Another rowdy night at Big Bob’s Booze and Burgers packed the joint with white nationalist malcontents and other assorted hayseed supremacist troublemakers who defied the governor’s orders to practice safe distancing and damn near everything else that smacked of responsible behavior.

Agitated, Bob asked Buck…er…Sparky…er…Buck a question.

When’s the General Lee get here?

Spaced out, Sparky…er…Buck…ignored the query and started across the road.

Bwakbwakbwak, he said.

Taking cocksure steps and clucking as he went, the redneck formerly known as Sparky looked very much like a man engaged in an exaggerated chicken dance. Herky-jerky muscle movements seemed to turn his shoulder blades into wings.

C’mon, Buck, I didn’t mean to hypnotize you into a chicken, Big Bob said.

Ashamed that his conversion therapy on good ol’ gay Buck failed to turn him into a heterosexual good ol’ boy, Big Bob tried to ignore the severe consequences of good intentions run amok. The homemade electric chair he designed to shock Buck out of his homosexuality short-circuited halfway through Big Bob’s treatment that included using self-taught hypnotism designed to alter Buck’s body and mind into manifesting more societally acceptable sexuality.

Smoke rose from Buck’s head, both eyes crossed and his private part stiffened like a refurbished flag pole at a NASCAR camp ground. But when Buck stood to test the therapy’s effect, the misguided hypnosis had dug too deeply into his subconscious, turning him for all intents and purposes not into a straight man, but into a fowl facsimile of himself.

Buck’s bird and other body parts had come home to roost.

Big Bob flew into a panic.

Where you going? Why are you crossing the road?

Bwakbwakbwak, Buck said.

Chasing his patient, Big Bob swung his pocket watch in front of Buck’s nose, trying to undo the terrible psychological damage he had done to his brother in arms against the snowflake world.

You are getting sleepy, Big Bob said.

Running back and forth across the road like a chicken with his head cut off, Buck ignored the command. Not even the monster engine roar from the car racing toward him deterred Buck from his path. As soon as the bar crowd heard the sound of the replica “General Lee” from the early 80s TV show “The Dukes of Hazzard,” hollering with all the joy of yokel moonshiners in a West Virginia country holler, the wild white folks stampeded into the street, trampling Buck in their path.

Big Bob had paid three landfill co-workers and backwoods siblings $25 apiece and the promise of all the beer and steak they could shove down their craws to show up in country cousin character with their car. By the time the actors piled out of the vehicle to be swarmed by a crazed assortment of local clodhoppers who emulated Luke, Bo and Daisy Duke, nobody noticed Buck squashed beneath the tires, hit so hard by the vehicle that landed and bounced after a trademark daredevil jump he got knocked out of his shoes, exposing long toenails at the ends of skinny legs that looked very much like chicken feet complete with unclipped claws.

Showing lots of leg in her cut-off blue denim shorts, Daisy preened and posed for countless videos and selfies. Luke and Bo slapped hands and shared high-fives all around as Big Bob ran to the make-shift stage to announce the beginning of the Boss Hogg look-alike contest. As hundreds of hellacious hillbillies chanted the rebel car’s name and raised beer bottles to the heavens as a toast to the South rising again, Darryl came out of nowhere. Dressed in an ankle-length dashiki adorned with the red, black and green colors of the black liberation flag, Darryl walked slowly toward the stage.

Parting white rubes the way Moses parted the Red Sea and taking the stage with all the confidence of the OJs singing “Love Train,” Darryl raised his leather black-gloved fist into the air the way John Carlos and Tommie Smith did on the winner’s platform during the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Sunshine glistened off Darryl’s fully combed-out Afro, complete with a black plastic styling pick stuck into his thick hair jungle.

Big Bob left Buck scratching in the dust and raced to the stage where his language took on a country time lemonade flavor.

Dadgummit, just what in the Sam Hill do you think you’re doing, boy?

Thank you, my brother, said Darryl.

Black gratitude took Big Bob by surprise.

Thank me for what?

For calling me “boy.”

Curses and racial slurs spewed from the crowd as the crackers were getting restless. Darryl stretched out his arms like he was looking for a hug. You could almost feel the gentle aura that seemed to follow him like a halo as he spoke.

I am the Hate-Eater, he said, here to devour your prejudice.

A thick heavyweight power-lifter with biceps the size of cannon balls growled. Capt. Jones reached for his Taser. The female mud wrestling state troopers menaced men as they moved toward the stage. A bail bondsman unleashed his Dobermans. A small group of skinheads pulled baseball bats and chains from the trunk of their stolen car.

Big Bob took Darryl by the hair and pulled him close.

You’re gonna eat my knuckles, boy.

Knock yourself out, Darryl said.

Looking Big Bob in the eye, he spoke with the conviction of a visionary on a holy mission.

You’re not chicken, are you?