Community Service

Community Service

Dusty Miller

This Smashwords edition copyright 2014
Dusty Miller and Long Cool One Books

Design: J. Thornton

ISBN 978-1-927957-15-8

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The following is a work of fiction. Any
resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or
events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters
and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. The
author’s moral rights to the proceeds of this work have been
asserted.

Table of Contents

Order in the Court

Piddling Along in
Traffic

The Voice Beside Her
Ear

About the Author

Community Service

Dusty Miller

Act One

Order in the
Court

“
Order in the court, order
in the court.”

The noise fell to a dull
hum.

“
All right. Whatcha got
for me, Rick?”

Richard Mathers, the court clerk, in
his usual stentorian tone, read off the name, the offence, the date
and the time. He read the docket number. He looked out inquiringly,
searching the faces and looking over the heads of the
mob.

A man was there at the back of the
crowd, the cheap seats in the bleachers as she thought of them
sometimes, and he approached the low, wooden gate leading to the
inner sanctum. He stood at the brink, as it were. Unusually for the
venue, he was wearing a suit and tie, charcoal jacket with lighter
pants, and dark brown shoes. The tie was a bright sunshine yellow
and there were small grey diamonds patterned on it. Kind of cute.
He was just the right age for her. Her innards squirmed on the
thought, just as they always did. Those thoughts were coming less
frequently these days, but then she knew she was kind of burned-out
lately and didn’t much care who knew it.

“
Yeah. That’s
me.”

“
Mister Albert
Wilson?”

“
Yup, all present and
accounted-for.”

She suppressed a smile.

“
Are you represented by an
attorney today, Mister Wilson?”

Judge Marion Carter examined the
defendant.

“
No, Your
Honour.’

He seemed well-formed and not
unintelligent. He was a man in his mid-forties.

There had been some doubt
about his attendance to court. At his last appearance he’d been a
half an hour late, as she recalled. All in a day’s work, and the
fact he
had
showed up, breathless and dressed for some sort of seasonal
construction job, had helped at the time. He seemed to have a
pretty good head on his shoulders, she thought. Not his fault the
bus was late, right? She let him go again on his own recognizance
and a promise to appear, which he had just now honoured.

It was one of the usual wretched
things, a pretty good guy in a spot of trouble. These were the
cases she disliked most.

“
You are charged with
being a public nuisance, possession of a small amount of marijuana,
being intoxicated in a public place, making lewd and lascivious
remarks for the purposes of soliciting sex, and breaches of terms
of bail. Do you understand these charges, sir?”

“
Yep.” He looked around
and possibly rolled his eyes to his peers, but it was all small
stuff and he knew that much.

A small titter ran through the
courtroom.

The gentleman turned back and stood up
a little straighter, now all serious of face.

The public prosecutor, Mr. James
Wilfried, a thirtyish man of round, black-framed spectacles and
particularly un-humorous personality, appeared to be all set to
go.

“
The defendant was found
to be drunk and disorderly by Constables Reid and Sigmundt, on
Major Street, at approximately eleven-oh-five, p.m. On the night in
question. At the time of the incident, he was expected to be in his
residence as of ten p.m. and to abstain from drinking or other
forms of intoxication. This especially applies in public places.
However, if officers had knocked on his door to verify his
whereabouts, and detected or had probable cause to suspect the
presence of drugs or alcohol, it would still be an
offence.”

“
Mister
Wilson.”

“
One would have thought a
little evidence might have been introduced. I would have liked to
confront my accusers.”

“
So what happened, Mister
Wilson?”

“
As I explained at the
time, I was out of work. My landlord changed the locks and piled
all my stuff up on the street. I was trying to salvage something
from the mess, if it please the court, and I really had nowhere
else to go.”

“
Had you been
drinking?”

“
I’ll take the fifth on
that one, Your Honour—in the absence of my accusers.” Why would he
ever provide them evidence when they didn’t have any?

She nodded. Not stupid, which bore out
her previous impressions. He also wasn’t a serious criminal type.
This wasn’t a way of life for him, based on his record, which was
minimal. Some other previous small infraction. That part was
completely boring and so she didn’t dwell on it.

“
What about these lewd and
lascivious remarks?”

“
Ma’am?”

“
What did you say, and to
whom did you say it?” She spoke slowly, enunciating carefully, but
there was no question of his hearing ability.

He had the grace to blush a
little.

“
One of the bitches was
undercover, Your Honour.” The impression given was that he was
admitting that he might have said a few things, without caring to
specify further.

“
And yet you couldn’t pay
the rent.”

“
I had the money in my
pocket, Your Honour. Two days late, but I had it.”

There were giggles and chuckles from
the assembled, those awaiting their own trial, loved ones, lawyers,
stragglers, the odd homeless guy in for the roof over their heads
and some entertainment, and others unidentifiable.

Wilfried spoke up.

“
I believe he is referring
to Constable Sigmundt, Your Honour, a decorated officer, who was
admittedly dressed as a lady of, er, ill repute…she was acting in
her role as bait, in a roving sting operation conducted
periodically by our local force.”

Marion bit her lip, listening
carefully to tone and facts.

“
The constables are in
Courtroom Four speaking on another matter, and are presently
unavailable, Your Honour. But if the defendant wishes, we can have
him bound over until another time. Your Honour, it would be
incumbent upon the defendant, under circumstances such as he
describes, to notify the
police
and then to attend to the approved
homeless shelter,
as
directed by police or court services.”

“
Which I did!” Mister
Wilson had a point, but the prosecutor seemed adamant. “Motion to
dismiss, Your Honour.”

“
That sort of thing has to
be properly written and presented, Mister Wilson.” God, even
Wilfried was getting into the act, thought Marion.

Unfortunately, Wilson hadn’t followed
established procedures. On the other hand, it was only
eleven-oh-five. Wilson couldn’t produce an eviction notice, the
only evidence Wilfried was likely to accept.

She waggled her head, reading the
report again.

Wilfried was up for reelection, and
wasn’t exactly a shoe-in by media reports and polls.

The youngster consulted his handy
pocket calendar.

“…
perhaps September
twenty-sixth? Twenty-fifteen?”

She regarded the defendant
politely.

“
Sir?”

“
No le contendre, if it
please the Court.” He looked thoroughly disgusted, defeated by a
system that just didn’t care.

She nodded, vaguely.

The system
didn’t
care, all too
frequently. So why make things worse for yourself? It was an
attitude not unfamiliar to her, and one that always threw the
burden back heavily onto her shoulders. He was running a game on
her, or was he? She had to consider the social environment and his
personal circumstances as well. She wondered how much he really
knew about courts.

He’d obviously been expecting a real
trial, a knock-‘em-down and drag-‘em-out fight where he planned to
give as good as he got. He was prepared to fight them on their own
ground!

As seen on TV.

Nice.

That was sort of impressive. It also
implied that he’d been around a bit, or did it? There were too many
cop-and-courtroom dramas nowadays.

She liked to see a customer with some
self-respect. It made their chances so much better for reform and
rehabilitation. It sounded like bullshit as soon as she had the
thought. There wasn’t much wrong with the man for the system to
fix. That was just bigger bullshit.

However, it very much did please the
court, as time was a-wasting and they were burning daylight, as her
dear old daddy used to say.

“
Guilty as charged. You
are sentenced to time served—” The man had waited a week in jail
before making bail and his original arraignment. “And, let’s see
here. Two hundred hours of community service.”

The man had this look on his
face.

“
Sir? You have a problem
with that?”

Face darkening, the gentleman stared
at her and then shook his head in a kind of disgust, but the fact
was, by one point of view, she was doing the best she could for
him. Unfortunately, the law was the law and terms of bail and
things like that were to be respected.

Most of them thought she was a cold,
hard bitch anyways—she had always known that, right from the start.
It was something one had to accept. There would always be that flag
up on the wall behind her. She had taken an oath, and one she could
not lightly break. Still, there were ways, and she had some leeway
in spite of mandatory sentencing requirements.

“
Okay, sir. The clerk will
have some papers for you to sign and you will be contacted with
regards to your place and nature of employment for the duration of
the two hundred hours. Is there anything you don’t
understand?”

The man just glowered at her and then
finally, eyes dropping, he shook his head and looked over at
Richard, who waved him over to his little desk by the side of her
rostrum.

All the man had to do was to sign it
and then he could go quietly.

***

It was Saturday morning and Marion was
still in her housecoat. She stepped to the front door to check if
the paper had been delivered yet. Although it was just after eight,
the boy was sometimes late. Sometimes the little twerp bounced it
off her bedroom window at six-thirty a.m., and surely this was much
better.

Opening the door, she put a foot on
the porch and leaned out, turning as the mailbox was to her right.
Something was not right.

“
Oh!” She squawked and her
hand flew up to her bosom. “Oh, dear.”

“
Ah. Sorry Ma’am.” A tall,
calm-looking gentleman loomed above her, wringing his baseball hat
and looking discomfited. “Ah, I’m here about the work
program.”