Matching lion cub tattoos on three legs

The roadhouse at Mulga Wells had closed years ago, but the sign still promised cold beer and hot pies above a row of blown windows. We filled the jerrycans from the rusted tank by the pump and sat on the tailgate while the sun went orange over the scrub. Dad used to point at the sky out here and say the same thing every time we got lost, which was often. Remember who you are, he'd say, as if we might have forgotten our own names in the dust.

Tomas pulled his sock down and showed me his ankle, the little cub curled inside its ring of brown and black ink. He'd had it done the summer after the funeral, the three of us squeezed into a shop with a broken fan, our legs stuck out on the vinyl chair. He said he hadn't looked at it in months. I said I looked at mine every morning, and he didn't believe me until I showed him.

We drove on after dark with the headlights carving a tunnel through the night. Somewhere past the dry lake, he started singing the wrong words to a song Dad hated, and I laughed until I had to pull onto the verge. The stars were thick enough to lean on. When the road finally bent towards the water, he was asleep with his foot up on the dashboard, the cub turned towards the windscreen as if it had been the one keeping watch.