Enlarged with AI from a smaller original
Tally marks on a forearm
Forearm · Mixed · Photo
A black tally mark of four upright lines crossed by a diagonal stroke sits on the forearm. The lines are bold and solid with even weight and no shading. Coloured tattoos of a pink bow and a teal and pink fish surround it, and a tattoo machine is visible in the blurred background.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
The slate hung on a nail behind the weighing scale, and Dad never once let anyone else chalk it. Four upright strokes and a bar across them meant a boat's worth of mackerel, or a crate of pollack, depending on which of the Hurst boys was shouting the weight. I was twelve when he handed me the chalk and told me to count properly, not to guess.
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The trouble with a tally is that it only counts what comes in. Nobody on the quay wanted to chalk what didn't come back. The Mary Ellen went out on a Tuesday with the tide turning and the glass dropping, and by dusk five of us stood on the wall with our collars up, watching the lamp at the harbour mouth swing and then go dark. Dad didn't touch the slate that night. It stayed blank under its wet cloth.
Two days later the Mary Ellen came in low on the water, her nets full of nothing but weed and one green buoy, and her skipper didn't say a word. Dad walked down the slip and held out his hand for the chalk. I watched him draw the four uprights and then cross them, slow, the way you'd strike a name from a list you wished you'd never written.
Then he gave me the chalk back. The herring were in from Penhallow that afternoon, a tub for the fishmonger and a box of crab for Sunday. I drew each bundle the same width and the same weight, and the gulls kept screaming over the wall while I worked.
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