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Grace in the Shadow of the Big Tree - Chapter 11

Joey had a fine arts certificate from Columbia University in New york, and Allison had a BFA from a four-year in Macon. Joey had done graphic design for a suit-and-tie ad firm fir the three years before, and he hated it. Allison had been working secretarial and trying to figure out what anyone does with a BFA from anywhere, when they'd met. Somewhere in between then and now, the subject of tattoos came up. Joey had a beautiful design of St. Joan on his left leg, and Allison had admired it and redrawn it a few times on notepads and napkins and next to random lines that she'd written out. On their one year anniversary of dating, Joey showed up at her parents' place with a ten pound bag of Florida oranges and a big paper bag. She'd made him dinner that got cold while they spent the night putting together the tattoo gun and looking at the inks he'd picked up.

One morning, a couple of months after Anna was born I woke up and stumbled down the stairs to put up a pot of coffee, and there was this funny sound coming out of the kitchen.

-zzzzzzzt zzzzt zzzzzzzt-

Allison was standing over the sink with this enormous grapefruit in her hand, and the grapefruit was looking very pleased with the rough sketch of Elvis' face that was being shaded into its left pec. Allison had her tongue halfway out of her mouth, standing the way that The Thinker would stand if he was holding a grapefruit that was going to go out and show off his new tattoo to his buddies that night over beer. It really did look like Elvis - the tattoo, not the grapefruit.

About two days later the kitchen table was a busy place to be, and we were all vying for space to finish our tattoo designs, and giggling about where we were gonna get them.

Abe had a Man's Tattoo - he drove a truck, cor' he had a Man's Tattoo. It was a buxom young thing with a big -ahem!- grin, wrapped around the Mac bulldog at the top of his right arm, near the shoulder. He'd gotten it at a truck stop in South Dakota one night when the snow was way too high to be driving and he'd got himself into a conversation with a guy who did tattoos, who was in the same predicament. Turned out pretty nice. The wife thought the girl in the picture was pretty nice - pretty nice to slug when she was madder'n'mad about something. Abe had got a bad taste in his mouth about South Dakota truck stops after a while. Well, at least the wife had a long wick. Abe wore a lotta flannels when he was home until he got the girl on his arm some clothes.

Mary was the first one of us to get her tattoo. Night before I drove her into town to catch a lift to the next wherever she was going she changed her mind about not wanting to get one, and Allison said, Ok, let's go, got out the greensoap and deodorant, and penned a turbo-charged armadillo with monster truck wheels onto Mary's forearm. Mary wouldn't look up until it was all done, said that she was the same way when she got her hair cut, and you pointed out that hair grew back, and Mary said that she trusted Allison, and Mary sat up when it was all done, looked and said it was, foine as frog's hair.

Joey got a big yellow sign on his shoulder that said in big black letters DEAD END STREET and spray-painty letter underneath that said, or bust, with a giant sunflower growing up next to it and a trowel in the dirt a little ways away. It took that a long time to get finished 'cos he was so thrilled that Allison was actually doing tattoos with the gun he'd bought her that he kept giggling and she kept having to stop and say stand still and kissing him to keep him quiet.

Lee wound up with quite a likeness of Mao with a Groucho Marx moustache and glasses, perched above her wrist.

Your tattoo was a chrysanthemum with a rose stem and leaves. You told me that you had seen that in a book of Japanese art, and you never knew what it meant, but you knew that you liked it real well.

You beat up on the girl on my arm a couple of times, but it made me feel like a Man, I suppose.

Submitted by Sou on Tuesday, November 13, 2007 (06:00:00) (505 reads)

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