Arthur’s Bad Day by Eli Moyse

My dad bought a new family car off Craigslist when the previous one finally gave up. When I was about 10 I went with him to pick up a Honda Odyssey from a tune up shop attached to an all-you-can-eat chinese buffet. A man met us around the back of the garage and told a strange story we weren’t supposed to believe that explained why he didn’t have the car’s title. My dad smiled and said it was ok, that he could figure it out with the state, but that the situation merited some kind of discount. They haggled, eventually landing on $1,250. My dad handed it over in cash, and the man took out a counterfeit checking marker and drew a little line on every bill, waiting for each to turn black. Once he was satisfied he handed over the keys.
The Honda had 175,000 miles, but more importantly, there was a built-in DVD player and T.V. that popped down from the ceiling. We didn’t have a DVD player in our house, but my mom found a bulk sale of kids DVDs at the church picnic, an entire Sterilite bin full for three dollars, and she dumped them in the center console. One of the DVDs had the first five episodes of Arthur which my mom always insisted on putting on since it was produced by PBS. The episode I remember the most was Arthur’s Bad Day. Near the end, Arthur’s sitting at the dinner table with his parents and drops his knife. His mom says “dropped a knife, looks like we’re going to have a male visitor.” Then there’s a knock at the door, lightning strikes, and it’s Buster Baxter asking for help with his math homework.
I replayed sequences from the Honda Odyssey T.V. over and over again in my head. I especially did this when I was on fire watch, in those quiet hours between 2:30 and 3:30 AM when I was assigned to hold up my M4 and peek out of my sleeping bag, looking around for enemies who were coming to attack my platoon’s patrol base.
One night I was assigned to the M240B machine gun and I got white chicken chunks for the third night in a row. The only upside was that the meal came with peanut M&Ms for dessert. Printed in little letters in the top corner where I tore them open was “we thank you for your service.” I stared at the way each letter was stamped on with a thousand discernable dots of ink. Each meal came with an individually packaged plastic fork and knife. There was no need for the knife because nothing was near-sliceable consistency, but I took it out most nights anyway. That night while I was trying to break open the plastic packaging I accidentally fumbled and the knife fell out of my hands and onto the dirt.
It wasn’t so much a male visitor as a boy. He shot an AK 47 at the 6 o’clock of the patrol base around 4:15 without aiming down his sights. I measured the age of our enemies by what percentage of their height their gun matched if it was stacked vertically next to them. For this boy I thought the gun would probably match about 70% of his height, which is to say that he was about five feet tall. Our PL called for a litter team who picked him up and moved him about 50 meters off in our designated KIA area, crossing his arms and legs.
I still think about that Arthur episode sometimes. I’ll sit in my basement next to my shadow box hanging alone on the white wall and I’ll pick up and drop my multitool knife over and over again, hoping that it might bring any sort of visitor.