Heir by Sam Graveney

Samuel Waggoner never used his own products. People admired that about him; Waggoner’s Wigs were so good, had he used them, no one would ever have known. An Australian, he fought in Vietnam and emerged from the jungles with a secret ingredient that turned dried-out hair from barbers’ floors into manes which shone like honey and lasted and lasted. He built a wig empire, became a rich man, he married a stage actress, Harriet, for love, he bought a big house outside Darwin. He was totally bald.

Harry Waggoner was born with reams of black hair that hung down to the floor when the midwife dangled him by his ankles and smacked his bottom. In name, and scalp, Harry took after Harriet. He had a happy infancy. There was a pool, and for hours Harry, Harriet and Samuel fished and played. It was next to a bunker, built against the Japanese. At the end of a happy day the Waggoners read their Bibles. Harry liked Sampson.

One day, Harriet’s long black ponytail got caught in a plane propeller. She died. At the funeral, a reporter remarked, ‘if only she’d been wearing a Waggoner’s’. Harry pulled out hanks of his hair with his child’s fists. Samuel shut himself and his son away from the world in the big Darwin house. He left only once per month, driven to the factory with a suitcase holding the Waggoner’s formula.

Harry’s memories were smeared by grief: he remembered his head being shaved by his father’s men. He remembered experiments done on his scalp, probing needles, he was sure to render him bald. Samuel Waggoner hated to look at him, he was sure. Hated his name, his hair, all reminding him of his dear Harriet. Her pictures were taken down, her name unmentioned. In time, Harry forgot what she looked like, and did not understand how something unremembered could hurt. Samuel tried to smother their pain, and treated Harry not as a son but an employee. They got to work.

When Harry designed a new wig mesh using nylon, he was allowed to go to the pantomime. When his patriotic initiative to give wigs to Australian veterans of Vietnam got good press and American sales, he was allowed to go to the cinema. At age 18, Harry was summoned to his father’s study. The walls were furred with wigs, the floor carpeted with loose hairs. Samuel Waggoner offered the boy a letter; he said it contained the Waggoner’s formula. Harry tore it up, unread. He hated wigs. He said he wanted to be an actor, like his mother. He said because it was true, and to hurt Samuel. His father let him go. His last words seemed a curse: Waggoner’s Wigs is under your skin.

Harry Waggoner did alright, initially. He moved to Brisbane. His hair grew back. He wasn’t the finest actor, but he had bottled-up energy to use. He did TV. Eventually, people realised he was the Harry Waggoner, of Waggoner’s Wigs. Producers gave him roles in hopes of future favours from his millionaire father. With his first paycheque, he bought two mirrors to see the back of his head: he liked to comb his hair, knowing it was real. But it made him miss his mother. He still could not remember her face.

A decade passed. Harry worked steadily, but not spectacularly. Waggoner’s Wigs haunted him. He wore a blond Waggoner’s to play a viking, a red Waggoner’s to play a pianist, a black Waggoner’s (with widow’s peak) to play a vampire. There were letters from his father. He never read them. He hated the idea old Samuel Waggoner would see him, bewigged, and mistake it for forgiveness.

Another decade passed. Harry Waggoner’s hair stayed glossy, but his face started to rumple. In a magazine, a reporter accused him of wearing a Waggoner’s: “a braid of vanity and childhood trauma”. The article had photographs of Harry and Samuel, but none of Harriet. Unlike his hair, job offers thinned out. 

Samuel’s letters only stopped when Samuel died.

At the funeral cadaverous old men, Samuel Waggoner’s colleagues, shook his hand, offered condolences, and then asked urgently for the Waggoner’s formula. They were certain Samuel had given it to him.

Harry Waggoner was alone, and paranoid. He was sure his post was read, his calls tapped, that people were following him, seeking Samuel’s secret. Waggoner’s Wigs share price dropped. Wigs went for thousands, second-scalp. Waggoner’s shareholders, who had heft particularly with Hair and Makeup, pressured a studio to drop him. They said he was deliberately destroying the company to spite his father.

Then a posthumous letter from Samuel Waggoner arrived. This one, Harry read.

By now I’m dead. When you rejected me, it hurt and I deserved it. I still want you to have the Waggoner’s formula. It is worth a fortune, so this letter will have passed through other hands. Hence: a code.

If you’re like me, you’ll understand. You are my son.

With love and endless hope of forgiveness,

Dad

It took Harry Waggoner a day and a night of thinking, and it came to him, knitted together like formula-treated hairs into a nylon mesh of a Waggoner’s Wig. 

Waggoner’s Wigs is under your skin

Memories of shaver and needle.

If you’re like me.

You are my son. Samuel’s son. Sampson. Samuel was bald. Sampson was shaved.

He took scissors and razor. Black locks rained. In the mirror he had bought with his first dollar, he read, inked tiny and black on his scalp, reknub. He took the next plane to Darwin, a taxi to the old house, and ran to the bunker by the pond. Inside, the suitcase Samuel Waggoner had monthly carried to the factory. It contained papers, plant names, maps of Vietnam, and names of trustworthy Waggoner’s men. Harry tossed these aside, because there was also a photograph of Samuel, Harriet and young Harry, and a lock of Harriet’s hair. The lock, of course, was perfectly preserved.

Sam Graveney 

Image by HEON CHANG from Pixabay – a hank of black hair coiled on a surface next to a pair of scissors.