First Sign of the Badger Read online

Nothing with blood in its body would eagerly anticipate a visit from an overgrown tick. Even if the mutant is its own offspring.

  An old man is hunched over on a padded chair in a holding cell disguised by a sedated yellow and pumpkin orange paint job. Existing in the noise of deconstruction, he’s waiting, inhaling disappointment and exhaling anger.

  It’s the third Sunday of a dehydrating June, Father’s Day. It’s the day a daughter chose for America to celebrate its fathers in honor of her own dad, who raised five children after the mother had died giving birth. Checking the calendar, which names the day in tiny italicized letters, is the only reason why the old man knows it’s a holiday, because no one has ever wished him a “Happy Father’s Day” except for his departed wife.

  Feeling that his life in a nursing home over recent years has been a joke, he can’t help but laugh that his son coming today is an awful punch line. The gift he wants from his only child is to be left alone.

  The cacophony of remodeling causes him to relate with a woman in the locked down Alzheimer’s wing. She had an old lady name and gray, powdery legs. Her clothes were drab and out of style, complete with orthopedic shoes. Every day she’d pack two large suitcases, bundle up, and patiently sit by the door, expecting a loved one to save her from being stranded. The night people were hassled with resettling her before a reoccurring nightmare would jostle her awake to do it all over again.

  The shithead that called the old man’s old lady “Mommy” walks through the door. Quality time begins when the businessman, suit wearer with no skills, removes his earphone and folds it into the front left, cell phone pocket of his jacket and patronizes as though he were asking for service at a foreign market, “Hey Dad, how are you doing?”

  “Fuh…” the old man’s head is flushed into a trance. The uncomfortable sway of the gray hair covering the old man’s head makes him recover. He uses his own bare hands to ruin the result of the morning’s comb by a frustrated, overweight, minimum-waged caregiver, and stretches his rusty voice to penetrate the pollution with, “I’m still alive, Matthew. Thanks for asking.”

  Matthew gently lifts his father out of the seat by pulling between the shoulder and elbow, “Let’s go to lunch.”

  The old man drops anchor and gasps, “Are you sure you don’t want to sit for awhile and talk?”

  “Dad, it’s a lunch break. I couldn’t get the day off. I don’t have time. Sorry, but we have to go.”

  The old man just sits for a few moments, but then wisdom senses futility, “Let me just get my things.” A raincoat and a plain cardboard box, poorman’s luggage, with pictures of his family follow him still.

  “Nah, Dad. That stuff’ll be all right here.”

  “I want to take it with me. It’s all I have right there. It’s no big deal. I can carry it.”

  Matthew, with a sensitive tone, directly explains, “What are you going to do with it? I don’t know what to do with that stuff. You’re making this difficult. You can’t take it. You know that. And there’s no reason to try… Let’s go to lunch, okay?”