Black fish skeleton tattoo running down a leg, with an inch ruler along the spine, fish names and a small red and blue Texas outline near the knee.

Fish skeleton and ruler on a calf

Calf · Mixed · Photo

A fish skeleton is tattooed down the back of a leg, with its spine formed by a graduated ruler marked in inches. Fish species names are lettered beside the ribs, and a small Texas outline in red and blue sits near the top. The bold black linework and solid fills dominate, with the colour limited to the state shape, and the tattoo follows the curve of the calf to the ankle.

Calf Ankle Texas Fish Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The scale on the back of the boat had been bent since the Thursday before, and Dessie Marr swore it still read a pound heavy whenever the wind came off the Laguna. Her uncle Cal had never trusted anything that didn't need a battery. So when the first speckled trout of the morning came over the gunwale, he laid it along the ruler he kept screwed to the transom and squinted like a man reading a will.

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"Nineteen and a quarter," Dessie said before he could. "That's not a fish, Cal. That's a rumour with fins."

He didn't answer. He was working the hook out of its jaw with the flat of a pliers, humming something Baptist and tuneless. Out past the jetty the water had gone the colour of old pennies, and the flounder were stacking up in the cuts where the current bent. Dessie had counted eleven red snapper on the sonar the previous evening, lined up like they were waiting for a bus. Cal said that meant nothing. Cal said a lot of things that meant nothing, and then he went and did them anyway.

They ran the trolling line until the sun was a hot coin behind the clouds. The triple tail came up last, dark and flat-sided, and it fought like it had read the rulebook and meant to break every line in it. When Dessie finally had it thrashing against the rail, Cal leaned over with his knife and his grin and said, "Write that one down, girl. Put the ruler on it."

She did. The number went in the logbook beside the others, and she drew the spine of the thing as a straight line with the inches down its length, the way he'd taught her. Cal wanted it on his leg by winter. Dessie told him the tattooist would laugh. He said that was the point, and that a man ought to carry the day's catch from the ankle to the knee where it could never be thrown back.