Hal’s house was a go-through feature of the attraction. Once folks had signed in and paid their dues he escorted them through the kitchen on out the back door, at which point he continued his lead-up speech with increased fervor. Potato and Ixonia, being they were Clyde’s first ever Monday morning customers, deserved better. Hal sat them to table and fixed up tall splashes of lemonade with plenty of ice. Hal poured out some mixed nuts. As they snacked Potato talked of their damn near four hundred mile drive to see Clyde, this on account of a neighbor’s claim that her penny’s landing on the gator’s back caused her husband to quit drink. “If you knew her husband,” Potato said, “You’d understand. That gator done worked a fuckin’ miracle, baby.”

“He is a special gator,” Hal admitted. He said, “You ever heard of gatorepathy?”

“Excuse me? I’m sorry, what are you trying to say?”

“Gatorepathy,”—Hal cleared his throat—“is the reptile version of human telepathy. That’s how the Magic Injun Gator communicated with all the other gators back during the days of the Seminole wars. Clyde was personal friends with Chief Osceola who—”

“Hey now, don’t tell us all that bullshit.”

“Beg pard?”

“How’d you to come by him?”

“Long story,” Hal said, disappointed. He’d wanted to impress the child, get her imagination working, see her eyes grow wide with wonder. This guy Potato would have none of it, so Hal shifted unceremoniously into Mr. Tell Nothing But The Truth mode.

Hal said, “Hurricane Dennis come through at the same time my second wife left. He tore up the fences of The World’s Scariest Gator Pit. That’s how my buddy Phelps Henderson made his living. The gators crawled down into Crooked Slough. That pissed the neighbors off. Them gators ate up on quite a few of their dogs. There were over fifty gators, but the only gator Phelps had that stayed put was Clyde. Phelps believed this to be on account that Clyde was once hit by a Volvo and had his legs broke. I think Clyde stayed so that he could help me with my depression. Now the gatorepathy that I was trying to—”

 “Why’d she leave ye?” Potato asked.

“Beg pard?”

“You heard me.”

“She never forgive me for taking over my daddy’s land,” Hal said, but no longer believed it. All said and done, Hal was probably just too boring for Marlene.

Ixonia tired of eating nuts fast, and drinking lemonade. She said, “Let’s see the gator Tater,” and stood, wiped her hands on the backside of her terrycloth shorts, what reminded Hal of the dishrag hooked over the nail above the kitchen sink. She wore a yellow bikini top, and was filthy-footed barefoot, country-style with bug bites all about her ankles.

“Damn girl can’t sit still five seconds,” Potato said.

Together them two were quite the pair, Potato skinny and bearded with ratty gold dreadlocks. The guy wore loose jeans, his cheap canvas sneakers checkered black and white.

“I don’t have no girl children,” Hal said.

* * *

With his new friends Hal ascended the plywood ramp onto the deck overlooking Clyde’s mud pit. In the oblong pool Clyde basked with imperial Indian poise, his lower half shadowed by the stucco tepee, upper half awash in the sun’s full glory, the yellow mohawk bristles aglow.

“That ain’t nothing but a broom!” Ixonia shouted.

“You’ll have to forgive her,” Potato said.

“This gator was personal friends with Chief Osceola,” Hal told the little ingrate, and straightened his back to assume a posture of indignant aplomb. “Osceola,” Hal said, “was the leader of the Seminole tribe. He did his very best to fight off the Yanks who come down to steal away their land and way of life. In the end he was imprisoned on a ruse. They sent him over to Saint Augustine where they cut off his head. Clyde tried to save him but—”

“Bullshit,” Potato interrupted. “No disrespect, Mr. Cole, but this here girl is far from Christian.”

“I see,” Hal said.

“She don’t believe in the Easter Bunny, but she talked me into coming down here because her daddy took ill.”

She cares about her daddy, Hal thought.

“That broom don’t mean shit,” Potato admonished the child. “Fact is the gator worked a miracle. Don’t disrespect it. Do, we might not can exploit the sonofabitch. Ain’t we worked off the admission price, Halifax?”

“She weeded my garden.”

“So there ain’t nothing to prevent our wishes from coming true?”

“The penny’s got to land on his back, that’s a necessary condition, but there’s no guarantee, ever that it’ll come true. That’s up to Clyde. Clyde is the decider. What I think is if he likes you he’ll be more inclined to help you.”

“I want you to make your wish first, Halifax. Ain’t no use saving up wishes, bitch. You got to wish your wish away, baby.”

“Clyde, didja hear that?” Hal shouted, and Clyde opened his mouth and turned his head at them, his yellow mohawk bristling, his rows of sharp teeth seeming to drip cyanide or sulfuric acid, brake fluid or some other corrosive liquid. Clyde could sure be cute when he wanted to be.

“Impressive,” Ixonia said. She stood akimbo on the plank, staring down at the gator with a sharp appraising eye. “That mohawk is driving me nuts.”

“Nothing to get your panties all wet up about,” Potato said in a dull tired-of-her voice.

Ixonia looked at Hal. “Can you believe he would say such a thing to me?”

“It’s a little different, I can vouch for that,” Hal said.

Clyde became bored, set his elongated chin back down on the concrete slope.

“You hurt his feelings,” Potato said.

“He knows exactly what we’re thinking because he’s got gatorepathy,” Hal said.

Ixonia pulled her penny from the front pocket of her dishrag. She licked both sides for traction, then tossed it. The penny bounded off a scute like a tiny copper UFO, like it had it in mind to fly off.  

“Shit,” Potato said.

Hal was sure the wish was lost, but for some reason, maybe because Clyde felt the penny hit his back, Clyde muscled forward so that the penny landed flat this time and stuck, right there on the end of his nose.

“Cha-ching!” Potato bellowed.

“Cha-ching!” Ixonia cried, and jumped up and down while clapping her hands, her rotted teeth giving her a trollish look, like maybe she was on old man in disguise.

“Take this penny,” Potato told Hal. “Throw it now before you can think.”

Hal threw the penny.

Potato threw his.

Both pennies landed. For the next minute the three winners congratulated each other and smiled and shared expressions of merriment. Hal thought he would invite them for supper, but Ixonia started in on how it seemed downright nasty for somebody to do a gator that way, putting a broom on his head and all that. “How is that thang attached?”

“I knew he was magic,” Hal said. “That’s why I saved him when Phelps was going to shoot him through the brain.”

“He looks like he likes that thing on his head,” Ixonia said.

“He does,” Potato said.

“But it ain’t right,” Ixonia decided. “What did you do? Screw it down into his head bone just like you would a two-by-four?”

“Pretty much,” Hal admitted.

“Girl, you got to shut your fat ass up,” Potato said. “What you trying to do, jinx our wishes?”

“I’m just saying,” Ixonia said.

And then they were gone. Hal returned to the kitchen. He determined which glass had been Ixonia’s. Her ice cubes had melted down to mere hailstones, but he drank the water then refilled her glass with lemonade and drank from it while sitting at the kitchen table. In his mind he replayed the events of the morning. While in the woods he’d seen a coral snake slide down into a tiny hole in the ground. He’d never seen that before in his life. And the visitors. He’d hated to see them go. If they had wanted, they could have stayed the night, but they lived in Forsyth, some forty miles south of Atlanta. Before leaving, Potato promised to make a special trip there to set Hal’s sons straight about that they needed to visit their daddy, show him the respect he deserved. “Don’t worry,” Potato said, “I got your wish covered.”

* * *

Hal busted up ground beef in a pan, dropped half a can of corn in there, stirred it, dropped a egg in, watched the egg gel then slipped the concoction onto a plate. He sprinkled garlic salt over it all and pepper and sprinkled on hotsauce and took his dinner to the living room where he sat on the couch and began to eat. Normally Hal ate din-din while watching TV, a movie maybe, if a good one was to be found on his thousand channels, or Star Trek or Cops. Tonight Hal just ate, thinking of Potato, of Ixonia. During their short stay they had become like family. Hal closed his eyes and prayed that Ixonia’s daddy, whatever was wrong with him, would recover from his ailment. Like Ixonia, Hal was an atheist. It didn’t hurt to pretend to believe, though, did it? Even when you knew in your heart that your belief was insincere, that it was fake, it still meant something important—the gesture brought you peace of mind. As for Clyde’s gatorepathy, however, that was a true thing. It was hard to explain but Hal knew for a fact that the gator understood his thoughts and that the gator communicated back to him through thin air, sending him messages of encouragement and letting him know that he did not need to be afraid or worry about things. Hal had really hated to see Ixonia and Potato disappear.

Upon the coffee table Hal set his plate, picked up the remote, flipped on Seinfeld. Hal laughed at the jokes, admired Elaine. Elaine was the stuff. That girl knew what she didn’t want in life. Hal liked that, and looked forward to when Jerry and George made a little more room for Elaine in the show. Kramer had just busted through Jerry’s door when Hal heard an engine drop into low gear out on the highway, the vehicle slowing as it reached his property.

Talk about a heart starter. It just had to be them. Hal rose, stepped to the front window, pulled the curtain aside. The green truck turned in. A jalopy. Hal was surprised it had made it down from Forsyth in the first place. Had Tater and the child had engine troubles? Was that why they turned back?

Hal pulled on socks and shoes, checked his appearance in bathroom mirror. By then the truck’s doors had opened and slammed. Hal did not want to appear eager, so waited for their knuckles on the door. As expected, their knocks were cheerful. Oh, I wonder who this could be? Hal thought, and shuffled on into the foyer.

Hal pulled his door back to see the friendly strangers yet again. He looked at them, unbelievingly at first, letting them know that he had not missed them in the slightest. Finally he cleared his throat and then, awkwardly, broke the silence with, “I’m glad y’all came back. Want some supper?”

Potato pulled a flask from his pocket, unscrewed it, double-guzzled, then held it upwards Hal’s direction. “Good idea,” Hal said, and stepped into the late light for a nip. Stuff put a fur ball in his belly, a warm fur ball. Hal handed back the bottle and Potato swigged it then screwed on the cap.

Here we are, Hal thought.

Ixonia said, “Tell’m.”

“Shit,” Potato said, “why I got to tell’m?”

Hal felt news coming. Had they stopped at the Piggly Wiggly payphone to call home? Hal felt that if the child’s father were to die he would be exposed as a fraud. The strangest thing about it was that he’d never cared about this before. Why now? “Tell me,” Hal said. “I can take it.”

They’d made a good piece toward home, Potato explained, and were feeling good in their wishes, “but then this goddamn little bitch”—he pointed at Ixonia—“starts in on how Clyde the Magic Injun Gator seemed sad and lonely. I said, No, you ain’t talking about no Clyde, bitch, you talking about Hal, but she says, I seen into the gator’s eyes. I said, bitch, quit your jabbering, you got your goddamn wish, now shutcher fuckin’ face for the sake of your daddy. I thought that would do it. She says No, no, I don’t think we should stand for it. Would you like somebody to screw a broom into your head? She got me there, Halifax. I didn’t want to admit it, but when she said that, she got me.”

“You mean to say you drove back all these miles to tell me?”

“Won’t stand for it!” Ixonia cried up. Her face looked like a polished stone Buddha’s belly in the orange light, smooth, coated in a thin film of dirt. She said, “We come back for the broom.”

Hal let this info sink in. He said, “Tater?”

“Yessir?”

“Lend me a hit off that brown juice.”

“Mi casa es su casa.”

Hal ran a healthy gulp down. He said, “You all have an erroneous picture of the situation.”

“That’s a big negative,” Tater said, “the girl hit all the bases, pried up every board.”

“I’m surprised at you, Ixonia,” Hal said, addressing her by name for the first time. The girl shifted from foot to foot. Hal said, “If you’re so smart you would have seen that Clyde loves his mohawk, that his mohawk is the most precious thing he knows. Clyde lives for his mohawk and the respectability it gives him.”

“Optical illusion,” Ixonia said, and pursed her lips while looking over at Hal’s tomato garden.

“When she gets an idea,” Potato said. It was quite clear that the boy didn’t want to be here.

“He’s worn that thing for nigh four years,” Hal said.

“Ain’t right.” Ixonia crossed her arms, still looking out across Hal’s field.

“There’s lots of things ain’t right in this world,” Hal said in his softest most fatherly voice.

Ixonia looked at Potato. “Tater?” she said.

“What?”

“Let’s get this show on the road.”

Potato looked at Hal. “How many screws are there?” he asked. “Do you have a screw gun? All I got is a regular Phillips.”

“I don’t have a screw gun,” Hal said, and added, “Wouldn’t you all care for some supper first?”

“He’s trying to butter us up,” Ixonia said. “He wants it to get dark out so we can’t see.”

“I reckon,” Tater agreed.

* * *

Potato retrieved the Phillips from his truck. He and Ixonia then sidled the house, Hal following after. He’d tried to get them to follow him through the house, but they called him on his trick, him trying to tempt them with a stop-through supper. When they arrived at Clyde’s pen, they stood in the tall grass, looking at him. Clyde had made it through the oblong pool on up to the other side without losing their pennies. “See,” Hal said, “He is protecting our wishes. Clyde knows how important they are. Most normally after people leave he shakes them off. Clyde knows that your daddy’s life is precious.”

“He’s got a point there, sweetheart,” Potato said.

“Each bristle on his head,” Hal reasoned with the girl, “is a conductor of wish waves. You deprive him of his bristles he’ll be good as useless. His gatorepathy won’t work nomore.”

“Go in there and get it, Tater,” she said.

“Girl, what you take me for?”

“Gimme another swig off that,” Hal said.

Potato handed Hal the bottle, and Hal, just to hell with politeness, drank it down. He tossed the empty bottle into the grass.

“Gimme that Phillips,” the child said.

Tater gave it over. The girl clenched it between her teeth and climbed up onto the banister where she squatted the way Chinese people do—she was more like a gargoyle, Hal thought, tell the truth, one with evil intentions.

“I wouldn’t do that I was you,” Hal said.

The child dropped down into Clyde’s pen. She pulled the screwdriver out of her mouth to say, “Long’s you get the nose shut closed ain’t nothing he can do, ain’t that right, Tater?”

“You a crazy ass bitch whore motherfucker, you know that, don’t you, Ixy?” Potato said.

“You best come down here and help me. I can’t do this by myself.”

“Goddamnit,” Potato said, and straddled the banister and hopped down into the pen. Hal let himself in through the swinging door, figuring he’d have to do something here to try and stop them. It wasn’t right.

Ixy, the Phillips again clenched between her upper and lower rows of rotted teeth, made tentative steps the gator’s way, lowering down so as that her fingertips were part of her huntress’s approach. Without a thought as to the nastiness of Clyde’s pool, she slipped down into it so that only her head could be seen above the dark water. Clyde lifted his chin, turned it a little bit her direction. As Ixionia climbed dripping onto the opposite bank, her feet seeking purchase on the slippery algified concrete, Clyde opened his mouth, his teeth catching the last light of day. Such teeth would have scared off any normal human being, but Ixonia jumped onto the Indian gator’s back and clamped shut his mouth.

Hal’s gut reaction was to cry out, “Don’t hurt her, Clyde!” for Clyde could have rolled over, twisting and flopping, taking the girl down into the pool with him where he would then bite into her leg, or maybe bite into her stomach, ripping out her intestines—the gall of her! Instead Clyde flopped upwards, dragging the girl into the mostly-dry mud pit with him. She held on tight to the gator’s snout, and maintained her position on the gator’s back, legs kinked upwards like a frog’s, intelligent feet clutching Clyde’s belly scales, toes spread out like Japanese fans. Clyde’s front legs had never fully recovered from the Volvo incident. Roll over, damn you, Hal thought, but Clyde was too proud. Clyde didn’t want to jeopardize his beauty, the regality lent him by his magnificent mohawk.

“Help!” Ixonia cried as the magic Injun gator thrashed his head.

Tater arrived, yanked the Phillips from between Ixonia’s teeth, pressed Clyde’s head into the mud, at which point the child’s fingers were crushed and she had to let go. She slid down over the gator’s back and clung to his tail as Hal, standing above the oblong pool, watched on. Once again he had turned into Mr. Petrified, aka Mr. Do Nothing In The Face Of An Obvious Wrong. As Potato parted Clyde’s bristles and made contact with Clyde’s screws, Hal was taken back to the morning Marlene left him. He saw the somber faces of his boys beyond the fogged-up rain bespattered windows of the Toyota. The image was superimposed over the in-progress ruin of what he loved most, yet still he did nothing, just watched as Tater unscrewed Clyde’s mohawk, the sonofabitch.

Done unscrewing, Potato jumped off the gator, hightailed it over the banister, the gator’s mohawk held high as a soldier back in the old days might’ve held high a Seminole scalp. In his excitement he’d forgotten all about Ixonia. He’d left her vulnerable to the gator’s jowls, and Hal saw it coming, that soon Clyde would bite her and he would have a mangled child to contend with. Still he did nothing. That’s when Tater realized his mistake. “Oh shit,” he said, and started to get back into the pen, but such heroics would not be necessary. Clyde no longer struggled. Clyde’s energy had been yanked out of him so that when Ixonia released her grip and hopped away, falling back down into the slimy pool, Clyde didn’t even turn his face back to acknowledge the force that had divested him of his reason to live.

As Ixonia emerged unscathed from the other side of the pool, dripping and covered in mud, Hal wished Clyde had left a scar on her, at least. It was an awful thing to wish for a child, but as she hopped onto the banister she looked so haughty as seen from behind, her legs spread out like the wings of a vulture as it snapped at some dead thing crumpled on a hot highway. The wet child was a monster, a verminous parasitical creature. Vampires? Werewolves? No, this was a new catastrophe, something worse, an unstoppable force that gained more power the more you tried to stop it—like the Borg in Star Trek. As Hal stood there dumbly, Clyde turned his head back, his mouth ajar, no mohawk on his head whatsoever to speak of. He looked so naked and sad. “You disconnected his brain,” Hal said.

Potato, up behind the banister, scratched his neck, and Ixy dropped onto the ground and decided that it was within her domain to say something. She said, “I am pleased to announce that I have beridden myself of the conflict.”

“You done fucked up, Girl,” Potato said. He threw Clyde’s mohawk into the grass. Ixy picked it up.

Hal let himself through the door of the pen, and looked back at Clyde. He was lax now in the mostly-dry mud, and appeared to be trying to lift his head.

“He’s all fucked up,” Potato said.

“Those screws had been screwed down into his brain,” Hal said. “I told you that, don’t you remember when I was telling you about his gatorepathy? That was the source of his magic and what gave him the power to grant wishes.”

“He’s all right though, don’t you think?” Ixy said.

“Does he look all right to you?” Tater said.

Ixy’s face began to crumple, as if she would soon begin crying.

Such were the state of affairs in Crooked Bend.

* * *

Hal’s new friends followed him into the house, where Ixonia, whose stomach had been punctured by a few of Clyde’s dorsal spikes and was bleeding slightly, set the yellow mohawk on the kitchen table. She looked at it then grabbed it and set it against the floor, leaning it upright against the wall by the back door, as if what? It might one day be used again as a broom?

Hal pulled out his white lightning reserve, poured a glass for Tater and passed it over, repaying the courtesy. In Hal’s sadness he drank along as he cooked dinner for his guests. After all the brass they’d been through, Tater and Ixonia fell down hard after dinner, Ixonia on the couch and Tater on the floor. Hal watched them in their sudden sleep and felt sorry for them. He did not think of Clyde.

In the morning Tater was gone, but Ixonia on the couch blanketlessly slept on her stomach, one leg hanging down onto the floor.

Hal pulled aside the window curtain to see the truck gone. Back in the kitchen he found a note: “Igzee daddy ded. PS: I look into yer boys.”

Hal put on coffee, went through the back door, took a look at Clyde, then returned to the kitchen. Clyde’s mohawk still lay on the floor where the child put it. Hal lit the gas burner and cracked some eggs into the pan. He cut up mushrooms and onions and was sautéing them when Igzee stepped into the room rubbing her eyes. Her stomach resembled the six-marking of a die.  She asked where Tater was. She looked very dirty, like she needed a bath, but hell if she would get one, the nasty little bitch. Hal said, “I hate to tell you this.”

“I screwed up,” Ixonia said.

“Your dad has died as a result of how selfish you were yesterday,” Hal said. “You hadn’t killed Clyde, things might have turned out different.”

“He’s dead?” Ixy said.

“What you did last night was cruel and stupid. You destroyed what I loved and your daddy died because of it. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now, but it looks like Potato is also sick of you.  It doesn’t look to me like he’ll be coming back.”

Once again the child started crying.

“Why don’t you stop that you stupid little crybaby,” Hal said, and he said, “From now on we doing things my way, you got a problem with that?”

“No sir, I don’t guess so,” she said sniffling and trying to dry her eyes.

“You want to help now instead of destroy things?” Hal asked her, and was just appalled by the sarcasm and anger in his voice.

“Yes sir,” Ixonia said.

“I want you to weed my garden,” Hal said, half-jokingly, but his voice was filled with anger.

The girl hopped to it. Hal realized that nothing she could do could surprise him, not after he’d seen her on the back of his gator. Though Hal hated what she’d done, he couldn’t help but to respect her uncouth wherewithal. Had he been more like her Marlene never would have gone, that was certain. He watched her from his front stoop, then went inside and cut the cord off one of his old lamps that hadn’t worked in years. He ran the cord through a hole in Clyde’s mohawk, then tied it off so that it was like a huge necklace. He then stepped into the yard with it and a cup of lemonade for Ixonia. Hal draped the necklace over her shoulders and told her that she was his daughter now and that he would spank her if she took off the necklace without his permission. She was to use it to sweep the floors and stuff, without removing it so that when she swept she’d have to get down on her hands and knees, those were the rules, and a small price to pay, ask Hal, for what she had done to the Magic Injun Gator Chief. Then Hal helped her weed. Once done weeding they went in and cooled off in the kitchen, discussing what to do about Clyde.

Well, if they ate Clyde’s tail, Hal postulated, who knew but that they might receive the consolidated wisdoms of the Seminole people? Who knew but that then they would be blessed with the powers of gatorepathy, and could speak to each other without even opening their mouths? That would leave them many cuts above the rest of the world. There was logic in it. Besides that, if they cut Clyde’s tail off and made steaks of it, that would help make it seem as if Clyde’s death wasn’t completely in vain, and the guilt factor might lessen. Something useful would be made of him, anyway. What bothered Hal was that Clyde, without his tail, would need a shorter grave. Hal knew that each time he dug the shovel in he would feel too awful for words.

But already Hal was beginning to feel pleased with his helpmeet. As they’d come back to the house she had taken a moment to sweep the steps, all that dust flying up in her face.  Eventually he would have to hose her down, or something. Hal didn’t want to treat her like an animal, but eventually he would forgive her. Once he was able to look at her without recalling Clyde, she could live like a normal person but until then she needed to suffer, at least a little bit. Hal owed Clyde that much.

In the meantime they would dismantle Clyde’s pen, wouldn’t they? They’d figure out what to do with those materials. They would also do something about Clyde’s billboard on Highway 98, the one that read: FLORIDA’S MAGIC INJUN GATOR, COME MAKE A WISH. All that would have to come down so that people didn’t show up at Hal’s place with a mind to visit the dead. As Hal spoke, Ixonia laughed here and there at his words, and this touched Hal. What fun they were having. If not for Marlene ditching him, Hal would never have met Ixonia. Later that morning they sawed off the gator’s tail and, after cutting it into sections, wrapping the sections in plastic sacks and stuffing them into Hal’s freezer, Hal said, “What say we dig this baby a hole,” and held out his hand. Ixonia put her hand in his, and the two of them crossed the yard to collect the shovel from the shed.

 

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