Dad never took a day off. He was gradually transforming Grandpa’s commercial fishing business into chartered fishing and sightseeing tours only, setting up a lame website with pics of rich tourists in front of the Ramona, showing off their catches – guys willing to pay a thousand bucks to spend a day drinking and being pointed to a boat-attached pole whenever it jerked from some poor fish taking the bait. All summer long and into the fall we transported skilled and wannabe fishermen to the best sites to throw down lines for redfish in the bay or kingfish offshore – fathers and sons or couples who bonded or spent the day trapped and pissed off at each other, elite executives who came alone or brought VIP clients, frat guys who did more drinking, cussing and sunburning than fishing.
I baited hooks, filled the tanks and supplies, cleaned and gutted fish, hosed down the deck, and took photos. By the end of the summer, I was darker, harder and at least an inch taller than my grandfather, unless the wispy white hair drifting above his head like fog counted as height. (Grandpa claimed it did.)
Grandpa nearly came unhinged when Dad added sunset cruises for couples, dolphin-sighting tours for families and whooping-crane excursions for groups of little old ladies. But the money increased, and the workload was easier – especially with me for free labour, so there was only so much he could protest.
‘I was thinking.’
I feared Boyce was about to turn philosophical, and I was way too tired for that shit. I’d only had one beer before nearly falling asleep while making out with a hot chick who’d be gone tomorrow, so I decided to quit drinking before I ended up face-first in the sand. Boyce stopped in solidarity of the fact that we were the only two in our pack who worked our asses off during the day. Me on the boat, him at his father’s garage. We carried threadbare beach chairs down into the surf to escape the others, who could be annoying shitheads, especially when they were high and we weren’t.
‘Dangerous, Wynn.’
‘Ha. Ha.’
I focused on the cool waves lapping over my feet and the ceaseless, lulling hum and crash of the rolling water. The tide was still coming in. If we remained in this spot, we’d be waist deep by midnight.
‘I was thinking that I’ve never seen you without your wrists covered.’
I tried not to react, but my hands clenched the aluminium arms of the chair. As tanned as I was, my wrists were as white as my ass – they never saw the sun. Ever. I wrapped them in bandanas and wristbands or the watch I seldom wore any more. No one here had ever noticed the fact that all that stuff was masking something else. At least, I’d assumed they hadn’t.
I turned my head to look at him. ‘And?’
He chewed a bit of dry skin on his lip. ‘I was thinking you could probably get tattoos to cover – y’know – whatever you’re … hidin’.’ He shrugged, closing his eyes.
I stared out at the moon’s reflection rippling across the water and felt my insignificance to my core. Nothing was important enough to strive for – nothing but the need to keep my past pushed too far down to feel. There was nothing else to be done with it. No other way to avoid it.
I’d never considered his idea, which seemed abnormally genius for Boyce. ‘Don’t I have to be eighteen?’
He laughed, low. ‘Nah, man – don’t you know me at all? I know a girl who’ll do it.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
He shrugged. ‘Let me know. I’ll hook you up.’
Her name was Arianna, and she was in her mid-twenties. One arm was sleeved in colourful ink, and the other had only two scripted lines on her inner forearm that read: New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings ~ Lao Tzu. We’d come an hour after the studio closed, since I wasn’t old enough to get a tattoo without parental approval.
‘If you want the tattoo to sort of cover the scars, like a smokescreen, then the scar tissue is inked. But you could also incorporate the scars into the design – leave them inside the negative spaces. They’d be hiding in plain sight – like camo.’ She examined my wrists, turning them to and fro and brushing her fingers across the disfigured pink tissue. I felt nauseated and exposed, but I couldn’t move. Boyce was uncharacteristically silent. ‘We could also tat all the way around. Make it look like wristbands.’
I nodded, liking that idea. We looked over a few designs from a scrapbook before I pulled a sheet of paper from my back pocket. ‘Um. I sketched a couple of ideas … I don’t know if you can use them.’
She unfolded the sketch and smiled. ‘I can absolutely do this, if it’s what you want.’
I nodded.
She sketched and transferred the two designs on to my wrists – one for the right, one for the left, and then readied the equipment and snapped on latex gloves. It hurt like hell, but it was a bearable pain. Boyce was so skeeved out – I assumed from the blood, though my blood all over his fists a few months ago hadn’t bothered him – that she ordered him to go sit in the waiting area until we were done.
‘So why are you doing this?’ I gritted my teeth as she worked over the bone at the side of my wrist, and tried not to think about the needle stabbing me over and over. ‘For me, I mean.’ I knew Boyce had filled her in. She hadn’t batted an eye when I removed the bandanas.
Her eyes didn’t waver from her work. ‘Because having the ability to make my skin my own again saved my life.’ She wiped the blood away and examined the link she’d just filled in. Her eyes met mine. ‘Some of us can begin to heal the damage people have done to us by escaping the situation, but some of us need more than that. Tattoos make statements that need to be made. Or hide things that are no one’s business. Your scars are battle wounds, but you don’t see them that way. Yet.’ She pumped the machine back to life with her foot.
I felt the burning prick of the needle as she began another link. ‘This ink will make your skin yours again. Maybe some day, you’ll see that your skin isn’t you. It’s just what houses you while you’re here.’ She paused as a roll of chills ran over me. ‘You’re an old soul, Landon. Old enough to make this decision. Just like I was.’
I went home with bandages round both wrists and strict care instructions. ‘This is like a wound of its own,’ she warned me. ‘Do not get a sunburn on top of it.’
For the rest of the month, I kept them hidden, same as always. When the sun touched the bare skin of my wrists for the first time in almost two years, I felt naked. The reactions of most of the people I knew was some variation of Cool tats, man. Some people assumed I’d been hiding them under the bandanas all along, which made me laugh. Yeah. The tattoos are what I’ve been hiding.
Girls thought they were sexy. Sometimes they asked, ‘Did it hurt?’
I’d shrug. ‘A little.’
Dad and Grandpa had similar reactions – a quick flash of the eyes to the ink when it was noticed. A grunt of disapproval. No words spoken.