Black fine line outline of the state of Alabama tattooed on the side of a torso, with a white shirt lifted above it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Alabama state outline on the side ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A single-line black outline of the US state of Alabama sits on bare skin on the side of the torso, with a small dark mark near its centre. The line is even and thin, with no shading or fill, and the shape is centred on the frame. A white shirt is pulled up at the top and a hand holds the fabric at the right edge.

Fine line Ribs State outline Map Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pen had belonged to Thomas Harrow's father, and its nib skipped on the vellum whenever it caught a grain of old ink, so he drew the western edge twice before he trusted his hand. Mr Vaughn, the clerk who kept the commissioners' ledgers in a back room above the cotton exchange, had insisted on one unbroken line. A lifted pen, he said, made a map look like a sick man's sketch, and the commissioners would not pay for a sick man's sketch. So Thomas worked through the afternoon with his tongue between his teeth, following the rivers down from the northern hills, past the long bend of the Tennessee, until the outline dipped at the bottom into the notch of the bay like a boot set down in the water.

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He was nearly finished when his wrist came to rest on the paper and a bead of ink dropped from the nib into the middle of the state. He reached for the penknife to scrape it, but the lamp guttered and a boatman called up the stairs that the steamer would not wait for anyone who had not yet bought his ticket. Thomas rolled the sheet, slid it into the tin case, and went down the stairs with the blot still wet inside it.

In Montgomery the commissioners spread the map across a long table and pinned its corners with brass weights. One of them traced the coastline with a fat finger, then the river, and stopped where the ink had dried into a small dark bead. He asked Thomas what it was supposed to be. Thomas, who had been awake since four and was tired of explaining himself, said only that it was where the cold water came out of the hill above Piney Hollow, and that a mule he had once known had drunk there every evening without fail. The commissioner grunted and let it stand, and the map went into the archive with the mark still in it.