Black serif lettering reading two lines of latitude and longitude figures, N 34° 4' 54" and W 118° 6' 2", tattooed on the back of a person's neck.

Coordinate lettering on the back of the neck

Lettering · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph from behind of a person with dark hair tied up, showing two lines of black serif numerals and symbols reading N 34° 4' 54" and W 118° 6' 2". The lettering is crisp, evenly spaced and set in a classic serif typeface with solid black ink. The text is centred on the nape, with the neck, hairline and a knitted grey jumper framing the composition against a plain light background.

Lettering Neck Coordinates Number Text Serif

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hollis had the brass disc in his coat pocket for three days before he set it in the concrete, because the figures on it would not sit still in his head. The county had given him the pair from a triangulation ledger with a coffee ring on its cover. He checked them twice against the theodolite before he believed them: this was the corner of the Aldana orchard, where the water board wanted its new pumphouse, and where, according to the foreman, a dog had been buried under a pear tree in 1904.

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The foreman, Ernesto Gil, kept the pear tree standing out of spite. 'You can move a pump,' he said, 'you cannot move a dog.' Hollis ran his chain along the fence line and sighted the stake until the crosshairs bit into the grey seam where the old wall met the ground. Lunch was bread and tinned peaches on the tailgate. Gil told him his daughter had carved her initials into the bark at nine, and that the letters had grown with the trunk, so they now sat at the height of a man's shoulder.

Hollis punched the numbers into the disc one stroke at a time, the way his father had taught him to mark a benchmark, so each digit sat slightly crooked and honest. On the last figure of the second line his hand slipped and the tail of the stroke ran off the edge. He considered filing it smooth, then didn't. The orchard had been wrong about the dog for a hundred years, he thought, and the water could stand a little wrong too.

They set the disc in wet concrete at dusk. Gil crossed himself and went home. Hollis stayed on his heels until the light drained out of the orchard, and the pear trunk with its faded initials went the colour of pencil lead, while the brass kept the last of the sun on the numbers facing up at the sky.