Stories (2011) (24 page)

"I thought you wanted to get away from the
boogies?" Wilson said.

"Naw," Buddy said. "This is all right. This
is fine. I'd like for a nigger to start something. I would. That old man back
there hadn't been so old and had his balls fucked up like that, I'd have kicked
his ass."

"We wondered what was holding you back," Wilson
said.

Buddy looked at Wilson, didn't see any signs of sarcasm.

"Yeah, well, that was it. Give me the jar. There's some
other women I know about. We might try something later on, we feel like
it."

But a cloud of unspoken resignation, as far as pussy was
concerned, had passed over them, and they labored beneath its darkness with
their fruit jar of hooch. They sat and passed the jar around and the night got
better and brighter. Behind them, off in the woods, they could hear the Sabine
river running along. Now and then a car would go down or up the street, cross
over the bridge with a rumble, and pass out of sight beyond the church, or if
heading in the other direction, out of sight behind trees.

Buddy began to see the night's fiasco as funny. He mellowed.
"That Butch, he's something, ain't he? Some joke, huh?"

"It was pretty funny," Jake said, "seeing
that old man and his balls coming down the porch after you. That thing was any
more ruptured, he'd need a wheelbarrow to get from room to room. Shit, I bet he
couldn't have turned no dog on us. He'd had one in there, it'd have
barked."

"Maybe he calls Sally Blackie," Wilson said.
"Man, we're better off she didn't take money. You see that face. She could
scare crows."

"Shit," Buddy said, sniffing at the jar of hooch.
"I think Hoyt puts hair oil in this. Don't that smell like Vitalis to
you?"

He held it under Wilson's nose, then Jake's.

"It does," Wilson said. "Right now, I
wouldn't care if it smelled like sewer. Give me another swig."

"No," Buddy said, standing up, wobbling, holding
the partially-filled jar in front of him. "Could be we've discovered a
hair tonic we could sell. Buy it from Hoyt for five, sell it to guys to put on
their heads for ten. We could go into business with Old Man Hoyt. Make a
fortune."

Buddy poured some hooch into his palm and rubbed it into his
hair, fanning his struggling squirrel-do into greater disarray. He gave the jar
to Jake, got out his comb and sculptured his hair with it. Hooch ran down from
his hairline and along his nose and cheeks. "See that," he said, holding
out his arms as if he were styling. "Shit holds like glue."

Buddy seemed an incredible wit suddenly. They all laughed.
Buddy got his cigarettes and shook one out for each of them. They lipped them.
They smiled at one another. They were great friends. This was a magnificent and
important moment in their lives. This night would live in memory forever.

Buddy produced a match, held it close to his cheek like
always, smiled and flicked it with his thumb. The flaming head of the match
jumped into his hair and lit the alcohol Buddy had combed into it. His hair
flared up, and a circle of fire, like a halo for the devil, wound its way
around his scalp and licked at his face and caught the hooch there on fire.
Buddy screamed and bolted berserkly into a pew, tumbled over it and came up
running. He looked like the Human Torch on a mission.

Wilson and Jake were stunned. They watched him run a goodly
distance, circle, run back, hit the turned-over pew again and go down.

Wilson yelled, "Put his head out!"

Jake reflexively tossed the contents of the fruit jar at
Buddy's head, realizing his mistake a moment too late. But it was like when he
waved at Sally's pa. He couldn't help himself.

Buddy did a short tumble, came up still burning; in fact, he
appeared to be more on fire than before. He ran straight at Wilson and Jake,
his tongue out and flapping flames.

Wilson and Jake stepped aside and Buddy went between them,
sprinted across the church yard toward the street.

"Throw dirt on his head!" Wilson said, Jake threw
down the jar and they went after him, watching for dirt they could toss.

Buddy was fast for someone on fire. He reached the street
well ahead of Wilson and Jake and any discovery of available dirt. But he
didn't cross the street fast enough to beat the dump truck. Its headlights hit
him first, then the left side of the bumper clipped him on the leg and he did a
high complete flip, his blazing head resembling some sort of wheeled fireworks
display. He landed on the bridge railing on the far side of the street with a
crack of bone and a barking noise. With a burst of flames around his head, he
fell off the bridge and into the water below.

The dump truck locked up its brakes and skidded.

Wilson and Jake stopped running. They stood looking at the
spot where Buddy had gone over, paralyzed with disbelief.

The dump truck driver, a slim white man in overalls and a
cap, got out of the truck and stopped at the rear of it, looked at where Buddy
had gone over, looked up and down the street. He didn't seem to notice Wilson
and Jake. He walked briskly back to the truck, got in, gunned the motor. The
truck went away fast, took a right on the next street hard enough that the
tires protested like a cat with its tail in a crack. It backfired once, then
there was only the distant sound of the motor and gears being rapidly shifted.

"Sonofabitch!" Wilson yelled.

He and Jake ran to the street, paused, looked both ways in
case of more dump trucks, and crossed. They glanced over the railing.

Buddy lay with his lower body on the bank. His left leg was
twisted so that his shoe pointed in the wrong direction. His dark, crisp head
was in the water. He was straining his neck to lift his blackened, eyeless face
out of the water; white wisps of smoke swirled up from it and carried with it
the smell of barbecued meat. His body shifted. He let out a groan.

"Goddamn," Wilson said. "He's alive. Let's
get him."

But at that moment there was splashing in the water. A log
came sailing down the river, directly at Buddy's head. The log opened its mouth
and grabbed Buddy by the head and jerked him off the shore. A noise like
walnuts being cracked and a muffled scream drifted up to Wilson and Jake.

"An alligator," Jake said, and noted vaguely how
closely its skin and Buddy's shoes matched.

Wilson darted around the railing, slid down the incline to
the water's edge. Jake followed. They ran alongside the bank.

The water turned extremely shallow, and they could see the
shadowy shape of the gator as it waddled forward, following the path of the
river, still holding Buddy by the head. Buddy stuck out of the side of its
mouth like a curmudgeon's cigar. His arms were flapping and so was his good
leg.

Wilson and Jake paused running and tried to get their
breath. After some deep inhalations, Wilson said, "Gets in the deep water,
it's all over." He grabbed up an old fence post that had washed onto the
bank and began running again, yelling at the gator as he went. Jake looked
about, but didn't see anything to hit with. He ran after Wilson.

The gator, panicked by the noisy pursuit, crawled out of the
shallows and went into the high grass of a connecting pasture, ducking under
the bottom strand of a barbwire fence. The wire caught one of Buddy's flailing
arms and ripped a flap of flesh from it six inches long. Once on the other side
of the wire his good leg kicked up and the fine shine on his alligator shoes
flashed once in the moonlight and fell down.

Wilson went through the barbwire and after the gator with
his fence post. The gator was making good time, pushing Buddy before it, leaving
a trail of mashed grass behind it. Wilson could see its tail weaving in the
moonlight. Its stink trailed behind it like fumes from a busted muffler.

Wilson put the fence post on his shoulder and ran as hard as
he could, managed to close in. Behind him came Jake, huffing and puffing.

Wilson got alongside the gator and hit him in the tail with
the fence post. The gator's tail whipped out and caught Wilson's ankles and
knocked his feet from under him. He came down hard on his butt and lost the
fence post.

Jake grabbed up the post and broke right as the gator turned
in that direction. He caught the beast sideways and brought the post down on
its head, and when it hit, Buddy's blood jumped out of the gator's mouth and
landed in the grass and on Jake's shoes. In the moonlight it was the color of
cough syrup.

Jake went wild. He began to hit the gator brutally, running
alongside it, following its every twist and turn. He swung the fence post
mechanically, slamming the gator in the head. Behind him Wilson was saying,
"You're hurting Buddy, you're hurting Buddy," but Jake couldn't stop,
the frenzy was on him. Gator blood was flying, bursting out of the top of the
reptile's head. Still, it held to Buddy, not giving up an inch of head. Buddy
wasn't thrashing or kicking anymore. His legs slithered along in the grass as
the gator ran; he looked like one of those dummies they throw off cliffs in old
cowboy movies.

Wilson caught up, started kicking the gator in the side. The
gator started rolling and thrashing, and Jake and Wilson hopped like rabbits
and yelled. Finally the gator quit rolling. It quit crawling. Its sides heaved.

Jake continued to pound it with the post and Wilson
continued to kick it. Eventually its sides quit swelling. Jake kept hitting it
with the post until he staggered back and fell down in the grass exhausted. He
sat there looking at the gator and Buddy. The gator trembled suddenly and
spewed gator shit into the grass. It didn't move again.

After a few minutes, Wilson said, "I don't think
Buddy's alive."

Just then, Buddy's body twitched.

"Hey, hey, you see that?" Jake said.

Wilson was touched with wisdom. "He's alive, the gator
might be too."

Wilson got on his knees about six feet from the gator's
mouth and bent over to see if he could see Buddy in there. All he could see
were the gator's rubbery lips and the sides of its teeth and a little of
Buddy's head shredded between them, like gray cheese on a grater. He could
smell both the sour smell of the gator and the stink of burnt meat.

"I don't know if he's alive or not," Wilson said.
"Maybe if we could get him out of its mouth, we could tell more."

Jake tried to wedge the fence post into the gator's mouth,
but that didn't work. It was as if the great jaw was locked with a key.

They watched carefully, but Buddy didn't show any more signs
of life.

"I know," Wilson said. "We'll carry him and
the gator up to the road, find a house and get some help."

* * *

The gator was long and heavy. The best they could do was get
hold of its tail and pull it and Buddy along. Jake managed this with the fence
post under his arm. He didn't trust the gator and wouldn't give it up.

They went across an acre of grass and came to a barbwire
fence that bordered the street where Buddy had been hit by the dump truck. The
bridge was in sight.

They let go of the gator and climbed through the wire. Jake
used the fence post to lift up the bottom strand, and Wilson got hold of the
gator's tail and tugged the beast under, along with Buddy.

Pulling the gator and Buddy alongside the road, they watched
for house lights. They went past the church on the opposite side of the road
and turned left where the dump truck had turned right and backfired. They went
alongside the street there, occasionally allowing the gator and Buddy to weave
over into the street itself. It was hard work steering a gator and its lunch.

They finally came to a row of houses. The first one had an
old Ford pickup parked out beside it and lots of junk piled in the yard. Lawn
mowers, oily rope, overturned freezers, wheels, fishing reels and line, bicycle
parts, and a busted commode. A tarp had been pulled half-heartedly over a tall
stack of old shop creepers. There was a light on behind one window. The rest of
the houses were dark.

Jake and Wilson let go of the gator in the front yard, and
Wilson went up on the porch, knocked on the door, stepped off the porch and
waited.

Briefly thereafter, the door opened a crack and a man called
out, "Who's out there? Don't you know it's bedtime?"

"We seen your light on," Wilson said.

"I was in the shitter. You trying to sell me a brush or
a book or something this time of night, I won't be in no good temper about it.
I'm not through shitting either."

"We got a man hurt here," Wilson said. "A
gator bit him."

There was a long moment of quiet. "What you want me to
do? I don't know nothin' about no gator bites. I don't even know who you are.
You might be with the Ku Kluxers."

"He's . . . he's kind of hung up with the gator,"
Wilson said.

"Just a minute," said the voice.

Moments later a short, fat black man came out. He was
shirtless and barefooted, wearing overalls with the straps off his shoulders,
dangling at his waist. He had a ball bat in his hand. He came down the steps
and looked at Wilson and Jake carefully, as if expecting them to spring. "You
stand away from me with that fence post, hear?" he said. Jake took a step
back and this seemed to satisfy the man. He took a look at the gator and Buddy.

He went back up the porch and reached inside the door and
turned on the porch light. A child's face stuck through the crack in the door,
said, "What's out there, papa?"

"You get your ass in that house, or I'll kick it,"
the black man said. The face disappeared.

The black man came off the porch again, looked at the gator
and Buddy again, walked around them a couple of times, poked the gator with the
ball bat, poked Buddy too.

He looked at Jake and Wilson. "Shit," he said.
"You peckerwoods is crazy. That motherfucker's dead. He's dead enough for
two men. He's deader than I ever seen anybody."