“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 chopped 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 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 barbed wire 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 barbed wire 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
