Chapter 11: Questions

[The previous chapters of this long piece of dreck may be found here. I don’t think this will make any sense if you haven’t read the previous parts.]

The hawk had flown away, and Sterling felt the jealousy that everyone feels when they watch a bird take flight. “I wonder if I could have been a bird?” He thought to himself. Why a skunk? A skunk was OK, he guessed, but how much better would it have been if the pot he smoked had transformed him into a hawk, or a crow, or an eagle?

As he was thinking about all of the birds he would rather be, Randy and Shash appeared rather suddenly before him.

“Where did you come from?” He asked.

“Right over there,” said Randy, pointing up the road.

“How could that be?” Asked Sterling, “There is nothing but a sea of grass. How did I not see you two coming?”

“Custer was in a sea of grass when he failed to see 3,000 Sioux Indians,” said Randy.

“Is that true?” Asked Sterling.

“True enough,” said Randy.

As the hawk had mentioned, the sun was sinking in the sky. The shadows were indeed long and the light was losing all vigor. To the West the clouds were turning to the colors of sunset. Sterling liked how the light felt.

“What beautiful twilight,” he said.

“It’s still day,” said Randy.

The bear looked at the rabbit with annoyance. He was standing up on two legs. When he looked down from that height his displeasure was ominous, but the rabbit wasn’t looking at the bear. He was busy lighting a cigarette.

Shash turned to Sterling. “Twilight comes after the sun sets,” he said, “Until the sun dips below the horizon it is still daylight. After the sun can no longer be seen you have civil twilight, then, depending on the number of degrees that the sun has set below the horizon, comes nautical twilight, and finally astronomical twilight. They end in dusk. Dusk comes right in before night.”

“Who the fuck cares?” Said Randy.

The bear blew through his nose loudly, then made a clicking sound with his mouth and tongue. The rabbit looked up at him, and did a quick double take when he noticed that the bear was staring at him. “You’re the one who corrected him,” said Shash.

“Oh, yea,” the rabbit replied, “That’s True.” He laughed his nerdy laugh and pushed his glasses back on his face.

“We should get going.” He said, “The day is getting on and Badger won’t appreciate us showing up too late.”

“I have a lot of questions I want to ask,” said Sterling.

“Can you ask them as we walk?” said the rabbit extending one of his bulbous hands outward in an invitation to start walking, “Shash will take the lead so that you may walk in the middle. That way we can answer your questions.”

The little fellowship resumed their ranger file and followed the earthen path through the grass. Around and above them there were a great many bugs. With the bugs came kingbirds and chimney swifts that dove at the insects the line of walkers stirred up.

“My first question is; why did you abandon me after I sprayed? There was a hawk, he chased me, I think with the intent to kill. He swooped down at me and hit my head. Luckily he missed, but I was terrified.”

“He didn’t miss,” said Shash, who was now walking on fours. “And we didn’t abandon you. We could see you the whole time, or, at least, Randy could. We just didn’t want any of your skunk fog on us. The hawk knew you were an American even though you look like a skunk, and nobody wants to eat an American.”

“Why not?” Asked Sterling.

“You taste like shit,” said Randy from behind, “Or… at least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

“It’s also bad luck to eat an American, and to the ducks, it’s a sin.”

“Everything is a sin to the ducks,” said Randy, “except eating water logged vegetables and piddling around in ponds.”

“The hawk talked to you for a while,” said Shash, “What did he say?”

“Well,” said Sterling, “He talked to me about bird intelligence. He said that pigeons are stupid and that crows are the smartest birds around.”

“Hah,” said Randy, “That’s a laugh.”

Sterling thought he heard Shash chuckle too.

“Why is that funny?”

“Everyone thinks that someone else is smarter than they are.” Said Randy, “That hawk is as smart as any crow. Crows are only smart when it comes to remembering fart jokes and finding things that look like shit but taste good. What you heard there was just a kettle of self-esteem issues. That hawk’s mother probably compared it to eagles since the day it was born. ‘Why don’t you soar straight like an eagle?,’ ‘why can’t you be quiet like the owls?’, ‘why did the falcon see that rabbit before you?’ Hawk mothers are the worst. They are super withholding. They will routinely refuse to regurgitate unless the chick opens their mouth all the way. Duckity, duck! It makes me almost feel sorry for that murderous motherfucker.”

Shash laughed again from the front. It was clear Randy was just getting started.

“I mean, nobody is comfortable in their own skin. They’re always comparing themselves to someone else. Even the fucking Coy Wolf is constantly asking me how much bigger he is than Coyote. Muskrat is positively fucking obsessed with what beaver is up to. ‘Did you see the trees they took down yesterday?’ he asks me. ‘Did you see what the built down on Ninagret Stream?’ Like I fucking care what those geeky buck-toothed motherfuckers are up to. I bet you hadn’t been a skunk for ten minutes, Sterling, before you started thinking, ‘why didn’t they make me a marmot or a fisher? Yea, I’d much rather be a fisher… what kind of dope do I have to smoke to become a wolverine?”

“Well,” said Sterling, “I was kind of wondering…”

“See, I knew it,” Randy said with a laugh, “How long have you been fantasizing about being a what? A bear like Shash? An erudite raccoon? What? What was it you were hoping you could be?”

“It’s funny you should say that, because I did think it might be nice to be a bird.”

“A bird!” Randy yelled, and then started laughing. “Sure, if we used an endoplasmic laser rifle and melted 8/10 of your brain, we could make you a bird. That would be a one way ticket to dumbville. The brain loss would be permanent, you know. You get your brain shrunk here and when you go back to your world you’d be so stupid you’d probably vote for Trump or something.”

“He’s right, Sterling,” said Shash from the front, “You don’t want to be a bird. Skunk was the proper choice, you were meant to be a skunk.”

“But I didn’t choose to be a skunk,” said Sterling, “I just became one.”

There was a silence. The last line of Sterling’s just hung in the air and the the pause allowed the sounds of twilight, for it was now truly civil twilight, to flood back into their perception. Sterling could hear Randy’s shoes on the path behind him. The grassland had gently given way to scrub, and they were on the periphery of another forest. This one was made up of ponderosa pines. After they had walked in silence for a while, Sterling spoke up.

“I have two questions,” he said.

“Go ahead,” said Randy.

“Who is Badger, and why are we going to see him?”

“That’s easy,” said Randy, “Badger is like a consultant. He’s smarter than us and knows the answers to a lot of questions.”

Shash looked back at Sterling and smiled.

“And, like any good consultant,” said Randy, “He’ll ask us a lot of questions and figure out what we are thinking. Then he will tell me what Shash wanted me to hear. Then he will tell Shash what I wanted Shash to hear, and since it is Badger saying it rather than each other, we will both accept what is said because it didn’t come from either of us.”

“And what about the things that neither of us know?” Asked Shash.

“Oh, that shit he will just make up, like any good consultant.”

“Why do you call him ‘Badger’,” Sterling asked.

“Because that’s his name,” said Randy.

“Well,” said Sterling, “You call Badger, ‘Badger’, but is he the only badger around? I mean the pigs call you ‘Rabbit’, but there are other rabbits, aren’t there? Is the name ‘Badger’ some sort of a title? Is it like calling someone ‘Wessex’ or ‘Cambridge’?”

“That’s interesting,” said Shash. “I understand and overstand your question.” Then, after thinking for a little while, the bear said, “It’s more like someone being called ‘Tex’ or ‘New York.’ A nickname like ‘New York’ works so long as there are no other people from New York around. Among a bunch of Texans, nobody is going to call someone else ‘Tex’. That’s the same way with our animal names. All the other animals might call me ‘bear’ up until the point that there are three other bears in the room. Then you have to start using proper names. There aren’t many badgers around, so we call Badger, ‘Badger’ almost all the time. His real name is ‘Alfred’, but don’t call him that unless you have to, and make sure not to call him Fred or Freddie.”

“He doesn’t like being called ‘Freddie’?” Sterling asked.

“No, not by others. ‘Freddie’ is what Mole calls him,” said Shash.

“Who is Mole,” asked Sterling.

“Mole is Badger’s boyfriend,” said Randy.

“Oh,” said Sterling.

They had entered the woods. The smell of turpentine was everywhere. There was virtually no underbrush. The trees were tall and straight and seemingly endless. The ground began to climb. At some point they turned and started walking up a steep slope that became so rocky the trees thinned out and almost stopped altogether. High in the middle of the rocky hillside was a lamp outside of a large wooden doorway. The doorway was surrounded by a granite casement.

“Badger’s,” said Randy, pointing at the light.

“You’ve told him we’re coming, didn’t you?” Shash asked.

“Of course,” Randy said, “I’ve been texting him regularly. He’s totally expecting us.”

They began to climb a set of granite steps that led up to the doorway. There were pieces of quarried rock on either side of the steps.

“Look at all the granite Badger has got,” said Randy.

“Look at that,” said Shash, pointing to an enormous woodpile neatly stacked to the left of the door. “What wealth!”

“Yea, tell me about it,” Randy said, licking his lips a little, “This is how the other half lives.”

“Is there anything I should know before I meet Badger?” Sterling asked. This was the first time that the bear and the rabbit weren’t full of social instructions. They had said almost nothing about how to comport himself around Badger. Their lack of coaching made him nervous.

When they arrived at the level of the door there was a beautifully laid out slate terrace. It had a low wall at its edge, and scattered throughout it were four sets of wicker chairs. Here, on the terrace, Randy and Shash stopped to answer Sterling’s questions.

“If he asks you what you would like to drink,” said Randy, “say, ‘I would love a scotch if you have one.’”

“Yea,” said Shash with a smile, “that’s an excellent idea. Ask for a scotch.”

[Next Chapter: Badger’s Den]