The Badger Is Generally a Solitary Creature

They called him Badger, but the name didn’t suit him. He was six and a half feet tall, had a pale, flat face, spoke in hushed tones, and moved slowly, intentionally. I’d been his Driver five or six times in the past year, and on every trip, he’d spend the whole time flirting and cuddling with the same pretty, brown-haired woman in the back seat. I didn’t know if they were married, dating, or just friends, and as a Driver I was in no position to ask. That was part of our code. No questions.

On this particular night, Badger had me waiting on the far end of a strip mall parking lot. A light drizzle tapped along the windshield and the flickering of an incandescent light bulb atop a lamppost cast shadows of trash cans and shrubs that seemed to move, ever so slowly, tricking me into thinking they were alive. I cupped my hands around my mouth and breathed out, savouring the momentary heat against my chapped and freezing hands. I checked my watch. Badger was late. It happened. That’s fine. Badger’s job was hard, and I couldn’t blame him if he was running late. But I was getting hungry—it’d been five and a half hours since I had dinner and this rainy night was getting to me. Inside my center console I found an old granola bar. A quick tap of my fingernail against it betrayed its stale hardness. I threw it into the plastic grocery bag.

A figure approached. Tall, like Badger, but solitary. My hand instinctively went to the glove box. I’d my index finger ready to pull it open and grab the pistol in two swift motions, something I practiced many times but never used in reality. But my preparedness was for naught—as the figure approached, I noticed his Scandinavian features and straight-backed army-man gait. It was Badger. He wore a black hoodie and held a duffle bag with his free hand. He went to the back of my car and tapped the trunk twice. I opened it, and he deposited the duffle bag and slammed the trunk shut with just enough force to get it closed. He didn’t want to shake the whole car. He got in the front seat, which surprised me.

“Oh,” I said, my voice trailing. I’d anticipated that he and that woman would be getting into the back, so I pulled the passenger seat closer to the front of the car to let Badger stretch his legs.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, adjusting the seat so he wasn’t so cooped up. His hoodie was soaked. It wouldn’t be long before it started smelling of mildew. From his pocket, he produced a yellow Post-it note with an address that was a twenty-minute drive away. Easy enough. I’d driven people further. Badger laid his head against the window and closed his eyes.

“I can turn the heater up.” I made sure not to phrase it as a question.

“Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see it, then started out of the parking lot. At one in the morning, the traffic was thin. The rain began to dissipate but not disappear. A generic pop song played quietly from my speakers, the lyrics indecipherable over the rumble of the road and the squeaking of my wipers. The silence gnawed at my ears. With Badger in the car, I’d expected to hear the cute giggling of the brown-haired woman, the faint whispers of Badger’s soft voice in her ear. I’d expected to be annoyed at their public display of affection. I’d expected to turn the radio louder as their lips smacked together. Why did I miss that?

“Turn in here,” Badger said, his head finally upright. He pointed at the glow of McDonald’s Golden Arches. “I want a burger.”

“Okay.” I turned into the parking lot and found a spot right by the entrance.

There were no customers inside. Just a couple of employees wiping tables and standing behind the counters.

“Do you want anything?” he asked.

My stomach grumbled. “A Big Mac and a black coffee.”

“Want to eat inside?”

“Can’t,” I said.

“Ah,” he replied, nodding. “Rules, rules, rules. You Drivers and your rules. What happens if you take one step out of the car?” A coy smile graced his face. Only now, however, under the bright white lights emanating from the restaurant’s windows did I notice how strained the smile was. Or how deep his eyebags were. He’d been short on sleep.

“Nothing, probably. Unless you told on me.”

“Just pulling your leg, I guess.” He tapped on the glove box. “Do you mind?”

I shook my head.

From his back pocket, he removed his weapon—a snub-nosed revolver—and placed it in the glove box alongside my pistol. He excused himself, left the car, and went into the restaurant. I watched him order, slip the cashier a twenty and a ten, then put the change in the plastic box of donations for the Ronald McDonald House. Then, he waited. His back straight, head tilted up, eyes trained at the menu. Badger stayed still. He had no phone to fidget with, no person to talk to. An air of loneliness surrounded him. Until he got called up to the counter to pick up his bag.

He emerged from the McDonald’s and knocked on the passenger side window. I nodded, and he opened the door, placing the bag and tray of drinks on the seat.

“If you don’t mind, I feel like eating this out here.” Badger unwrapped yellow paper, revealing a flat cheeseburger with artificially beautiful buns. He leaned against the side of the car.

The rain had disappeared. Puddles pooled on the sidewalk. Petrichor lingered in the air.

“Care to join me? It’s nice out.”

“Can’t,” I said, reaching over and taking my coffee out of the tray. “Rules and all.”

“Can’t blame you,” Badger said. “None of my business.” He took a couple bites out of the burger then retrieved his pop. He sucked on the straw and stared at the night sky, its clouds parting, revealing the bright glow of a gibbous moon. “You look a fair bit younger than me,” he said.

I didn’t reply.

“When I was a kid,” he continued, “my mother would take me to McDonald’s after church, and I always got this. A cheeseburger. No fries. Sometimes, I’d get two, but most of the time one burger would suffice. They used to be this big.” With his thumb and index finger, he suggested that burgers back then were almost twice the size of the ones now.

“Inflation,” I replied.

He grunted and said, “Yeah. But it was more than that, I suppose. A kind of—how do I say it? Maybe I’m getting nostalgic about burgers. Even if the burgers were twice this size and tasted like they did decades ago, I don’t think it’d be the same.” Badger finished his food and threw the wrapper away in a nearby trashcan. He downed his drink in one, hearty sip, turned his head to the side, and burped quietly, though I could still hear it.

Back in the car, he closed the door and put his seatbelt on. “Say,” he whispered. “You can bring me wherever I ask, right?”

I nodded. “No questions asked.”

“Right, right. If I told you which way to go, that’d be fine, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Sweet,” he replied. “Then forget the original destination. I’ll let you know where to go.”

The change in plans unnerved me for just a moment. Was my life in danger? Where was Badger going to make me drive? The look on his face, however, didn’t indicate any malicious intent. In fact, he seemed as solemn as he did earlier, his face straight ahead, index finger massaging his temple. A sigh here and there.

As we left the parking lot, Badger changed the radio with my permission. His thin, spindly fingers rotated the knob, and snippets of rock, rap, and talk shows graced my ears before he settled on a station. The media console read In a Sentimental Mood. The Duke Ellington and John Coltrane track. I never much listened to jazz, but my parents did. When I was a kid, they had a CD of the album, and on occasion they’d dance in the living room to the dulcet and lyrical saxophone. The fading sunlight on their faces. My head buried in a book, unsure as to what my parents had to dance about.

Once Badger and I left the parking lot, he directed me to his destination. “Left here. Right here. Go straight.” His voice never wavered, and for the first time this night, his intention seemed steady. I wound through residential roads, an industrial park, and a school zone that seemed to go on forever. The song changed a few times, more cool jazz that turned my sedan into a cocktail bar.

Finally, just past a block of apartment buildings, Badger asked me to turn the corner and park in the nearest open spot. In the darkness, I couldn’t see into the distance. But as my eyes adjusted, and I squinted, I noticed a cop car parked in front of a brick building. Two cop cars.

“I loved her,” Badger said. “The woman I’d do the jobs with. I loved her more than anything in the world.”

“I remember her,” I said. “Whatever you think you’re doing—you don’t need to do it.”

Badger smiled, revealing a deep dimple in his left cheek. “This is out of your control now. Make a three-point turn, and don’t go past the station.”

“You don’t need to do what you’re doing.”

Badger didn’t reply. He got out of the car, made his way to the trunk, and tapped it a couple times. I popped it open. He took the duffle bag out and made his way back to the passenger seat. “I’ve got something for you.”

From inside the bag, Badger took out a felt watch case, unadorned with branding or identification. He instructed me not to open it until I got home. “Thank you for tonight,” he said, cupping my hand around the case.

“Are you sure about this?” The moment my words left my mouth; I cursed under my breath. A question.

Badger put his index finger to his lips. “I won’t tell.” With some hesitation, he opened the glove box and tucked his revolver into his hoodie, possibly into a holster I could not make out. Badger closed the door gently. He walked slowly to the police station.

With a turn of the key, my engine roared back to life, headlamps flashing bright before I manually turned them off. My left hand gripped the steering wheel. I was crying, a deep pit in my stomach. I swung the door open and let my feet touch the pavement. After all, my Fare was done. I’d brought Badger where he requested. But I didn’t stop him from leaving. Why couldn’t I stop him?

In the silence of this nighttime, I heard no birds. No life. No commotion of the day. No cars in the distance. Maybe, some leaves rustled. The hum of the electrical box across the street.

Then shouting. And more shouting. Some lights in the apartment building turned on, silhouettes of sleep-deprived humans roused out of bed by the incident across the street.

Badger was gone. I’d left the scene before the shouting stopped, because I did not want to hear a gunshot ring through the humid air.

Back at my place, I sat under a dim light in the kitchen. The felt case on the counter. It had a bit of weight to it. I tucked my fingernail under the lid and flipped it open, revealing a black Patek Philippe watch in pristine condition, free of fingerprints.