Dillon's Tattoos

Here's an excerpt from Sadie's Mountain. It's when Dillon asks to spend the night with Sadie because he's worried that she's just encountered her rapist again. Little does he know, it's his own brother he needs to be worried about. But, I love this scene because we get the first glimpse at Dillon's tattoo.

***

Here goes nothing. I open the door to my room and find Dillon lying on the bed on top of the covers. He’s wearing some snug, grey boxer briefs and a white sleeveless T-shirt.

Whoa! He is a man now. His arms and chest are so powerfully built—not bulky just defined and full of vigor. Through the thin fabric of his shirt, on his stomach I can see ripples of muscles tucked under the upside down V of his ribs. I don’t want to look below his waist band. I’m still too afraid. My mouth goes dry.

“Is that a wife beater?” I ask, remembering Jake calling it that yesterday.

He laughs, “yeah, that’s another name for it, I guess.” His deep laugh makes my nerves fizzle away like bubbles in a luke warm bath. He pats the side of the bed he’s not on. “Come ‘er,” he says. The nerves come right back.

I drop my dress on the chair and plug my phone into the charger on the desk.

That’s when I notice, on his left bicep is a huge tattoo that stretches all the way down, almost to his elbow. Part flower, part print. My name is on the top in dark black, cursive ink. Below it is a flower that has always grown wild in our yard each year. It’s a ‘great laurel,’ as Momma always called them, a long-petaled, pink-tipped flower with slight green accents. It has long tendrils that reach out to find a bee for pollination. It’s quite beautiful and makes me realize that it must remind him of me. Below the great laurel is a poem or a verse. It says,

Place me like a seal over your heart,
like a seal on your arm;
for love is as strong as death,

its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
It burns like blazing fire,
like a mighty flame.

 Many waters cannot quench love;
rivers cannot sweep it away.

“It’s pretty,” I say rubbing my left arm and giving him a slight smile.

“It’s nothing like the original,” he says, unfaltering. I feel like swooning. How does he do this to me?

“What does it mean?” I ask.

“It means, it means that I belong to you,” he says, staring into my eyes. I look at the corner of the room to escape the overwhelming sincerity in his eyes. My heart beats like a little scared bunny.

“The poem is kind of gloomy.”

“It’s from the Bible,” he says. “Do you remember it?”

 As I’m trying to remember the verse, he pats the bed again. I rub the annoying lump in my throat, and turn off the room light. The moon casts a blue hue over everything. There are little shadows flitting around coming from the wind blowing through the trees outside my room. My heartbeat staggers, then it feels as though it cannot stay in my body as fast as it is beating.

I cross my wrists in front of my body and look back to the corner of the room. He’s going to have to help me. I can’t go to him right now. I feel stuck to the ground.

“I think we need to talk about the rules again,” I admonish and peek at him through my lashes.

***

 

I wish someone could draw the great laurel and the script below it. I can see it in my mind. Can you?
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Here's the business :-)

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