by Joel Arnold
“Any part of you not tattooed?”
He paused. Turned to look at me as if he’d been waiting for me to ask. “Why, yes.” He nodded. Turned his attention back to the walls. Hands behind his back. An eagle covered his chest. Its talons clutched an iron cross. He continued to circle the room.
I knew Jim was out at the bar, a quick shout away. I also had a hunting knife strapped to my calf. But I’ve never been one to start trouble.
“I’m getting ready to call it a night here. Why don’t you come on back tomorrow.”
He pulled a wad of cash from his jeans. Peeled off three one hundred dollar bills.
“It’s late,” I said.
On his right bicep was a tattoo of Adolph Hitler. On his other arm was a figure in a white sheet illuminated by a burning cross.
“Do you want me to call Jim in here to show you the door?”
It’s usually a reaction they’re after. An excuse to blow up in your face with verbal or physical violence.
“I’m going to count to two,” I said. “And then I’m gonna call on Jim.”
He held up his hands. One hand said NIGGER in flaming letters. The other said DIE JEW. “I’ll be back later. When you’re not so — “ He sighed. Then smiled. “ — tired.” He nodded. Turned swiftly on his hard leather boots, so shiny they reflected the room like a collage of photo negatives.
As he left, I saw another image on his back just below the left hook of the swastika. An image of Martin Luther King, a bullet slamming into his chest, blood spurting out and dripping from his outstretched hands, his face. The phrase ‘DIE NIGGERS’ was scrawled below it.
You might wonder why I said nothing about his tattoos. Why I didn’t tell him they were offensive, why they caused my fists to clench and my jaw to tighten. Why, you might ask, didn’t I tell him to get the fuck out of my place and stick his white dick up his daddy’s Aryan ass.
I could tell you that I believe it’s best to turn the other cheek, best to let him waste away in his own ignorance. That God’s glory shines upon me and the pits of hell await his kind. I could tell you that, but I’d be lying.
Truth is I was just tired. And I wanted him to go away and leave me alone. Simple as that.
There are anomalies in this world and always will be.
Simple as that, too.
I thought of staying home the next day.
While I lay in bed that night, I told Rhona about him. Told her I felt like taking a day or two off. “I don’t need that shit,” I said.
She kissed me on the bridge of my nose. Her breath smelled like white Zinfandel. “You think he don’t want exactly that?”
“Don’t care what he wants.”
I rolled away from her. Rolled away from her eyes, the moisture in them shiny and serious. I didn’t want to smell her wine-coated breath, didn’t want to feel the righteousness ooze from every pore of her naked body. I pretended to sleep. A married man gets to be good at pretending sleep after fifteen years.
She rubbed the small of my back. “Baby,” she whispered in the loving way only a wife knows how.
In the morning, I fixed myself a plate of scrambled eggs. I went out back of our small brown house and split wood for the fireplace. I guess that’s when the rage really came out. Started out just hacking at big old logs, splitting ’em half-heartedly, then all of a sudden I couldn’t swing hard or fast enough. And when I was done splitting logs, I kept hacking at the goddamn tree stump where I done the splitting, kept hacking big chunks of it off, splinters of wood flying at my sweaty face, into my tear filled eyes until I heard Rhona screaming at me from the door jamb.
I stopped. Wiped the sweat away. Looked at the work I’d done to the stump and let the axe drop to the ground, the long wooden handle bouncing off my work boots. I walked past her into the house. I couldn’t look at her. Not then. I didn’t like it when she saw me like that. Losing control like that. I didn’t like it.
I showered, changed into clean clothes, and drove to the Slaughterville Roadhouse.
I’d just finished a plate of egg rolls straight out of the bar’s deep fryer when I heard his jackboots echo on the wooden floor. His shadow disappeared into my dark skin as he waited in the doorway.
“Are you awake tonight?” he asked. “Do you have time for a scumbag like me?”
“Just what the hell do you want? Don’t look like you have space for any more tattoos anyway.”
“There’s one space left,” he said. “One place that hasn’t been touched by the needle. One place that is still pure.”
“And you trust a nigger to do it? How you know I ain’t gonna fuck it up?”
He smiled at my sarcasm. Pulled out his wad of cash, peeled off not three, but five hundred dollar bills.
“No,” I said. “Keep it ’til I’m done. Then you can pay me.” It was all I could think of at the moment to keep from plunging my needles into his neck and filling the wounds with ink.
“Fair enough,” he said. He eased himself into the chair. I couldn’t help but stare at his chest, his arms, his neck, images of hate covering every square inch of his body.
“Where do you want it?” I asked. “And what do you want? A couple more swastikas? A pile of burning babies?”
“Please.” He closed his eyes. Reached down to his jeans.
He pulled a switchblade from his pocket.
I froze. My mouth turned dry as ash.
I don’t know why I wasn’t more prepared. I don’t know why I didn’t jump and try to take the knife away.
But I wish I had.
I wish I had.
He pressed a button on the switchblade’s black pearl casing. A mean looking knife sprang out with a click.
“Redeem me,” he whispered.
He could have easily stood from the chair and plunged the thing into me. Could’ve taken his damn time for as frozen with fear as I was.
But he didn’t.
And I swear to God this next part is true. I swear to God on the life of my wife. On the grave of my mother.
“Redeem me,” he said again, his voice pained as if something unseen had its hand around his neck.
He turned the knife’s point to the top of his chest. Stuck his arm straight out, then brought it in quick with enough force to plunge through his sternum.
My legs went numb, my whole body. Why I didn’t fall off my stool, why I didn’t shit myself, I’ll never know.
He opened his eyes. That’s something I won’t ever forget, something I see every time I try to sleep.
I realized at that instant that even his eyes were tattooed. What I thought had been blood vessels were tiny robed figures bowing toward his pupils. I wanted to look closer at his eyes, try to see inside his pupils, because I knew, I knew deep down in my soul that the tattoos continued on inside his eyeballs.
But my own eyes were drawn away. Drawn to the knife that sliced an uneven line down to his own belly. He set the knife down, breathing heavily. With long sharp fingernails (and my God, I swear, even those were etched with figures) he pulled back the skin on either side of the long jagged cut. I saw his ribs. Saw the intricate black etchings that covered them.
“Scrimshaw,” I whispered, was all I could think of to whisper like some idiot child.
Each row of ribs depicted scenes from Hell. The bottom rows held creatures both human and non thrashing about and copulating in a sea of fire, and each row above that another scene, scenes of torture, mutilation, death, the figures gradually rising upward, reaching toward the sky, toward Heaven, their faces scratched with agony.
No. That’s not right.
They weren’t reaching toward Heaven.
They were reaching toward his heart.
It beat fiercely. The only organ, the only thing of this man’s body left unadorned by the mark of a needle.
He pulled out one rib, then two, the crack of each making me jump. I watched his heart beat, watched it force blood through his arteries, watched the blood flow in and out, becoming purified
in an endless cycle.
Purified.
Blood spilled from him, soaking his jeans, pooling around his hips and dripping off the blue vinyl chair. His hand shook as he picked up one of the tattoo needles from the tray next to him. Sweat poured down his face.
“What?” I asked. My teeth chattered so much, I could barely speak. “What do you want me to do?”
“Finish it.” His eyes bulged. “You know what to do. Finish it.”
I wondered again what those hooded figures scratched into the sclera of his eyes bowed to, what was it exactly that was tattooed within the soft folds of his brain.
I took the needle from his hand, its buzz drowned out by the sound of my own heart beating in my ears.
I looked at his heart. I slowly reached in. Took hold of it. Felt it warm and pure in the palm of my hand. Never before had I experienced such an intimacy. It pumped hypnotically, forcefully.
I brought the needle to it. Started to draw.
Not a picture. But a word. The same word. Over and over. In large letters. Small letters. Block letters. Cursive letters. Over and over as his heart continued to beat in my hand, the main arteries still attached, strung between my thick fingers.
One word.
Love.
That was the word I wrote.
Love.
Over and over.
Over and over.
Love.
The only word pure enough for the sanctity of a heart.
He gasped as I placed it back in his chest. I took the pieces of rib from his hand and stuck them back loosely in place. I folded the flaps of skin back over the bone and noticed how even the insides of his skin were covered with tattoos.
He smiled at me.
Grabbed hold of my hand.
“Danke,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
I left him there to die. To live. I don’t know which.
But I do know that when he finally left my chair it was as a redeemed man.
A pure righteous man.
I still got a good eye, but my hand ain’t so steady anymore.
The Starlite
“Bourbon on the rocks with a twist of lime.”
Dinah’s usual. She let the edges of the ice smooth before taking her first sip.
Control, she thought. That’s the key.
She sat with one elbow on the worn wood of the bar, a Camel in one hand, the glass cool and wet in the other. The band hadn’t arrived yet, their instruments standing mute and waiting on the Slaughterville Roadhouse’s small platform stage. Dinah blew smoke rings that blurred and dissipated into the already thick haze over the bar. She closed her eyes, nodding along with the music.
That’s the great thing about music, she thought. Takes you away on a momentary vacation, turns your mind back in on itself, and for a little while you’ve elapsed back in time and you’re in high school again, drinking beer, smoking pot, not worried about much other than whether or not Dan Griffin, the boy you finally got to go out with you on a date brought condoms along. And if he didn’t, well you’d probably fuck him anyway, cause what the hell, you only live once.
All that brought back by a song, by a smoking guitar riff.
And when the song ended and Dinah opened her eyes, the past disappeared, her age caught up with her like a mean dog, and she waited for the next drink, the next song.
Smack!
The sound of a pool cue hitting the wall. Dinah flinched. Cigarette ash spilled across her knuckles.
“Wanna fight?”
“Bring it on, man. Bring it on.”
She swiveled on her stool to check out the commotion. Troy Hanson circled the pool table, holding the white cue ball in his fist, his arm cocked back ready to throw. Troy was a regular. Always getting in trouble one way or the other as long as his brothers were with him.
But the other man circling the table, the one with the broken pool cue, was someone — had she seen him before? A man with slick black hair and sideburns, a black leather jacket, his worn-brown wallet attached to faded blue jeans by a long chrome chain. Like someone out of a B-grade biker movie.
“Whenever you’re ready,” the stranger said, his voice quiet and hoarse, like faraway radio static.
Troy’s two surly brothers rose from their chairs, ready to step in if necessary.
They continued to circle the pool table. The other patrons backing off, hooting and chanting ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ over The Door’s L.A. Woman screaming from the jukebox.
Troy’s younger brother Dirk yelled, “Kick his ass!”
His older brother, Elvis Jr. shouted, “Don’t be a pussy. Throw it!” He grabbed Troy’s beer and guzzled it while Troy’s eyes were fixed on the stranger’s broken cue.
Then there was the unmistakable kerchunk of Ben Hooper’s twelve gauge, the sound cutting through all the hollering, the music, like an arrow shot through wet toilet paper. Everyone turned to look. Ben pointed the gun at Troy.
“Drop the goddamn ball right now.” Ben had tended bar at the Slaughterville forever. He was often seen carrying two full beer kegs at a time, one on each shoulder.
He turned the gun on the stranger. “Put down your cue.”
He did as he was told.
“Next time I pull out my gun, you can bet I’m gonna start firing until I hit somebody.” Ben set the shotgun behind the bar, his eyes still fixed on the two men. “Now shake hands.”
They shook; Troy with a sneer, looking like he was going to spit, and the stranger with eyes that floated in their sockets, reflecting the bar lights back at Troy in a glare of dead calm. They backed away from each other, Troy sitting down with his brothers, muttering, “Ain’t worth it.”
Dinah could tell he was spooked.
The stranger put his hands in his pockets and turned his back on the brothers. He stepped quietly over to the bar, his chain jingling, and took a seat next to Dinah.
She blew a thick ring of smoke at him. “Have I seen you before?”
The stranger shrugged, then nodded at her half-empty glass. “What are you drinking?”
“Bourbon.”
He jerked his chin at Ben. “Two bourbons.”
When Ben set the drinks down in front of him, the stranger laid a fifty on the bar. “Sorry about the pool cue. Didn’t mean to break it.”
Ben pushed the fifty back at the stranger. “Forget it. First drink, first broken cue is on the house.” He nodded toward the brothers. “Just watch your back when you leave tonight. Ain’t a bigger buncha assholes ever walked this planet.”
“Thanks.” The stranger lifted his glass to Ben in salute.
Dinah did the same. “Thank you, Ben. “ He nodded and turned to pour drinks for a couple of farmers at the other end of the bar. Dinah swiveled toward the stranger. “Ben’s nice enough. Just don’t get on his bad side. Where you from?”
“Out west. Name’s Billy.”
“You ride a bike?”
He looked at his drink. Nodded.
Dinah shoved the remains of her cigarette into the ashtray and pulled out two more. “Aren’t you going to ask me my name?”
Billy produced a match from somewhere below the bar and lit it with the nail of his thumb. He held it to the two cigarettes in Dinah’s glossy red lips. “I figured you’d get around to telling me sooner or later.”
Dinah sucked in. Handed one over to Billy. Winked. “Smoking’s bad for you.”
“Smoking don’t affect me.”
Dinah smiled. Tilted her head back and blew a mist at the idle ceiling fan above. “What brings you here?”
“Just passing through.”
“What about tonight?”
Billy laughed. “You get right to the point, don’t you?”
Dinah shook her head slowly, in rhythm to the jukebox. “I’m no slut. Just being kind to a stranger is all.”
Billy drained the rest of his glass, chewed on a chunk of ice. Turned to the empty stage. His face seemed to flicker through the smoke she blew at him. And when the moving col
ored lights of the dance floor hit the exposed skin of his neck, it looked for a moment like it was melting, like a piece of film stuck in a movie projector.
Damn, he’s cute, Dinah thought.
He stood from his stool. “I have to go.”
“Hey, wait. I didn’t mean—”
“I know what women like you want.”
Dinah blinked. “And what’s that?”
“You want a knight in shining armor. Someone to walk through that door and sweep you off your feet. A fantasy man. A movie star. But all you ever meet are drunk assholes and losers.”
She stared at him. Her drink was empty and goddamn, did she want another one. Her fingers shook as she tapped the ash off her cigarette.
“I have to go,” Billy said. “It was nice meeting you.”
But he didn’t move.
Dinah finally looked up at him and his eyes made the pit of her stomach ache. His pupils were depthless, black, the irises bright blue, and she could see the surprise in her face reflected in them. A sadness swept over her. She wanted to hug him. Slide her hand up under his leather jacket. Take him to her apartment and tuck him into bed. There was a hollowness deep in his eyes that enveloped her and she wanted to caress it away from him.
“Please,” she whispered, not knowing if she could be heard over the jukebox. “Let me take you home.”
Maybe the hollowness she saw in his eyes was her own hollowness staring back at her, a longing she’d felt for years, dreamed of since she was a teenager. Everything was possible back then, and now — nothing.
That was what she saw in those eyes, reflected back at her a hundred times over, making her want to crumple on the floor in a heap, crumple and let the night pass, wait for the day to come and warm her, wait in a heap of wrinkling skin and graying hair on the chilled dusty wood of the roadhouse floor.
Billy turned from her and walked away. The three brothers shoved their chairs back and followed him out the door.
Part of Dinah suddenly wanted them to beat the shit out of him. Shred him to bits, because he was an impossibility, nothing more than a dream she’d had a million times over. But the bigger part of her wanted to run to him, wrap her arms around him, yell out to him. But she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Her neck craned back to the bar. She stared at her drink. It glowed golden in the bar’s yellow lights. She lifted it to her lips. Let it fill her throat. Again and again.