A Girl Called Badger (Valley of the Sleeping Birds)

by Colegrove, Stephen

  “I’ve never seen you enjoy anything,” said Mike.

  Jack smirked. “Never said I was perfect. Just mean and ugly.”

  “I wonder if I’m doing the right thing sometimes. If what I’m doing really matters.”

  “If what matters is your kids, then yes.”

  Mike sighed. “Yeah … Greg wants me to go through the implant program.”

  “I told him to pound sand.”

  “Is that why you’re leaving? I thought it was the paperwork.”

  Jack spat on the sandstone. “His implant thing was the last straw.”

  “I just want my kids to look back with pride,” said Mike. “I want them to look back and think, my dad was part of that. He was part of something great.”

  “Kids don’t care about that,” said Jack.

  “But you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s just … I hate this bio-med stuff,” said Mike. “I didn’t get a phone for the longest time just like you, Jack. So I’m not feeling good about the program right now.”

  “You can’t transfer back to Benning. Your kids love it here and it won’t be that bad,” said Jack. “When the ship launches you’ll be in the history books.” He paused. “Come over and help me move tomorrow. I’ve got something to cheer you up.”

  They gathered the rope and gear and hiked down the back of the rocky sandstone hill.

  JACK WENT OVER TO Padre’s first thing to look at the house. The place stank of bleach, malt liquor, and the heavy, oily smell of unwashed men. Trash covered everything, including the cheap plastic furniture. Furniture that normal people kept outside. A huge TV had been taken apart and the guts were scattered along a wall.

  “Maybe these words don’t go together,” said Jack. “But this is one shithole of a meth lab.”

  Padre kicked an empty can of drain cleaner. “That piece of–”

  “You didn’t know he was a tweaker?”

  “I should call his mother right now,” said Padre.

  “Does she clean houses?”

  Padre grabbed a screwdriver from the floor, turned it over in his hands, and dropped it. “She wouldn’t care anyway, that’s the problem.”

  Jack helped Padre push a dumpster across the road and they filled it with most of the stuff from the house. Clothes and the few things that weren’t trash went into the shed at the back. Mike brought cleaning supplies with him and they mopped and scrubbed, rinsed, then scrubbed again. At dark they stopped and left all the windows open.

  “You sure know how to have fun on a Sunday,” said Mike. “So housework is what cheers people up?”

  Jack went to his bike and took out a bundle of yellow cloth from the side compartment. Mike unwrapped it and held a flat wooden box stained in dark walnut. Inside lay a silver revolver, a leather pouch, and a box of rounds.

  “This is amazing, Jack. Is this antique?”

  “It is, and it still works. My dad gave it to me when I joined up.”

  “Your father? You sure you want to give this away?”

  “Only something special makes a special gift. Anyway, he gave me guns all the time. A few like this one I smuggled overseas.”

  “You used this in the army? It’s not standard issue.”

  “Me and the guys did lots of stuff like that.”

  “Thanks, Jack. Did you want to move your things tonight?”

  “No. I’ll rent a truck. This shack still has to air out, and I want to paint it this week.”

  “Give me a call if you need help.”

  Jack watched him back up and spin gravel out of the driveway. He rode back alone to the Silver Spur.

  FOURTEEN

  Since her mother wanted nothing to do with parties of any kind, Jack agreed to let Colleen have her sweet-sixteen at the house he was renting.

  On the night of the party Jack regretted his decision. He sat on his porch next to the door and took bottles from the kids like a grinch on Christmas Eve. Most of the kids were stupid and didn’t try to hide the booze. They walked up with plastic bags and Jack put the stuff right in his cooler. Some of it was pretty good, he thought, and popped open another beer.

  “I’m not twelve anymore, Dad,” she’d said. “There’s no jumping castle.”

  “You’re not eighteen, either. That’s my cut-off for breaking the law.”

  The windows vibrated and he wondered if he should make them turn the music down. A couple of teeny-boppers in miniskirts said hi and went inside.

  Parvati’s smoke-colored Fiat pulled into the drive and she walked up.

  “Finally a friendly face,” said Jack. “I was getting lonely.”

  “With all these hot messes walking around?” Parvati sat next to him on the cooler. She had on jeans and a sweater.

  “Not my style. If anything’s going through my head it’s, wow, that girl must be cold.”

  “Liar.”

  He pulled her over and kissed her. “Want me to prove it?”

  “You can’t abandon your post, soldier.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Jack blew white puffs in the autumn air. “So what’s new?”

  “Have you talked to Mike?”

  “Not for months. I’ve been busy.”

  “He’s not happy with work.”

  “We talked about it a while ago but there’s not much he can do,” said Jack. “Once the implants are in, they’re in.”

  “Just give him a call, okay? For me.”

  “Sure, but what’s the trade?”

  “The trade is … I tell you a joke,” said Parvati.

  Jack sighed. “No. Please, no.”

  “What do you call a cow with no legs?”

  “What?”

  “Ground beef.” Parvati slapped Jack on the leg and giggled like a schoolgirl.

  Tires squealed and a tangerine Camaro stopped in the road. A door slammed shut and the car took off. A young man in ragged jeans walked across the road to the porch. A black tattoo of Chinese characters speared from his collar of his white shirt and curled around his neck.

  He stopped at the wooden steps. “Who the hell are you two?”

  Jack stood up. “Watch your mouth, cholo.”

  The kid saw the knife in Jack’s belt and backed away.

  “Easy, now. I don’t want no trouble.”

  “Could have fooled me,” said Jack. “Now make tracks.”

  “But I live here!”

  Jack sighed. “What’s your name?”

  “Sergio Fong.”

  “I’m renting the house now, Sergio Fong. Go talk to Padre about it.”

  The young man loped across the street with a slow and irregular gait. He returned in a few minutes.

  “Padre said my stuff is in the shed. So can I get it?”

  “Whatever’s left,” said Jack. “Stop! Around the side, not through the house.”

  Jack drummed his fingers on his leg. He didn’t stop until Parvati held his hand.

  “You’d think Padre would have told him,” she said.

  “Who knows or cares what happened. I don’t mess with other people’s business.”

  Another carload of teenagers pulled up. After Jack inspected their bags they went into the house.

  “Greg held a meeting about the flu going around,” said Parvati.

  “Parv, don’t tell me classified stuff.”

  “It’s not. It was about the flu outbreak in Denver. Wait, you haven’t heard about it?”

  Jack snorted. “I don’t follow the news even on my days off.”

  “Anyway, Greg said they’re going to test the virus on trainees.”

  “How can it be flu? It’s too early in the year. Barely October.”

  “Tell that to the people who’ve got it.”

  A huge crash vibrated the windows and Jack rushed inside. A table had collapsed and a girl lay in the middle of smashed glass and paper plates.

  Jack clicked off the blaring sound system.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “Table dancing?”


  He helped her to stand and a pair of girls took her to the bathroom to clean the cuts. Jack got a broom and delegated teenagers to the clean up.

  He looked around for his daughter. “Where’s Colleen?”

  Jack went through the kitchen to the back yard. His daughter stood at the door of the shed talking to Sergio. Jack pushed through the throng of teenagers.

  “Colleen, go inside and check on your drunk friend. She smashed a table.”

  He waited until she was gone then grabbed the front of Sergio’s shirt.

  “Having fun? Talk to my daughter again and we’ll have a party, just the two of us.”

  “You’re crazy! She came up to me!”

  Jack twisted his hands tighter.

  “Okay, okay! She didn’t.”

  He let go and Sergio backed toward the road with a duffel bag in his hands.

  “You crazy, man! I’ll get the rest tomorrow.”

  “Make sure you do or I’ll burn it,” said Jack.

  THE NEXT MORNING SERGIO came in a rusted pickup and took everything. Jack hadn’t seen a Chevy that old for a while and watched it more than he did Sergio.

  “I forgot to tell him,” said Padre, cleaning the bar. “Probably because I want to forget about that side of the family. He’s always making problems so I shouldn’t have rented the place to him, but Aunt Sally said he had nowhere else to go.”

  “I don’t need a sob story from a thousand different relatives. What did he do?”

  “Drugs, B&E, assault and battery. I bet this time it was drugs.”

  Jack went back to his house and cleaned up from the party. He had lunch by himself and drank some of the leftover booze while pacing the back yard. He remembered what Parvati had said and snapped his fingers.

  “Call Mike Wong.”

  “Dialing,” said the female voice.

  “Jack! How’s it going?” Mike sounded tired.

  “Good. Want to grab a drink?”

  “I’m working.”

  “Not now. Tonight.”

  “Sure, I can do that,” said Mike. “I’ll come by after work. I can’t stay too long.”

  “No problem. Are you feeling okay?”

  “Happy as rain, why?”

  Jack drove to the range in the Impala and did some shooting the rest of the afternoon. He’d been using the range because the house across from Padre’s didn’t have enough open space and the neighbors would have called the cops. In the evening he picked up a couple of steaks and some corn and started grilling.

  Mike showed up as it got dark. They ate the steaks and foil-wrapped corn and potatoes. Jack still had some cheap Japanese beer from the party.

  “How’s it feel steering that desk?” he asked Mike.

  “Ah, you know. There’s good and bad. The worst part about the place is this.” He pushed up his uniform sleeve and pointed at a red scar and a line of stitches on his forearm. “Also, all the tests and exercise, the diet. I should have transferred back to Georgia.”

  “What doesn’t kill you–”

  “–tastes like chicken. Yeah, whatever. We get injections but they won’t say what’s in it. Rumor is some guys got the plague.”

  “They’re not doing it just for fun, Mike.”

  “I don’t care why they’re doing it. I’m just worried about the kids. I’m too scared to touch them. I could give them some horrible disease.”

  “Nothing like that will happen. The base is run by professionals, not mad scientists.”

  Mike sighed. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Been to the range lately?”

  Mike shook his head. “I’ve been too busy with training and the kids.”

  He left after an hour. Jack cleaned up and went over to Padre’s for a while.

  A few days later he was changing oil in the Impala when he got a call.

  “Incoming from Joanie,” said the female voice.

  “Accept.”

  “Jack, I need a favor,” said his ex-wife.

  “What is it?” He tried to remember if the minivan needed work.

  “You need to talk with Colleen about a boy. He’s been hanging around too much.”

  “She’s young. She needs friends,” said Jack. “If you can remember what that was like.”

  “Not like this. He’s too old for her.”

  “All right, I’ll call her. What’s the boy’s name?”

  “Sergio.”

  JACK PARKED HIS CAR in a dark corner of the shopping center off Galley Road and walked to the apartment block. It was an old two-story motel that had been converted to apartments. Graffiti covered the walls and he guessed the owner had given up. Kids played in the dirt courtyard even though it was late and dark outside. Squadrons of moths battled around the sulfurous globe of a single, buzzing streetlight.

  Sergio wasn’t connected to any of the local Chinese mafia––Jack had checked for that. But he was stupid. Stupid enough to post his new address everywhere on the net.

  Jack climbed concrete stairs to the second floor and tapped on the window. He waited around the corner but the door didn’t open. The latch on the aluminum window popped easily with his multi-tool. Jack climbed inside and stepped over trash to the light switch. He flipped it on and off, stepped on the bed to break the ceiling bulb, and waited in the dark.

  The phone gave him constant updates. Like all the kids, Sergio used auto-post to tell everyone what scabby dive bar or greasy spoon he was at. Jack thought of him as a tragi-comic travel writer for the ‘bangers.

  A pair of shadows crossed the window and Jack took the automatic from his pocket. The door opened and someone felt for the switch.

  “Damn it! Light’s broken,” said Sergio.

  A female giggle. Feet shuffled into the room and crunched on paper food containers. Sergio turned on the light by the bed and looked into the barrel of the automatic.

  “Don’t say a word,” said Jack. He waved his other hand at the girl in a black leather skirt. “You. Get out.”

  She stumbled away like a newborn deer. Jack heard the rapid tap of her heels as he walked over and closed the door.

  “Don’t do this, man,” moaned Sergio.

  Jack smelled malt liquor as he walked closer.

  “Don’t do what? Kill you?”

  He punched Sergio in the gut with his metal hand and kneed him in the chin.

  “That would be stupid,” Jack said.

  Sergio was flat on the floor, spitting blood. Jack kicked him once then stuck the auto in his pocket. He sat on top of Sergio and punched his face over and over. The only good thing about a fake hand was you could hit a stone wall all day and not feel it.

  Jack got bored. He sat back in a chair and smoked a couple of Hongtashan until Sergio groaned and moved his legs.

  “Ready to listen?”

  “Yessss.”

  “Call the cops if you want. They’ll find the weed I hid in this rat-hole. You want to go back inside, right?”

  Sergio shook his head.

  “Stay away from Colleen,” said Jack. “Next time I see you, you’re dead.”

  THE NEXT WEEK HIS school held a survival workshop and Jack was in the backcountry trying to keep scrubs from freezing to death. In the van on the way home his little finger went crazy. A dozen messages from the Woodland Park cops and a few dropped calls from Parvati. The cop messages didn’t say anything so he called her back.

  “What? You don’t know?”

  “Know what? I had another workshop.”

  “The place you were staying at burned down.”

  Jack stepped over the police tape and walked through the black skeleton of the house. Most of what he owned had been charred to dust, then soaked into a black, midnight mud.

  PADRE RAPPED HIS KNUCKLES twice on the varnished wooden bar.

  “Listen, Jack. A guy like you collects enemies like a dog collects fleas.”

  “So what?”

  Padre poured another Fat Tire and slid it over.

  “So what �
�� I’ve known you for a while. You’re a tough nut who doesn’t make friends on the playground.”

  “Are you blaming me?”

  “Of course not. I just don’t want this to escalate.”

  “If the kid can’t take a few swipes from an old man it’s not my fault,” said Jack.

  “If you’re just an old man then I’m the bishop of Bath and Wells.”

  A pack of locals showed up. Padre served them tall glasses of draft and came back.

  “Where does it end? I hate the kid as much as you, but Jack … one of you is going to end up dead.”

  “You don’t have a daughter, do you?”

  Padre shook his head and sighed. “No, I don’t, and I understand how you feel. You’re forgetting it was my house. Still, I’m trying to find him and make peace.”

  “I’ll be ready when you do.”

  “I want both of you to part ways, Jack, and I don’t want to read about it on page two. Or page one.”

  A news report came on the TV about the Denver epidemic. A long list of guard units scrolled down the screen.

  “With all the problems we got in the world, the papers don’t have time for me and Sergio,” said Jack.

  His phone buzzed.

  “I heard about the fire,” said Mike’s voice. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Most of my stuff is gone though.”

  “If you need a place to stay we’ve got an extra room.”

  Jack imagined a piece of Lego digging into his heel.

  “No, I’ll just go back to the Silver Spur. I’m used to it.”

  “Don’t be a stranger, Jack. If there’s anything you need, tell me.”

  “There is. I need to borrow something I gave you a while back.”

  JACK COULD HAVE STAYED with Parvati but didn’t want her involved. That afternoon he checked in at the motel, bought supplies at the drug store, then washed his clothes while he waited for Mike to get home. The old television at the laundromat droned on about the Taiwan nuclear disaster and the invasion, but half his mind was on the guns he’d lost. The old fireproof gun safe at the house had been too heavy to take and he’d been keeping everything in a locked trunk. Now it was just a lump of black metal in the burned house. An old .308 Model 70 was all he had left, only because he kept it in the trunk of his Impala to shoot deer on the road.