Badger

Chapter 2

Chapter 2The very first time I saw the Badger, it was a drizzly Wednesday in late September, and I was bleeding from my chin and arm.

I’d been hit by a car — a Jaguar sedan, I think, a streak of gleaming gunmetal — which sprang like a sucker punch from a backstreet parking lot. I’d been crossing the wide alley on a shortcut to Downtown Crossing following a disheartening job interview, my third in two weeks.

A hot bolt of pain as my right wrist broke, a scraping burn as I hit the pavement. It was mid-afternoon, but there was no one off the beaten path to witness it. No one but the Badger.

I remember my ChapStick rolling from my purse all the way to the far sidewalk like it had someplace better to be. I remember staggering to Summer Street, where of course no one acknowledged my injuries or expressed any concern. This was Boston, after all, iciest of New England icy, eyes forward, don’t engage lest you’re accosted by a crazy person or a survey taker or a tourist in need of assistance with the spiderweb our forefathers passed off as urban planning. A blur blew past from the side street where I’d been hit, flying in the direction of the Jag, and someone shouted, “Dude, it’s the Badger!”

I fumbled left-handed in my purse for my phone, since no one else seemed poised to dial 9-1-1 to get the bleeding girl a f*****g ambulance.

˚ ° ˚They called him the Badger because he was rabid and aggressive, black and gray.

They called him the Badger, but I thought he made a far better pigeon. He swooped out of no place and disturbed people on busy city streets, peppered clothes and cars with white paintballs like combat-grade bird s**t. Black and gray on top from a striped hoodie, faded orange sneakers on his feet. People said he was dirty and feral, an urban transient. People loved or hated him, just like a pigeon.

Me, I like pigeons.

The Badger rode an old yellow Schwinn, faster than a bike messenger on meth. Which was exactly what I imagined he was, at first. He shot between the slow-moving cars on Summer, tugging something at his lower back. I found out later it was a U-shaped bike lock, one of those big steel numbers that hipster couriers somehow manage to stash in the back pockets of their too-tight jeans. I heard the c***k when the Badger sank that thing into the maybe-a-Jaguar’s rear window, another as he whacked the driver’s-side mirror clean off. I read later on a Boston crime blog he got the windshield as well, then disappeared in the direction of the Common.

But when all that happened I was leaning against a building and stammering my whereabouts to a dispatcher. Soon the approaching wails of my rescuers drowned out the Jag’s alarm and the honking of the cars around it. As I was helped into the ambulance, police sirens came and went. Soon I was heading to the hospital, and my hero was long gone in the opposite direction.

And for a brief time I forgot about the Badger, because all I could think was, Who in the f**k is going to hire a writer with a broken wrist?