“It probably doesn't mean a thing.”
“Maybe not. But tell me anyway.”
“What I see here is a process of—” he paused, groping for a word.
“What I see is a process of purification, somehow.
He's honing, reducing it, concentrating it, trying to simplify it. He's trying to reduce it to pure essence of lion for Lamar.”
Bud looked carefully at the drawings. From Number Two to Number Three it was true: same lion, same posture, but somehow simple, less fretwork to it, the lines bolder, the suggestion more powerful.
“Why?” he asked.
“Well, he's getting close to cartoon almost, one could say. Or emblem.
He's reducing it to emblem or trademark. I don't know. But there's definitely a lot of work, a lot of practice, a lot of method gone into it. Now, he's nervous before the crime, he's not thinking, it's just come welling up. And he gets this one, which is by far the best.
Whatever he's reducing it to, he's almost there. Lamar will see that.”
Bud looked at the drawing. He was trying to figure out what it could be. Was Lamar going to put a trademark on his” crimes?
“I don't know,” said the doctor.
“It looks like something I once saw, but… Is there a visual tradition in criminal culture? Possibly it has to do with graffiti or hex signs or some such, some unique signature, some proclamation of deviance that says to the world, 'I am the bad man'?”
He paused.
It looked like something to Bud, too.
Then he remembered the mottling of blue stains on Lamar's arms as Lamar bent to put a bullet into poor Ted and the f u c k and the y o u I Lamar wore on his knuckles.
It appeared to Bud perfectly formed and beautiful.
“It's a tattoo,” Bud said, astounded at his own insight.
“Richard is designing a tattoo for Lamar!”
CHAPTER 22
“Tattoo?” said Richard.
“Goddamn right,” said Lamar.
“That's what you been workin' on! And now, by God, you done it!”
What lay before them on Ruta Bern's coffee table was Richard's best and final lion, a beast so pure and fierce it leaped off the paper at you to tear your throat out. It sang of blood. Next to it was a beautiful young blond woman, tawny and silky and adoring, her arm around the king, lost in his mane. It was like a Nazi wet dream.
“I want to proudly wear that on my chest. I want a artist to put it there, in a nice parlor. Not no convict thing, like this here trashy shit on my skin now.”
“Lamar. I'm sure a good one could. I mean, I saw tattoos in Mcalester I wouldn't have believed. Evidently it's gotten quite sophisticated. It's not crude anymore. The artists are quite free with line and color.”
Lamar carefully unbuttoned his shirt and shucked it off.
Though he hadn't been working out regularly as in the Mac, his body was still sleek with muscle. On his pneumatic arms, the fading blue ink of prison tattoos that had lost their vitality spilled like stains. But on his hands, the f u c K and the y o u I still told the world who he was.
“See,” he said, 'it's like it was meant to be. I never had nothing on my chest. I done that all on my arms and hands and back when I was young and stupid or young and drunk or high on crystal or all three.
But here, I'd like that lion, just as bold as bold can be.”
“Daddy,” said Ruta Beth, 'that would be cool. That would be the coolest thing.”
“I think it would be, too,” said Lamar.
“See, I've always seen myself as a lion and this here thing is what would make it so. Baby O’Dell, what do you think? Do you think Lamar would look cool with a lion on his chest? You know, a real roaring lion, like the one Richard here been practicing to draw.”
O’Dell's damaged mind grappled with the concept and at last grasped it.
Picture. On. Skin. Lion. Grrrrrrrr. Scary.
Pretty.
“Too! Too!” he said, so excited he sprayed Frosted Mini-Wheats and milk with each syllable.
“He wants one, Lamar, that's what the boy's saying,” said Ruta Beth.
“Can he get one?”
“Well, sure. Maybe not when I do it, because somebody'll have to stand guard. But later we'll get him a right nice one. O’Dell, what you like your tattoo to be?”
But O’Dell did not want a lion. He wanted something else.
“Doggy! Mar, me doggy. Doggy Dell. Yoppayoppa?”
“Yes sir. Baby O’Dell, we'll get you the goddamnedest best doggy ever there was. Right, Richard. You could design a doggy just like you done a lion, Richard, couldn't you?”
“Of course, Lamar.”
“Daddy, I want one, too.”
“Of course, honey.”
“I want a picture of my mother and daddy. On my back.
And a raven. I want it on my right shoulder blade.”
“Bet Richard could do that too, huh, Richard?”
“Ah—yes.”
Actually, Richard thought he was going to faint. Ever since he was a boy Richard had hated needles. What was tattooing, as he understood it, but ordeal by needle? Just sitting there, the tattoo artist would puncture and puncture and puncture, injecting a small permanent blot of color under the skin, until some hideous banality like a skull and cross-bones or a battleship or f u c k and You! was formed. He knew he couldn't get through it.
But he also knew this is why he was here. In some way, his skill with the pen had jiggered something deep and yearning in Lamar. It had drawn Lamar to him, made him important, even magical, to Lamar. It had, he supposed, saved his life.
“Richard, I want your help.”
“Help?”
“Be the foreman. Son, you worked so hard on the drawing and now I would say it's perfect. I want you to work with the skin artist and get it exactly that way. I don't want no slipups!” His mood turned briefly dark. He pulled the muscle of his biceps until they could see where drops of blood, once red but now faded pink, dripped off a tattooed slash in his arm, opened by a dagger. It was a trompe 1'oeil of some earnestness but not much skill. However, what infuriated Lamar was the third drop from the wound.
“See that one? Look, see it?”
They all crowded around.
“Yes sir. Daddy,” said Ruta Beth.
“What's wrong?”
“See how it goes out. All the others go in. That's what's wrong.”
But Richard realized it wasn't a mistake. The tattoo artist whoever he was, was trying to make the spurts of blood slightly more authentic by varying their configuration and modulating their placement in the stream, knowing instinctively that irregularity meant realism. If he'd done it the way Lamar had assumed he'd do it, it would somehow be deader. It was the endless battle between the patron and the artist for control of the work! It was the Pope versus Michelangelo!
“I suppose I'd have to do some research. I'd have to find a guy with the skill. You can't just walk in on these things.
