Many men in Roy’s neighborhood had tattoos. Most of these tattoos were of military reference, such as USMC, Semper Fidelis, U.S. Navy, 101st Airborne, Dive Bomber or Tailgunner. Some of them were illustrated with an anchor, crossed sabers or rifles. The men who bore these tattoos had fought in World War II, the ink had faded and the men were middle-aged and generally overweight. Every once in a while Roy saw someone who had a woman’s name, by itself or under a heart, or, less often, the word Mother or Mom, burned into his skin. A guy from West Virginia named Weevil, who worked the cash register at Rain Bo’s Car Wash, had a drawing on his right forearm of a brunette with big eyes and bare breasts and the name Ava in cursive where her stomach might have been.
Most tattoo parlors in Chicago were located on South State Street, close to pawnshops and burlesque houses. Roy had never seen anyone actually getting a tattoo other than a drunken sailor or soldier until Flip Ferguson’s older brother, Lefty, got one just before he went away to boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina.
Roy and Flip, who were both fourteen, accompanied Lefty, who was seventeen, to Detroit Art’s Tattoo Emporium on the corner of State and Menominee. Lefty had recently been expelled from high school for beating up the vice-principal, who had ordered him to put out his cigarette. Lefty put it out on the vice-principal’s forehead, then popped him in the face a few times. Shortly thereafter, Lefty and Flip’s father signed a release giving his oldest son permission as a minor to join the Marines. When apprised of this, the Board of Education and the vice-principal agreed to drop the assault charges they had filed against Lefty. By enlisting in the Marines, Lefty saved his father a lot of money in legal fees, and himself a year in the reformatory at St. Charles.
Detroit Art was about sixty, tall and skinny with a pockmarked face Lefty later described to an uncomprehending prostitute in Saigon as resembling a Chicago street after a bad winter. The tattooist wore a green eyeshade and Coke bottle-thick glasses with heavy black frames, and smoked an unfiltered Old Gold in an ebony cigarette holder.
“What’ll it be?” he asked Lefty. “You know what you want?”
“Yeah, I want it to say ‘Lefty from Chi.’”
“You want a picture with it?”
“What kind of picture?”
“That’s up to you,” said Art. “How about a fist?”
Lefty thought about this for a few seconds, then nodded.
“Okay, a left-handed fist,” he said, and held his up for Art’s inspection.
Art peered at it for a moment or two, then asked, “You want upper and lower case or all capital letters?”
“All capitals,” said Lefty.
“Over, under or around the fist?”
“Over.”
“Biceps or forearm?”
“Biceps.”
“Left, right?”
“Right, left,” Lefty said.
He rolled up his left sleeve and presented the designated arm to Detroit Art.
“You’re really gonna do it?” said Flip.
Lefty grinned. He wasn’t all that big, or even especially tough. He just liked to fight, Flip told Roy, like their father.
“Sure, he is,” said Art, who did not remove the cigarette holder from between his clenched teeth while he worked. “Won’t take twenty-five minutes.”
Flip and Lefty’s mother had died a couple of years before under mysterious circumstances. According to the newspapers, their mother was found lying in the alley behind their house very early one morning. Her head had been bashed in from behind with a hammer or similar object and she was found dead when a neighbor, taking out his garbage, discovered the body and called the cops. Flip and Lefty and their father were asleep in their house when the police came. No murder weapon was ever found and the case remained unsolved. Nobody knew why Mrs. Ferguson had been in the alley at five thirty that morning, unless she had taken out some garbage, but no fresh garbage was found in the Ferguson family’s trash can. Neither Flip nor Lefty had heard any unusual noises, they said, nor did their father. The only strange thing was that Mrs. Ferguson’s body was entirely nude when the neighbor found her. It was late March, snow flurries were in the air and she didn’t even have slippers on her feet. If the police ever had a suspect or suspects in this case, no mention of it was made public.
A little more than a half hour later, the three boys were back out on State Street. It was windy and cloudy but not cold. An old woman passed them on the sidewalk, pushing a baby carriage filled with empty beer cans.
“Set ’em up in the other alley!” she shouted.
“How does your arm feel?” Flip asked his brother.
“Probably how a calf feels after it just got branded,” said Lefty. “It stings.”
“You were really brave,” Roy said. “You didn’t say anything while he was writing and drawing on you.”
Lefty took out a pack of Chesterfields and a book of matches from the right pocket of his navy blue windbreaker. He lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, then let the smoke out slowly.
“Know why soldiers wear uniforms?” Lefty asked.
“So they’ll know who’s on the same side,” said Flip.
“That’s one reason,” said Lefty. “But it’s also so everyone feels equal. Nobody’s better than anybody else and each man knows he’s not alone, that they’re a part of somethin’ bigger than just themselves.”
The boys began walking toward the el.
“You gonna show the old man?” asked Flip.
“I ain’t that brave,” said Lefty.