Project Purple

17 - The Badger

Alison simply couldn't uncheck his desperation: "How do we drop the kids off at the pool without toilet paper?"

They had just completed a long-winded training lecture on colonial hygiene (the outcome being that there is basically none), and his desperation

"You'll have a supply of leaves right by the hole," consoled the Goatwench,"if you plan accordingly."

"Leaves?" Alison mouthed, dumbfounded with the primitive restriction.

Alison Meath was Jewish, but he never embraced Judaism-certainly not like the Hassids that jaywalked like crazy across his home turf of Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, with their long beards and black coats. Alison seemed to hold nothing but distain for those men; they were nothing but close-minded bigots that roamed his pleasant, secular city like divine prophets.

"I'd rather be a Goatwench any day than a licensed pauper,' he moaned back in May, when they learned of their assigned roles, "A Badger? - I've got the suckiest job in the colony, and tell me-What's fair about that?"

The Badger knew the project had been rigged, right from the beginning.

He was a homosexual, though he was good at concealing his effeminate ways. He could butch up anytime; for an audition, for a straight night out in Hollywood with the boys, or just for an afternoon with the parents; no one would be the wiser.

But he was becoming increasingly concerned; his girlfriend side was making several spontaneous appearances, which puzzled him, because he didn't know why. When he was sharing a joke, or when he was brushing back his hair, or when he touched someone's arm-very slight mannerisms, hardly noticeable, but indiscreet nonetheless in the harsh colonial world he had volunteered to role-play within.

"It's not like I checked any box that said 'faggot' on the application form," he confessed to his diary cam one night in late July.

The Badger had always been gay, and he had always held a keen fascination for older boys-for as long as he could recall. And his slow gravitation toward the Preacher came from a deep-seated realization that Robert was merely a latent and, with gentle prompting, would, in due time, realize the inherent stirrings within, and then step out of that suffocating closet in dignified fanfare.

He had seen it so many times before, and knew, as those in the know know-He had read the Preacher's dormant inclinations from the very outset.

It was the music that woke him-the Governor's recorder, playing the same merry tune from their celebration a few evenings back.

Then the female voice: "God ye good morrow, faire Pilgrims." It was prerecorded, intonation-less, as if announcing the need to notify airport staff of unattended baggage.

"God ye good morrow, faire Pilgrims."

He tramped outside with the others, and then a new voice-that of the Goatwench-rang from the surrounding trees: "I'll let you sleep with me, Bob... How's that for moral values?"

The Goatwench had stopped in front of him, and he sidled to her.

"What's this now? -The Hokey Pokey with you and Bob?"

It was a twenty-second tape loop of those two sentences-a proposition that could well damn her-yet with the jolly recorder giving her words a melodious lunacy.

The familiar blue screen waited for them by the Lingenberry tree, but there was no audio, only a grainy video of two men under the Magnolia tree-Alison and Robert, locked into an embrace of passion.

He tried to make light of what they were all watching, shouldering the Goatwench, "We're both failures as servants ... We'll have to trade up with somebody."

There were no takers, and the Bader glanced at the Preacher, who squinted at the video, as if unable to grasp its significance.

The Badger understood, all right; the Preacher, a free man, one of the Good Old Boys, would go unscathed.

The servants, however-the expendibles-were about to be bludgeoned.

***

Robert's voiced puffed over him, "God needs homosexuals."

Alison, the beleaguered Badger, squatted on the floor of the Governor's hut, next to the stove.

"But we are in the wilderness!" he wailed in his defense, "We're reliving the story of Exodus!"

At that time, on the grubby floor of the hut, he felt more Jewish than at any time in his life. The exclamation, however, held little association with the uncompromising charges before him.

'God needs homosexuals, too, so we can pray for you," Robert said softly with the compassion of a man who showed genuine concern, "Once you accept Jesus Christ into your heart, your spirit will lift upwards, you will reject sin."

"I wasn't kissing myself out there, you know."

But his words made no impact on the Preacher, who swayed over him in righteous authority.

Then the Badger cried.

A woman's voice now, the Matron: "You will come out of the dark cave you are walking through now, and you will reject Satan."

The Goatwench, observing it all by the door, suddenly erupted into a rage, picking up the steel bucket and swinging it furiously at the nearest camera, which had been mounted carefully into one of the thick kitchen struts ... And Alison looked up to see the lens, designed to catch the cook room activities, responding with a large spider crack-the inevitable result of frangible technology meeting robust milk bucket.

After several more retributive swings of the bucket, the Goatwench shattered the lens piece-the green diode in camera #19 fading to terminal black.

His fellow servant, blistering at the injustice of it all, dropped the bucket and walked silently out of the colony-completely out of the colony.

Everyone turned and watched the plucky, doomed servant disappear into the towering trees.

No one called out to her, and no one tried to stop her.

***

Alison Meath had a sister, who watched the whole scene, courtesy of an anonymous sender-her poor, troubled brother, blubbering there on the floor, in some ugly mess once more.

Her husband, crouched over her shoulder, frowned, "Queenie's at it again, huh?"

His brother-in-law's lifestyle was one of depravity, and when the question came on the screen: Will you be his angel? -He sneered, oblivious to the tiny camera above her computer screen.

Alison's sister sighed, dragging the file from her Dropbox folder into her trash-just like she did with the others. Little brother would stew in the broth of his own creation.

Then the solicitations stopped.

The Badger would receive no angel.