The Tale of Deep Scars

Gypsy Lou began:

"I was down at the docks of Los Angeles, sitting with the guys as they took their lunch breaks with some beer and sandwiches in the sun. At that time I used to travel the world for free, hot in demand on every ship just for the entertainment I gave.

Sea gulls were squawking above us and the waves lapped against the jetty walls beneath. The guys had just finished loading a ship and now she blew her horn as she pulled out into the harbour. We sat around, telling jokes and laughing, pulling the rings of new cans still cool from the freezer. In the July heat we sweated about as much liquid as we took in.

The talk turned to the tattoos we'd picked up in various ports around the world and we started to compare prints; Joe had two Chinese dragons making love on his right arm and Charlie had a syringe running from his elbow down to the vein at the wrist.

"Picked that up in Thailand,"He said, "Along with a lot of other bad habits - Seemed like a good idea at the time. But man. What shit the union gave me about it."

They were all very complimentary about the tiger eyes on the back of my shoulders - But maybe that was because I had to to remove my top for them to see it.

Then the focus swung round to Pete who had not yet said anything.

"What about you, Pete? I don't see anything on your arms but maybe you got something on your chest, huh?"

"Yeah," Joe agreed, "And how come you're always wearing that T-shirt? You must be cooking in this heat."

It was true. Of all the guys sitting around, Pete was the only one not bare-chested. But he just smiled into his beer and didn't care to explain. But we’d already had too many beers to go without an answer and we hassled him for the story.

"Yeah - What's with that man?” Charlie asked, “I've never seen you take that thing off - Not on the shit-hardest shifts on the hot-as-fuck days. You got three nipples or something?"

We laughed as our interest kindled. But Pete shook his head slowly, trying to suppress a painful memory that arose on his face. He slowly said:

"No, Joe, no third nipple. Just something I want to forget and that you don't want to know about." He paused and when it became clear that he wasn’t going to say any more, Charlie broke the silence:

"What da fuck? You can't leave us hanging on like that. We're your friends, man and... well, we wanna know."

"Alright." Pete growled, rolling back his head with an unfamiliar grimace, "If you really want the story you can have it - But anyone interrupts or gives me any bullshit at the end and I'll take out all their teeth."

We nodded uncertainly, a little sobered by this unexpected threat that we took quite seriously. Pete swigged from his can and spoke:

"Okay, so, a few years ago, I was working on the West coast, just drifting from job to job, with nothing and no one to tie me down. Yeah, I hear you - A life of happy freedom, the world my oyster - But that's all just shit. Nothing I did meant nothing and every place I went just looked the same as the last. All I could see were the same old bad stories that I didn’t want to know about. Man, I didn’t even know what I wanted.

So one evening I was drinking too much, like usual - I guess the beer is the one thing that does stay with you, good times or bad. And I was sitting at the bar of some damn forgettable joint, when I saw this Mexican chick looking at me strangely. I poured my drink over my right hand and of course she comes up to me and says, ‘What you are doing, senor?’ I told her I was getting my date drunk.

Maybe she saw the sadness in my eyes because she didn't slap me in the face and walk away like she should have - Instead I ended up going back with her to the little run-down cabin that she rented on some old bastard's land. It looked like shit from the outside but she did her best with it as she could afford and anyways, it was the cosiest place I'd been in a long time.

She seemed a little surprised to see me when I turned up at her shack the next evening with a couple of bags of groceries. And maybe if it had been any other chick I'd never have bothered. But man, she was something else. She was wild in bed like nothing I'd ever seen before, biting and licking me with crazed eyes and then curling up in my arms afterwards, as comfy as can be.

We settled down into a nice routine and there wasn't a time that I visited her that I didn't bring something. Flowers or chocolates or whatever - And I aint ever done that for no woman. And though I knew my folks wouldn't be so happy about me hitching up with a Mexican chick, I figured they could go jump in the harbour. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me and I reckoned I'd propose to her on her porch in the light of the full moon - you know, romantic and all.

But on the day before I'd planned, she warned me not to come over the next night.

'Why?' I asked, 'You got someone else coming?'

'No.' She almost spat at me in fury, 'Just... Just don't come tomorrow. Come the next night and the ones after that.'

I promised to do as she said and then we made love again, wilder than ever before and I didn't think about it again until the next evening.

Sunset rolled by and I got off work and didn't know what to do with myself. I bought a pint of whiskey for company and sat down by the docks. But the more I drank, the more I thought about it and the more I just had to know if she'd be my woman or not.

So I went over to her place but the door was locked and the lights were off. When I put my ear to the wall I could hear moaning sounds from the inside and I knew she was cheating on me. With murder in my mind, I burst open the door with my shoulder and reached for the light. And there she was, sprawled out on the bed, naked but all alone. She just stared at me with wide, hungry eyes.

'Honey,' I said, moving round to the bedside, 'I'm sorry but I just had to-' And then she scowled like a mad animal and I saw that her ears were pointing sharply upwards just like a cat. Her canine teeth were drooling out of her lips and, worst of all, the nails on her hands and feet had grown to claws that tore the sheets beneath her.

Then she leapt at me. I dived down against the wall and past her onto the bed. I tripped on the pillows and she pounced on me before I could do anything about it. Her teeth went straight for my throat and it took both my hands to keep her head away. Meanwhile, she scratched and clawed me with her spare paws and my screams must have been heard a mile away - But the neighbours were used to that. What they didn't know was these weren't cries of passion."

Pete pulled off his T-shirt and not even the heavy-weight drinkers among us could hold back a wince. The deep scars had lacerated his chest into a gory mess, awful and compelling.

"So now you know. I was lucky to escape with my life that night and I had to pay a private doctor to sew me up on the quiet - How the hell could I explain a thing like this at the hospital?

The next day, she got my address from somewhere and came to my door.

'Petey. Petey. Let me in.' She cried from outside, 'I can explain. Oh, why did you come?' And on like that for an hour. I just couldn't bring myself to open the door - I was scared. I admit it. But what a fuck-up I was."

Pete crushed the can in his hand and chucked it into the cool, blue lapping waters below.

"A week or two later, I realized I was just as much in love with her as ever and I went to her door. But her cabin was empty. The old landlord saw me and with a shotgun in his arm, he called,

'She's gone. No forwards address.'

'What?' I cried, 'She left? Just like that?'

'Yeah,' he told me, 'Paid up all her rent too - Unusual for her people. Said something about a broken heart.'

I looked for her all that year, even followed some leads down into Mexico. Never found her." Pete looked us in the face and told us, "Despite what she did to me, I still lie awake at night, dreaming about what could have been if I'd had the courage to let her in."

The hooter blew for the afternoon shift. We picked up what was left of us after the story and Pete pulled back on his T-shirt. No one ever asked him to take it off again.”

Chapter 17