Harold "Badger" Denton bore a physical resemblance to his furry namesake, though that alone had not earned him his name. Years of powerlifting had emphasized his squat physique, given him the broad chest and thick forearms of something which burrowed for a living, but attitude, more than anything else, suggested the name which defined him.
A dogged resistance to agreement with what everyone knew to be true was his standard, awkward insistence upon a different view of nearly everything his long practice. That the world had not approved, did not approve, and never lost an opportunity to remind him, had so far made little impression.
"My God, look at Jimmy! No wonder he's playing basketball." Margret compared old and newer photos. "He looks like he's grown half a foot since I saw him."
"He's six foot even as of last week. I don't know how tall he'll end up but I can't keep him in pants and shoes. Every few months he needs a whole new wardrobe." Dottie shook her head in wonder. "The boy can eat, I'll tell you."
"I'll bet he can." Margret's blue eyes rested on Dottie, calculating. "How's he been since Dan moved out?" She smiled encouragingly across the table.
"He's been great. You know, Dan was just as rough on him and Cathie as on..." She looked down, shoulders beginning to quiver.
"As you. We know honey, believe me we know how he treated you. But things are going to get better now." Margret turned toward her husband, gave him the Look of Significance.
"That's right, Dottie. You're better off without him, you know. The guy was just a maggot. Nobody could stand him."
Margret rolled her eyes at him. He stared back, unrepentant. Let her dig up Henry James if she wanted a finely nuanced character study of Dan Sheffield, or for that matter, his mouse of an ex-wife.
Dottie pawed at a picture. "Here's all of us at Thanksgiving."
Margret examined it closely. "I love Cathie's dress; where'd you get it?"
"My sister Phyllis made it for her. Can you believe that? She did all the bead work herself."
Margret shook her head. "She did a great job. Wish I could do that."
She passed the photo toward Harry. It remained between them until her eyes speared him. He took the four by five, glanced at two adults and two children grinning at the world, as though daring anyone to question the truth of their posed happiness. He put it on the table and massaged his forehead, trying to rub out the sudden pressure point stabbing between his eyes. Dottie poked another picture his way; another lying image, Dan and Dottie beaming at each other. It was too much.
"We used this picture for our Christmas cards this year. Dottie handed off another photo. "You got this one didn't you?" Another ersatz family moment made the circuit.
"We sure did. I think I put it on the mantel."
"Dottie, why is Dan in these pictures you had taken at Thanksgiving and Christmas?"
He asked the question with the feeling of taking the first step of a familiar odyssey. A sense of fatalism enveloped him, as though he was mounted on rails and must go forward, despite long experience at predicting the wreck at journey's end. A sense of "might as well get this over with now so Margie and I can fight about it and get that over with, and then maybe life can go on."
He felt rather than saw his wife stiffen in response to his question for he only had eyes for Dottie, watching her struggle to decide how to take it. He smiled at her and considered: Let's see if you can get good and pissed, Dottie. Let's see what that might lead to.
"He's still the father of my children."
Brava, Dottie, Brava. Those green eyes were flashing. But it wasn't enough, not by half.
"Yeah, let's consider that as established. What I'm wondering is why you felt it necessary to perpetrate a fraud, because what you have here is a deliberate lie, you know? A warm and fuzzy snippet of holiday fiction."
He waved a picture at her. "Look at this. You and the kids are standing next to your Christmas tree with a guy who treated you all like shit for years. And you're smiling like—"
"Oh Jesus Christ, Harry, would you shut up? Just shut up." Margret rounded on him, "I should have left you in your corner like a zombie." In a softer voice, "just ignore him, he needs to be kicked in the head."
Dottie stared at the floor, nodding. "I know." She looked up at him. "You never change, do you Harry? Always pushing some weird agenda, aren't you?"
He grinned again. "That's me. And my theme today is: Every Picture is Worth a Thousand Untrue Words." He held a four by five up.
"Looky here, it's Dottie, Dan, Cathie and Jimmy all dressed up for Christmas, the perfect family. Except we know that Dan's been a bad boy for at least ten years. Dan's been fucking everything with two X chromosomes. Dan's been knocking his wife and kids around. Dan's been such an enthusiastic guy that Dottie had to get the police to drag his ass to jail for a few days. And finally throw him out.
"But now here's Danny boy again, back by popular demand, showing off his beautiful, loving family, again, just like in all those other lying holiday pics going back years. He sure gets around.
"And you're shoving these pictures at me like I don't know what's been going on, like you've haven't poured out a litany of suffering to us for ten frigging years. And the only truth I can find in them Dottie, the only accuracy I could swear to in these pictures, is that you were all physically in the same room and seem to have had control of your facial muscles."
"God! I don't need this now!" Dottie stood, and she was everything he'd hoped for. "I came over here to forget about that shit for a few hours, not listen to an asshole!"
He kept smiling up at her, as she stood over him, wetness starting around her eyes again.
"Well put. Now if only you'd said something like that to Dan, about ten years ago. I'm just pointing out that you've been using these pictures like counterfeit twenty dollar bills and I'm not going for it."
"I don't need you to point out anything, Harry. I'm making a pit stop and then I'm going home." She bent to snag her purse from the floor and walked away to the bathroom, leaving Harry in possession of the battlefield, facing a strong counter-attack from across the table.
Margret swept all before her without even raising her voice. "Do you think you could possibly leave me one friend who still wants to come over here? Do I have to start meeting Dottie for lunch somewhere, or go to her house like with everyone else you've run off? Just because you exist without friends doesn't mean I want to."
"I've got plenty of friends, Margie, you know that."
"Oh C'mon Harry, your fishing buddies? Those knuckleheads at the gym? They're not friends. They're just hanging around waiting for your next rant. You're a car wreck, Harry, a forty-two year old cluster-fuck.
He chuckled. After fifteen years she still surprised him. He looked at her appreciatively—still easy on the eyes, sitting there in jeans and Christmasy sweater. She watched him warily, ready for battle, and that heightened his admiration.
He was finally old enough, finally tired enough to forgive her for being more then he deserved. He didn't know if he could claim mature enough—probably the world wouldn't agree. Margie had never flinched when his flensing knife tongue removed a few layers of skin. She'd stayed with him; a puzzling gambit he'd given up trying to understand.
He laughed again. "A cluster-fuck. Now where'd you come up with that bit of Vietnam era arcania?"
She shook her head, "No, we're not delving into that now with Dottie crying in the bathroom. The question is what are you going to do about that?"
"Me? All I did was refuse to go along. I'm sick of being manipulated by images, sick of people worshipping them as the ultimate truth when it's actually harder to get at the truth in pictures then words. I'm not standing for it anymore."
Margret shook her head sadly. "So you thought you'd unveil your latest bonehead manifesto for my best friend, who's just been through a terrible time with another bonehead. We're just so lucky you decided to favor us, Harry, at Christmas. But now she's crying in our bathroom, which really shouldn't surprise me since I've seen the effect of your revelations before. But what are you going to do now? Maybe you'd like to go in there with a knife and put her out of her misery."
"Christ, Margie. I just can't believe even Dottie would expect anyone to swallow those pictures after what Dan put her through. I didn't insult her. I just tried to break through the soap bubble world she's determined to pass off as reality. I just tried to help."
She let out a snort. "Yeah, you helped her like Saddam helped the Kurds. The world needs to be protected from your help, dear. I ask again, what are you going to do now?"
That question, that demand had been placed on him many times. You've screwed up again, Harry, he'd been told. You've mouthed the impolitic aloud and broken what can't be fixed. What now?
He'd never known, never been any good at cleaning up the messy aftermath. He'd simply become accustomed to paying the price for failing to go along. The money he hadn't made, the women he hadn't got, or kept; friendships destroyed. The down payment had been paid twenty-five years ago, before the usurious final price was even dreamt of by spendthrift adolescence.
A Friday afternoon in Greg Cates basement, Jimmy Smith playing host, rolling a huge doobie of pure Colombian laced with angel dust. They'd skipped school, pooling their money and sneaking Jimmy's mom's car into the city to score the good stuff. Greg was setting out some munchies for later when the basement door opened and his father clomped down the stairs.
"What's he doing home?" Greg hissed, shoving dope and candy and chips under the work bench.
"Hi boys, home from school early, eh?" Cates senior tousled his son's hair. "Learn anything good today?"
Greg and Jimmy were content to greet that hopeless dad-speak with scornful silence, but Harry, no, Harry couldn't leave it alone.
"I sure did, Mister Cates. Today I learned to kill without emotion and I can't wait to take the test."
Poor guy. Poor, pitiful dad. He'd simply stood there a few moments as though dazed, staring down at Harry before turning on his heel without a word and climbing those stairs up, out of the lions' den. Harry still wondered if he'd ever again asked anyone about school, or even tousled his son's hair. He'd never spoken to Harry again, and had kept his son away from him.
That too-easily crossed border never again appeared on his map. There was no re-entry into the safe, pleasant land of decorous blandishment, no going along to get along. There had been only the power to shatter illusions and the cost, toted up in lost friendships and locked doors.
"Dottie?" He addressed the bathroom door with as much phlegm-like pathos as he could dredge up. "Listen... I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it. I don't know why I did it. I guess the holidays just get me crazy. Anyway... I'm really sorry. C'mon out, would you? We want to see your pictures."
It didn't hurt much. Middle age opened doors as well as closed them, made the once unthinkable possible. Margie would be happy and that was worth something, maybe everything. He needed her in his corner because he wasn't going to change, needed someone who couldn't be driven away. One person to cling to, and he could embrace his role as the gnawing worm inside the shiny apple, a warty toad swimming defiantly in the holiday punch bowl—forever.
This was a test of the rest of his life, he told himself. He'd defeat each day's illusion like a cancer, a tumor waxing and waning according to his strength, his refusal to be duped, or his weary acquiescence to the interminable grinding of a planet of convenient images. Today's battle called for discretion, for living to fight another day, but tomorrow....
"Did I show you the pictures of our Florida Keys trip last year?"
Dottie, with a death grip on the sofa arm, leaned forward to reveal the triumph of western civilization.
"Check these out."
Margret, in the chair opposite, face arranged for maximum empathy, looked across the table. "Have we seen their Florida pics?"
Harry, on the sofa next to Dottie, wearing a perfect smile of contrition, glanced at two adults and two children grinning at the world; a fraud, with palm trees.
"Okay," he nodded. "Fire away."
