Badger

Chapter 3

Chapter 3As I sat in the back of the ambulance, an EMT fussing over the blood and grit ground into my chin, freshly fractured bone shrieking in my dominant wrist, I thought, They’ll give you something for the pain. You’re supposed to tell them not to, but you won’t.

It was a relief, like the universe was giving me a sign, a hall pass, a nudge in the direction of Easy Street.

Then I remembered those seconds — the hum of chain and spokes, the scrape of rubber on asphalt as the Badger flew past to avenge me. A gray blur on two skinny wheels, a man seeming as elementally fearless and angry as I was meek. My fantasy involving an orange prescription bottle dissipated, whipped away in the suction of his slipstream.

As we pulled into Mass General, I thought, I’ve just got to meet him.

˚ ° ˚Once I was back home in my tiny apartment with my wrist in a cast and six stitches in my chin — prescription soundly refused, clap for me — my research began in earnest.

I’d heard of the Badger, but only in passing. I thought I’d read a fluff piece about him in the Metro once, or eavesdropped on people discussing him on the subway. I knew he was a bit infamous and unsavory, but for what, I couldn’t have told you.

Once I began investigating, most of what I could glean came from a single website, BostonBadgerWatch.com. It was a blog people sent their “Badger sightings” to — grainy cell phone pictures and written reports, the odd snatch of shaky video.

As best I could tell, he was like a bargain-basement Batman.

The website was a little over a year old, and it seemed the Badger had gone rogue about a year before that, right around the time I — or rather, my Mr. Hyde self — was busy selling my sister’s ring for pill money.

Everyone agreed that whoever he was and whatever his deal might be, the Badger was definitely on something. c***k or speed or glue, or some special recipe he whipped up in his secret lair.

But basically, he was a menace on a bike. He probably didn’t make Boston any safer. The opposite, really. He just made it more fair.

He fought violence with violence. If you dinged a pedestrian or cyclist with your car, he’d smash your mirrors off with his U-lock. But if it was something less heinous, you’d just get balled — run a red light or splash somebody with dirty puddle water, and he’d nail your window with a white pellet shot from a Glock-style paintball pistol. Harass or intimidate somebody on the street, or generally be a d**k in any way to your fellow man and get caught — thwack! Big white bird-shitty splatter all over your nice new coat.

Given what a dramaphobe I was, you can see why I’d find the Badger both terrifying and hugely compelling. I hate a scene, and he was a human scene. He was everything I wasn’t and couldn’t ever be, not outside of opiate withdrawal.

Of course that time I spent being a fearless fuckup . . . it was merely another flavor of cowardice, just me trying to get out of my head, silence all its anxious whispering. I still did that, I’m sad to admit, but now when I needed to feel The Nothing, I just drank a measured dose of Nyquil and went to bed at nine thirty. It was pathetic, but legal and cheap. I guess it was technically a***e, since I didn’t have the flu, but hey, it was a step up.

I hadn’t always wanted to hide and sleep. For almost all the time I was in college, I came alive in my understated way. I had a pulse. I went to art school, because that’s what you do when you grow up being praised for your drawings. Amanda got praised for everything else, and with good reason, but drawing was mine. The absolute only thing that distinguished me from my twin for the better.

I studied illustration here in Boston, and you know what? I was goddamn good at it. I was among the best in my class, my specialty these crazy-intricate interior scenes collaged out of tiny slivers of X-Acto-cut paper, which I’d embellish with hand-stitching. I also took to writing unsettling vignettes and taught myself bookbinding, and I created a series of rather exceptional little volumes as my degree project and graduated with honors. For a while, I’d really felt like someone special, with something to share. Like the thing in the sunshine in front of the shadow, for a change.

But fine art and publishing are not industries for the deferring, and with the assignment-based sense of purpose that college offered behind me, I misplaced my compass.

I was a good writer, and one of my professors helped me get an entry-level gig penning copy for an ad agency her husband worked for. I hated that place, but I’d liked the somebodyhood that a job title gave me. I stayed there until I had a violent back spasm, when I was informed that Vicodin addiction had an opening that just might be a perfect fit for me.

During my time in the correctional facility, I’d felt awake and alive for a little while. I hadn’t had much choice, once detox did its thing.

I’d started drawing again to fill the sleepless nights, and all the women in my ward treated me like da Vinci. I was writing, too, and when I got out I’d felt like someone again. I’d taken a menial job as a grocery-store stock girl while I was in sober living in a dumpier corner of Back Bay, thinking it would give me endless hours to brainstorm and meditate on where my art was trying to lead me. But in the end it had just left me exhausted and glassy-eyed, fingertips cracked and itchy from dust, and my fire died all over.

And that brings us to the present.

I needed a real job, because the supermarket had laid me off three weeks earlier and the first of the month was looming. If I couldn’t pay my rent, I’d have to move back in with my parents in Lincoln, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that and not start looking for the next pill, the next great escape. If I was going to be miserable at a job, I might as well try to get a decent salary and health insurance while I was at it, so I’d been looking for in-house copywriting gigs. But again, there’s my record. That permanent smear of dog s**t on my heel, its stink lingering well after I’d get led back to the elevators and told to have a lovely day, we’ll be in touch if you’re the right candidate.

˚ ° ˚I hadn’t even seen the Badger’s face, but with every scrap of information I uncovered, I felt more and more as though he and I were two halves, polarized and separated. And the more I learned, the more sharply I ached to be near him. I wanted to feel and hear the magnetic click as I snapped tight against him, to someone like him. To someone so unlike myself. I wanted to see his face and hear his voice and touch his skin, as surely as zealous Catholic schoolgirls secretly want to bone Jesus.

According to Boston Badger Watch, he’d never been caught. Thanks to the coke or crystal meth or whatever secret sauce kept him going, he escaped through alleys, under overpasses, sometimes on foot up fire escapes, and allegedly even down subway tunnels and storm drains . . . though some of the stories did smack of embellishment.

One BBW report claimed the Badger saw a businessman flick a lit cigarette on a homeless guy who was panhandling at Downtown Crossing. Could have been vindictive, or it could have been that this jerk hadn’t registered the homeless man’s existence any more than he might a sack of garbage. But flick went the cigarette, and pop went the Glock, and apparently the paintball hit the businessdouche square in the back of the head and knocked his toupee off. I grinned when I read that one, because I felt silent and invisible in this city, too.

The Badger was a huge hit with the local homeless population, and there was a special “Badger Spotting” section in the Spare Change homeless-run newspaper. Most people seemed to think he was a transient himself. One thing was for sure — he had issues. Major issues. You’d think that would’ve put me off, but it didn’t. I wanted to find out myself if he was for real.

And for the first time in ages, I wanted to create.

After I’d exhausted the Internet’s disappointingly meager Badger knowledge, I stayed up late obsessively stitching the shapes of bicycle wheels and gears onto an old scrap of muslin. Awkward work using only one clumsy set of fingers, my right hand reduced to a fleshy pin cushion. But awkward felt beautiful in the moment, and being awake felt better than sleep, which it hadn’t in months. I brainstormed a million crappy strategies for finding the Badger, none of them viable. And real-life worries beckoned me with the dawn.

˚ ° ˚After my run-in with the Jag, I needed a paycheck worse than ever. I’d never gotten around to signing up for health insurance, and though I was broke enough that my ER visit got reduced to twelve hundred dollars from four thousand, that was still twelve hundred bucks more than I had. It was time to settle for freelance.

Maybe I could write a local color article about my run-in with Boston’s infamous Badger. That might not sell for much, but if I could actually meet the guy? I could be Lois Lane. If Lois were a former klepto painkiller addict and Superman a tweaker on a ten-speed.

It was worth a shot, and most important of all, it validated my new obsession. The Badger had also been the only witness to my hit-and-run. Was there any chance he’d remember the guy’s plate number? Who f*****g knew. Plus, considering how many assault warrants he surely had, it didn’t seem likely he’d volunteer to testify for me.

Then there was the little matter of even finding him.

Some enterprising nerd had taken the time to create a Badger-spotting interactive map on the BBW site, with virtual pins marking all the places he’d been seen. Some corridors were more clustered than others — certain stretches of Tremont Street, various hot spots downtown, dots all along Mass Ave. I also found a post from a guy who claimed that he saw the Badger all the time, late at night while walking across the Longfellow Bridge after his bartending shift. He said the Badger had glided past him on dozens of occasions, bound for Cambridge. He’d never seen the Badger do anything exciting, but right around two thirty or three in the morning, there he’d go with his stripes and his Schwinn.

The Badger didn’t respond to people yelling at him, I’d read.

Didn’t answer to his nickname or make eye contact.

He only engaged to mete out his crude brand of justice via U-lock and paintball, so if I was going to stand a chance at interacting with him, I’d have to be either the perpetrator or the victim. After mulling it over through the weekend, I decided to be both.

˚ ° ˚Late Monday night, I made it to the Charles/MGH stop on one of the evening’s last trains and walked halfway across the Longfellow Bridge to a spot bathed in streetlight.

I knew I had a good hour or more to wait, and as I stood before the ledge, cold autumn air whipping my hair around, I imagined falling in love with the Badger.

I’d had a few relationships, though no grand romances. In college I’d had a boyfriend I wanted so desperately to love, I’d scared him away. Once he was gone, I’d found I didn’t really miss him, only the idea of him. I’d felt sad to realize I hadn’t loved him, and ripped-off that my heart wasn’t broken. I’ve always wanted to be in love. Companionable or passionate or train-wreck tragic, I’m not choosy. Just real and inspiring. Yet another chemical escape to this junkie.

The bars closed and the city quieted, more still and calm than I’d known Boston could get.

After nearly two hours, after thousands of glances over my shoulder at the Cambridge-bound lane, I finally spotted an approaching cyclist. My stomach lurched, a strange tug more solid and purposeful than nausea, one that seemed to tell me, He’s close. The magnet-click I’d fantasized about.

My limbs had grown stiff and cold, my bad wrist moaning low and plaintive beneath my skin. I got into position on my knees on the bridge’s wide concrete railing — dangerous and stupid in itself with only one working hand. Adrenaline locked my joints as I stood.

I stared at the water, eyes glued to the shushing black waves. I ran through what I’d tell any non-Badger passerby who confronted me.

No, I’m fine, thanks, I’d say in my best well-adjusted voice. Sorry to scare you. A friend of mine committed suicide here last year. Sometimes I just like to come here and remember her. Yes, very sad. Thanks for stopping, though. A corny lie and bad karma, but I didn’t want the cops called. And I didn’t want anyone to worry. No one except the Badger.

I heard the bicycle approach, then slow. I stood with held breath, anticipating words but not receiving any. There was a scuff and a clatter, soft footsteps, a huff. Then the Badger was standing beside me on the concrete ledge, staring down at the water with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. I felt as if I was standing next to a celebrity, an angel, my grubby cut-rate Christ.

His voice rang unnaturally loud in the crisp fall air, a not-quite-echo bouncing up from the water. A tired voice, a bit deep, a bit flat. “How’s it look?”

“Cold,” I said, watching the waves.

In my periphery, the Badger nodded. “Does look cold.”

Unsure what to say, I kept mum.

“I don’t really feel like going in after you.”

I turned to face him, wishing I could tell what color his eyes were in the yellow streetlight, or how old he was. His hood was up. His skin was pale, stubble dark, and he was attractive in a broody, Eastern European way. Heavy eyelids and strong bone structure. Not handsome, but sort of sexy . . . if danger and angst turn you on. He was a local, too, ignoring the Rs on the ends of words, banishing the Gs from his gerunds.

I looked to his chest, his hoodie half-unzipped so I could see the thick leather strap of his pistol holster.

“I’m not really going to jump,” I finally said.

“Yeah, I could tell.”

“Oh?”

“Nah. You’re not dead yet. Not dead in the face.” He circled his own face with his hand. “You’re just a cry for help, waiting for somebody to come by and plead with you not to do it. Want me to plead?”

Embarrassed, I shook my head and fumbled to the sidewalk. Badger jumped down to join me, sneakers slapping asphalt.

I smiled sheepishly. “You’re right. I was never planning to jump.” I held up my right hand with its cast. “Do you remember me?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, my name’s Adrian—”

“Good for you. You must get called first during attendance.”

Okay, fine. No small talk. “A few days ago, I got hit by a car in Downtown Crossing, and you smashed the guy’s windows.”

“Sounds like something I’d do.”

“I wanted to find you, to say thanks. Do you not even remember it?” How could that be, when it was among the most dynamic events of my life?

“Sorry, no clue who you are.”

“So I guess you didn’t catch the plate number, then.”

His smile was faint and wry, bereft of apology. So much for my witness, my outside chance at recouping my medical expenses. As if that was really why I’d come here.

“Well, thank you, anyhow.” I took a deep breath and blurted, “I think it’s really great, what you do. Helping people you don’t even know. I was hoping to maybe . . . find out more about you, I guess.”

His smile tweaked to a smirk, the gesture carving a parenthesis beside one corner of his lips.

“Would that be okay? If we met for a drink or a coffee—”

“Sorry to wake you up from whatever Robin Hood wet dream you’ve been fingering yourself over, but I don’t do that stuff to help anybody.”

My hopeful balloon deflated with a doleful sputter. “Pardon?”

His bike was lying against the curb, and he righted it, holding the handlebars. “What I do, I do out of hate, not humanity. Because punishing assholes gets me off — not saving victims. And actually all this . . .” He cast his gaze around us. “This isn’t doing a f*****g thing for me. So if you’re not going to jump, I’d just as soon be home in bed.”

Home. Well, there was one question answered.

Face burning, I shook my head. “No, I’m not jumping.”

“Great.” He slung a leg over his crossbar. Face utterly unchanged, the Badger drew his infamous Glock from inside his hoodie, took aim, and shot me in the thigh from five feet.

“Ow, Jesus!” White paint exploded across my favorite jeans, and a bolt of exquisite pain promised a welt.

“That’s for wasting my time,” he said, replacing the pistol. “I’m too f*****g tired for false alarms, so next time have the decency to jump.”

My slack mouth produced no words. I watched him glide away, silent and passive once more. As ever.

I glanced at my palm, streaked with white from where I’d grabbed my leg. Looked and felt just like when a bird shits on your hair. You pray it’s a raindrop, but it never is.

Fuck you too, Badger.