Badger Lawrence

Maisie had been told, twice, not to go through the little wooden gate.

Papa Whit was clear about it. "The path is fine. The creek is fine, and so is the clearing. But you stay out of Lawrence's garden unless Lawrence is standing right there." Maisie nodded both times, mostly because nodding seemed to end the conversation faster. Archie nodded too, though he'd spent the whole lecture trying to balance an acorn on his nose, so there was no telling how much of it had actually landed.

Now here they were, standing in front of that very gate.

Archie pushed his nose between the slats. "Who's Lawrence?"

"Badger Lawrence."

"Why's he bad?"

Maisie gave him a flat look. "He's not bad. He's a badger."

"Oh." Archie considered this for a moment, unconvinced. "Is he nice, though?"

"I don't know."

"Have you even met him?"

"No."

"Then why are we here?"

Maisie didn't have a good answer for that, so she didn't give one.

Beyond the fence sprawled the biggest garden either of them had ever seen — rows of green climbing wooden stakes, yellow flowers spilling over a low stone border, vines twisting up little arches made from bent branches. A shed with a crooked roof sat near the back, three rain barrels lined up beside it like patient old dogs.

That was when Archie spotted the strawberries.

Bright red, dozens of them, growing right along the inside of the fence. One especially fat berry hung so close to the gate that his paw found its way between the slats before he'd really decided to move it.

Maisie grabbed his wrist. "Don't."

"I wasn't doing anything."

"You were reaching."

"I was checking." He tipped his head, all innocence. "How close it was."

"That still counts as going in."

"My paw isn't a fox, technically."

Maisie was midway through deciding whether that argument deserved a response when something rustled among the cabbages. Both kits went still. A leaf shivered, then another, and a voice — low, and not at all pleased — boomed out from somewhere inside the rows.

"Get out of there!"

A rabbit shot out from under a cabbage leaf so fast it nearly knocked Archie off his feet, squeezed through a gap in the fence, and was gone into the trees before either of them could blink. A heartbeat later, a badger came stomping after it, wearing a straw hat with one side bent lower than the other, both paws caked in dirt, a little wooden shovel tucked under one arm.

He watched the rabbit disappear with the weary look of someone who'd chased that particular rabbit before.

"Little cabbage thief," he muttered, and only then noticed the two fox kits frozen at his gate.

His eyes went straight to Archie's paw, still hovering an inch from the fence.

"Whatever you're reaching for — don't."

Archie snapped both paws behind his back like he'd been burned.

"I wasn't reaching."

The badger glanced pointedly at the strawberry hanging directly beside him.

Maisie elbowed her brother and stepped in. "We were just walking."

"Were you." It wasn't really a question.

"Yes."

"And your walk happened to stop at my strawberries."

"They're really big ones," Archie offered, as if that explained everything.

The badger let out a long breath through his nose, the kind that suggested he'd made peace with a great many things in his life and fox kits were simply one more of them. Then, to Maisie's surprise, he reached over and unlatched the gate.

"Well? Coming in, or are you two planning to wear a hole through my fence with your noses?"

Maisie hesitated. "Papa said we're not allowed unless Lawrence is here."

The badger looked down at himself, at the mud on his paws and the shovel under his arm, as if checking.

"I appear to be here."

That settled it. Maisie stepped through first; Archie followed close enough that his tail kept brushing her leg.

"Are you Lawrence?" he asked.

"Who's asking?"

"Archie."

"And I'm Maisie," she added quickly.

The badger studied them both for a long moment, like a puzzle he already half suspected the answer to.

"Whit kits."

It wasn't a question either, and Maisie nodded anyway.

He groaned, low in his throat. "Should've known."

"Known what?" Maisie asked, ears pricking.

"That your father was a menace at your age." He turned and started walking into the garden without waiting to see if they'd follow. "Come on, then."

They followed.

The garden felt even bigger once they were inside it — beans climbing poles twice Maisie's height, pumpkins sprawled fat and heavy beneath broad leaves, carrots marching off in tidy rows toward the shed. Little hand-lettered signs marked almost everything: CARROTS. BEANS. TURNIPS.

One sign, planted at a slight angle, read: ARCHIE, DON'T TOUCH.

Archie stopped dead.

"Maisie. How did he know?"

She looked, then looked at Lawrence, who was suddenly very interested in something on the far side of the row and whose bundle of spare signposts was one shorter than it had been a minute ago.

He'd written it on the spot.

"You tricked me," Archie said, delighted and betrayed in equal measure.

"Worked, though."

"You don't even know me!"

"I know a Whit when I see one."

Maisie caught up to him. "What does that mean? What's wrong with Whits?"

Lawrence made a sound that might have been a laugh trying very hard not to be one, and admitted, half under his breath, that her father had once decided the pumpkin patch needed a shortcut.

"What was wrong with that?"

"The shortcut went through the pumpkins."

"How many?" Archie asked, already grinning.

"Three."

Archie burst out laughing so hard he had to sit down in the dirt. Maisie tried to hold it in and mostly failed.

"Did he get in trouble?"

"Oh, he did."

"With you?"

Lawrence shook his head slowly, savoring it. "With his mother."

Archie's laughter cut off instantly.

"Oh."

"Exactly," said Lawrence, and Maisie decided right then that this was a story she would be bringing up for the rest of her life.

They wandered on toward the strawberry beds, Archie slowing his steps the closer they got, until Lawrence finally sighed and crouched down beside the plants himself. He lifted a cluster of leaves, revealing a handful of berries dark red and still warm from the sun, and held one out.

Archie eyed it suspiciously. "What is it?"

"A turnip."

"That's not a turnip."

"Then I suppose you already know what to do with it."

Archie bit into it before Lawrence had finished the sentence. His eyes went wide. He chewed fast, swallowed, and looked up with the expression of someone who had just discovered a great truth about the world.

"Can I live here?"

"No."

"What if I help?"

"No."

"What if I help a lot?"

"Still no."

Maisie got a strawberry too, and it really was sweeter than anything she'd ever found near the creek. "These are really good," she admitted.

"That tends to happen," Lawrence said, "when fox kits stay out of the patch."

"Papa only stepped on three pumpkins," Maisie offered, a little defensively.

"Three that I saw."

She decided, on reflection, that Mama probably didn't need the full story either.

When Lawrence stood and headed for the carrot rows, Maisie trailed after him. "Can we help?"

"Absolutely not."

"Why not?"

"Because the last time I let a Whit help in this garden, I lost three pumpkins."

Archie held up both paws. "I haven't stepped on anything."

"You've been here five minutes."

"That's still pretty good, though."

Lawrence rubbed a muddy paw down his face and pointed at a basket by the carrot patch. "Fine. Pull weeds. Not carrots, not beans, not anything with a sign. If you're not sure — leave it."

That turned out to be the hard part. Kneeling in the row, Maisie found carrots, and small green things growing between the carrots, and other small green things growing beside those, and no obvious way to tell one from the other. She and Archie crouched there so long without moving that Lawrence eventually noticed and doubled back.

"You two planning on starting sometime today?"

"Which ones are the weeds?" Maisie asked.

He didn't tease her for it. He knelt down instead and showed her — this one, chickweed, grab it low near the roots, don't just yank the leaves off the top. Her first attempt snapped in half. Her second came up clean, root and all, and Lawrence gave a small nod that felt like more praise than it probably was.

Archie's first attempt came up clean too — except it wasn't a weed. It was a carrot, small and orange and entirely, unmistakably a carrot.

He held it up like evidence.

"Is this chickweed?"

"No."

"Can I put it back?"

"No."

"Can we glue it?"

Lawrence just looked at him.

"Can I eat it?"

"That," said Lawrence, taking it from him, "we can work with."

Maisie laughed so hard she had to sit down in the dirt for the second time that afternoon.

Archie's weeding career did not improve from there. He pulled a second carrot. He stepped on a bean plant reaching for a stick. He tried, with real conviction, to argue that a beetle sitting in the row technically counted as a weed because it was "in the way." Eventually Lawrence pointed him toward a pile of fallen branches near the shed instead.

"New job. Pick up sticks."

"I'm good at weeding."

"You're good at pulling things out of the ground. There's a difference."

Archie thought about that longer than the compliment probably deserved, then wandered off toward the sticks, apparently satisfied. A few minutes later he came sprinting back waving a branch nearly twice his own length overhead.

"LAWRENCE. LOOK."

Lawrence surveyed it with the enthusiasm of a badger who had seen roughly four thousand sticks in his lifetime.

"Barely," he said, but Maisie noticed he was almost smiling.

By late afternoon her paws were black with dirt and Archie had somehow acquired a flower tucked behind one ear that neither of them could account for. Lawrence straightened up, pressed a paw to his back, and declared that would do for the day.

Archie dropped his last stick immediately. "Do we get more strawberries?"

Lawrence gave him a long, weary look.

"Worth asking," Archie said, unbothered.

Lawrence disappeared into the shed and came back not with another shovel but a small woven basket, heaped with strawberries, two carrots, a cucumber, and a handful of tomatoes still warm from the sun. He handed it to Maisie.

"For your mother." Then, gruffer: "And tell your father he still owes me three pumpkins."

"I will," Maisie said, grinning.

Archie tugged at the hem of Lawrence's shirt. "Can we come back tomorrow?"

"You pulled up two of my carrots."

"...Yes."

"You stepped on my beans."

"Also yes."

"You argued with me about a beetle."

"It looked suspicious."

Lawrence stared down at him for a long moment. Then he turned toward the shed, muttering that he still had sticks lying around, if anyone happened to be free tomorrow.

Archie's whole face lit up. "So that's a yes?"

"I made an observation."

"That's Lawrence for yes," Archie told Maisie confidently, as they slipped back out through the gate.

"It is not," Lawrence called after them, not turning around.

"Bye, Lawrence!" Maisie shouted.

He lifted one paw without looking back. "Stay out of the pumpkins!"

They walked home slowly, Archie cradling the basket in both paws like something precious. Halfway there, he looked up at her.

"Do you think Papa really stepped on three pumpkins?"

"Probably."

He turned that over for a while, clearly pleased with himself. "I've never stepped on a pumpkin."

Maisie glanced down at the basket, then back toward the garden behind them.

She decided not to bring up the carrots.