Tattoos

　

　

Some years ago, when I was a young lawyer, my firm represented a medium-sized corporation headquartered in our town. While reading death notices in the paper, I learned of the death of the mother of the privately-held corporation. A few hours later, the owner of the business called me and asked if I could do him a favor. Of course, I was eager to please.



The big boss told me that his daughter and her husband were addicted to methamphetamine. As a consequence, the boss was caring for his two grandchildren, a boy and a girl – the two little kids were about 4 and 6 years old. He said that during his mother’s funeral, it would be difficult for him to baby-sit the two small children and, so, he wondered if I could do this for him. I thought it an odd assignment, but agreed to help.



The two children were very small and blonde and cute. I lost track of the boy early on and don’t recall what happened to him. But I kept the little girl close to my side. She played on the floor in my office, coloring on a legal pad, while I waited for the time to leave for the funeral. My instructions were that she should attend the funeral and sit next to me in the pew. The little boy was supposed to come as well but I seemed to have lost him.



The funeral was held at a big mortuary with a large L-shaped room in which people were gathered for the obsequies. The mortuary had a white colonial-style exterior with pale steeple. Parking was to the side and behind. There were many cars and it was hard to find a place. The parking lot, a very large expanse of asphalt, was also (as I remember it) L-shaped. A large Methodist church rose over one of the legs of the L-shaped lot – probably the funeral home and the church shared that lot. The church was square and heavy-looking with great masonry walls and it was set upon a platform above tiers of grey, granite steps.
 

I led the little girl by hand into the funeral home. Her cousins and aunts and uncles were all gathered near the door and they cried out her name when she entered. She was very happy to see her relatives – I remember her little face beaming with joy. (She didn’t understand that her grandma had died or, if this had been told to her, she didn’t know what death meant.) Because of the crowd, we were given little tickets marked with numbers. Apparently, the seats in the big room were somehow numbered.

After greeting some people that I knew, I walked with the little girl into the big room. The casket was at the front of the room, next to the door through which we entered. It stood on structure of rails covered in spotless white cloth. A paradise of flowers stood behind the casket. Nearby, there was a pulpit. All of the seats in the room facing the casket were occupied. I saw the corporate executive in the front row with his wife and nodded to him.


Because there were no seats in the part of the room in which the casket and pulpit were located, I took the little girl into the other part of the room. In that area, people were lounging around less focused, of course, because the casket and preacher were not in front of them. I searched the chairs for numbers correlating to the ticket stubs I held. But, if there were numbers, they were invisible to me. It took me a long time to find a place to sit and, while we were looking for chairs, the service began. I could hear organ music and, then, a liturgy conducted in the part of the room with the casket and flowers and pulpit. Finally, I sat down. The little girl had vanished. I assumed that she had seen one of her uncles or aunts and was sitting on that person’s lap in the room with the casket.
 

Just as I sat down, the service ended and everyone stood up and formed a line to shake hands with the grieving corporate executive. I was a little concerned that I had lost sight of the small girl. But I wasn’t worried – everyone here was a friend and I was sure that she had simply slipped into the custody of one of her relatives. The line moved slowly and, then, it dispersed and by the time I reached the next room, several men in dark suits were removing the casket and carefully disassembling the flowers. The whole thing was over.



I went outside and looked for my car. I had a red Honda and, although I couldn’t remember the exact number and letters on license plate, I was confident that when I saw the car I would recognize it. It was wintry afternoon and the sun was setting and a cold wind blew against my face. I hoped that the little girl wasn’t wandering around the parking lot alone, but I didn’t see her. Some kind member of her family had undoubtedly taken her into their care.



My car was not located in the part of the lot facing the white Colonial building and spire of the mortuary. I went around the corner into the larger lot under the steps leading up to the big Methodist church. A few beggars were sitting on the steps, shivering in the cold and, at the corner of the parking lot, a burning barrel was shrugging some orange flames into the sky – people were huddled around the fire. It became dark. A playing field of some sort was on one side of the parking lot and I saw a couple people stumbling around in the snow. At the burning barrel, people were talking about client’s mother and what a rough and tough and exemplary person she had been. Someone said that she ate potato chips in bed. Someone else remembered going to a hunting cabin with her. "She sure loved her potato chips," the man said.



The cars were all parked haphazardly and it was suddenly too dark to see them clearly. A voice sounded near me: "I hate to mention this, but it’s the end of the world." A cackle of laughter came through the darkness. I went back into the mortuary. It wasn’t clear whether I was searching for the girl or my car or both. Somehow, I found myself in the crematorium in the mortuary – there were stainless steel rails and a big arched masonry opening from which flames were lurching upward to stain the bricks with soot. I didn’t want to see what was burning and so turned away my face. A slogan in cursive handwriting was displayed on the wall.
 

The slogan was on the inside forearm of a heavily tattooed skin-head. Everything about the little girl and the missing car and the dead woman who loved potato chips was tattooed on the man’s arms and throat and calves – the skin-head was wearing shorts. The skin-head looked sleepy and he had a bristly beard. His bare skull was covered with inscrutable emblems.