Badger Games Read Free

Certainly not up in this mountain village, where the Daliljajs had been farming for generations.
    The cop didn’t even have a real uniform, just some foolish camo outfit. Was he even an officer? What was his rank? Something about the oaf’s grinning face made the farmer hesitate.
    â€œWhat is the problem?” he said, careful not to address the policeman with disrespect but also not to honor him with a title like sergeant or lieutenant, which might not properly apply.
    â€œThe problem is that it’s parked in the road,” the cop said. He looked about the compound in a way that suggested he was taking inventory. He raised an eyebrow at the figure of Daliljaj’s daughter,Fedima. Like a good Muslim woman, she immediately vanished into Franko’s house, leaving behind the coffeepot sitting on the bench next to Franko. A moment later she exited from the other door and presumably went to the farmhouse, via a route shielded from the eyes of the men in the yard.
    â€œWho are you?” the cop said to Franko, who stood up and approached the gate.
    Franko was cautious. He’d heard about this fellow from Captain Dedorica, the police chief in Tsamet. He was called Bazok, and he was the informal leader of a handful of such men, sent down from Belgrade to “assist” the local police chief. Captain Dedorica’s information had been sketchy. Franko had meant to press Dedorica about it, but he’d forgotten.
    â€œI live here,” he said.
    Bazok nodded. “Oh yeah,” he said. “You the one they call Franko? I want to talk to you.” He turned to Daliljaj. “Move the tractor. You can’t leave it on the road.”
    â€œNobody ever complained before,” Daliljaj said. “There is no traffic—it’s not in the way.”
    â€œMove the fucking tractor,
balija,
” Bazok snarled, the smile icy now. When Daliljaj went off, he turned to Franko and said, “Where’s your place?”
    Franko shrugged and led him back through the gate and across the barnyard. He stopped and pointed to the old stone cottage with a new metal roof. Suddenly seeing it through a stranger’s eyes, Franko thought it didn’t look like much—a miserable hovel. The stone had been laid in a style that he had known at home as “pudding stone”; that is, a crude frame of wood was erected, and stones were simply dropped into a thick pudding of cheap, sandy mortar. These old walls had a tendency to fall down after fifty or sixty years, but someone had kept this one repaired. Of course, if it had been a bull pen that would account for the extra-thick walls.
    Bazok gestured for Franko to go ahead and took a step toward the house himself, but stopped when Franko did not move.
    â€œWe can talk here,” Franko said. He wasn’t sure how receptive he should be to this fellow. Was he actually a cop, or some kind of unwarranted deputy? In Montana a man didn’t just walk onto another man’s land in the way that Bazok had, unless he was armed and visibly authorized with a badge and a uniform, to say nothing of an official, legal paper. This guy looked to be about twenty-two or twenty-three, big and beefy but with a few complexion problems still and not too handy with a razor. Even so, one was not in Montana. It wouldn’t hurt to play along, tentatively.
    Bazok looked at him, sizing him up. Franko was not a big man, not within six inches of his own height or fifty pounds of his weight, but a sturdily built man in his late thirties. Like most of the men in these villages, he had black hair, dark eyes, a thick black mustache. Bazok was not impressed.
    â€œCome,” Bazok said. “I have to discuss private things.”
    Franko realized then that Bazok was not a Serb. He spoke the language all right, but there was something unnatural about his usage, as if he was not quite comfortable with it. It occurred to him that the man was an American. In