The March Men

Sometimes Bobby thought that his father was the saddest man he had ever met.

"Are you boys ready?" Sounds of kitchen noises, of home, clinked and rattled their way around the other room as Mom made her final rounds. Jack put his arm softly onto Bobby’s shoulders and sighed.

"Come on, son. What do you say we go and get some chow, huh?" And with that, Bobby and his father walked together towards the dining room as moths slapped against the dim, orange hall lamp and the boy knew happiness as the soft evening light made the yellowed wallpaper shimmer like pleated gold.

* * *

The week came and went. Nobody talked much of anything. Jimmy never mentioned the goblin again. Tap. Jimmy wasn’t even at school much, it seemed. When he was, he seemed hardly there anyway. Like he was walking in his sleep. Tap. Bobby watched Jimmy from across the cafeteria, as the husk that once seemed a boy stared at the cool plastic table and the tray of food that had long since gone cold. An older boy walked by and suddenly lunged at Jimmy with his fist, like he was going to hit him. Jimmy didn’t flinch. Tap. He didn’t even look up. The other boy laughed and moved on, catching up with his three friends.

The sound finally caught Bobby’s ear. He looked down from Jimmy’s hollow face to his hand. He loosely held his plastic fork. It was very still. Suddenly, Jimmy flicked it forward, where the tip hit the table. Tap. Maybe that’s why nobody wanted to sit next to him. Funny that it didn’t bother Jimmy, that stupid tapping. He didn’t even seem to notice it. Bobby turned back to his lukewarm peas and stirred them with his fork. Tap.

"There’s a dead dog out near the railroad tracks."

"Liar."

"Shut up, dork. Anyway, my brother said he saw it yesterday."

"Did not."

"Yes he did. He told me he poked a stick into it and flies came out. He said it was all swelled up and its eyes were white and runny."

It took a moment for Bobby to hear the conversation from the table behind him. He felt like Jimmy’s stupid tapping was putting him to sleep. He turned around and saw Tommy flicking peas at the kid who didn’t speak any English and who was by himself at the table next to him. Another pea flew, much to the delight of Tommy’s friends. The kid who couldn’t speak any English (Bobby couldn’t remember his name but he seemed to dress funny and smell oddly of spices) looked on the verge of tears (he thought his name might have started with a J), but Bobby looked back at Tommy, remembering the disappointment of last year’s discovery.

"Did it look like the cat?" Bobby ventured.

"What?" Tommy replied, keeping his attention on the foreign kid. Apparently, something hit its mark as the other kids began to laugh hysterically and Tommy’s eyes shined with glee as the J kid jumped up and ran from the room, spilling milk on the floor.

"Last year, you told me and Danny that you found a dead cat run over by the side of the road by your house. And about the bird."

One of the other kids whom Bobby didn’t know turned to Tommy.

"What about the bird?"

Bobby held his gaze on Tommy as the door to the cafeteria slammed shut and Tommy laughed.

"Tommy said the bird was alive," Bobby explained.

Tommy tuned his eyes toward Bobby.

"It was, shit for brains," Tommy liked saying things that his father said, or that he heard on television. "The cat must have caught it right before it got hit."

"But we went there and there was no cat," said Bobby.