Close photograph of a small black fine ink tattoo of two dots and the number 20 on the inner wrist, shown on a pale pleated bedspread.

Small ':20' lettering on the wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black tattoo of a colon followed by the numerals 20 sits on the inner wrist of a light-skinned hand, which is curled into a loose fist. The linework is thin and even, with the dots and numerals kept simple and compact. The ink is solid black against the skin, and the background is a cream, pleated fabric that fills the frame.

Lettering Forearm Number Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are up before the wasps, which is the only reason anyone trusts you with the ladders. The kitchen clock says twenty past five, its colon blinking the way it has since your mother's time, and you take the wooden crate out past the pump and into the Bramley rows where the grass is still silver.

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Old Harold Pryce walks the rows with you on the first morning and says nothing until you reach the Discovery trees, then taps a windfall with his boot. "Bruised on the side that met the ground. Leave that one for the pigs. Take the ones that fell clean." He says it the way he says everything, as if the apples had been listening and he wants them to know they are being judged fairly.

By the second week your fingers know the difference without your eyes. You learn to twist and lift, never pull, so the spur stays on the branch and the tree still has something to give next year. Late August gets hot by nine and the orchard hums. Somewhere over the hedge a tractor starts and stops, starts and stops, and you stop too, holding a cold apple against your neck, counting the seconds until the light tips over the ridge.

On the last morning you are the first in the rows again, and the clock in the kitchen window reads twenty past five when you look back at it. Harold has left a cardboard tray on the step with your name on it in pencil, and beneath it a single russet, scuffed and perfect, which he has not left for the pigs.