six-day-a-week job. He hasn't had a vacation in 15 years. But his work paid the bills as he raised two girls with his wife of 30 years, Donna, a nurse.

"She never minded the hours," he says. "She knew where I was."

But now Hickman wants to sell the shop, to someone, he hopes, who will let him come in and cut hair when he feels able.

Until then, he works.

He begins with the clippers, first trimming the hair on the top of the head and working down the sides. Then he trims around the ears, cleans the back of the neck with a straight razor and snips away at unruly eyebrows.

It takes 15 minutes at least. He doesn't do five-minute haircuts.

"If you don't get what you want, then you aren't coming back," he says.

He charged $6 a cut for 14 years. Before that it was $5. Two years ago, he raised the price to $7, with customers usually tossing in a $1 tip.

Customers chat and joke or just watch the morning news on TV as they wait their turn. Hickman keeps his conversation to simple sentences. Yes. No. His throat hurts too much to say much more.

He'll stop to light a Pall Mall for a single puff or to take a swig of Gatorade, which makes him wince.

Hickman soon will begin two months of chemotherapy and worries that he won't be able to work at all. If he's not at the shop, his customers will go elsewhere. He could lose the business altogether.

"Something like this hits you, and you sit down and start thinking," he says. "It really knocks your legs out from under you."

But the shop is still busy for now.

"I got a good clientele. I couldn't ask for better people," he says.

While Bob Frankel waits for his turn, he talks about Mayan pyramids in Belize and the Democratic contenders for 2004. Frankel, a retired professor from Saint Leo University, has come to Jack's for 16, maybe 17, years.

"Of course we always talk about philosophical things like Hippocrates and Shakespeare," Frankel says with a wink. "And the language is always pristine."

Frankel tells about his career in the U.S. Public Health Service, his first car - a 1956 Chevy - and tries to brag about Hickman. Hickman will have none of it and tells Frankel to be quiet.

When it is Frankel's turn, Hickman snips his curls down to a clean, orderly cut. He shaves Frankel's neck, cleans up his sideburns, brushes off the clippings and removes the apron. Frankel pays him. He wishes Hickman a happy New Year and tells him to take care of himself. Frankel's face looks drawn, his eyes sad.

Outside, the retired professor pauses by his car to wipe his glasses.

Like Frankel, some customers know about Hickman's cancer. Others learn of it when they stop by for a regular cut.

Ed, a retired cop who won't give his last name, asks if Hickman's sick when he hears his raspy voice.

"Throat cancer," Hickman answers.

Ed, reeling, drops his sunglasses on the floor and scolds him for smoking. He looks in the ashtray, filled with partially smoked Pall Malls, and scolds him again.

Hickman says he was indulging before the chemotherapy. They don't talk about it further.

Hickman can't remember his age when he first began smoking. It might have been around the time he started at Gulf High School.

Ed sits quietly for the rest of his haircut. On the TV, Maury Povich scolds out-of-control boys for committing misdemeanors and being mean to their mothers.

A barber has to be a good listener, Ed says, "like a bartender." Hickman finishes the trim, and Ed wishes him a happy New Year and leaves. He doesn't mention the cancer.

Just before noon, another customer enters. This will be the last of the day. Hickman, whose medicine makes him sweat, wipes his brow and works through the haircut.

Clippers, scissors, razor, brush.

Done.

He leans against the counter to rest.

Then he flips the sign in the window to "Closed" and sweeps the floor.