Chapters (43)
- Pronunciation
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Acknowledgments
It took hours, and a lot of blood, and Peter bore it without a single word of complaint. I could see in his face how painful it was, but he was never going to admit it. Stoic, he was. A martyr to his dream.
I sat with him the whole afternoon, listening to the whine of the tattoo gun, watching the needles engraving flesh, and admired my brother’s fortitude as ink and blood got wiped away with every other stroke.
I would have done anything for Peter. I knew how frustrated he got sometimes, aware of his limitations. But he never got angry, or swore, or had a bad word for anyone. He was a good soul, my brother. Better than me. I never had any illusions about that. And he deserved better in life.
By the end of the afternoon, his arm was a mess. It was impossible to see the tattoo for the blood, which was already starting to dry in a patchwork of scabs. The tattoo man washed it with soapy water and dried it off with paper towels before wrapping it in a lint bandage which he fixed in place with a safety pin.
“Take this off in a couple of hours,” he said, “and wash the tattoo regularly. Always pat it dry and don’t rub it. You need air for the wound to heal properly, so don’t cover it up.” He handed me a small jar with a yellow lid. “Tattoo Goo. Rub this into the wound after every washing. Just enough to keep it moist. You don’t want a scab to form. But if it does, don’t peel it off, you’ll pull the ink out. As the skin heals it will form a membrane. And eventually that will flake off. If you look after it carefully it should be fully healed in about two weeks.”
He knew his stuff that man. It took about twelve days to heal, and it was only then that we saw what a good job he had done. There was no doubting that it was Elvis Presley on Peter’s right forearm, and the way he’d worked in the banner lettering of Heartbreak Hotel it looked like the collar of his shirt. Very clever.
Of course, we had to go to some lengths to keep it hidden during that time. Peter always wore long sleeves around The Dean, and at school, even though it was still summer. On bath night he bandaged it up again and kept it out of the water. I told the other boys that he was suffering from psoriasis, a skin condition that I’d read about somewhere in a magazine, so the tattoo remained our secret.
Until that fateful day in late October.