“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 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 barbed wire 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 alligator 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 bed time?”
“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 the 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 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.”