Tattoo the Wicked Cross

by Salas, Floyd;

  “The trouble with all the punks around here is they’re afraid. I’m not afraid, Buzzer. I’m not afraid and you better believe it. Whoever takes me on is going to have to pay for it with his hide, black, white, or Mex-cun brown, bad actor or punk.

  “Punk,” he repeated, and pointed at Barneyway, and started shouting, unable to dam or slow the torrent of angry words. Yet he was intensely aware of what he was doing. He watched himself do it. But he was beyond his own control, beyond the control of all the boys together, including the tight-lipped Buzzer.

  “You want to kick each other’s ribs in, bust on each other’s skull, Buzzer? You want to cut on each other a little bit? Call it, Buzzer!” he challenged, and grabbed his pant leg to show his blade and prove he meant it; but he checked the motion, for the power of surprise, but only for that, because he believed what he said, and he welcomed the chance to fight with the blade, to see who would die, but die angry, die bad, die strong, strong, and full of heroism.

  “I’ll make one guy pay for all the crap I’ve taken, Buzzer. I don’t care who it is. I don’t care if it’s Big Stoop,” he said, believing it, thinking it really possible; and trying to attack something bigger than the man, he shook his hands at the ceiling, and shouted:

  “I’ll even go to Hell. Yuh hear? Hell! I’ll roast in the flames for doing somebody in. It’ll be worth it! Yuh understand? I’d stab God if he messed with me. Stab God, yuh hear? Stab God! Stab God! Stab … God!… Stab … God!… God!…”

  His boast resounded in the dormitory, then passed, unchallenged, out of hearing altogether in the persistent quiet which followed, but it hung like a haunting echo in the guilty corners of his own mind.

  He went out into the courtyard, but he could still hear it. He went back to the gym, but the aggressive noises he heard there seemed mild compared to the sound of his threat. He went to the baseball field, where the tiny competitive cries of outfielders emphasized how puny and yet how very serious was his own cry, which neither a silent count nor marching commands nor the boisterous talk at dinner could help him to forget. The echo sounded more blasphemous than ever in the chapel, because his intention to use the blade kept him from kneeling, and his attempts to fill the chapel with prayer sounds while standing ended in stutters. He then saw a flawed knot on the square face of the wooden Christ, which resembled a beauty mark so closely it distracted him. He studied it and decided that it was just a curlicue in the grain of the cheekbone. He then guessed that it was a lumpy spot of congealed varnish, because it went away with the sunlight; but he went away, too, and without praying.

  Dusk and unfrequented paths on the visitors’ lawn helped him to keep busy and isolated but brought him no relief. He soon began to limp, too, for the blade was taped too tightly to his shin, and every time he sat down or leaned against something to rest, the letter crackled.

  Only a bed-hugging speechless lockup and the wide berth given him by the other boys helped him to conceal his lost hope that he would ever be able to either keep his promise to Judith or be bad, let alone both.

  But lights out brought many ghosts. Some were shaped like the blade. Some crackled like the letter. Others shriveled into tattooed dots at a glance. But all spouted blasphemy. All moaned over broken promises. All warned of coming battles. And a warm, sticky, multicolored current of blood and milk and ink spurted out of a thousand tattoos, and splashed over him, and awoke him, sweating, late at night.

  V

  The oak tree spread crooked, moss-infested, leaf-clustered, swaying branches and a hushing shade over Aaron, as if warning of a family conspiracy; and he wouldn’t give Judith his attention.

  “I waited a week, Aaron,” she said, but he still refused to answer.

  For her beauty mark was a tattooed point of betrayal, and smacked, as well, of a little girl’s annoying and faulty attempts at big girl make-up, which marred the brushed simplicity of her blond bangs and the natural hair fall and curl of her page boy and seemed in bad taste with the full skirt and feminine ruffles of her green summer dress.

  “Aaron,” she said, touching his cheek and irritating him with such a familiar act in front of his family.

  Nora had opened the basket of sandwiches with the stealthy care of a thief, had spoken only to offer food, and had then sat next to him on the picnic blanket, with the petrified limbs, the dark beauty, and the empty gaze of an anonymous cover girl.

  His father’s bald head was the dull color of adobe, and he kept his cheeks fat with bites of baloney sandwich, finished two cokes in quick succession, and shifted nervously about on the camp stool without telling one tale about his adventures as a young man, which would have been a happy miracle to Aaron, if the behavior weren’t so suspect.

  Stanley now squatted on his haunches and appeared to be examining the oily liquid in his coke bottle, although he had shown the same, unnatural preoccupation when he had hugged Aaron, without smiling, in front of the office, had driven, without speaking, to the field, and had carried, without help, the blanket and the basket and the Kool-aid jug to the shaded spot of the previous week.

  But his body was so muscular that, when he squatted, stretch lines creased like suspender straps between his sport shirt collar and his shoulders; and the barely suspended power kept Aaron on guard.

  “I didn’t tell them what you told me, Aaron. On my Mother’s Honor, I didn’t,” Judith said and touched him again.

  “I got scared, Aaron. I saw Nora and she said that they had been to see you and that you were real sad. I was sure that the trouble had gotten worse. But I only told her that somebody was bothering you, that’s all. On my Mother’s Honor,” she said and pulled on his chin and turned his face toward her.

  The beauty mark then looked so out of place situated in the center of such plump freckled innocence that he was overwhelmed once again by all the confusion and misery caused by his misinterpretation of it: his belief that it was somehow as sharp and strong and suitable for her face as the point of his blade for its handle, an example of both the good and the gutty; and he distrusted a growing sense of gratitude toward her and a rising belief in her loyalty. With the maddening bleat of a cricket in the shaded grass behind her, which shouldn’t have been making noise in the middle of the day, he tugged his chin free of her fingers and tried to escape his burdens through the small consolation of rejecting her.

  “Come on, honey, tell us what’s wrong. We only want to help you,” Nora pleaded, pressing him against her, and rippling the bodice of her blouse. But the subtle movement of the silk and glazed shadow implied some kind of scheme, and he resented her affection.

  He resented the massive, chewing jaw of his father, too, which dropped, which pulled hollows into the cheeks, the temples, which crunched closed, which expanded with muscle, which then flooded the cheeks and temples with firm olive flesh, and which made the shrug of his own shoulders in reply to Nora seem so totally helpless.

  “Somebody bothering you?” Stanley asked, leaning over the blanket, using the coke bottle for a brace.

  “Big guy, huh? Bully?” he said, balancing so far over the blanket that his outstretched arm looked like the long left feint of another boxing trick, which would later be joked about and justified because it made a man out of a guy. Aaron didn’t answer.

  “Why don’t you answer your brother?” his father demanded, getting angry, gulping down the last swallow of his sandwich, with a dough-white flash of bread.

  “Do you think we’re asking you for nothing? Do you think we came all the way out here so we could go home feeling bad?”

  He picked the last half of his sandwich off the paper plate and brushed the plate off his knee.

  “I’m not good for nothing, huh? All I’m good for is to pay the bills. Is that it?”

  “Daddy, Daddy,” Nora pleaded and motioned to him to be quiet, and he began to chew sulkily on the sandwich, for which Aaron was grateful.

  “Listen, Aaron. Don’t be a sucker. If I can’t understand what’s wrong, nobody can,”
Stanley said, handing the coke bottle to his father and bobbing closer to Aaron, while he balanced on his heels with the easy athletic grace that Aaron so much admired.

  “Tell me, Aaron,” he said.

  “Tell Stanley, Aaron,” Nora said. “You know he’ll be able to help you.”

  “Tell him, Aaron,” Judith said. “He wants to help you.”

  “Tell me,” Stanley said.

  “Tell him,” Nora said.

  “Tell him,” Judith said.

  “Tell him,” both women said together, and he blurted out:

  “The Buzzer! A great big colored guy! He beat Barneyway up and now he’s trying to get me!”

  But he hid his face in his hands, sure he had taken a step he was going to regret.

  “Tell the superintendent, honey. Don’t let that boy hurt you,” Nora said.

  “I can’t be a dirty snitch,” he replied and he shoved her arm away, already sorry he had told them.

  “By God!” his father exclaimed, “I wouldn’t let anybody pick on me if I could stop ’em. All we need is for him to get hurt here. I’m going up and tell the superintendent, myself.”

  He tried to raise his heavy body from the canvas seat, but he was clumsy because of the coke bottle and the sandwich, and Stanley kept him seated.

  “Hold it, Dad! Let’s figure this thing out,” he said and quickly asked Aaron:

  “Has he hit you yet?”

  “No,” Aaron mumbled. “He tried the other night though.…”

  He stopped, recalled the slap, but disregarded it because of the struggle’s outcome.

  “What happened?”

  “I held him off until we heard a guard coming. Now he’s waiting for a good chance to get me. I tried to be nice to him afterward. After she wrote to me,” he added, with scorn, pointing to Judith. “Then he thought I was scared. But I let him know that I wasn’t. And I’m not and he won’t get me, either. I’ll get him first. I’ll do him in!” he yelled, and his eyes flooded with tears, and the red blanket tilted and swam over the seated figures.

  Nora’s cry of “No-no, Aaron!” was a flash of light; and his father shot into a large, wavering size above him, then spread sidewards at the waist like an image in a curved mirror.

  “By God, I’m going to stop this right now.”

  “Wait a minute, Dad. Wait a minute now! It’s better he’s got the guts to try and stop the guy than let himself get bullied around. He’s got to live in the place.”

  But the bald head spun like a top, and Stanley’s back bobbed and weaved before it, and Nora tore at Aaron’s clothing, and he struck at her arms and sprang to his feet.

  “You’ll all help him kill me.”

  “Sit down,” his father said. “Nobody’s going to kill you.”

  “I’m not sitting down and he’s not gonna kill me, either. I’ll kill him first,” Aaron shouted. “I’ll get him before he gets me, I tell yuh.”

  “Don’t talk like that. You’ll end up in the gas chamber. You’ll go to Hell, Aaron,” Nora said.

  “I’ll slap your face. I’ll teach you to talk like that,” his father said and started around the blanket; but Stanley grabbed him, struggled with him, succeeding in stopping him, then asked, “How will you kill him, Aaron?”

  “I’ll kill him with my blade! I’ll bury it in him,” Aaron said, backing away and stumbling over a tree root.

  “What blade? They don’t let these kids run around with knives in their pockets. Who you kidding?”

  “You don’t think so? This blade,” Aaron said and, with one practiced motion, bent and raised the pant leg up to his knee and exposed the black-handled knife.

  “Oh, my God!” Nora screamed.

  “Aaron!” Judith cried.

  “Give me that!” his father said, struggling to free himself from Stanley.

  “Dad! Dad! Let me handle this, pleeeeese!” Stanley pleaded; and his father stopped struggling again, glanced at Aaron, and then began to jerk angrily at his tie.

  Stanley turned, once more, to a wary Aaron, and propped his knuckles against the thin indentation of his belt, with all the studied caution of an angry schoolteacher trying to control his hands.

  “Nobody’s going to try and take it away from you, Aaron. So come on over and settle down.”

  But Aaron kept his distance.

  “Have I ever lied to you, Aaron?”

  “No,” Aaron replied, and it seemed that the admission lightened his crushing burden somewhat, cleared the dense, stupefying heat in his brain a little, tempted him to give up the blade and be freed of all the problems associated with it. But he couldn’t forget how the Buzzer had treated him after two days of trying to be nice, and he still felt that Judith had wronged him by telling the family, by the tattoo, and by expecting the promise from him; and he kept the blanket and several feet of grassy turf between himself and Stanley.

  “Then trust me and let me help you. Let all of us help you. We’re on your side and we’re not going to let you get hurt in any way—that means being considered a sissy by the rest of the guys or letting the superintendent know you had a knife.”

  Aaron still hung back, for although the words sounded good, they were unsupported, and he needed something more dependable, a plan that he could count on and use to clear his mind.

  “We’ll explain to the superintendent that he’s not to question or punish anybody. We’ll ask him to just transfer you to some place where the bully won’t be around. How’s that? Then you not only won’t have to fight him, with or without a knife, you won’t be bullied or thought of as a snitch, either. How’s that? Think about it, fella. If you fight that guy with that blade, you’ll never get out of here.”

  The growl of a passing diesel truck penetrated Aaron’s stupor, accented the warning, and he fastened upon it, to focus his thoughts, and recognized that he still had to fight the Buzzer, that the blade was no guarantee of victory, and that he might lose his soul as well as his life.

  He listened for the ripple of the truck’s tires above the bubbling engine drone, but heard the restricted breathing of his father and his brother and his sister and Judith, as they waited in the shade for his response. He then noticed that Nora was standing next to the moss-fringed trunk, making speaking motions, and holding her arms out to him.

  “Please, honey, we want to help you. You’ll get in trouble by yourself,” she said, and he replied:

  “I’ll give Stanley the blade, and that’s all.”

  And her arms dropped to her skirt, with a tiny listless slap.

  But his mind cleared with the sound.

  VI

  Sweat made a loose, uncomfortable wrinkle of Aaron’s collar, dampened his hairline, his brow, plastered his T-shirt to him, but did not annoy him, for he liked working alone as a stable boy; and he dug the rusted rake tines deep into the thick muck on the cow stall floor. Nor was the muck offensive to him, for the old manure had dried and the mud gave off a clean smell, which mingled with the sweet pungency of hay. But he had detested everything about the big dairy barn, including the morning light which streamed through its high rafters like church rays filtered by colored glass, until a few days of familiarity, if not safety, with it had helped him shake his despair over Stanley’s failure.

  Monday morning work count had been such a time of hard-to-control exhilaration, it had intensified the despair which followed. For Mr. Handy had told him not to go out on the garbage wagon, and when the lines had broken and the boys had scattered, he had felt like singing. But Mr. Handy had then explained to him that the Buzzer, as cadet captain and straw boss of the dairy, would show him what his new duties were, and he had quickly learned that all the supposed transfer had done was increase his chances of getting hurt.

  He thought of Stanley’s repetitious and worthless reassurances as he raked the muck into a pile by the stall door. Stanley had started reassuring him so carefully, as he carefully pulled the black bands off, to prevent tearing the leg hairs off with them. Stanley had then rea
ssured him so carefully, as he carefully explained how names would not be mentioned and how Aaron’s reputation as well as his life would be protected. Stanley had then reassured him so carefully, as he carefully packed the picnic supplies into the car and drove carefully to the office, Stanley had then so very carefully reassured him, as he very carefully left him in the car with Judith and Nora, and went carefully into the office with their father.

  Aaron leaned the rake against the splattered wall and shoveled the muck into the wide-bedded wheelbarrow with conscientious energy, an energy that had developed when he found that work lessened his fears, but fears that Judith and Nora had promised him would disappear, because he had trust in his family and, as Nora added, in a girl who liked him very much; and the beauty mark had lost its stark emphasis in the flood of color to Judith’s cheeks.

  He scraped the last loose lumps together, slipped the shovel under them with a quick slide, dropped them on the muddy brown pile in the barrow, laid the shovel on the pile and reached down for the slippery hose. A hose as slippery, he mused, ironically, as Stanley’s promises when he had come rocking out of the office with his heavy-shouldered, short-stepping boxer’s tread, when he had promised a transfer in the morning, and had guaranteed that nobody, not even Big Stoop, would ever know who the guy was. Nobody, not … even … Big Stoop, Aaron thought and looped some hose slack around his bare arm, streaked his wrist with mud, and twisted the iron nozzle.

  The hose bucked and writhed, but much less fitfully than he had writhed on Sunday night, hoping that he would get transferred, that his faith in Judith’s tattoo would be fulfilled, that Nora’s intentions would prove to be as true as her beauty, and that Stanley would turn out to be as strong and persuasive with his tongue as he was with his fists.

  But the hose hardened into a tight noose and pinched his arm, and he had to pry at it before he could free his arm and use it. And after he had washed the walls, loosened the muck that had pasted to the floor, and cut the spray, he threw it into the aisle as angrily as he had wanted to throw his death in Stanley’s face after count on Monday morning. He then raked the floor as if he were digging furrows in the wood, scraped the mess into the doorway with a squeaking shovel blade, shoveled it into the wheelbarrow, and, lastly, washed the stall clean.