Badger from Barnswallow by Charlie Parr

It was late in the summer when the corn was fully grown, we’d gone for a swim in the pond on my uncle Henry’s farm, and when we got home we saw a badger in the yard, running flat out for a hole beneath the shed. It disappeared into its den underneath the floor and it was gone and Dad just said goddamn. Badger can’t stay he’ll kill you just like that, mean as any grizzly, sneaky as any cat. And he went and got his gun from the closet in the hall and pulled a 6-pack from the fridge and walked on out the door. While Mom made us brush our teeth and get ourselves to bed, it’s late and he’ll be awhile was all that she would say and I saw him in the twilight his .410 across his lap, sitting in a lawn chair, staring at the shed. A fallen soldier from the 6-pack laying at his feet and sometime in the night a gunshot woke me from my sleep. It was late in the summer when the corn was fully grown, we’d gone for a swim in the pond on my uncle Henry’s farm.

• Folk
• Duluth