The Tattoo

by Chris Mckinney

  She sighed. “Yeah, that was totally cool of Mr. Puana. I’m stoked. But you know, even though I’m going to do this, I still feel scared. You know, eighteen and getting married. Don’t get me wrong, I love Koa. And I would never get an abortion. But, you know.”

  I knew. She was scared shitless. She felt like her life was ending. Like all of us had thought when we were young, that when you get married, have kids, that’s it. It’s over. I suddenly realized that she probably envied my “ticket.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said, “if it ever gets really bad, give me a call. Not that it’ll ever get bad, you and Koa, you guys will be happy together, but if it ever really gets terrible, give me a call and I’ll send you a ticket.”

  She laughed again. “Thanks. Hopefully I’ll never have to take you up on that, but thanks for offering. I’m sure it’ll be great. We’ll build a house, one that we can design. It’s going to be a killer house. That I’m looking forward to.”

  I decided I liked her even more. She worried about the future, and it made me feel like I had a partner, like I wasn’t the only one. “Yeah, that should be cool,” I said,“making your own house.”

  She looked at me and smiled.“So I guess I should tell Cheryl that you’re not interested.”

  “I don’t believe I lasted this long,” I said. “I dig her, but I gotta get out of here. Besides, I wouldn’t be good for her, anyway. What are you Ahuimanu chicks doing? Chasing us delinquents around?”

  “You know what it is? You guys, you’re real. You know, no bullshit. You guys do what you want, be yourselves with no apology. Like, ‘This is me, take it or eat shit and die.’ There’s no hiding with you guys. Girls like that, you know.”

  Suddenly I felt an arm resting on my shoulder. Koa stuck his face between me and Kahala and then he turned his head toward me. “Eh, neva mind trying to steal my fewtcha wife, ah.” He turned to Kahala and kissed her.

  She crinkled her brow and laughed. “Ill, you drunk.”

  Koa turned back to me. “C’mon, get up, we gotta take more shots.”

  I sighed. “Let’s go.” I smiled at Kahala, kissed her on the cheek, and said, “Bye.”

  Koa and I left her at the table and headed toward the tequila, determined to get even drunker. By the end of the night, we were so drunk we passed out in the yard. The next day, when the harsh sun woke us up, we stood up and brushed the grass and dirt off our clothes. We looked at each other and laughed until the tears came out of our eyes. I felt my head pounding and tasted the cotton feeling in my mouth, but I laughed anyway. Koa turned away to puke. I laughed even harder. We spent the morning laughing, crying, and puking all at the same time.

  What a fucking night that was! Fucking beautiful. There are some experiences so pure, so deep, that flowery descriptions and metaphors don’t do them justice. When you remember them, you have to use expletives. There’s no other way.

  I think back on it now, all of it, this entire chapter in my life, and I trip on how this part of my life was much like that day in the mountains, how I shot the pig without even thinking, how the ranchers chased us, and how we ran down the mountain, not looking, not caring where we were going as long as we were going down. Koa taking the point, the position of lead blocker, and me following, trying to keep up. I don’t believe that I kept picking that boar up every time I dropped it. I often ask myself why I couldn’t just let it go and leave it, but I can’t really come up with any concrete answers. All I know is that it was almost like I needed to, like if I didn’t, the entire bad experience was a waste, like it was just senseless running into oblivion. Dropping that pig would have been like surfing straight down a wave, not juicing the ocean for a long ride. It would have been like diving in the ocean, not to catch fish, but to swim around aimlessly, dangling on a hook like shark bait. The pig was a load I didn’t want, but felt I needed to carry.

  It’s like my imprisonment. I can’t think of it as a senseless end, even though I can’t remember carrying out the specific crime, the one act that brought me here. As if it were just one event. I stopped believing in one events. Sure, the first drag from a pipe, the pulling of a trigger, the whispering of a lie, these at times can be monumental events, but there is always history behind them. They can’t be picked apart standing alone. It’d be like trying to split an atom with a machete.

  The other thing I think about when I remember that night with the pig is what happened after. The beating I took. How I escaped the clutches of one threat, and how I ran straight into the arms of another. I figure that’s how life is sometimes. Just when you think you’re out of the shit, when you’re running, looking back, and laughing, you run right into another pile, slip, and fall on your ass. You never even see it coming, but the only thing you can do is pick yourself up and head for the next pile. I felt like staying down once, but never again. Life is gonna have to hold me down and drown me in it.

  They had missed lunch and had Cal’s two cigarettes for a meal instead. Cal was almost finished filling in the symbol when he tapped Ken’s shoulder. Ken stood up and stretched. It was time for dinner.“Okay, let’s take a break.”

  Cal put down his gun and plopped down on his mattress. He cracked his knuckles. Ken laughed.“That’s the only sound I’ve heard you make, besides the buzzing of your gun.”

  Cal shrugged and scratched his head. He looked at his hand and saw dandruff flakes underneath his fingernails. He smiled. This place is breaking me up piece by piece, he thought.

  Cal lifted his arm and stuck his thumb up. He closed his eyes and pictured the Windward side. He had been through there years before. He remembered the dark green of the mountains and the hot sticky air. The coastal waters of Kahaluu had been brown even back then, but Cal thought it was because the mountain streams mixed with the ocean, bringing fertile soil into the sea. He never attributed it to pollution. Evidently things changed, because Cal remembered the Windward side as a beautiful place.

  Cal opened his eyes. Ken was staring out the rectangular window of the door. “I hate the fact that they can hear us from that box whenever they want,” Ken said.

  Cal was surprised that Ken wanted to limit his audience. Cal knew that Ken took pride in his story, and that it probably irritated him that no one would read over it or make a movie out of it. Sure, if you take all the pidgin out, exchange Ken with some white guy from West Virginia, then there’d be an audience. But Ken was Japanese and brought up in “paradise.” Paradise was never the compelling setting unless it was falling or lost.

  Cal knew part of the reason why local guys hated white guys so much was because white guys got all of the attention. He smiled. But then nobody will hear my story, too, he thought.

  “Claudia’s coming to visit me the day after tomorrow,” Ken whispered. “She’s bringing the kid.”

  This stung Cal. He thought of his children, a daughter about Ken’s age and a son a couple of years younger. He took their mother away from them in one act of jealous rage. Cal shook his head.

  “You got kids?” Ken asked.

  Cal shook his head again. He was not their father. What kind of father would take away their mother?

  “You should see Claude,” Ken said.“Beautiful.”

  Cal walked to Ken and tapped him on the shoulder. “Yeah, I’m ready,” Ken said. Cal looked at Ken’s back and noticed the blood and ink were beginning to dry. There were also a couple of big bruises where Ken’s back had hit the wall that morning. Fuckin’ Tavares. Cal wet a wad of toilet paper and wiped Ken’s back when the door buzzed for dinner. Cal did not want to see Ken interact with Nu‘u or Tavares.

  When they got to the cafeteria, Ken and Cal sat alone at a table. Nu‘u was sitting with Johnny and a few of the others. He was harassing Johnny while the others laughed. Ken was quiet. He picked at his food, but did not eat.

  Cal wondered why he was so vocal in the cell, but quiet in public. Public, Cal would laugh if he could. Halawa was definitely more private than public. His longing for laughter ended
as he saw Tavares’ giant ink-covered forearms underneath the hands which now gripped the table.

  Tavares sat next to Ken, ignoring Cal. “You knew Koa Puana?”

  Ken nodded. “He was my cousin,” Tavares said.

  Hawaiians. Everybody was related to somebody. Cal then knew that Tavares had been in the control box listening to Ken’s story all day, too.

  “He was my brother,” Ken said.

  Tavares nodded, then stood up. He wiped his hands vigorously against the legs of his blue jumpsuit.

  As he walked off, Ken smiled. “Cleanliness is godliness.”

  Cal looked at Ken, puzzled. “It’s prison guard syndrome,” Ken said. “I heard about it before. If you were to go toTavares’ house, you would see. A perfectly cut lawn. An impeccably clean house. They’re around prison so much, and feel so dirty that they become obsessed with cleanliness. You know, they try to wash that locker room, animal smell of prison off themselves. I heard some of their wives hear it if the house isn’t kept perfectly clean. In other words, they always hear it. There’s no such thing as a perfectly clean house.”

  Cal nodded. “Cops aren’t that different,” Ken said. “Cops feel like college professors trying to teach a class full of ten-year-old retards who look like men. Sooner or later, you’re either going to beat the retards and take their lunch money because you know you can get away with it, or go home and beat your wife out of frustration. I ran into a couple of corrupt, pig mother-fuckers. At the time I probably wanted them to go home and fuck with their wives like most good cops do. But now... Ah. Women, they should know, but they can’t be blamed. Stay away from any man involved with the law. Either side of it.”

  Ken dumped his spoon in his tray of mashed potatoes. Cal dug in his tray for the rubber glove and cigarettes. Just then, Nu‘u sat by Ken. “Hey, tough guy,” he said.

  Cal wanted to close his eyes again, but just before he did, he saw Nu‘u’s face screw up in pain. He seemed to be trying to get something off his lap under the table. He was acting like there was a tarantula on his lap or something.

  Ken smiled and leaned towards Nu‘u’s ear. He grabbed the spoon and held it handle up. “You keep fucking wit’ me,” he whispered, “and you’ll be talking about as much as Cal does.” He showed Nu‘u the handle of the spoon. “It would take me less than one fuckin’ second.”

  Cal didn’t doubt at that moment that Ken could bury the blunt handle of a spoon in Nu‘u’s throat. Every ounce of Ken’s face said he could. But instead, Ken let Nu‘u’s balls go. Cal could see that Nu‘u was wondering if he should hit Ken. But he paused. Ken didn’t take his eyes off him.

  Tavares walked to the table. “Problems, gentlemen?” he said. Nu‘u stood up and gingerly walked away.

  Ken put down the spoon. “He ain’t no Koa.”

  Tavares smiled as he walked away. “There was only one of him.”

  “How’s Uncle James and Aunty Kanani?”

  Without stopping or turning around,Tavares said, “Good, good. I heard.”

  Ken picked up his tray and looked at Cal. “It’s like Musashi said. ‘When you appreciate the power of nature, knowing the rhythm of any situation, you will be able to hit the enemy naturally and strike naturally. All this is the ‘Way of the Void.’ Nu‘u is ignorant of this.”

  Cal smiled. This pycho thought he was living in feudal Japan. But then again, jail did seem like a more primitive place. Maybe Ken was approaching it with a healthy attitude.

  Before Ken walked away, he said, “I thought I knew all of Koa’s cousins. I guess not.”

  Cal knew that that was about all the friendliness Ken could expect from Tavares. Tavares was a guard, Ken was a felon. But at least it probably meant that Tavares would stay off of Ken’s back. Cal hated Tavares. He was the kind of guard who took it in his own hands to make sure prisoners were doing hard time. Even Cal almost got beat when Tavares had found out that the state government was buying computers for the prisoners down the hill in middle security. “What about my fuckin’ kids!” he’d yelled. “Das my money, da taxpayas money buying dat!” He was anti-rehab, pro-punishment. And having Sergeant Miranda as the supervisor was both a good and bad thing. The smaller but tightly built Portagee-Hawaiian did not get emotionally involved with the issues. This job was just a paycheck to him. This meant he never abused prisoners, but it also meant that he didn’t care if guards like Tavares did. But Tavares had a connection with Ken now. He wouldn’t beat his dead cousin’s best friend.

  Cal and Ken dumped their food and made it through the strip search without any problems. They went to their cell. As Cal readied the gun, Ken started his story again. His voice carried more enthusiasm. He looked toward the control box. He knew he probably had an audience of two now. Cal cracked his knuckles and started on another moonlight session which would take them to early morning.

  chapter three

  “Each time Honolulu city lights,

  stirs up memories in me.

  Each time Honolulu city lights,

  will bring me back again.”

  Honolulu City Lights

  Beamer Brothers

  LOOKING AT MUSASHI

  Honolulu.Town. It was the place I took refuge in when I was eighteen years old. The day I left, I took the uphill drive with my suped-up eighty-three Toyota Celica. It was designed with oxidized black paint, bondo patches, and surface rust corroding the bottom of both doors. I drove up the Pali with an old twin mattress and a surfboard, a Town and Country gun strapped to the roof. Boxes of clothes and books were stuffed into the back seat, oozing socks, long flannel sleeves and denim pant legs. My diving equipment, thirty-thirty and twenty-inch television were riding shotgun. I had nine-thousand dollars folded in my pocket. Connected to the rear view mirror dangled my Bronze Star, the one my father had given me. Every time I looked in back of me, I saw it there. It was dark compared to the light which shined through the windshield.

  I looked ahead and saw the winding asphalt in front of me. It looked almost like the road was poured down from the top of the mountain, winding down like a cooled stream of lava. As I drove, one hand was on the vibrating wheel, the other was holding a greasy roast pork sandwich. I listened to the whine of my engine in fourth gear. My exhaust system was letting out a loud, sputtering sound as I climbed the mountain range.

  My great escape was a half-an-hour drive through the Koolau Mountains. The climb started with a steep, uphill drive on the Pali Highway. I took the hairpin turn. I saw the green mountains on the left, the cliff on the right. Looking over the cliff, I saw all of Kaneohe and its Bay. The suburbia spread under overcast skies. The atmosphere bled shades of gray. Looking down into the Bay, I saw the breaking waves, which looked like suspended white brush strokes on a blue canvas.

  These were the cliffs where King Kamehameha the First drove his enemies into free fall. He pushed the ali‘i, the chiefs of Oahu, into oblivion. Using guns and cannons brought from the West, conquering, killing. I thought about the blood that must’ve run down the mountains that day. The people, the blood, pouring down the cliffs like waterfalls, emptying into a pool of death below, perhaps running so far, perhaps reaching the Bay itself. But it was all gone. In that place where the pool was, instead sat a golf course. The path of the river of blood was covered with houses and asphalt roads. History dried up, and in its place rose an imported way of life. A new history, a foreign one. I never fooled myself, my ancestry was a part of this new history, too. I looked over the short cement railing and waved goodbye, taking a bite from my roast pork sandwich before I entered the first tunnel through the mountain.

  After I passed through the second tunnel and began my gentle descent down the mountains, I was greeted with rain. Heavy showers, which the Koolaus are known for. I turned on my wipers and the blades squeaked against the windshield, the sound of children jumping on a box-spring mattress. The rain was really falling and, although my wipers were at max, visibility was becoming a problem. I scooted my face closer to the windshield,
squinted my eyes, and saw the brake lights of a car rapidly approach in front of me. I down-shifted, then pressed down on my brake with a nervous foot. The car hydroplaned for a couple of seconds and my hands, dropping the pork sandwich, worked on the wheel. Finally the tires grabbed the asphalt, jerking my body forward. The gun was fired. I saw the surfboard fly ahead of me, almost hitting the car ahead. It cracked on the road. Regaining control of the car, I sped up and ran over it. I felt the tires leap. Well, I thought, since I’m going to town, a gun’s no good anyway. I needed a longboard to surf the small waves in town. Then I wondered if this was a warning from my mother. Waving away the absurd, child-notion that my mother’s spirit drifted in these mountains, I picked up the sandwich from the floorboard. My eyes remained squinted until I reached the bottom of the gentle downhill ride.

  I found myself in Makiki, home of the high-rise condominiums and ugly three-story apartment complexes. My crummy studio apartment was directly north of Ala Moana Shopping Center and Keeaumoku Street. It was close enough to the mountains so that vegetation blossomed, close enough to the Ala Moana district so that the green looked out of place. For almost two years I had bled my nine grand, paying for tuition at Kapiolani Community College, paying six hundred dollars a month in rent for my studio in one of those crummy three-story apartment complexes. When I first got to town, the only two costly things I ended up spending my money on were my paulowina tattoo and this framed Otsuka print of Miyamoto Musashi, the most legendary samurai of feudal Japan.

  I found him in some gallery at Ala Moana Shopping Center. There he was, covered with a glass sheet, hanging on the wall, looking like he was about to shatter the glass. The lights were on him. The glass absorbed the fluorescent glow of the bulb which hung above it. This gave the glass a mirror effect, and when I looked at Musashi I saw my reflection. I recognized Musashi immediately, his messy, long black hair, his shaven angular face. I looked into his dark slanty eyes, which somehow coupled both serenity and rage. He had that look, that “I’m going to kick your ass and there’s nothing you can do about it” look. The print had this animated, cartoon quality to it. I had read about him before, read his A Book of Five Rings. I liked it even though, at the time, I didn’t understand much of it. He was the ronin, who, by the age of thirty won over sixty duels. Shit, the crazy mother-fucker sometimes fought with sticks while his opponents had swords. He’d still kill them. He was the fucking man. I looked up to him, hanging there in the gallery. I had to have him. I walked up to the lady who was working there that day. She was a Chinese-looking lady dressed in a smart-looking lady’s suit. I asked her how much. She looked at me skeptically and said, “Framed, five hundred and fifty dollars.” I pulled out my wad of cash. “Well,” I said, “take it down, I don’t have all day.”