ON Friday Terry went to Louden’s house after dark. Louden said the first one should hurt. They used plastic black ink pens. It was only small letters, five to spell his name. Louden boiled water on the stove and held the razor blade with metal tongs in the moving water. Terry rolled his sleeve and pulled it tight over his right shoulder. His hands tingled. He felt the blood warm down over his bicep and forearm. He stood on a spread newspaper. The headline read RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY. The blood ran off his fingers and dropped at the newspaper. Louden dabbed the letters with a paper napkin. Terry winced, and the room wobbled dizzy and cold. Louden looked at him hard, lit a cigarette, blew smoke.

Don’t move, he said.

He broke the ink shaft with two hands, and held the split plastic on top of the razor cuts. He dropped the tube against the newspaper and smeared his hands over the letters and held them there. Terry’s arm was dark blue, and some red, and throbbed at his heartbeat. He held it straight out and Louden covered his bicep with plastic wrap and pulled it tight.

Terry was crying.

South Carolina’s first cash crop was indigo, Louden said. Blue ink.

He mashed out the cigarette on the floor, and then he lit another, blew smoke at the side of his mouth. Terry stomped his foot hard. Louden smiled.

Awhile now, he said.

His arm throbbed. He touched the clear tape wrapped bandage and stared as they passed streetlamps. They got stoned off pot that tasted charcoal. He went through half a pack. They drove the same loop four times through one of the old neighborhoods. The dope made him feel mean, and tall, and blank, and his arm burned, and he wanted to tear it off, drop it from the window.

The front yard of the old wood finished two-story was wet. There was a long porch on the front and kids leaned at the rail and against the wall and sat in lawn chairs. In the front room there was a gas fireplace with fake logs tossed orange and white, and some sat on a couch, and some on the floor around a coffee table littered with bottles and cans. There were ashes on the floor and in the air. In the backyard a fire burned, and people stood around in small knots on the dark grass. Terry and Louden went and stood by Francis. He told them Noah was at home and asleep.

I cut him, Louden said.

Francis wore the blue mesh baseball hat. He pulled up the sleeve and looked on the bandage. He squinched his eyes, dropped the sleeve back.

What’s that mean?

I don’t know, Terry said. It’s my name.

Did it hurt?

Yeah.

Bad?

Real bad.

Did you cry?

Some.

I would have.

They threw dented cans in the fire. Francis tossed a handful of dirt. The clouds ticked fast over the moon, blue frame, white haze.

Louden kept his eyes fixed on the road. He took a cigarette from behind his ear and put it to his mouth. He rolled down the window and blew smoke. Terry watched him drive with his sure and crunched face. There was madness inside Louden; his heart, fist and bone, a hundred screams. Terry’s hands and the blue word on his bicep burned. Some blood came from beneath the tape on his arm. He balled his shirt at the bottom and wiped it.

My old man, Louden said. That fucker, when I was twelve, he got a railroad spike in his temple. He worked there, I mean, for the railroad, on the tracks, fixing things that went wrong, and once he slipped on those rocks, you know the ones that are always on railroad tracks, those slick fat ones that are all jammed up together? He slipped on those. You’d think there’d be a train or something. But no. He slipped. It took a small piece out. The skull, I mean. It fucked up his head some, made him mean, mostly, but also he can’t clean himself anymore. Not like he shits himself, just that he doesn’t have any sense of personal hygiene, like the idea of brushing your teeth, or washing yourself, doesn’t mean anything to him. Like even after people told him, he didn’t do anything, because he couldn’t, like his brain had lost that one single part. Everything else, besides being a fucking asshole, I mean. That was mostly there already, everything else was fine, normal. Not at all out of the ordinary The smell of this man, though, I’m telling you, is incredible.