The Tattoo by Chris Mckinney

home, I didn’t go to school. Koa picked up some clothes for me. His parents let him stay home for a couple of days to keep me company, and when he went to school I just read more because I couldn’t talk. After I got a little better, Aunty Nani stopped giving me pitying looks, and began teasing. “You betta start fuckin’ eating cause I not going give you any mo’ Slim Fasts. Bumbye you get even mo’ skinny.”
    Uncle James stayed out of it. I suppose it’s a code that exists around the world: Never interfere with the raising of someone else’s child. You have no right. A week and a half later, my father picked me up and took me to an oral surgeon. Uncle James and Aunty Kanani stayed in the house while Koa shook my hand outside by the truck. My father nodded to Koa and drove off. Puana Castle got smaller and smaller. It was a quiet ride. The quiet rides I had in that truck. They always occurred, it seemed, when he was picking me up from someplace else and taking me home. I guess most quiet rides occur when you’re heading for someplace you don’t want to go. I looked toward the Koolaus and again thought that I had to get over the mountains, out of the Windward side.
    This thing with the sword, it was the worst beating I ever got. That sword never did seem to do me any good. My beating was bad because I didn’t fight back, didn’t demand respect, a presence, but there was always something in me that refused to hit him back. I was trained well. On the bright side, to this day I have whiter teeth than anyone else I know.
    The memory loss bothered me more than the physical discomfort. It was like losing a cursed heirloom that I didn’t want but felt I needed to have. I hate that frantic feeling when you lose something, know it’s somewhere around, but can never find it. He’d hit me before, but it was the first time I couldn’t remember. It scared the shit out of me. For days I tried to dig deep down in my mind and search for a shred of memory. It seemed even further away from my conscience than my mother’s last words to me.
    My father and I never discussed what had happened, even when I returned home. I hid in the cradle of books my mother left me. I read about foreign places, places I wanted to go to, but didn’t think I’d ever see. Sometimes I’d put a book down and wonder why my great memory was not able to dig up such a huge corpse. I thought, if I blanked out once, I could blank out again. How could I lack control to such a degree? I probably wanted to find the memory because I didn’t want to believe it. How could I get so crazy that I didn’t care anymore whether I lived or died? It concerned me greatly that I could get to the point where I just didn’t care anymore, that I’d just give up, crawl under a rock and accept death. I wanted to be a fighter, to go out in a blaze if necessary. I did not want to be the kind of person who just accepts his fate with a defiant grin. I knew the grin was just a feeble attempt to save face. My behavior, the accepted futility that Koa had told me about, scared me. My attachment to memory is strong, but perhaps my desire to never go out quietly is even stronger. I like to slam the door.

    When Koa and I didn’t go surfing, diving, or hunting, we got into more trouble. We gambled, fought, drank, got high, sometimes all in the same day. We used to steal chickens and take them to the derbies. Koa always had good knives, those clean, razor-sharp, sickle-shaped blades you tie on to both legs of the chicken, lending each gladiator bird the power to kill with one stroke. We, the Romans, low-income degenerate gambling mother-fuckers, looking down into the colosseum, watching the feathers fly with each furious charge. It was amazing to watch a usually timid and weak creature suddenly turn blood-thirsty, angrily leaping up at its opponent. Both would be suspended in mid-air for just a second or two, wings flapping violently, claws extending in quick offense. When both