Posted by A Passerby at the Courthouse
by RJHoffman
The distraught boy sits on his mother’s lap wailing. His little frame shaking, his shoulders and head stooped forward in resignation.
His voice quivers on the air like a plaintive bird. “I don’t wanna go. Oh ho ho ho. I don’t want to go.”
His mother tries to explain why he can’t see his daddy anymore. “He was bad and had to go away.”
“But why can’t he play with me?
“Because he can’t.”
“But why?”
“Shhh Shhh” his mother purrs. “We’re going to be just fine. We can go live with grandma and grandpa.”
“But I want to see Daddy wah. Wah!”
The mother holds her son close as they sit on the bench outside the courthouse. A passerby, a man, witnesses them and it gnaws at him. He is fifty two years old. Never had children because he knew he didn’t have the temperament for it. He was a loner who longed for the company of family but knew it was impossible given his impulses that would inevitably get away from him.
He is looking down when he hears a woman utter mockingly “wah, wah!” The passerby looks up to meet the face of a fifty year old woman in a dollar store Mickey Mouse shirt and with her hair dyed red and blue. “Wah, wah” she utters again in her contemptuous voice and with a shitty looking face to match. The passerby gives her a hard glance then looks away.
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