25

Oh, Mr. Gash put up a fight.

Not a great fight, but then again, he was minus a kneecap and most of his tongue. So pain was a factor. Plus he was stark naked, which seriously compromised his freewheeling style of personal combat. Nonetheless, he managed to get off a couple of right hooks that would have knocked most men to their knees.

The punches had no discernible effect upon the bum in the checkered skirt, who at the time was lugging Mr. Gash down the slope of a hill. The hill was not a natural formation, for Toad Island was as flat as a skillet. The hill had been created by earth-moving machines. It was a steep mound of scraped-up soil, scrub and tree stumps; the debris of a road-grading incursion through the pine woods. The bum had slung Mr. Gash over one shoulder, like a sack of lime, and charged down the soft-packed bank. He seemed to be in a hurry. Mr. Gash slugged at him frenetically, landing at least two monster blows – one to the ribs, one to the kidneys. Nothing; not even a grunt of acknowledgment. The bum kept to his mission. Mr. Gash flailed and spluttered incoherently. He knew something bad was coming. He just didn't know what.

At the bottom of the hill, the bum dumped him and turned to go back up.

Now what? thought Mr. Gash. He made one last ferocious swipe at the man but came away with only the pinned-together checkered skirt, which turned out to be a flag of the sort waved at the finish line of automobile races. Mr. Gash used it to sop the blood from the holes in his cheeks. The stump of his tongue stung like a mother. He lay in the mulch and pondered his options, which were limited. Because his mangled right leg was useless, escape by running, walking or crawling was impossible. He would have to wriggle, and wriggle swiftly, assuming the bum was not finished with him.

With a mournful effort, Mr. Gash rolled himself over. He reached out both arms, dug his fingers into the sodden grit and pulled himself forward until his chin touched his knuckles. Total linear progress: Two feet, max.

Mr. Gash thought: This sucks. He felt the tickle of an insect on his buttocks and flogged at it awkwardly. From the other side of the man-made hill came the chug-chuggingof an engine, too rackety to be a car. Steadily it got louder. Mr. Gash craned his neck, squinting into the gloom. Of course he knew what he was hearing. He'd driven one of the damn things himself, the night he took care of that troublemaker Brinkman. Now the rig loomed directly above him, on the crest of the slope. Mr. Gash recognized the blocky square-edged outline. He could smell the acrid exhaust. A tall figure emerged from the cab, then reached back inside – undoubtedly to release the brake.

"Fuugghh me," Mr. Gash groaned.

The bulldozer jolted clangorously downhill. Rabidly, Mr. Gash tried to drag himself out of its path, and he almost made it. Only half of him got pinned under the track; the lower half.

So his lungs still worked, which was encouraging. Another positive sign was the surprising lack of pain below his waist. Mr. Gash concluded that the bulldozer had not crushed his torso so much as embedded it in the spongy turf. His immediate concern were the diesel fumes being belched into his face. His eyes burned and his stomach roiled – obviously the dozer's exhaust pipes had been damaged in the descent. Eventually the machine would run out of fuel and its engine would cut off, but Mr. Gash wondered if he could stay conscious until then, inhaling from a noxious cloud. He felt simultaneously sleepy and convulsive.

A pair of dirt-caked hiking boots appeared before him. Then the bulldozer hiccuped once and went silent. As the smoke dissipated, Mr. Gash raised up on his forearms and drank in the fresh breeze. Crouched beside him was the bum, his glass eye gleaming like a polished ruby in the starlight.

"You're gonna die out here," he said to Mr. Gash.

"Ungh-ungh."

"Yeah, you are, Iggy. It's all over."

'Iggy'? Now the fucker's making fun of my hair! Mr. Gash boiled.

"You're dying even as we speak," the bum said. "Trust me. I know a thing or two about roadkill. You qualify."

"Ungh-ungh!"

"In case you haven't noticed, your ass is lying under a Cat D6. That's twenty tons of serious steel," said the bum. "I don't know about making peace with God, but it might be a good time to tell the young lady you're sorry for trying to hurt her. Want me to go get her?"

Mr. Gash said, "Fuugghh oooh, popff."

The bum stood up. "That's a mighty poor attitude," he said, "for a man who's bleeding out of both ears. Now, if you'll excuse me, Iggy, I've gotta go track down some fool dog."

"FUUGGHH OOOOH!"

Mr. Gash's head sagged. Soon he heard the crunch of the bum's heavy footsteps fading into the woods.

What an idiot, thought Mr. Gash. He should've shot me! I'll be out of here by dawn!

Hastily he began trying to dig himself out from beneath the track of the bulldozer. The task was arduous. Being pinned on his tummy, Mr. Gash was forced to reach behind himself and work his arms like turtle flippers. After twenty grueling minutes Mr. Gash quit in exhaustion. He fell asleep with a centipede skittling across his shoulder blade. He was too weary to slap it away.

Hours later a helicopter awakened him. It was daylight; a high rose-tinged sky. Mr. Gash couldn't see the chopper but he could hear the eggbeater percussion of the rotors as it landed nearby. He lifted his head and gave an unholy wail; pain had found him. Horrible, nerve-shearing, bone-snapping pain. He observed, despairingly, that all his frantic digging had accomplished little. A pitiable few handfuls of dirt had been scalloped around each leg, upon which the Caterpillar D6 remained steadfastly parked. Mr. Gash could not drag himself a single millimeter out from under it. After a third attempt, he gave up.

Instead of escape, he now focused on survival. The helicopter, of course. It would be lifting off soon – Mr. Gash could tell by the accelerating whine of the engines. Anxiously he scanned the ground within his reach, searching for something, anything, to draw the pilot's attention. His eyes fixed upon a silky-looking wad in the muck. It was the crazy bum's skirt – the checkered racing flag, now lavishly spotted with Mr. Gash's dried blood. He snatched it up and shook off the loose dirt.

With a head-splitting roar, a black-and-gray jet helicopter appeared over the spires of the pines. With both hands Mr. Gash raised the checkered flag. He began a wildly exaggerated wave, flopping his upper body back and forth like a rubber windshield wiper. It was a completely new experience for Mr. Gash: desperation. He swung the flag with the fervor of a drunken soccer hooligan, for he feared the pilot couldn't see him, grime-smeared and half-interred beneath a bulldozer.

He was right. The chopper circled the clearing once but didn't hover. It banked sharply to the north and hummed off.

The flag dropped from Mr. Gash's hands. He was in the purest mortal agony. From the waist down: dead. From the waist up: every cell a burning cinder. His head thundered. His arms were cement. His throat was broken glass on the scabby nub of his tongue. Sickening trickles ran down the fuzz of both jaw-lines, all the way to Mr. Gash's chin – warm blood from his ears.

That fucking troublemaker of a bum had been right. It was over.

Or maybe not.

Mr. Gash noticed a small object on the ground, something he couldn't have spotted in the dark. It lay a few precious feet out of reach, partially hidden by a palmetto frond.

It was black and rectangular and plastic-looking, like the remote control of a VCR, or the clip to a Glock.

Or a cellular telephone.

Mr. Gash used a broken branch to retrieve it. Woozily, he mashed at the power button with his forefinger. The phone emitted a perky bleep and lit up with a peachy glow. Mr. Gash stared at the numbers on the keypad. A desolate smirk came to his whitening lips.