Free Lunch-Box Dream by Tony Abbott

bloody battle.
    Glancing behind him, Bobby saw no one watching. He returned the slug to the cloth bag and with his hands low on the table slipped it into his jeans pocket. It was only a dollar. Less. Sixty-five cents. No one would know.
    His chest pattered as he moved away from the table.
    â€œBobby!”
    He spun around. His grandmother was at the door. “Bobby. Come. Ve’re leaving now.”
    Soon they were outside, heading for the car.
    Bobby walked behind the rest of them. He slid the bag from his pocket, opened it, and dropped the slug on the grass near the pavement, and the bag a few feet away.
    â€œHey, look at this. Ricky. Look at this.” He remembered they were the same words his brother had used on the battlefield. When he saw Ricky turn, he bent down and picked up the shiny bullet.
    Ricky came over and looked in his hand. “What?” He put his fingers in his pocket to feel the slug he had found on the hill.
    â€œThere was a table of them right there in the store,” Bobby said, rolling the bullet back and forth across his palm. “Didn’t you see them in there? They look pretty real, don’t they. But they’re not. I guess you found one that somebody lost or dropped. See, here’s the bag,” he said, bending down to retrieve it. “It’s just a souvenir.”
    Looking at Bobby’s palm as if hypnotized by what he saw there, Ricky pushed his glasses up, but his head was lowered, and they slid down again. He wasn’t getting it. “No…” he said. He pulled out his dirty bullet and compared it with the one in Bobby’s hand.
    They were the same.
    â€œYeah. It’s a souvenir,” said Bobby, looking at the two slugs. “Wash yours off, it’ll be shiny, too. Sixty-five cents. Not worth anything.” He was breathless now.
    Then, almost softly, Ricky said, “You little jerk.”
    â€œWhat?” asked Bobby, trying on a little smile as if he hadn’t understood the meaning of his brother’s words. “What do you mean?”
    â€œYou little jerk,” Ricky said again as softly. His face was bunching up, his glasses slipping slowly down the bridge of his nose. Even in the abundant sunshine of the parking lot he looked pale, more so because of the bright reflections from the cars all around him. “You thief!” he said loudly now, his face still looking down at the hand that held his dirty bullet, his glasses nearly off the end of his nose. “You little thief—”
    Then his hand fisted around his bullet.
    Bobby stepped back. “What? You want to fight? You want to fight, huh, Coke-bottle glasses? Bottle glasses! Yeah?” He reached into his pocket, slid out the stick knife, and wiggled it in front of Ricky. “Shut up! Shut up! Jerk! It’s fake! It’s damn junk. Your stupid Civil War. Blindy—”
    He didn’t hear the sound of the twisting gravel behind him, but his mother was suddenly there, wheeling his shoulders around and smacking him sharply across his open face. “Give me that! Give me that!”
    Bobby’s cheek stung as if it were scraped with a file. He pulled the knife away from her, as Ricky had pulled the bullet away from him. “Give me that!” she screamed. Bobby threw the stolen bullet and its bag angrily at the ground and ran off into the trees beyond the parking lot.
    â€œBobby! Bobby!” his mother called, but he didn’t stop.
    â€œI hate you all!” he shouted over his shoulder. He felt like a trapped animal and ran as if his cage door had suddenly swung open. When he got to the trees, he slowed and turned. He saw his mother’s hand bunched around something as she helped Grandma into the car. Her face was tight, spitting mad. Was she crying? Were they both crying? Ricky was staring at the ground nearby, looking lost. Was he crying, too? Bobby’s chest stung from shoulder to shoulder, as if poisoned. It was all