Dirty Rotten Scoundrel

For a time, my mother supported her children as a hairdresser. She was skilled at her job, and it was always entertaining to hang out after school in the shop while she finished her work; one heard extraordinary stories as she straightened hair, or cut it. When I first read Eudora Welty’s story “Petrified Man,” I felt as though the author had been sitting in a corner of my mother’s beauty parlor, writing things down the entire time I was growing up; indeed, part of what fascinated me about the tale was its description of a little boy who listened to stories just as I listened to stories.