"It was probably inevitable," said Belkula Yurho to his brother Coffee at the breakfast table. They were joined there by their other two brothers, Stinky and Pinball, and the topic of discussion was what had happened last night at Smut's Bar in Boatville.
Coffee, who was holding his head very still in an effort to soften the effects of the hangover he was nursing, just moaned.
"I take it he's got something against tattoos," Pinball said to Belkula. As a Navy veteran, Pinball had a couple of tattoos. "Maybe," he said to Coffee, "she'll get a flying eagle, or maybe a dooseyed-up heart with 'mother' tatted across the top of it." Coffee was grinning as he said that. He didn't really think those kinds of tattoos appealed to women. Mostly he saw the chance to aggravate his brother.
Mostly that's what the four bachelor Yurho brothers did to one another, was aggravate. It kept them honest and on their toes.
What had happened was last night The Widow Fistula sasheyed into Smut's Bar and sat down with the brothers. As you may or may not remember, Coffee and The Widow have had an on-again, off-again affair of the heart going on ever since the proper period of mourning for her husband was over. (Her husband, "Pickle" Pete, died in a freak accident at The Pickle Factory in Boatville when he had apparently fallen into a vat of number 1 gherkins. He had actually had the nickname "Pickle" for years before that, due to speculations involving his liver and a lifetime of drinking.)
ADVERTISEMENT
This affair between Coffee and The Widow was one of the few things that kept Boatville entertained over the years, and had almost overtaken the weather as the universal conversation starter amongst folks around town. "Hi, there. What do you think of this weather?" That no longer happened. Now it was: "Hi, there. I heard The Widow chased Coffee off with the 12-gauge yesterday." It kept everyone, like I said, entertained.
So anyway, there the four brothers were, sitting at a table in Smut's, finishing a long day of celebrating a long day of drinking, when in came The Widow, who sat down with them and started doing shots of Tequila. Somehow during the conversation, tattoos had come up, and Coffee had expressed his dislike of "inked-up women," I believe was the term he had used.
Plus he had added, his brothers reminded him this morning, "Only women of the night have tattoos."
"Women of the night!" spat The Widow. "What the H-E double-ell is a woman of the night?" The Widow tended to get argumentative at the best of times. The Tequila seemed to make it even more so.
Coffee kind of stammered something unintelligible, and looked to his brothers for help here. They piled right in. "I think he means women of ill repute," said Pinball. "No," argued Belkula, "I think he means women of inadequate moral bearing."
The Widow blew out her breath with an exasperated grunt and said: "If I want to get a tattoo, it's nobody's business but mine." Then she added: "Lots of people are getting tattoos now. It's fashionable."
"What kind of tattoo are you going to get?" asked Belkula, sensing an interesting conversation in the making.
"Maybe something Biblical, you know."
ADVERTISEMENT
"Oh, well, that sounds practical," said Coffee, thinking maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.
"I'm thinking a big red apple with a snake wrapped around it, the tree of sin in the background, and a big bite out of the apple." There, thought The Widow to herself. That should rile Coffee up.
"A what?" groaned Coffee, who promptly tipped his beer over and began looking for another one.
"So where are you going to put this tattoo?" asked Belkula, who found all this simply great, especially Coffee's extreme reaction to tattoos in general.
"That's for me to know and you to find out," The Widow said back to Coffee's younger brother, like she'd ever let him try. The Widow also got flirty on Tequila.
Coffee stood up and said: "You wouldn't dare put it on some part of you Down There!" Just the thought of some tattoo artist drawing on The Widow's nether parts was enough to drive him crazy. He might not be able to name those parts, but he knew he didn't want anyone else Down There either. "That wouldn't be decent," he added.
The Widow was suddenly overcome with the urge to reach over and slap Coffee. Instead she said: "Coffee! It's time you entered the current century." Then she added: "As long as others can see it at the beach when I get my new bikini on."
