The Tattoo Read Online Free Page A

mother smiled. “He’s right,” she said, “you gotta be tough.”
    I flexed my arm at them and they both laughed. “I goin’ pick up da net,” he said. “So what, you goin’ let me take da kid too?”
    My mother’s arms wrapped tighter around me. “Hell no.”

    My father shook his head and sighed. He and Uncle Sonny picked up a cooler filled with beer and walked toward the boat.
    Through the hours they were gone, I spent half the time listening to my mother read me parts of Treasure Island , and when I got restless, I spent the other half looking for crabs with Junior Boy. We got flashlights from our mothers and scoured the beach. The crabs were harder to catch at night. Whenever they saw our lights, they charged into the small shore break. The white water washed over them and most of the time, when the water washed back out, the crabs were gone. Junior Boy and I were at it for hours, though. We weren’t satisfied until we had twenty crabs.
    After we’d caught our twentieth crab, Junior Boy and I saw the lanterns on the bows of the boat get closer. We shined our flashlights toward the water and waited. As the hum of the outboard engines grew louder, Junior Boy said,“I hope dey caught sharks.” I shivered. I hated sharks.
    My father and uncles brought the boat into shore. It was very late, early morning in fact, when we heard the boat buzzing in from the darkness. A couple of seconds after the engine was killed, the boat’s nose slid up the sand. My father and two uncles jumped out of the craft and pushed the boat further up the beach. I heard the grains of sand rub against the fiberglass hull. I waited farther back on shore than Junior Boy, afraid of the water, especially at night. Gone was the transparency of the ocean surface, it was now black where the lantern light didn’t touch it.
    After the boat was secured, the men began to throw their catch out onto the sand, showing the children their trophies, showing their children what men they were. All sorts of fish were caught in the net. Mullet, weke , awa‘awa , omaka , papio and lai were thrown into a pile. A separate pile was made for the biggest rubbish fish in the ocean — sharks.
    When my father began throwing the baby hammerheads out of the boat, I took a step back. They weren’t big, ranging maybe from one foot to two, but I hated their mutated heads and I associated them with their much larger parents. The last thing my father threw out of the fiberglass boat was a tiger shark, about three feet long and still alive, flapping as soon as it landed on the sand. Though it wasn’t as ugly as the hammerheads, it looked more dangerous, with its large mouth and its hydrodynamic body. There was a lot of kick to it and, with each jump, its entire body cleared the ground. My father stepped out of the boat with a small bat in his hand. I looked back toward the tents and was comforted when I saw my mother walking toward us.
    The next thing I knew, my father scooped me in one of his arms and was walking toward the baby tiger, which, after its first several leaps, had stopped moving. My father put me down a couple of feet away from the shark. “Touch it,” he said.
    I shook my head violently and took a step back.
    “Touch it,” he repeated, beer fumes shooting toward my face.
    Again I looked back for my mother. She was still far away, and I looked up at my father. I felt like one of those sand crabs Junior Boy and I had caught. I felt like I was scurrying in the palm of my father’s hand. “It’s still alive,” I said. “It might bite me.”
    My father shook his head. He took a step toward the shark. He leaned over and hit the shark on the head twice with the bat. It lay still. He stepped toward me. “Now touch it.”
    I refused again and again looked back. Mom was getting really close.
    Then I felt my father’s thick fingers wrap around my forearm. He squeezed hard and it hurt. He stepped me up to the tiger and forced my hand on its back, right