The Language of Men (29 page)

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"Walking. What are you doing?"

"Waiting."

"I can see that." I step into the deep footprints Don made in the snow bank, steadying myself as I cross over yellow pock marks and brown craters. I make it to the sidewalk and stomp my boots. Don watches me through the fogged glass. I follow his trail of melting snow inside.

We flip through the big black portfolio books full of basic tattoo designs. Don finds a page of Yosemite Sams, taps the plastic and nods. I smile and point to the wall of tribal tattoos and Chinese letters behind him. He shakes his head.

Don looks at the woman behind the counter.

"Are we gonna get some service here or what?" he says, not to me, not to her. His question seeps out of his mouth and disappears, like the incense burning on the coffee table.

"Did you ask?"

"No, I sat here like an asshole. Yes, I asked. She said she'd be right over."

I flip a page. "Well, then, she'll be right over."

"Yeah, well, when?"

A big bald guy with earlobes like janitor's keys jingles into the tattoo parlor and points at us.

"You my one o'clock septum?"

Don and I look at each other. "No, man" Don says. "We're waiting on some information about tattoos."

"Oh," the man says. "My bad. Sylvia'll be right with you."

"Thanks," I say.

All I can see of Sylvia is the back of her head. She's hunched over a shirtless young man. The girl who appears to be his girlfriend leans in the doorway, watching Sylvia cut into his chest.

Don holds up a page full of hearts that say
Mom
and
Dad.

"Let's get 'em."

I laugh and shake my head.

"What? Come on, let's get matching tattoos."

"Yeah, right."

Sylvia's needle buzzes. Stops. Buzzes.

"Fuck it, I'd do it right now," Don says.

"Let's start with Dad's, okay?"

"Why?" he says, looking straight at me. "You said you wanted another one."

"I do." I flip another page and stare at each design. "But I'm not gonna just pick out something random."

The buzzing stops. "Okay, what can I do for you boys?"

Don closes the portfolio, tells Sylvia he's looking to get a tattoo for his father. He unfolds the paper.

"This is what he wants. I don't know if you can do it or not. If it's too detailed orwhatever."

Sylvia scrunches her face. "No, I can do this."

"Okay, cool," Don says. "Just that another place said they couldn't so that's why I said that."

"Is this your father's first tattoo?"

"Yes, it is." Don's voice goes up an octave and he drums a quick beat on the counter.

"When do you want to do it?" Sylvia asks, opening her planner.

Don grins. "Day after Christmas?"

Sylvia looks up. "I'm booked through February."

I turn toward the window and grin. Nearly an inch of fresh snow covers my car. A parade of plows and salt trucks roll by, their flashing yellow lights momentarily filling the tattoo parlor.

"February 3
^rd
is my first available. It's a Wednesday."

"Oh, perfect," Don says. "He's off on Wednesdays."

"I'm supposed to start teaching in January," I say to Sylvia.

"What?" Don asks.

"That job I told you about."

Sylvia looks at me, then Don.

"Well, this is from both of us, dude," Don says.

Sylvia turns to me.

"I know that. But I'm saying if you want me there, it might have to wait a little while." Sylvia turns to Don.

"I understand that. And I'm saying we should both be there." Don turns back to Sylvia. "Got anything the first week in March?"

Sylvia looks at her book. "I could do March 3
^rd
, it's a Wednesday."

"Not sure I can take off that soon," I say.

Don sighs. "Okay, fuck it, February 3
^rd
."

Sylvia looks back at me for the last time and writes in her book.

"Guess you'll just have to see it when it's done," Don says.

I nod and give Sylvia a tight-lipped smile, though I want to scream, stand up on the counter and look down at Don and tell him that Dad's waited sixty years to get a tattoo. What's another couple of months? But I can't slow him down. I'm used to Don moving away from my father. That's the role he established, the one he played so well. Lately, Don is trying to get close, and I don't know how to act.

Aren't I the one who lingers in the past, digs through old photographs and watches videos of our summer vacations? The Don I grew up with barreled through the present, drove headlong into the future, leaving the past coated in dust. Since my father's stroke, I've seen a different side of Don—a desire, desperate at times, to create something tangible, something he can point to as evidence, proof that he and my father existed.

We don't talk again until we step outside. The dog piss and shit at the side of the road is covered with a fresh layer of snow, and the foot holes that helped me cross have slowly begun to refill.

"All right," Don says. "She turned out to be pretty cool. Man, I shoulda scheduled this earlier."

I pretend I can't hear him over the trucks roaring by, but it doesn't seem to matter because he continues to talk about how there are still some nice people left in the world and it all depends on our attitudes as customers and if everyone could just relax and be patient with each other, the world would be a much calmer place.

I had recently left the temp agency. They offered me a "marketing position," which really meant handing out free newspapers on the corner. A friend of mine told me about a teaching position at a prison in Boston. As part of my graduate program, I had taught a few creative writing classes in a correctional facility, so I applied.

Today is casual Friday, which means I can wear a t-shirt and jeans. "Civilian" clothes, my students say. They wear the same uniforms as yesterday, unless they've changed units. Drug recovery is blue, kitchen is brown, re-entry is maroon. Green and beige do not have specific requirements, and guys who live in these units can sit in their cells all day watching TV. When I say I don't own a television, one of my students, Tito, looks at me.

"Get ya'self a Blu-Ray, man. Shit. They ain't gonna break ya' wallet."

I smile and shake my head. "It's not about the money, Tito. I just don't like it. It's a distraction."

Terrance, one of my larger students who used to frighten the hell out of me, speaks up.

"Man, I remember when I'd come home from a job. Kick off my boots, pour myself a tall glass of Wild Irish Rose, mix that shit up with some Hennessy, splash'a ginger ale-"

"That sounds awful, Terrance," I say. Tito laughs.

"What!" Terrance says, "You out ya mind, man. Let me finish my story. I mix the Wild Irish Rose with the Hennessey and the ginger ale, throw in a can of fruit cocktail, mix it all up and suck it down." He holds the drink to his lips and slurps.

"Shiiit. We all know where it's headed," Tito says. "You start pimpin' ya nasty-ass hoes, drinkin' that shit, passin' out to
The Jeffersons."

The class erupts with laughter, even Terrance. Terrance is a big bald guy, mid-sixties, calluses and scars shaped like hands. On his first day in class, I asked him if he'd like some help with his reading. He looked at me, then picked up the excerpt from
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
on my desk.

"This the one with Jack Nicholson?"

"Yeah," I said. "Sort of."

"Either it is or it ain't."

"No, yeah. It is."

He held the paper as if weighing it in his hands. "All right, sign me up."

Terrance sits back in his seat, drumming his fingers on his book.

"Are we still talking about television, Terrance?"

"Yeah we are, if you let me finish. God damn. He musta got some last night, Tito. He's all feisty today. In his jeans and t-shirt."

"You and the ol' lady start the weekend early?" Tito asks.

"So I mix it all up, walk into my living room and take a seat in my nice leather chair. Flip on the tube and just relax. Now you tell me. You tell me what's so wrong with that?"

"Nothing, Terrance. Nothing at all."

"Well, then why don't you have a TV, man? Sometimes it's nice to zone out."

I shake my head. "I grew up in a house where the TV was always on. I go home now and it's still on. Dad comes home from work, watches TV. Mom comes home from work, watches TV. Is that living?"

The class is quiet for a rare second, but it doesn't last.

"They all lived out," Tito says. "Ya ol' man's tired. Ain't no thing."

"Hey, ain't we supposed to watch
Cuckoo's Nest,
today?" Terrance asks. "You been promisin' us a movie for months, man."

"I got it, I got it. And it hasn't been months, Terrance. It's been two weeks."

"Yeah, right. Sure feels like months."

I walk to the back of the room. The set is a TV/VCR combination, but there is a DVD player plugged in beside it. I feel old looking at this outdated equipment, like my parents must feel looking at a box of reel-to-reels. I pop in the DVD and press
Play.

"1975," Terrance says. "The year this came out. Swept the Oscars, man. Took my girl to see it down at the Paramount. She was lookin' good, too."

I smile. "That's great, Terrance. Did she like it?"

"I don't remember and I don't give a shit. I liked it."

I skip through the coming attractions. "Well, as long as you enjoyed yourself. That's all that counts."

Terrance looks at Tito. "Finally, man. Finally he's making some sense."

"Rest yo' neck, killa. Movie's on."

I step back from the TV and take a seat next to Terrance, trying not to stare into the new camera in the corner of my classroom. The room must never be dark, so we watch the movie beneath fluorescent light, our faces glaring back at us on screen. Jack Nicholson walks into the dayroom in a leather jacket, jeans, and wool hat. He speaks to the giant Indian for the first time.

"Shiiit. Ain't he supposed to have red sideburns?" Tito asks, flipping through his book.

"You're right, Tito. In the book he does."

Tito shrugs and turns back to the screen and laughs as Jack Nicholson jokes with the patients. The Big Nurse begins the day's therapy session. Many of my students receive a steady dose of group therapy: AA, NA, Anger Management. Jack Nicholson and the patients sit in a semi-circle around the Big Nurse.

Terrance's belly laugh fills the room. "He look a bit like Ant, don't he, Tito?"

"Terrance, remember when we played the silent game?"

He looks at me. "Gettin' cute, now."

We return our attention to the movie, but my mind wanders. I remember how I used to bring in material I thought the students would relate to—hip-hop lyrics or articles on affordable housing and CORI reform. These lessons often drew blank stares. They had heard it all before. Listening is their full-time job: to officers, caseworkers, lawyers, teachers, guest speakers, parents, wives, girlfriends, children. I encourage them to talk.

Once, I was alone in the classroom with Terrance. He spoke more quietly than when he was around the other guys. I stared at his big, cracked hands as he gripped a pencil. We were reviewing long vowel sounds.

"After this bid, Ant, I'm gonna need a job."

"I thought you were retired."

"I am. But I still gotta earn." He asked me if I could show him how to fill out a job application. He also wanted to know what kind of words he should use in an interview. I pulled a blank application out of my filing cabinet and put it on the table. Terrance stared at it.

"Where do I start?"

I pointed to the blank line at the top of the page. "Start with your name."

"Well, who'd a'thunk it? Shy guy ends up teaching in the joint," my father says when I tell him I got the job. He wants to know if my students wear shackles in class or if any of them can make a knife out of a bar of soap. My mother asks if there are officers in the room with me at all times. I lie and say yes.

Some students are intimidating, guys who look the way movies tell you prisoners should look, like they spend all their time lifting weights and ticking time with chalk on their cell wall. But more often than not, the tough facade falls, and they pull me aside after class one day and whisper, "I can't read shit. You gotta help me."

Even now, after teaching there for three years, I'm still struck by how well-versed my students are in their different slangs, the languages they employ as pimps, drug dealers, arsonists, bank robbers. But when I call them up to the board for the first time, they don't say a word, their eyes locked on the blurry symbols inked into their hands.

The picture my brother took with his cell phone is small, but I can see my father's lips pressed tight, his eyes slightly closed. He wears a sleeveless shirt, tiny skeleton printed above his heart, as Sylvia, the tattoo artist, bends over his right shoulder. He leans against a black leather recliner, but I know that on the back of his shirt are two skeletons, one bending the other over a tombstone. The male skeleton wears a black bandana, the female a pink bikini. Above them, in white blockletters:
The Boneyard.

Sylvia holds the blurry silver needle, etching the eagle head into the tan skin of my father's shoulder. An hour later, Don sends another picture, a close-up of the eagle's eye and beak. An hour later, another picture, the feathers red, white and blue. The last picture arrives and the eagle is finished. Above and below the eagle are black letters and numbers that did not appear in the newspaper where my father first saw the eagle. The bottom characters arc in a smile, the top in a frown:
Vietnam/1970-1971.

In high school, Don gave himself a tattoo. He used a sewing needle and the ink from one of his sketch pens. A small star with a long, looping tail, just below his ankle bone. I glimpsed it in the mornings before school, as he shuffled to the bathroom like a zombie. If my parents noticed, I never heard them say anything.

A shooting star didn't seem to fit my brother's personality. A middle finger, sure. The cover of Pink Floyd's
The Wall
across his back, fine. But a shooting star?