THE SATURDAY BOY

(Above: my favourite biker movie, because I’m a contrary arsehole)

Banks here: Does everyone have their blankie and special story time pillow? Good, because we have a very special guest here today, who’s come all the way from America to continue a thrilling tale of derring-do, all in the aid of Hogdoggin’ Monday, an American national holiday where everybody buys a copy of Anthony Neil Smith’s latest piss-in-the-pocket-of-the-establishment tome, Hogdoggin’. So snuggle up, turn out the lights, make sure your crack pipe’s filled and ready to spark, and off we go …

In the Last Episode, Keith Rawson’s Bloody Knuckles, Calloused Fingertips delivered on its promises of relieving all your tension… 

…but we previously left our town sheriff in danger of being swallowed whole by a mob of drunken bikers over at Needle Scratch Static, but then a mysterious stranger rolled into town. 

Banks stared, the cig nearly dropping from his lips, as the crowd passed the bloodied sheriff around above them as if they were a sea, with random punches to his back or face thrown in.  All orchestrated by the maniacal bartender, waving and shouting as if this was some heavy Wagner or some shit. 

“Fuck.  Me.” 

But there was one guy fighting the tide, trying to do what he could to help the poor lawman, not even concerned with his own safety.  But it wasn’t like he needed to be.  Handled himself nicely.  Pretty well-built, but no too much so.  Not exactly tall.  Not exactly…oh, wait.  Banks let out a breath and mock-smacked his head with his palm.  Said it aloud. 

“He’s a cop, too.”  It didn’t exactly fit, though.  So he tried again.  “Aye, I mean he used to be.  Not anymore.” 

Finally lit the cig, leaned against a post outside the front door, propped open in this heat.  Kind of like the Wild West a bit, like watching a Peckinpah up close.  Some people smashed beer bottles over the Sheriff’s head, stabbed him with sporks. 

But something ate at him.  It just wasn’t right, cop or not, for this to be so lopsided.  Even if the man survived, then turned around and arrested Banks, he’d still think it better to wade in for the underdog than the mob. 

“Aw, shite.  That’s not something I want to do.” 

A girl he hadn’t seen before eased up beside him.  She was blond.  Pretty, but guarded.  She was too smart for this pose of hers.  “Do what?” 

Banks pointed, blew smoke. “I have a bad feeling I’m about to go help that madman save the Sherff, that’s what.” 

“Goddamn it.”  She looked into the bar and smoothed her hands down the front of her miniskirt, then wiped her fingers just below her bottom lip where her lip gloss had smudged.  “You mean the madman who just kicked that tub of lard onto his stomach and broke a pool cue over his head.” 

Banks turned back to the scene.  He’d missed it thanks to the distraction of lovely Miss Distraction.  “Him, yeah.” 

She lifted her sweaty hair from the back of her neck and tried to air it all out.  Looked to Banks like she’d just been playing tonsil hockey with the biker who was just pulling away.  Really…tonsil hockey?  What was he, twelve? 

“That madman is mine.  What the fuck has he gotten into?” 

“Him?  He’s with you?”  Banks jerked a thumb over his shoulder.  “Then what about him?” 

She ignored him, pointed to his cigarette.  “Can I?” 

He handed one over, lit it for her, and she sucked it damn near down to the filter in one pull.  Let it all out and said, “Do me a favor, okay?  Go in there, do what you’ve got to do, but bring his ass back out here, will you?” 

Banks was ready to say Fuck yourself, you and your slick legs and sexy eyes and small, cuppable breasts…but he blinked before the fantasy got anymore tempting and instead said, “Back in a flash.” 

Inside, the music was overwhelmingly bad, loud, and American.  Sounded like Molly Hatchet and Dolly Parton in a gangbang.  But the mob pummeling the Sheriff was much louder.  The crazy man had rendered the Lard unconscious and was now going after his friend when Banks tapped him on the shoulder.   

The man turned on his heel ready to strike with the cracked cue, held back when Banks lifted his hands.   

“Mate, no, I’m gonna help!” 

Guy turned his ear closer.  “What?” 

“Your bird there tol’ me to come give you a hand, aye?  Gon’ save the copper!” 

The guy, who had “Lafitte” sewn onto his jacket, shook his head.  “No fucking idea what you’re saying.  Is that Irish?” 

I come all this way to be abused?  Is that the score?  “Fuck off, you.  Fucking Irish.  Fuck off.  Watch this.”  He pointed at himself, pointed at the friend of El Lardo, then picked up the nearest barstool and bashed it over the fuck’s head.  Out cold.  The victim feel into the crowd and was lost in the trampling of boots and flip-flops. 

Lafitte gave Banks an impressed look, then grinned.  “All right.  Let’s fuck some fucks up.” 

They bumped fists and lit into the assholes. 

Not that it was hard.  They were so drunk or high or sweaty or gone that it was like beating up sponges.  The outer circles feel to the slightest kicks and slaps.  Banks threw a couple of headbutts, one at a woman, but proceeded on towards the Sheriff.  Lafitte was clearing out the path like a steamroller, watching them all fall underfoot.   

Then the inner core.  The tweakers.  Those son of bitches…eyes as of fire.  Breath like ammonia and rocket fuel.  Scrawny muscles stretched as tight under the skin.  They were like zombies, but the fast ones.   

Best way to do this was to split up.  Banks got up to the brass rail surrounding the bar, heaved himself up and on, and stood to find himself face to face with the Satanic Conductor himself, bar owner and instigator. 

He looked up and down Banks with a sneer of recognition, said, “Last time I saw you, you were getting donkey punched.” 

“Maybe in one of your wet dreams, you freak.” 

“Come on, man.  Don’t try to be a hero or anything.” 

Guy was punny.  Very fucking punny. 

Banks said, “Bite me.”   

Then he lunged at the barkeep, took him down hard.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lafitte lift three tweakers above his head and toss them like they were basketballs.  Then he was helping the Sheriff up and out of the bar. 

The bar owner tagged Banks hard in the right eye, right cheek, jaw. 

“Hey, hey, hey!”  Banks grabbed the man’s wrist before the next punch.  “I’ve about had enough of you.” 

“Too bad.  You’re stuck with me.  Forever exchanging beatdowns, letdowns, and long violent stories.  That’s the deal.” 

Nearly made Banks shit his pants.  “You really do think you’re the Devil, right?” 

Big smile on the barkeep.  “Did you really think you woke up in the real world?” 

Banks panicked, looked towards the door.  The moment Lafitte passed the threshold, he disappeared.   

Unbelievable. 

Banks fell off the devil, scooted back into the far wall.  All of the fallen players in the game shook off their injuries, uprighted furniture, and put another crap song on the jukebox.  A couple of tweakers lifted Banks like he was a bag of sand and set him on a barstool.   

Everything back to normal, sort of.  He checked the far back corner.  There was Lafitte again, or at least a good facsimile, sitting next to a man Banks was sure was dead, him being the one who killed him. He turned to the front door.  Here came the Sheriff, good as new, accompanied by that blonde bird he’d seen outside, the one who told him to go on in. 

Then the bartender was right there in his face, wiping down the dark varnished wood before handing across a fresh Stella.   

“Now,” the bartender said.  “It’s your turn to tell us a story.  And don’t worry about how long it takes.  We’ve got all the time you need.” 

* 

Ray Banks = Cool.  Too cool.  The guy sweats cool.  Every word he says is cool.  Goddamn it, I’m jealous of all the cool. 

Here’s a guy who rose quickly from the short-story mosh pits to deliver a startling poke in the eye of the Private Eye genre with Saturday’s Child, before going on to top himself with Donkey Punch (re-titled in the US, but let’s not dwell on that).  Add to that No More Heroes, Beast of Burden, and his first shot called The Big Blind, and you’ve got a rich body of work on your hands, and he’s only just begun. 

What I love about Banks is he understands that storytelling isn’t just about the story.  We see plenty of crime fiction, possibly interesting stories, tossed off in pedestrian prose that might as well have been a menu at a fast food joint.  And that’s a shame.  It’s probably more than one reason why so much of the genre has to wear that “merely entertainment” badge.  What’s missing is what Banks brings: a love of the telling.  There’s an art to it, and you’ve got to love words, love phrasing, love rhythm.  It’s not only about the story.  It’s who tells them the best.  Sometimes that means getting out of a story’s way, stripping it naked.  But in Banks case, it means slapping it around and then buying it drinks, see what it says when it’s loaded. 

I published a story of Ray’s in Mississippi Review called “The Last Kayfabe”, which is already great with that title, right?  Here’s a description of the pro wrestling life from our narrator: 

Shake my head. Apart from the blood. The blood was real. The pain. Shit, you wanna talk pain, we can talk pain. I got a constant steel-band ache across the back of my neck thanks to a guitar broke over my head by an Elvis-looking motherfucker called himself The Honky Tonk Man. Then Hardcore, list it out: second-degree burns on my hands and arms; been spiked so many times with barb wire I lost count; broke all my ribs, individual and all at once; broke my sternum; eight concussions and I got a total of over six hundred stitches holding me together like a beefed-up rag doll with bad dreams. 

Might’ve been sports entertainment. Might’ve been rehearsed. Bret Hart saying he never hurt anyone -- fuck Bret Hart. But just ’cause you planned that three-hundred-pound grizzly dropping on your ass from fifty feet in the air, didn’t mean your damn bones didn’t shake and break. 

Cool, right?  You can feel it.  The narrator is reliving every injury as he tells us about them. 

And you can feel it in Saturday’s Child, when Banks allows us to see the story through more than one pair of eyes.  He’s a chameleon that way, knowing how much it makes a difference.  So there he is, beating up one voice and then stapling it to another that sounds different.  All the while, smiling. 

Did I mention I was jealous? 

* 

Next time, an invasion of irregulars from the West Coast, led by the Jester himself, Greg Bardsley.  And then, from out of Detroit, Patti Abbott haunts our dreams. 

Tonight on the Main Stage: Ministry, “Jesus Built My Hot Rod”