O’Dell's damaged mind grappled with the concept and at last grasped it.
Picture. On. Skin. Lion. Grrrrrrrr. Scary.
Pretty.
“Too! Too!” he said, so excited he sprayed Frosted Mini-Wheats and milk with each syllable.
“He wants one, Lamar, that's what the boy's saying,” said Ruta Beth.
“Can he get one?”
“Well, sure. Maybe not when I do it, because somebody'll have to stand guard. But later we'll get him a right nice one. O’Dell, what you like your tattoo to be?”
But O’Dell did not want a lion. He wanted something else.
“Doggy! Mar, me doggy. Doggy Dell. Yoppayoppa?”
“Yes sir. Baby O’Dell, we'll get you the goddamnedest best doggy ever there was. Right, Richard. You could design a doggy just like you done a lion, Richard, couldn't you?”
“Of course, Lamar.”
“Daddy, I want one, too.”
“Of course, honey.”
“I want a picture of my mother and daddy. On my back.
And a raven. I want it on my right shoulder blade.”
“Bet Richard could do that too, huh, Richard?”
“Ah—yes.”
Actually, Richard thought he was going to faint. Ever since he was a boy Richard had hated needles. What was tattooing, as he understood it, but ordeal by needle? Just sitting there, the tattoo artist would puncture and puncture and puncture, injecting a small permanent blot of color under the skin, until some hideous banality like a skull and cross-bones or a battleship or f u c k and You! was formed. He knew he couldn't get through it.
But he also knew this is why he was here. In some way, his skill with the pen had jiggered something deep and yearning in Lamar. It had drawn Lamar to him, made him important, even magical, to Lamar. It had, he supposed, saved his life.
“Richard, I want your help.”
“Help?”
“Be the foreman. Son, you worked so hard on the drawing and now I would say it's perfect. I want you to work with the skin artist and get it exactly that way. I don't want no slipups!” His mood turned briefly dark. He pulled the muscle of his biceps until they could see where drops of blood, once red but now faded pink, dripped off a tattooed slash in his arm, opened by a dagger. It was a trompe 1'oeil of some earnestness but not much skill. However, what infuriated Lamar was the third drop from the wound.
“See that one? Look, see it?”
They all crowded around.
“Yes sir. Daddy,” said Ruta Beth.
“What's wrong?”
“See how it goes out. All the others go in. That's what's wrong.”
But Richard realized it wasn't a mistake. The tattoo artist whoever he was, was trying to make the spurts of blood slightly more authentic by varying their configuration and modulating their placement in the stream, knowing instinctively that irregularity meant realism. If he'd done it the way Lamar had assumed he'd do it, it would somehow be deader. It was the endless battle between the patron and the artist for control of the work! It was the Pope versus Michelangelo!
“I suppose I'd have to do some research. I'd have to find a guy with the skill. You can't just walk in on these things.
-I'd have to see samples of his work. I think they have magazines full of tattoos. You could find a guy from them. And then we could—”
“No, no,” said Lamar, "that would take too long. He does something this fancy, I'll be laid up for a month while it heals. Longer I wait, longer it's going to be. Want it done now, tonight.”
“But Lamar, I—”
“The Fort! Don't you get that?”
“The Fort?”
“Fort Sill. Outside the Fort, on that Fort Sill Boulevard.”
“Tattoo parlors?”
“You got that right. We go tonight, we check ’em out, if you find a boy who can do what I want, then we do it tonight. We lay up, 'bout a month. I figure another job. We pull it off, then by God it's Mexico and a vacation!”
“A vacation,” said Ruta Beth.
“Oh, Daddy, you think of everything.”
It happened rarely enough anymore, because everybody had such different schedules and agendas, but it happened tonight, and Bud was a happy man.
They were all there, his wife and his two sons, gathered around a dinner table in the Mahogany Room of Martin's, Lawton's finest restaurant for forty years. And the place still knew how to put out a pretty good plate of roast beef, its specialty, though tonight Jen had decided to have some fish thing and Russ, though the honoree, had chosen a plate of linguini with pepper sauce.
But he was happy. Bud was. They sat there eating, Bud shoveling down the forkfuls of reddish meat that always so delighted him. The boys looked great. Russ, the object of all attention, had slicked up his act a bit: He wore a white shirt buttoned at the top and a pair of black jeans over his black boots, and his long hair smoothed backward.
The earring was still a little one. Jeff, in a blazer and tie, looked a little more like Bud's idea of a Princeton student.
“We are so proud of you, Russ,” said Jen.
“See, what's so great isn't just that Russ is smart,” said Bud.
“The world is full of smart people. Lamar Pye, he's smart. He's smart as hell. But Russ works. That's what's rare. The world is full of people who think they're just too damn smart to work.”
Russ was modest through all this but seemed to be enjoying it. Only Jeff was unusually quiet, although he also had good news: He had been moved up to varsity.
“Well,” said Bud, "they say a man is rich to the degree his sons make him proud—”
“Who says that, Dad?” said Russ, teasing the old man.
“Well, I don't know who exactly it was, maybe a Russian, maybe a Greek, and maybe I just made it up, but if it's true, then I'm the goddamned richest man in Oklahoma tonight.”
“Well, Dad,” said Russ, "maybe I'll flunk out.”
“You won't flunk out. No man who works as hard as you has a thing to worry about. Then you go on and go to work doing what you want and you have sons who’ll make you just as proud as you two make me.”
“You-all listen to your daddy,” said Jen.
“He's speaking the truth. You boys have been a great thing for us, made us so happy. Not a lick of trouble between the two of you, thank the Lord.”
Bud had more roast beef.
“Bud, do you think we should order some champagne?” said Jen.
“I think these boys are man enough.”
“Mom,” said Jeff, "that stuff costs eighty dollars a bottle.”
“Well, Jeff,” said Bud, "your brother has just saved us about a hundred thousand dollars, so I think we can spend eighty bucks.”
“Jeff, the domestic is forty-two fifty,” Jen said.
“You can buy it in a liquor store for about fourteen dollars a bottle,” Jeff added.
Bud called the waiter over and ordered a bottle of champagne, slightly shamed by Jeff into choosing the domestic one. When it came, he ordered it poured for the whole family.
Then, dramatically, he said, "And here's to Russ and all the hard work he's done.”
They all lifted their sparkling glasses and drank; but Bud only let the stuff touch his lips and did not swallow.
“Here, let me pour some more,” he said, giving each a half glass more, until it was all gone.
The boys and Jen finished the champagne and then it was time to go. Bud looked at his watch: about ten. He called for the check and paid it with his Visa card without wincing, though it was about forty dollars more than he had expected. Still, except for Jeff's strange sullenness, it had been a wonderful evening.
Is it the last? he wondered.
Am I about to do some fool thing and move into a little house near the airport with a young woman?
“Bud?”
“What?”
“You were talking to yourself.”
“I must be going crazy.”