(Partial interview, G. Shuey, newspaperwoman, Wash. State, Dec 2020; Full interview on GatFinger.com soon, unless Podcast picked-up by xxx.)

You have a very odd name…

Well, Grampa got off the boat, and in those days, you were literally force-fed into Ellis Island’s de-lousing station and then sorting, where Commies were shipped back to where they came from, after they were mostly de-loused. Well, it was Sonnier, but the Immigration Agent had a magical understanding of the  French language, and this agent decided that the correct translation was to be Rattlesnake, when it should have been more like Bell-ringer, … or maybe Doorbell, but NOT Rattlesnake.

Doorbell?

Well, my French is not so good. I was raised Canadian-American. So Grampa exits the Ellis Island complex, gets onto another boat, and next stop is New York City. He waits his turn and then exits the boat with a crowd of people. He noticed at once that people were physically plucked from the crowd, and either put immediately to work, or …. My Grampa thought that many were just up-and-up kidnapped.

Kidnapped? In broad daylight?

Well, he was just off the boat, spoke maybe two English words, and people would look at your name tag given to you by an agent on Ellis Island, and then ignore you, or they would grab you off the street. Men and women, not too many children. But my Grampa noticed that people would look at his nametag and grimace or move back, often in fear, as if Grampa were some sort of fiend or a carrier of the plague. My Grampa thought that maybe the Immigration Officer had written a bad word or phrase, but it turned out, that he wrote out “RATTLESNAKE” thus, Grampa, formerly Mr. Jean Sonnier, became Mr. Johnny Rattlesnake. And people feared to tread on him, so to speak, for the rest of his life. In some ways, he had to live up to the name.

Live up to the Rattlesnake surname?

Yes, many times, he would explosively lash out at a rival or an out-of-line colleague, and grab their collar and smack them around, just like Jimmy Cagney, so that his persona, the Johnny Rattlesnake persona, was preserved; kept him out of a lot of fights.

I see, and your screenplay Gat Finger resulted from this pain?

No, not at all. One day I read that writers should be able to write about their most significant tragedy of their life, because no one else could live in their shoes, yada yada, yada. At first, I thought the exercise was half-witted, but I trudged on, and I really looked at myself, very deep. I realized that I never really dealt with the hand-pain. I mean, I’ve experienced it for 50 years, but I never really dealt with it, as if it were real. So, I revisited the pain and imagined what might have been, if I was injured in the 1880’s, where there would be no modern medical care. No plastic surgery. No possibility to heal normally.

And then your struggles became the Gat Finger story?

Yes. I added family lore and a boatload of gore and some of the surgical details I remember. And, thus I bore the GAT FINGER.

The protagonist’s name is Gat Finger?

All superheroes have a pseudonym. Bruce Wayne is Batman; Tony Stark is Iron Man; Banksy is … … Banksy. Gat Finger, the superhero, is the name given to him by the man who saved his life.

And Gat Finger story has a heroine?

Yes, Becky, she too, was hideously maimed as a child, and they have a very deep attraction and they develop a fierce bond and loyalty to each other. As if they were made for each other, which of course, they were, because I made them.

(Gen Shuey is a well known writer from the Pacific Northwest. Her writings have appeared in lofty journals, such as the Goldendale Sentinal,  and a few of her pieces have been picked up by international wire services.)