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The noise from the tattoo gun is like the sound of a particularly persistent mosquito in his ear, loud and buzzing. It reminds him of a different time of hot days sleeping on uncomfortable bunks on the other side of the world while getting eaten by those bloodsuckers, and Snafu has to suppress the instinct to swat the tattoo gun away like he did the mosquitos of those hot, tropical islands.
On the brighter side, his artist of the quiet kind and has only spoken the bare minimum sine Snafu sat down on the tattoo chair all those sessions ago, and Snafu is glad. He doesn’t feel like talking, doesn’t want to explain himself. Certainly doesn’t want to be distracted from the pain of the needle digging into the soft flesh of his left arm.
Left side is the heart's side, Snafu thinks to himself.
“So what’s the story with this?”
“Huh?” Snafu grunts, confused.
The tattoo artist inclines his head towards the artwork he is currently etching into Snafu’s arm for forever and Snafu glances down at the rich foliage and flowers growing in black and grey ink on his arm. The artist's needle is currently hovering over the head of a dog, a spaniel specifically, that's peeking out between some leaves right under the crook of his elbow. The dog’s tongue is lolling out in the corner of its’ mouth and the artist has managed to get a certain curious, happy light to the dog's eyes.
“It’s none of my business but speaking from experience, this ain’t something you get just ‘cause you wanted a sleeve, my man.”
“Hn,” Snafu says noncommittal, hoping that his dismissing attitude might discourage the artist to ask anymore.
“All these details,” his artist continues, not at all deterred by Snafu’s aloof attitude. “Like this for example. I’ve seen plenty of people wanting a bible before but nothing like what you requested.”
The old, tattered bible is on the other side of his underarm, placed a bit lower down than the dog. It is resting open on a large hibiscus leaf and its’ pages are littered with tallies and ineligible handwriting between printed letters, and there’s a small snub of a pencil and a knife lying between the crack of the pages.
“Or this.” The tattoo artist indicates towards the inside of his upper arm where the biggest piece of the sleeve is sitting amongst the flowers. It’s a heart, an anatomically correct heart. If Snafu rest his arm down his side the heart would touch his, only skin and bones coming in-between the two.
Left side is the heart’s side, Snafu reminds himself once again like a mantra.
“I lost someone,” Snafu surprises himself with the confession. He hasn’t talk about this with anyone, he doesn’t tell people about Eugene. He just doesn’t. But looking at his arm now, almost finished from relentless hours in an uncomfortable chair, he feels compelled to share a little of the story behind it. “They were a good friend of mine.”
“I'm sorry for your loss.” The artist sounds genuine, though he averts his eyes like everyone else does when they regret asking. Or maybe he is merely uncomfortable with the topic of death. It isn’t exactly something you’d discuss with a stranger you’ve barely spoken to for the 12 hours you’ve spent in each other’s presence.
They lapse back into silence; the only sound of the small studio once again that of the loud buzzing of the tattoo gun.
Snafu tries to focus on the pain of the needle digging into his skin, but his mind keep straying to Eugene, flashing images of a gentle smile and fiery hair behind his closed eyes. Snafu isn’t haunted by memories from the war. Quite on the contrary, his memory betrays him by continuously showing images of a happier time. One with Eugene still in it.
They’d moved in together. The apartment had been tiny and cramped, paid for by what they could scrape together from their small marine pension. Still, it had been theirs and they'd been happy. Happy to be together and to be alive.
Oh how he miss spending long mornings in bed, lying atop of Eugene who had his arms wrapped around him while Snafu rested his head on the concave of Eugene's stomach, listening to the steady thrums of his heart. Eugene liked to thread his fingers through Snafu’s hair and would always tell him he needed to cut it, to which Snafu would huff in reply and nip teasingly at his skin. Most days it would lead to them rolling around in their white sheets, laughing and gasping intermittently as they touched each other, and then after they’d lie there holding hands while they spoke with only shared looks between them and soft smiles.
It’d been the happiest Snafu had ever been.
“Was your friend a vet like you?” The artist asks, breaking the silence once again and bringing Snafu back to the present. It is an innocent enough thing to ask but Snafu can hear the underlying question there.
“Yeah,” Snafu replies. He doesn’t have the energy to say anything else, to tell the truth. Let him think Eugene had died as a war hero, died for his country. Shot down by a stray bullet or torn to pieces by a landmine.
Snafu thinks that maybe that would have made things easier. At least then, Snafu wouldn’t have had the time to fall in love and hope for a future that would be robbed from him. But the truth is unfair and Snafu wonders every day what he could have done differently.
Eugene's heart had given out on a Saturday.
Eugene had been lying thin and pale in a hospital bed, wires and tubes that Snafu had no idea what was hooked up to and into him. Everything around him was sterile and white, nothing like their small, sunlit bedroom that smelled of cotton and smoke. He'd been wearing this small, serene smile on his face, like he knew what was coming and knew there was no stopping it.
The weather that day had the fucking decency to be sunny and cheery, like the world wasn’t aware that it was about to lose the greatest person that had ever walked upon it. Eugene told Snafu that such thinking would be blasphemous if you believe in the New Testament, because the bible said – fuck the bible, Snafu would snap at him, and fuck God for taking you away. Then, Snafu would break down crying and Eugene would pull him into bed next to him with weak arms and hold Snafu like he was the one that was about to die.
In fairness, something in Snafu had died that day. Sometimes at night he would take back everything bad he’d said about God ever, saying that he would do anything to get Eugene back. On other nights, when he felt the most alone, he prayed that God would take him too.
But Snafu had made a promise to Eugene before he passed that he wouldn’t do anything rash. That he would take care of himself because Eugene couldn’t be there to do that for him.
Remember to eat, Eugene had said to him. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
“Well, you're done. Go check it out in the mirror.”
Hopping off the tattoo chair, Snafu makes a beeline towards the full-length mirror pressed up in the corner of the small shop.
In the bright light of the shop, Snafu looks thin and haggard. It doesn’t look like he’s been able to keep his promise to Eugene at all. There were many he hadn’t kept. He is trying though, he really is.
Taking a deep breath and quelling the guilt bubbling up, he twists his arm around to get a good look of his new tattoo and he squints at it in his reflection.
His arm is transformed. There are different flowers and leaves into and all around his arm, some from the Pacific, some of the ones Eugene had studied in school. Eugene’s personal favourite had been peonies and Snafu had one of them inked onto his shoulder in full bloom, looking almost like armour wrapping itself perfectly around the curve of the bone.
All the small details vowed into the flowers is what made it unique though; Deacon, his bible with tallies for every year Eugene and Snafu known each other, his pipe which Snafu still had tucked away in his bedside drawer. On the inside if his wrist, a sledgehammer with its head down, the wooden shaft running up the inside almost to where Deacon was peeking out between his hiding spot.
To the unwitting eye, it looked like a complete mishmash of things, nonsensical and maybe even childish. To Snafu though, it is the most beautiful piece of art he’d ever seen and now it had been branded into his arm forever, for him to carry it with him always.
“So what d'ya think, man?”
Relaxing his arm and letting it fall down to rest against his side, Snafu’s watery eyes focus onto Eugene's heart once again. The tattoo on the inside of his arm is peaking out slightly from where it is pressing close to Snafu’s ribs, where his own heart is beating underneath in a strong, steady rhythm. “He’d love it,” Snafu whispers around the lump in his throat. “Thank you.”
Left side is the heart’s side and now Eugene's heart would forever be close to his until they meet again.