Blame Steve

Midnight Quatermass 10: Go West!

Hell yes I watched Furiosa on the biggest screen in the country and hell yes it’s fucking brilliant, but I’m not ready to talk abut it just yet so let’s crack on.

I was raised by movies. And my grandmother.

My dad, ill for as far back as I can remember, my mum, focussed on him, left me with my nan. This the North West of England in the 70s so she lives just across the road. Every single weekend plus school breaks I’m over there. We didn’t do holidays so I’d take single-day coach-trips with my nan in the summer to places like the Lake District. Everyone else was around 70 years older than me, but they introduced me to toasted teacakes in the kind of place that Withnail demanded the finest wines available to humanity.

This was my normal and I leaned into it hard. At home there was my room, my books and my comics. Later a Spectrum 48k and then music. Eventually girls and the first glimpse of London and what life could be. But long before that I’m just a nipper whose my parents stay in The Jawbone til late, but my nan would stay up with me watching horror doubles-bills on BBC2. Mostly though those core years were spent watching old black ‘n’ white movies in her small living room.

It was amazing.

My first cinematic crush was Olivia de Haviland. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen The Adventures of Robin Hunt (1938) and They Died with Their Boots On (1942) and while I’m a fan of Errol Flynn its his leading lady that was the big draw. I first saw her in Glorious Technicolor as Lady Marian on a TV set that you had to occasionally whack to stop it drifting back to black n white like a reverse Wizard of Oz. Later I had my first portable b&w TV in my bedroom where I devoured all the stuff that I couldn’t watch downstairs meaning my first introduction to a lot of 70s film was less than ideal.

It didn’t matter. The kids at school would bond over football and Panini albums, but I had a Picture Show Annual from 1952 with stills of Laurel & Hardy in films I hadn’t seen. Yet.

Once I got older I started collecting movies. Mostly ones I’d seen before, until one day my uncle (who went on to become a local legend in the video pirating underworld) let me borrow one of his new tapes. I held on to it for ten years.

While “Round up the usual suspects” and “Rosebud” rightly live in most folks’ cinematic Parthenon mine also contains “Charlie's copped a saucepan in the throat.”

At first I thought I hadn’t seen anything like Mad Max (1979). But then The Road Warrior (1981) dropped into my lap and it all clicked. 1939. John Ford. John Wayne. Stagecoach.

To this day I have no idea if George Miller was thinking about The Ringo Kid while smoking his pipe watching Mel Gibson walk away on his shattered leg. I know when he took Max to Japan everyone praised his modern Samurai movie and his obvious love of Kurosawa. Miller apologised. He’d never heard of him.

Archetypes then. The lines I was drawing started a long time ago. Like a really long time. I was introduced to Max Rockatansky the same year I read The Iliad for the first time. My Classics teacher explained Homer to me by way of Sergio Leone and I am forever thankful for him. The films and stories that have meant the most to me over a lifetime tend to push the same buttons and, years before I first read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, I was already in awe of the hero with a capital H. It’s also why I love writing them.

Max is old school. Like Trojan War old school. Goose dying? That’s the Death of Patroclus. Achilles literally refuses the call until both his love and his honour are gone. Max loses both when his partner and then his family are taken from him. It’s also why we don’t see him in the last of the V8 Interceptors until that moment.

Let me talk about a car.

That’s like waving Excalibur around and calling it a sword. Max’s ride is perhaps the most important vehicle in cinema history… once Max is behind the wheel. The Toecutter understands what none of his gang or even Max himself do. “This is a threshold moment.” Once you step over it there’s no going back. Max’s car is built as bait for this moment. His boss, terrified of losing his best man, has the car thrown together to cut off Max before he can swap his badge for a regular life with his family.

“They say people don't believe in heroes anymore. Well damn them! You and me, Max, we're gonna give them back their heroes!”

In a script that’s pretty sparse Miller uses this line twice.

Fast forward thirty-six years and Max is maybe ready to move forward. Still haunted, still strapped in, but with something dangerously close to hope heading his way. In Fury Road (2015) the V8 is wrecked, taken from him and repurposed. When Max sees her again there’s a lot going on but he cuts through it.

“They’ve got my blood. Now it’s my car!”

The car is as much a part of him as his body. We see it one more time towards the end of the film, but even as Max shouts, “That’s mine!”, we know he’s wrong. In the black Interceptor’s place is now the silver Razor Cola. Like Max the car has finally gone insane and lost itself in The Wasteland. Max is helpless as the only thing he’s ever been able to depend on roars down on him and it’s up to Furiosa to save him and finally destroy the most iconic vehicle to ride the screen heroic.

It may be Slit who screams “Valhalla!” as he dies, but, trust me, his stolen ride is already there.

Back in the first movie The Toecutter is represented by a raven, but when Max, arm broken, knee shot out, heads to his car it’s a hawk that fills the screen. The mythology Miller is tapping into is ancient. These are old stories. Older gods. When Johnny The Boy is pleading for his life, “Please sweet Jesus”, he’s preying to the wrong god.

On the Fury Road though Toast and The Dag share this moment:

“What are you doing?” “Praying.” “To who?” “Anyone that’s listening.”

That’s smart. Soon Furiosa is dying. Exsanguinated. Max attempts to save her by giving up his own blood, but it’s not working. What has he got left? One thing and one thing only. He finally reveals who He is and invokes his Name.

“Max. My name is Max. That’s my name.”

And saves her.

So if he’s redeemed why then does he not join her? Why does he return to The Wasteland? Let’s ask The Ringo Kid.

“Well, I guess you can't break out of prison and into society in the same week.”

Westerns, man… oh. That reminds me. Story time.

~

Kincaid’s Steel: A Tale of the Weird West

Horse left me for Eternity on the third day. It took me two more days carrying the saddle myself to clear the salt flats. Then a day sleeping before I walked into town at sunrise and drank at a trough like the plug I resembled.

Lost your horse, said the man with the badge.

Nope. I know exactly where he is.

He scratched himself and I took another drink.

But I am in need of a new one. If you could point me in the direction I’d be obliged.

Don’t know about new but the last place before you leave us had a few for sale last I checked. If you have the money tell Old Clem that I sent you.

I stood up and adjusted my hat towards the rising sun.

I’m thankful. The law keep you busy out here?

The ones that break it do.

I nodded.

Maybe before I leave there’s a place I can get cleaned up. Eat some.

The lawman sighed.

Tell you what. You tell me your name and business and I’ll ask my wife to cook us both breakfast.

I spat at the ground and smiled at the offer.

Mighty generous, Sheriff…

Briggs. Jay Briggs.

I offered my hand which he took keeping his left hand near his equalizer.

My name’s John Michael Kincaid and I’m here to kill me a hidebehind.

~

You mean a Leshi, said Mrs Briggs as she put the eggs in front of me. My grandma back home always said if we strayed in the forest the Leshi would take us.

Well I don’t know how important the name is considering the damn thing don’t exist, said her husband still waiting on his eggs.

No one’s disappeared then, I asked.

Where you from, Mr. Kincaid?

‘Fore this? Wichita, Kansas.

Dare say if I asked folk in Wichita, Kansas, what happened to you they’d say you plum disappeared. Yet here you are. Folk move on. That’s all.

So you’ve had folk move on? Unexpected like? Maybe leave family behind.

Maggie McGovern, said his wife sitting down to her own plate at the same time she gave Briggs his.

Maggie McGovern left Bill for a cowboy and I dare say they’re both the better for it. Maybe not the cowboy.

Mighty fine eggs, ma’am. Bill McGovern’s place far from here?

~

The horse didn’t like me much. Must have been stood in Old Clem’s lean-to waiting for Wyatt Earp himself to come along and partner up, but ended up under me.

Sorry to disappoint you, horse. But I ain’t so bad once you get to know me.

The horse farted.

Well, fuck you too.

~

I figured Bill McGovern to be the wild lookin’ feller with a game leg who came out on the broken down porch with a smile and a shot gun.

You lost?

If you’re not Bill McGovern I am.

You got business with me?

I just had breakfast with Sheriff Briggs and he told me your wife was missing.

He lowers the gun and I see hope in his eyes. Only known the man for 90 seconds and I already messed up.

You got news of my Maggie?

I’ve got news of my own, but I worry our stories may be similar. Could we sit a spell?

Good job the Sheriff fed you. All I got is coffee, but it’s strong and hot.

I pull the bottle out of the saddle bag and offer it to him.

Then its about to get stronger.

~

I tell him about Kayley. How we met here despite living a few villages apart our entire lives. How she heard my accent first and said it was the best part of me. I thought the same way about her eyes. She carried Ireland in them. We wed a few weeks later and then spent the next year getting ourselves to a place called Wichita because she liked its jumble of letters in the newspaper. We were happy there for three weeks and then she was gone.

McGovern didn’t bother with the coffee on the next refill.

She didn’t run out on you?

Did Maggie?

Anger in his eyes for a moment. Then sadness.

Still. A hidebehind’s nothing more than a story to scare children.

On the fifth day I saw it, Bill. Worse than that it saw me.

You’re not supposed to see them. Isn’t that how it goes?

Aye. They’re out there, but behind the thing you’re looking at. They move when you quit looking. Away if you’re lucky. You look up again and maybe its a rock now. Or a wagon they’re sat behind. You can’t see them. But they’re hungry. And patient.

But you saw one? And now you think what? It ate your woman and then travelled god knows how many miles to eat mine?

~

I’m on my knees and spitting blood. The feller I just called out is already walking away. I’m not worth it. He’s closed my left eye and everything in my right is blood red. I pass out right there. On the same spot I last saw Kayley. It’s dark when I wake and everything hurts. My eye is caked with dried blood, but I open it a fraction and then I see it.

It’s hard to look at. I don’t mean because its a monster. It’s sort of there and not there at the same time. But it has claws and teeth and it’s leaning over me and I can smell the rot from deep down in its gut. I guess the feller that left me here took my side piece, but not my knife. There’s a noise from further up the trail and it raises its head so I oblige my luck and bury the hilt into its jaw.

It’s thrashing now and I’ve wiped my eye some and it’s somehow less. By the time I stand it’s gone. I bend down to pick up the broken knife and there’s something small and delicate caught in its shattered blade. A gold chain so fragile the breeze could have taken it away. I bought it for her our first day in Wichita. All I could afford, but she loved it. She loved it.

It had caught in the thing’s throat and now it was all that was left of her.

~

It stays, Bill. Not for long. No longer than a week. Maggie’s been gone almost that long.

You want me to punch you in the eye so you can see if its standing behind you? It’s only the whisky and your sad tale that’s stopped me from delivering that already.

I finish my drink with a smile.

No need. I took that broken knife and couldn’t tell if the thing had left its blood on it or not, but see here?

I leaned back to show him the healing nick under my right eye.

I gave myself a little memento. Tried not to blind myself, but honestly I don’t see too good on this side anymore. But what I can see is worth the trade. I saw it two days later and it saw me and it ran. Ran clean across the salt flats and I think I would have ended the thing and maybe saved your Maggie if my horse hadn’t died under me. But I’m here now and no, Bill, the thing isn’t stood behind me.

I put the drink down.

It’s stood behind you.

I’d been practising. My new knife is the same style as the one made for the late Jim Bowie. It’s big and it’s heavy. What my pa would have called a pigsticker. But it’s also a thing of beauty. The heft of it… and when it moves it moves faster than the eye.

And best of all you can’t mesmerise steel.

Bill has the shotgun up, but isn’t sure what he’s pointing out. Doesn’t matter anymore. The thing is pinned to his porch is dead as Pharaoh. I ask him to make fresh coffee and get to gutting it while he’s inside.

He sits and weeps holding the cheap wooden rosary I pulled from the offal while I use a pail to wash what’s left of it off his porch.

~

It’s dark when I get back to town. Sheriff Briggs is standing in the same place I met him as I get off the horse.

Clem saw you coming, Wichita.

May be, but he’s growing on me.

The horse snorts and shakes its head.

I’ll grow on him.

You’ve left it late. I dare say Mrs Briggs won’t mind feeding you supper if you tell her another fairy tale that takes her back to the old country for a spell. Won’t be too much effort to find you a roll to sleep on out back unless coyotes worry you.

Much obliged, Sheriff. I do have a story to share and coyotes? Well… I’ll keep an eye out.

Someone told me this week that these newsletters are way too long. Sorry. I write til I stop. Sip, swallow or spit I’ll still be here next week. Hope you are too.

Oh, and “Where do you get your ideas from?”

Blame Steve. Always blame Steve.