Tattoos, Barracuda Teeth, & a Lady Who Talked to Worms

By Tom Dunham

What awaited us in shadowy paths when we were ten, or thirty, or now, for those of a “certain” age? And how did we find out, for ourselves? When do passions begin? What did those moments feel like? When did we first watch someone do something magical— nail a jump shot, focus a backyard telescope on Mars, cut and fit a miter joint, maybe send out a lure with a cool flick of the wrist, and we thought, That’s for me. I can do that, too.
If you’re lucky, if you were paying attention, the discoveries of childhood stay with you forever. Especially, when you did it best—watching, listening, taking risks, out on your own, with no one to hold your hand. Ten-year-old Dan spends three days all but alone, a greenhorn from the moment he leaves a dark path for the blinding sunlit waters of a lake, a bag of fresh bought fishing gear in hand. “Okay, I’ll be back,” his grandfather tells him. “’bout two hours.” What follows is a story for all ages—a book best categorized: Fiction>>Family.
Author, Matt Yurdana, writes: “What impresses me the most about Tattoos is the voice, the way the story unfolds easily in the boy's language and perspective so that I was immediately in his world, his situation. For me, Tattoos is about the love and awe of a new and immediate passion--that everyone (as a kid) has experienced. And it does this in such an understated and quiet way, and it takes it's time with the boy's learning and mistakes and small triumphs. I think the heart of the book (and the majority of it) is the lake, and I think that's exactly right; it's where he's challenging his fears, ‘bonding’ with various strangers, problem solving, and seeing the world and his own abilities in a very new light.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Dunham
• Release date: Nov 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311157621

Tom Dunham

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Tattoos, Barracuda Teeth, & a Lady Who Talked to Worms

Tom Dunham

Copyright 2013 by Tom Dunham

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual locales, events, or persons, living or dead, is fully intentional.

Published by Tom Dunham at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

About the Author

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For Ana

Chapter 1

Family business.

What she always says when I catch her packing And every time it’s Florida and family business. My mom’s happiest when she’s packing.

She sends postcards, and I got a ton of them I keep in a shoe box. My favorite one’s a photograph showing a restaurant shaped like an alligator with a family walking in the mouth.

So her going again’s why I stayed at Mal and Nana's last week. They’re my grandparents and live out on Long Island. That’s near New York. Nana doesn't have much to do with this. It’s really about Mal and me.

We move around a lot cause my step-dad's a pilot in the Air Force. He’s in Hawaii now, and that's where we’re going day after tomorrow. Right now we’re waiting in San Francisco on an army base where you eat in a cafeteria like at school except you get seconds, thirds even, and they blow a bugle to wake you up in the morning. At night when they blow it again my mom opens the curtains and does a hula dance in front of the window where the flag’s coming down, singing about grass shacks and humanuka fish and moving her hips and hands like waves, same as the lady I saw at Ruby’s.

And what’s neat is we’ll be going, just me and my mom, on a gigantic navy ship I can see from the window. It’s got four stacks of life boats and two guns in front and two more up top where the chimneys are. I don’t know about Hawaii except for some pictures she has. Women wear dresses made of leaves and people eat whole pigs they cook in the ground. Plus there’s a volcano’s right on the beach with people swimming right next to it all smiling, like they don’t even know. When we get there I’ll be in fifth grade. My fourth school since kindergarten. If they have schools. I mean when you look at the clothes they’re wearing and how they eat and all. I asked my mom if they did and she said, Well, let’s just wait and see. It’d be okay with me if they don’t.

First, though, before I get going with this, you ought to know something about Mal. A couple things.

His name, for one. And why I’m not being rude calling him that. Mal, I mean. Like he’s a friend or something. And why I don’t call him some normal grandfather name like Pappy or Gramp, or even Saba, like Bobby Asher who wears a beanie to school calls his. The reason is everyone calls him Mal. Even my mother, she calls him Mal. Her own father. Even when she was a kid she called him that. His name’s actually Malcolm Massey. Malcolm Bevrage Massey. Which I know sounds like some kind of soda. And get this. Every year he sends my mom a birthday card, always with a check in it he signs the same way he does the card. Malcolm Bevrage Massey. His own daughter.

The other thing? He never gets angry. I’m serious. Never. No matter what. Even when Nana’s really mad about something, like he forgets to bring home bread or eggs. The other day it was eggs. She yelled at him, You want eggs, here’s your goddamn eggs, and she called him a son of a you know what, and threw the carton at him. Still had an egg in it. But he won’t get mad, or even yell back. He’ll keep doing whatever he’s doing, smiling the whole time, or he'll get his pipe and the newspaper and go out to the porch and watch TV. At dinner everything’ll be okay, the two of them like nothing happened. And you know the best part? When they’re eating they don’t care if I joke around. Nothing like home if the three of us are eating. When my step-dad’s there he likes it quiet, or just talk about his job. If I crack up over something, even something I’m just thinking, I end up eating in the kitchen, and the whole house is quiet.

With Mal and Nana if something funny happens, like the time I was picturing how Ronny Malone chicken walks into class and started laughing till soup came out my nose, so what. All Nana’ll do is hand me a napkin and ask me what’s so funny.

And get this. Another time it happened it was Mal who started it, swear to God. He was telling me about how they wear false teeth, both of them. Which I already knew cause I’d seen them. The teeth, I mean. Pink and white gummy things they keep at night in a glass of soda water in the bathroom. He was saying how in the morning sometimes they get them mixed up. And how when that happens all day he talks like Nana and Nana talks like him. And he showed me, clacking his teeth, saying in this warbly old lady voice, Dear, please pass me the peas. Then Nana in a low grumbly voice, Of course Sweetkins, and she passed him the peas. Mal said, Thank you, Dear, and fluttered his eyes, and Nana burst out laughing so hard salad shot out her mouth and she had to go out to the kitchen.

You want to know the best thing, though, about staying at Mal’s? It’s they let me sleep on the front porch, on a sofa. Or I thought so till Mal told me, Here, give me a hand, and we pulled out the bottom part where your feet go and Bingo, he said, and I was looking at a bed. A huge one. Wide enough I could sleep either way. And what makes it even better is the porch is made of screens, so it’s more like camping out than sleeping in a room. I mean how you can see the stars and I can feel wind blow over me.

Sometimes after they’re asleep, which I check by putting my ear against their door, I go out and lay in the yard, on the grass flat out with my hands behind my head, and I look up and wait for shooting stars. And you want to know the best way to see them? I learned it by accident. It’s you don’t keep looking in one place. You sort of look off to the side, like you don’t care if you see one or not. And that’s when they happen, two or three at once sometimes. These streaks of pure sparkling light that burn out and leave nothing behind.

And laying on that bed there’s everything you hear, too. Once I heard something in the bushes right below my head, moving a little, scratching and sniffing around, then quiet, then moving some more, and I laid there wondering could I make it to the living room before it came in through the screen door you can push open easy.

I hear people, too. Getting in and out of cars. People on the sidewalk who don’t know I'm there cause of the hedge, as tall as they are, and don’t know I can hear everything. One night a man and woman were talking. I couldn’t see them at first, till I heard, Just forget it, okay? her saying it all angry, then walking past the gate wearing some kind of fur coat even though it was summer. Her hair bounced when she walked. Same as my mom’s. He said, You know what this means? Not loud, just serious. Like my step-dad asking me when I mess up, What were you thinking? She said something, I don’t know. Then him quiet, walking around, then her, Oh for God sake, and walking off. I couldn’t see him anymore but I knew he was there cause smoke was rising up mixing with the streetlight. When he flicked his cigarette it came shooting over the hedge like a comet and landed in the grass right in front of me. I wondered, would it start a fire, so I watched it till it went out.

And you want to know how I woke up every morning? It’d be Mal, coughing like he was dying, then gargling and spitting in the bathroom, the toilet flushing. When he finished he’d come out to the porch and get me for breakfast, wearing his suit, all ready for work smelling from the blue stuff he splashes on after shaving. I'd roll over and make like I was sleeping till he ruffled my hair saying, Up and at ‘em, Champ, with his breath like the red stuff the dentist makes you spit.

Chapter 2

This year was the first time he took me to work with him. Which was great, cause his car’s incredible. Nothing like ours, just a Ford and okay, I guess. But Mal, he’s got this enormous grey one with a silver statue on the hood, like one of those half naked ladies on the front of pirate ships, and real rugs inside, and huge velvety seats big as sofas. Especially the one in the back I can lay on like a bed. It’s a Hudson, and that’s what he calls it. I mean instead of just the car.

It was my third day there, after breakfast. I was around back, looking through some scrap wood stacked by the cellar door. Looking for a piece the right size to make a sword like he’s got hanging over the fireplace. When I asked him what it was he said, What’s it look like? I said, I don’t know. I sword, I guess, and he said, Uh huh, and he smiled and took it down and held it real careful, touching the blade, running his finger along a groove that goes all the way to the point. Well, it’s a long story, he said. Nana said something from the kitchen, and Mal said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, and hung it back on the wall. Some other time, he said, and he winked at me, Men’s stuff.

Anyway, I was out there checking a piece that was perfect except for a split at one end