Unstained

One

'You want work done?' The artist asks in a thick Nepalese accent.  

'Yes,' I reply, 'It's...delicate. I was told you'll be discreet.' 

'You have money?' 

I place the crumpled notes on the surface between us - ample to cover the simple inking I want, or rather it would be if it was a normal tattoo.  

The man looks over my shoulder expectantly, 'Where is your father?' 

'I have his ashes in my backpack.' 

I explain what I want and the tattooist's eyes widen. He makes to refuse, but I had expected that. I pull out a much thicker wad of cash - American dollars this time - and toss it across to him.  

'You'll do it?' I ask.  

He stares at money, 'No needle - a knife. I cut you.' 

I hand him my father's remains and lie on the couch. The artist mixes the ashes with ink, before standing above me.  

'This will be pain.' 

I snort a humourless laugh as the man's broken English makes more sense than if it had been correct.  

This will be pain.  

It was no different when my father was alive. 

'Slaves, cotton and molasses.' He always used to say, 'Three things guaranteed to make money in America. We can't sell slaves, so we sell cotton and molasses.' 

What an asshole.  

We owned over three-thousand acres of cotton and sugar. A company built with blood, and he stained it with his ignorance. He only said it because he knew I hated it. 

Why was he jealous? I had quadrupled revenue since I graduated, but this was family money. Why couldn't he be proud? I am of his blood. 

But I was the competition. The upstart. 

He thought it for so long, that's exactly what I become. 

I turned the board against him. My father walked away with nothing.  

I didn't hear from him for weeks, and then I received a mail: 

'I am in Nepal. I'm going to your mountain.' 

Mount Kailash, Tibet.  

The perfect mountain, with its roots in the seventh hell and the peak in the heavens, it is called the World Pillar. Significant in four religions, one circuit around its base could wash away your sins. All of them. 

It was my dream.  

Stealing it was his last dig at me, final because a week after he had crossed the border with Tibet, he was dead.  

He was too brash. He'd said the wrong thing, to the wrong person. I travelled to where he'd been shot, built a pyre, and quietly spent an evening watching my father burn. 

The next day I walked around the perfect mountain, the World Pillar, and bathed in the forgiveness of four gods - I was cleansed. 

I had his ashes in my backpack. 

Special permission is needed for cremations and I didn't have it. I wouldn't be allowed to carry my father's remains out of the country, but it didn't matter. I had decided what to do before I left America.  

I stand in the airport restroom, staring over my shoulder at my naked back. The pain is intense, as if the flames that had turned my father into ash still burn in ink and flesh. There is no sign of infection. It's just him. I am of his blood, now he is in mine. I guess he doesn't like coming home. 

A young man enters and laughs, 'Nice tattoo, mate. Love the irony.' 

I smile with no eye-shine, a morbid amusement at just how ironic, and I take one last look at the eight-inch high letters stretching from shoulder to shoulder. 

'UNSTAINED' 

© Nathan Lear 2015. All Rights Reserved.