Alabama Bamboo BAM!
One moment he had been walking the junkyard, just like he did every evening at about this time, and the next he was flat out on his back, dirt in his hair, and the whole of his face went from screaming pain to complete numbness in about two seconds. His name was Jeth, and as soon as he could find his feet he was going to upend that motherfucker who’d floored him.
But his head seemed stuff full of wool, and he wasn’t entirely sure he could feel his legs. There was no cloud cover this night, he could see, and the stars burned almost yellow in the sky. Off to his left came a clattering as his assailant knocked over a pile of pans and cutlery. Nobody ever knocked over the mattresses or the cushions. Jeth sneezed and the whole of his face lit up with pain, and an almost clotted wad of blood blew from his nostrils. Jesus fuck, but that hurt.
He rolled over onto his side, his harsh breath blowing dirt away from his face. It seemed to Jeth that his vision rolled over slower than his body did, and that if he could feel the pain that must be in his head then he’d know well enough to pass out and be done with the day. But somewhere in this junkyard was a sneaking, cold-cocking bastard that needed to be seen to, so he hefted himself up onto an elbow and slowly began the process of righting himself. There was a flush of warmth on his chest, and he looked down to see the flow of blood that his chin couldn’t feel as it spread down around his collar. Jeth reached an arm around to the small of his back and pulled the gun from his waistband, cocking it in one smooth motion as he brought it around to bear on the noise in front of him.
Somehow his legs didn’t betray him as he began to walk. He listed a little, to be sure, but he kept upright by swinging his free arm like a night-time drunk on the last ferry home, and soon he was at the wooden door to the barn that stored all of the household junk he had collected for some thirty years or more. Inside, Jeth could hear rummaging. He kicked the door inwards and strode in.
“Okay,” he called into the dark space within. “Opening hours are from seven ‘til six. And attacks on municipal employees will not be tolerated.”
The figure in the corner didn’t turn around. He was sorting through what Jeth called his ‘Eastern Shit’ – a collection of Oriental statues and trinkets that had accrued over the years. God knows why people had this stuff in their houses – Jeth couldn’t recall clearing a single house that had belonged to any Asians – and nobody wanted to buy it from Jeth after he’d acquired it, but it had accumulated into a great pile in the corner of the barn, and now the small, dark figure had found what he was after. He rose and turned, a large ivory horn held loosely in his hands.
Holy-Moley Jesus, thought Jeth, the fucker wasn’t no bigger than Sally’s nephew, and that boy stopped growing after the truck hit him. How in Hell had the little bastard knocked him cold when he was all of five foot fuck all tall in his slippers?
Jeth looked him up and down, what there was to see. He was dressed head to toe in black, with his head covered and only his eyes visible. Fuck me if he don’t think he’s a ninja, Jeth thought.
The figure snapped his feet together and executed a tight, quick bow. “Sorry,” he said, in clipped, accented English. “I am just wanting to get the horn please.”
Jeth pointed the gun towards the man. “Son, I don’t give a tin shit for your problems, but I can’t let you come in here in your God damn PJs and knock me silly in my own yard. If I don’t even try to give you a good Alabama shit-kicking, then I can’t ever go into Macey’s Bar with my head held high again.”
The man, for Jeth couldn’t bring himself to truly believe that he’d been attacked in his own junkyard by an honest-to-God fucking ninja, placed the ivory horn gently down on the ground and plucked his staff from where it had been resting against a dresser than Jeth had found in the Widow Cunningham’s attic room. When he’d cleared it out, he’d found some porno tucked behind one of the drawers, and he’d never been able to look her in the eye since.
The staff was nearly as long as the man was tall, a length of bamboo about as thick as the wrist of the jailbait that lived down the road, and the man held it two-handed, one hand palm up, the other palm down.
Jeth aimed the gun square at his opponent. “Okay. You’re trespassing and stealing, even if it is shit I can’t sell. And unless you guys invented bamboo bazookas without telling no one, you ain’t getting past me any time soon.” He tried to cock the hammer of the pistol for emphasis, forgetting he’d already done that earlier, and in the moment it took for him to do that he failed to see the dark shadow blur its way across the barn and shunt one end of the bamboo staff into his stomach. Jeth folded over instantly and threw up a little into his mouth. Before he fell backwards completely, his finger involuntarily pulled the trigger and the bullet thudded into the packed dirt between them. The ninja – because, all things considered, if this little fucker wasn’t a ninja, then Jeth didn’t want to meet one – somersaulted backwards, landing exactly where he’d placed the horn, and picked it up deftly.
But Jeth wasn’t giving up so easily. His stomach felt torn open – he was sure he’d be pissing blood by morning - and he still couldn’t feel his nose, but the taste of vomit in his mouth he could feel, and it kind of pissed him off. He stood up just in time to be kicked through the side wall of the barn by the departing ninja.
Jeth had built this barn by himself, not ten years ago. As if it wasn’t bad enough getting his ass handed to him by a five-foot Chinaman, now his construction skills were being shown up something awful.
He rolled over, and this time his vision was definitely suffering from jet lag. His arm, weighing approximately forty pounds by now, he held bravely parallel to the ground, and he got off a shot at the ninja, who was stood not ten feet away, fiddling with his wristwatch like he didn’t give a Chinese shit.
Maybe it was his brain finally saying fuck it and lighting out for the day, or maybe there was some weirder stuff happening that Jeth wasn’t able to understand – beyond having his ass kicked six ways to Sunday by a ninja – but between the bullet exploding from the barrel of the gun and it hitting the ninja, the air seemed to glitter like a Christmas tree in the darkness, and then the ninja disappeared.
It fell silent. Far off over the boundary fences, Jeth could hear the wind sighing through the trees. Somebody’s dog started barking.
“Fuck me then,” Jeth whispered to himself. “Sci-fi ninjas…”
He heaved over sharply and blew the remains of his supper into the dirt. There was a lot of blood in it, and some corn he couldn’t remember eating.
Jeth rolled onto his back. The stars seemed to wheel in his vision and leave light traces in their wakes. They pulsed in time with his heartbeat, and he could feel the blood moving through him, like a faraway memory of pain.
Some time later, various parts of his body started to report in. When he finally got the feeling back in his legs, Jeth found that he’d pissed himself. Only consolation was, it was still warm, so (thank Christ) he’d probably only done that after the ninja had left.
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