“You little bastard,” the old man yelled, “don’t you come sniffing around here after my daughter again, or I’ll cut your nuts off.”
Then the old man saw Wilson and Jake across the street. Jake, unable to stop himself, nervously lifted a hand and waved.
“Git on out of here, or I’ll let Blackie out,” the old man said. “He’ll tear your asses up.”
Buddy came on across the street trying to step casually, but moving briskly just the same. “I’m gonna get that fucking Butch,” he said.
The old man found a rock in the yard and threw it at them. It whizzed by Buddy’s ear and he and Jake and Wilson stepped away lively.
Behind them they heard a screen door slam and the plump girl whined something and there was a whapping sound, like a fan belt come loose on a big truck, then they heard the plump girl yelling for mercy and the old man cried “Slut” once, and they were out of there, across the street, into the black side of town.
They walked along a while, then Jake said, “I guess we could find Mammy Clewson.”
“Oh, shut up,” Buddy said. “Here’s your five dollars back. Here’s both your five dollars back. The both of you can get her to do it for you till your money runs out.”
“I was just kidding,” Jake said.
“Well don’t,” Buddy said. “That Butch, I catch him, right in the kisser, man. I don’t care how big and mean he is. Right in the kisser.”
They walked along the street and turned left up another. “Let’s get out of boogie town,” Buddy said. “All these niggers around here, it makes me nervous.”
When they were well up the street and there were no houses, they turned down a short direct street with a bridge in the middle of it that went over the Sabine River. It wasn’t a big bridge because the river was narrow there. Off to the right was a wide pasture. To the left a church. They crossed into the back church yard. There were a couple of wooden pews setting out there under an oak. Buddy went over to one and sat down.
“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. The 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 called 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 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.