Black and white photo of a raised fist showing a small solid black cross tattoo on the inner forearm near the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small cross tattoo on forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small, solid black Latin cross sits on the inner forearm just above the wrist, with a raised clenched fist above it against a plain light background. The lines are crisp and even with solid black fill and no visible shading. The photograph is monochrome, with soft lighting that shows the skin texture and knuckles clearly.

Forearm Cross Fist Hand Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody aboard the Halcyon Mary had seen the stoker's fist come up before, not even Dolan, who had known him since Cardiff. It went up slow, the way a man lifts a hand in chapel to ask for quiet, and the whole stokehold stopped. I was in the galley doorway with a tray of cold tea, and I remember thinking how absurd it was that the mark I'd scratched into the bulkhead beside the cocoa tin should be the thing I looked at.

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I had cut it there in my first week, with the tip of a bread knife, a small upright thing no longer than my finger. Mr Venn, the purser, asked why a cook would mark a wall like a convict, and I said it was so I'd know which hook was mine. That was a lie. My mother had made the same mark on the flour bin every Sunday, and I did it so the galley would hold one thing that did not belong to the company.

The strike lasted nine days. Coal went cold, the boilers were banked, and the captain sent for the cook as if food were the only thing that could bring men back under a roof. I cooked for both sides. I served the stokers at the rail and the officers at the saloon table, and I gave each the same stew, which was the only fair thing left to me.

On the ninth morning Dolan came to the galley door alone. He did not raise his fist. He pointed at the bulkhead, at the small black cross, and said, 'Your mark's still there, Pell.' I told him it always would be. He nodded, took a loaf from the rack, and went back down the companionway with it under his arm, and that was how the ship came back to work.