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Banger’s father was not the man whose last name Banger bore. His father was a sweet tryst that lasted the baseball season, and he had left his mother even before she learned she was pregnant. He had been headed down to the coast, looking to strike it rich at the casinos, and Banger’s mother would bet that he had not gotten to New Orleans before landing in jail. For about one-tenth of a second, if that long, she had considered an abortion, and then she never thought about it again. Banger’s mother Plummy, despite her name with its suggestion of round vowels and luxe towels, was not a high-class woman; she was a low-down, walk-all-over-me-and-I’ll-show-you-how-good-I-can-make-the-soles-of-your-feet-feel kind of a woman. Plummy tended bar at Moon Shots near the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, and she lived with her twelve-year-old son—he had received his nickname when he was little and had let the screen door bang whenever he came in or went out—in a rickety rented two-story-with-wood-siding.

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