Badger Games

by Jon A. Jackson

  A large, brutal-looking man in a paramilitary uniform walked up to Daliljaj and kicked the gate free of his hands.

  “That your fucking tractor out on the road, balija?” the fellow demanded loudly.

  The old man gaped. Nobody, not even a Serbian cop, talked to the old man like that. The term balija was derisive and contemptuous, and hadn’t been heard in these parts until quite recently. Certainly not up in this mountain village, where the Daliljajs had been farming for generations.

  The cop didn’t even have a real uniform, just some foolish camo outfit. Was he even an officer? What was his rank? Something about the oaf’s grinning face made the farmer hesitate.

  “What is the problem?” he said, careful not to address the policeman with disrespect but also not to honor him with a title like sergeant or lieutenant, which might not properly apply.

  “The problem is that it’s parked in the road,” the cop said. He looked about the compound in a way that suggested he was taking inventory. He raised an eyebrow at the figure of Daliljaj’s daughter, Fedima. Like a good Muslim woman, she immediately vanished into Franko’s house, leaving behind the coffeepot sitting on the bench next to Franko. A moment later she exited from the other door and presumably went to the farmhouse, via a route shielded from the eyes of the men in the yard.

  “Who are you?” the cop said to Franko, who stood up and approached the gate.

  Franko was cautious. He’d heard about this fellow from Captain Dedorica, the police chief in Tsamet. He was called Bazok, and he was the informal leader of a handful of such men, sent down from Belgrade to “assist” the local police chief. Captain Dedorica’s information had been sketchy. Franko had meant to press Dedorica about it, but he’d forgotten.

  “I live here,” he said.

  Bazok nodded. “Oh yeah,” he said. “You the one they call Franko? I want to talk to you.” He turned to Daliljaj. “Move the tractor. You can’t leave it on the road.”

  “Nobody ever complained before,” Daliljaj said. “There is no traffic—it’s not in the way.”

  “Move the fucking tractor, balija,” Bazok snarled, the smile icy now. When Daliljaj went off, he turned to Franko and said, “Where’s your place?”

  Franko shrugged and led him back through the gate and across the barnyard. He stopped and pointed to the old stone cottage with a new metal roof. Suddenly seeing it through a stranger’s eyes, Franko thought it didn’t look like much—a miserable hovel. The stone had been laid in a style that he had known at home as “pudding stone”; that is, a crude frame of wood was erected, and stones were simply dropped into a thick pudding of cheap, sandy mortar. These old walls had a tendency to fall down after fifty or sixty years, but someone had kept this one repaired. Of course, if it had been a bull pen that would account for the extra-thick walls.

  Bazok gestured for Franko to go ahead and took a step toward the house himself, but stopped when Franko did not move.

  “We can talk here,” Franko said. He wasn’t sure how receptive he should be to this fellow. Was he actually a cop, or some kind of unwarranted deputy? In Montana a man didn’t just walk onto another man’s land in the way that Bazok had, unless he was armed and visibly authorized with a badge and a uniform, to say nothing of an official, legal paper. This guy looked to be about twenty-two or twenty-three, big and beefy but with a few complexion problems still and not too handy with a razor. Even so, one was not in Montana. It wouldn’t hurt to play along, tentatively.

  Bazok looked at him, sizing him up. Franko was not a big man, not within six inches of his own height or fifty pounds of his weight, but a sturdily built man in his late thirties. Like most of the men in these villages, he had black hair, dark eyes, a thick black mustache. Bazok was not impressed.

  “Come,” Bazok said. “I have to discuss private things.”

  Franko realized then that Bazok was not a Serb. He spoke the language all right, but there was something unnatural about his usage, as if he was not quite comfortable with it. It occurred to him that the man was an American. In English, he said, “What’s the big deal?”

  Bazok broke into a genuine grin. “All right,” he said, in good American. He grabbed Franko’s right hand with his own and clapped him on the shoulder. “They didn’t tell me you were from the States. Where you from, dude?”

  Franko managed a faint smile but wrenched his hand free and stepped back from Bazok’s near embrace. Without glancing around he gauged whether there were any Kosovars anywhere near. He didn’t think so; none of Daliljaj’s sons or cousins would be in the compound at this time, and he was pretty sure that Fedima had gone to the house. Still, it wouldn’t do to appear too chummy with this clown.

  “I’m from out West,” Franko said. “Butte.”

  “No shit,” Bazok said. “I been there. I rode a freight through Butte once. Burlington Northern, eh? Friendly people in Butte, they don’t hassle you. So what’re ya doin’ here, hangin’ out with these hankyheads? You don’t look like no Taliban—you ain’t a fuckin’ terrorist, are you?” He laughed and prodded Franko’s stomach playfully.

  Franko frowned. “You must have heard about me, from Captain Dedorica,” he said.

  “Oh, sure,” Bazok nodded. “You’re the friendly neighborhood dope peddler. That’s why I stopped by.”

  Franko suppressed a sigh of depression. So that was it. This oaf wanted to be cut in on Dedorica’s “business tax.” He considered it. He supposed he had no choice. If Dedorica had seen fit to inform this guy, then it probably meant amending the agreement. The question was how much, and whether this meant that Dedorica now got correspondingly less for not keeping his mouth shut. But…. He had a second thought: who was this guy, really? Why an American? Something was amiss.

  He nodded at the door, a slight motion. “If you insist,” he said in Serb. As he’d hoped, the cop caught on. He pushed Franko forward, his huge hand on his back. Even if no one seemed to be around, there were always eyes. Franko was more comfortable with an appearance of being coerced. He could not afford any suspicion from the Kosovars.

  Like any such house of its type and vintage, Franko’s croft was not well lit. There were few windows, and the electrical wiring was a single exposed conduit. It ran an old battered refrigerator, and there was an outlet from which extension cords served a radio, a reading light by the so-called easy chair, and another reading lamp clamped to the bed frame. A single light bulb dangled from the center of the ceiling.

  The interior was essentially one room, perhaps four paces wide and twice as many long. The kitchen area took up one end, with a sink and a counter for preparing food. A narrow window looked out onto the path that led around the granary toward the main house. There was no running water, no drain system, and certainly no toilet. A bucket stood on the rough wooden floor near the sink. Another bucket under the sink caught the waste. Around an old, scarred wooden table covered with an oilcloth stood some mismatched wooden chairs.

  At the other end of the room stood the metal frame bed with a single mattress, some rumpled blankets. In between was a ratty old overstuffed chair with a table next to it, on which were stacked a few books—a Serbian dictionary, a mystery novel with a black cover and a French title. A reading lamp stood nearby. It had a battered paper shade. Clothes were scattered on the floor, more hung from a rod affixed in a corner.

  “Pretty cozy,” Bazok said, with no apparent sarcasm, peering about with interest. Suddenly, he thrust out his hand. “Hey, the name is Boz.” He pronounced it “Bozh.” “Back in the States, they call me ‘Badger.’ But over here, it’s Bozi Bazok.”

  “Badger?” Franko said. “Is that what that animal is?” He gestured toward the ferocious, snarling beast on the patch that decorated Bazok’s baseball cap.

  “Yah,” Bazok said, proudly. “But I got the name from this.” He lifted his cap to reveal thick black hair that was cut in a stiff brush. In the center of the brush was a tuft of white hair. “I had that since I was a kid,” he said, “so in Geor
gia, they called me Badger. Mark of the beast, my old lady used to say. It fits.” He grinned, displaying a lot of white teeth.

  He pointed at the loft, to which a ladder led. “What’s up there?”

  “Storage,” Franko said. He leaned against the counter. “Go ahead, look.”

  Bazok climbed the ladder until his head was above the level of the loft floor. There were boxes, a suitcase, an old television set. “What’s in the boxes?” he called over his shoulder.

  “Junk—it was here before.”

  Bazok climbed down. “How long you been holed up here?”

  “Six months, maybe more.”

  “You don’t watch the tube?”

  “They don’t carry the ballgames,” Franko said, sourly. “I’m not interested in propaganda.” Lately, the Serbian television stations had been spewing anti-Muslim “news” broadcasts and special programs extolling the regime.

  “Nice radio,” Bazok said, nodding at the fancy Telefunken broadband radio sitting on the kitchen table. Franko didn’t respond. “So, where do you keep the shit?”

  “What shit would that be?”

  “The dope.”

  “I don’t have any dope,” Franko said. He was sure that Dedorica would not have suggested to the young cop that narcotics were readily available here. But maybe the cop was just asking a cop question. “When were you in Butte?”

  “A couple years ago.” Bazok aped a southern accent: “Just kickin’ around the country. Ah’m from Atlanta, originally.”

  “Really? You speak pretty good Serb,” Franko observed.

  “Actually, I was born in Yugoslavia,” Bazok said. “I think. I got adopted by an American lady. Grew up in Atlanta. But I got tired of it and hit the road when I got old enough. You grow up in Montana? That’s nice country. I liked it. It’s a little like this, the mountains and all.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly say that,” Franko said. “This is more like West Virginia, Appalachia, don’t you think?”

  Bazok nodded. “Yeah, I can see it. Well, listen, we gotta talk.”

  “What about? I’m happy to meet a fellow Yank, even one from Atlanta, but I’ve got to be cool. These folks don’t exactly dig Serb cops, you know.”

  “Hey, I’m cool, dude. I’m not gonna blow your cover, Frankie. The deal is, I know the bros, in Belgrade. Ziv and them. They said to look you up.”

  “Zivkovic?” Franko was suprised. “How do you know these people?” He thought it was interesting that they hadn’t told Bazok that he was an American. It suggested that they hadn’t been totally open with Bazok, for whatever reason, but he didn’t bring that up.

  “I met ’em in the States,” Bazok said. “That’s how I got to this fuckin’ shithole country. I’m part of their posse. Then I got into this vigilante gig.” He gestured at his outfit. “It was Ziv’s idea. It’s a good scam.” He laughed. “I’m kind of diggin’ it. But it’s a long story.”

  “I’d like to hear all about it,” Franko said. He was sincere. “But not here, not right now. Maybe I could meet you in town, in Tsamet. At a beer garden, maybe. Or, I know, I could come by the station. We could talk.”

  “Yeah, that’s okay,” Bazok said. “But the news is there’s some heavy shit going down. You wanta get your show ready for the road. In a couple of days you don’t wanta be here.”

  Franko was stunned. “What kind of operation? When?”

  “I’m not sure, but it’ll be heavy, is the word,” Bazok said. “The army will be along pretty quick, in a day or two, maybe sooner. I got the feeling, though, that they’ll have me and some other outfits like mine do the dirty, at first anyway. Ziv found out about it, he called me.” He tapped his breast pocket, evidently where he kept his cell phone. “You got one of these? What’s your number?” Franko gave it to him. “All right, I’ll give you a buzz.”

  “I’ve got to know how soon,” Franko said. He looked out the kitchen window toward the barn, the lane, the orchard. No one seemed to be about, but he felt uneasy in the house with the thug. The big question was how much Zivkovic had told this guy. “I’ve got shipments, things scheduled. I can’t just pick up and run.”

  “It’s gonna get jungly,” Bazok said. He sounded excited. He came over to where Franko was and stood too close; his breath was foul. “They’ll be putting up roadblocks pretty soon. Your shipments won’t be coming in or going out. You gotta think like you might have to just walk, leave everything. I’ll try to get up here first, make sure there’s nothin’ too suspicious layin’ around. Prob’ly have to torch the house. See what I mean?”

  This was serious. Franko thought of Fedima. He’d have to get her out. That wouldn’t be easy. He had to think. Maybe he could get Daliljaj to go too. That would probably be best. Get up into the hills, to the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army), maybe. Daliljaj would have contacts; they could get over into Montenegro, maybe, or down to the coast. Maybe get out through Albania.

  “I can’t just walk away,” Franko said. “There are people due in here, valuable goods to consider.”

  “I gotcha,” Bazok said. “But like I say, I doubt that your people will be gettin’ through. When the shit starts, it’ll come down like a storm outta the hills. You don’t want to be thinkin’ about your business. C’mon, let’s get outta here.”

  Outside, the cop took a deep breath of the mountain air. He looked around. “That your car?” He nodded at the beat-up Subaru Outback. “I thought you’d have something with some jump to it—you’re makin’ a ton here. A Cherokee, maybe even a fuckin’ Humvee.”

  “It runs,” Franko said. “That’s what passes for a good vehicle in these parts.”

  “Ah,” Bazok said, nodding, enlightened. “You don’t want to make too big a scene out here in the sticks. But you got to be thinkin’ about haulin’ your shit down to the barracks, tonight.”

  “Tonight!” Franko didn’t like the sound of that. Deliver close to a couple hundred thousand dollars’ worth of raw opiates to this doofus in his barracks? Not likely.

  “It’s happenin’,” Bazok said. His face was big and grinning, like a jack-o’-lantern. He was not an ugly guy, if he could think to keep that menacing grin off his face—the teeth mirrored the badger image on his patch.

  “What about my people?” Franko said.

  “What people? I told you…. oh, you mean these balijas? What the fuck do you care? Whoa, I get it. You’re shaggin’ the ginch. I seen her, not a bad little piece of ass. What’s her name, Fatima or something?”

  Furious, Franko stepped toward the grinning oaf, fists clinched. Suddenly the cop’s boot shot out and slammed Franko’s right leg on the side of his knee, causing it to buckle. The cop caught him by the hair, burying his powerful fingers in it, while his other hand wrenched Franko’s right arm around behind his back.

  “You fuckin’ dog,” Bazok growled loudly in Serb. “I ought to kick your fuckin’ ass and haul you down to the station.” He bore Franko to the ground, facedown, with his knee on his back. He knelt to rasp in his ear, “How can you fuck something like that? I’ll bet she’s as hairy as a coon.” He stood up but held Franko down, pinned with a heavy boot. “You get your ass down to the station this p.m., shithead. Don’t make me come back up here lookin’ for your sorry ass. And you,” he snarled at Daliljaj, who had come around the side of the barn, “did you move that fuckin’ tractor? All right.”

  He kicked Franko playfully in the butt, then strode off, taking a lazy swipe at Daliljaj, who ducked. He laughed and walked out to the road and got into his police jeep and drove off.

  Daliljaj rushed to help Franko up. “Are you all right?” he asked anxiously.

  “I’m okay,” Franko said, standing up and brushing himself off. “Filthy bastard. He didn’t hurt me.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Just throwing his weight around, I guess,” Franko said. “Listen, my friend, I must go down to Tsamet. It’ll be all right. Dedorica won’t allow anything serious. But I’m concerned about you, and your famil
y. This man’s behavior concerns me—something unpleasant must be happening.”

  “You don’t worry about us,” Daliljaj said. “You mustn’t say anything to Dedorica.” He looked fierce. “We can take care of ourselves. We have friends.” He looked toward the forested mountains about them. “These pigs, they will pay.”

  The old man was not really very old, just into late middle age. He was short but stocky, a powerful man. He knew that Franko was dealing contraband, but he wasn’t sure what it was. It didn’t pay to inquire too closely. He also suspected that Fedima was attracted to the man, but he didn’t believe that it had gone very far. He could not allow that, although he liked the American. Franko was not a Believer. It would not do. Still, the patriarch understood women: they had no control over their passions. A man had to govern them. The American was a good man, as foreigners go, but had no morals, of course; that was certain. It was up to Daliljaj to see that nothing foolish went on. A little flirtation, that was nothing.

  Sometimes, though, he had thought that maybe Fedima should marry this American, go to his country. Things were getting bad here. He and his people would survive; they would rise up, take Kosovo. He was a Believer, but he was a practical man, after all. If the American wanted the girl and took her with him when he went—and he was sure that Franko would go, he had always known that—then perhaps that would be all right, even though the man was not a Believer. At least he wasn’t a Serb—he might have the name of a Serb, but he was not a Serb. She would be safer with the American when things got really bad. A woman in Kosovo, a Muslim woman, was always in danger from the Chetniks. But the American could not have her here. That would not be right. It would make Daliljaj look bad, although the American was well liked.

  “I have a bad feeling,” Franko said. “This Serb, he is too bold. If he can behave like this, it means that something evil is coming.”

  “Oh yes, the evil is coming,” Daliljaj said. “But you need not fear for us, my friend. We will be all right. Besides, the bashi-bazouk is not a Serb. Couldn’t you tell? He’s a German, I think.” He was being polite, distinguishing the policeman from his tenant.