I was sitting on a bench in the county courthouse, leaned over a book, and this guy brushes by me, so close I could feel the space between us. The hallway is about twelve feet wide, plenty of room, so I looked up angrily, ready to give one my best stares to the back of his head. That’s when I noticed the handcuffs that attach him to the tall, official-looking man walking next to him. Beyond him, written over a pair of glass doors were the words: “To Jail”. From where I sat the words appeared to rest on the man’s head like a crown. Then he went through the doors and disappeared.
Now, I’m not a terribly religious type, but I was disappointed to learn that our court date was on Good Friday. I don’t know why, but I always get kind of spiritual around Easter. It’s the only time, too- I don’t even get that way on Christmas. Maybe it’s that whole death thing, I don’t know. In any case, for some reason I was really bothered about going to court on Good Friday. Worse yet, we had to get up at four A.M. to make the drive from Austin down to Corpus Christi, where the accident had occurred.
We arrived in Corpus at about eight, so we had a couple of hours to kill before the trial. Downtown Corpus is a slag heap, no doubt about it. It is made up mostly of ancient, decaying two-story buildings with layers of plaster peeling off the sides, revealing age-worn gray brick and decades of graffiti. Clumps of weeds peek out through numerous cracks in the sidewalks and gutters. Vacant lots are a common sight, replete with empty beer bottles and large sheets of red-rusted metal. So too are pawn shops, with the words “PAWN” and “CASH” written in ten-foot high letters. A 7-11 advertises the fact that they cash checks. Even the newer, less dilapidated places seem cheap, like bright, overdone makeup on an ugly girl. People shuffle along these streets, moving slowly, as if afraid of actually getting to where they’re going. They are people of all sorts: the old man with thick glasses and long, gray beard; the heavyset Hispanic woman whose many kids caper alongside her; the balding, unshaven middle-aged man who seems to have to drag along one of his legs; the winos or the bag ladies. All seem to have one thing in common: eyes that are empty of everything- they don’t even aspire to despair, which implies the possibility, however slight, of regaining hope. They simply move along- to the next job, the next child, the next bottle, the next day.
At one corner several men were gathered outside what appears to be a soup kitchen. Some sat, others milled about, waiting, I guess, for nine o’ clock, when help opens for the day.
I looked over at Jon, “My God, this place is just... how can people live like this?”
Jon shifted around in his seat. He’s tall, so comfort isn’t always easy for him. He’s clean-shaven for the hearing, his blondish-brown hair is cut close to his head, and his blue-gray eyes flash with the potency of youth and hope. “ I don’t know. I can’t even understand these people, you know? I mean, it’s totally outside of my experience. I was born a rich WASP, I’ll live a rich WASP life, and I’ll die a rich WASP. Living like this, I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you know, I just wonder if God ever notices places like this, or if He just passes right on through. For us it’s Good Friday, right? Christ dies for our sins and all that. Not for these people. It’s not Good Friday, or Black Friday or Joe Friday. It’s just another day where they have to eat and breathe and sleep, and no one cares, not even them.”
Soon we were at the edge of downtown, and houses, shopping centers and restaurants began to appear. They still had the tired appearance of downtown, though- shopping centers with neon lights and Bingo Barns.
“Hey, look over there,” Jon pointed. “‘Suzy’s Number One Hot Spot’! Think it’s open?”
“What, like a topless coffee house or something? I doubt it. God, you know, I would bet money that there’s a church around here somewhere. There always is.” Sure enough, not half a block away on the opposite side of the street stood a large, white First Presbyterian Church. “Thank God it’s Presbyterian, anyway, and not Baptist or something.” The church itself was actually one of the nicer places we had seen. It was a simple wood building with stained glass windows that reflected the early morning sun into an array of Biblical scenes. For some reason, though, this all made things look even worse to me. Perhaps it was the parking lot filled with the cars of Good Friday morning worshippers, including a large white Cadillac that epitomized all of my feelings of dread. “Hey Karl, you wanted God? He’s in there, having breakfast with the minister.”
We found a McDonald’s to eat breakfast at, then headed for the courthouse.
After I found Jon and told him of my brush with prison life, he said that he hoped it wasn’t a bad omen. After a bit of searching we finally found the courtroom where Jon would meet his fate. We were a few minutes early, so we sat in the empty courtroom accompanied only by our nerves. It was pretty much like you might see on TV, though smaller, and no place for a jury, of course, except for one thing. All of the doors were painted a hideous shade of pink, which produced an effect that was just ominous enough to keep from being laughable.
Soon two more men came in. The first was the prosecutor, a blue suit who strode into the room with a purpose that suggested that he was trying murders and armed robberies rather than misdemeanors and traffic tickets. He was a fairly young, Hispanic-looking man, and he had an air of dignity about him that belied his surroundings. He was followed by a leaned-over, scruffy, middle-aged man with light brown hair that appeared in patches on his scalp and face. He was wearing a yellow T-shirt and dirty blue jeans, and you couldn’t imagine him wearing anything else.
“Okay now...” said the prosecutor, turning to Jon, “you are Jon B. Wright?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re here for a traffic ticket related to an accident.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, if you’ll just hold on a sec, I’ll get back to you...”
“Right.”
He turned to the other man, “Okay, what’s your name, sir?”
“Mike Magnuson.”
“Okay, you’re here for public intoxication, is that right?”
“Yes sir... you see, the thing is what happened was I had been on medication for pain, and I had only had two beers at that little Mexican restaurant down the street. Now they said I was acting drunk, so I guess I was under the influence, but you know I think a lot of it was the beer reacted with the painkillers.”
“Now you know, all I have to prove for a P.I. is that you were under the influence...”
“Okay, yes sir, I was under the influence, yeah.”
“... but under the circumstances, okay, what I can do... now, the normal fine for public intoxication is three hundred and twenty dollars... How long did you stay in jail?”
“From about six to about twelve, or about ten, all night and all day.”
“Okay, what I can do for you is I can reduce the fine to... two hundred dollars, and give you credit for two days spent in jail at sixty dollars a day, so you’ll have to pay eighty dollars. Can you do that?”
“Well, I’m only working odd jobs, so you know when the lady downstairs said three hundred-fifty, I mean, I couldn’t pay it.”
“What you can do is you can pay it off a little at a time, as you get the money. Can you pay anything today?”
“Well, I’ve got five bucks in my wallet, but I need that for gas. I can’t pay now, but I can start paying by next week.”
“Okay, that’s fine, don’t worry about it...”
The man looked over at Jon, “I mean, I’m just trying to get back on my feet.”
Jon laughed nervously, “Yeah...”
The man left to go downstairs and make arrangement for paying his fine, and again we sat and waited.
After about half an hour the prosecutor went through a door in the back of the courtroom, to speak to the judge, we presumed. A few minutes later he came back out and announced that as the police officer who had written the ticket had not shown up, the charge was dismissed. Jon let out a long sigh of relief, like he had been holding his breath since we left Austin. “All right.”
Later, though, as we left the building, he became a little annoyed. “You’d think if the guy was going to write me a ticket he’d have the balls to back it up in court. I drive all the way here from Austin, at four in the morning, spend the whole time going what happened, and I don’t get to say a fucking word.”
“Yeah, it does seem like kind of a waste, doesn’t it.”
A couple of blocks from the courthouse, near a liquor store, I saw someone familiar. “Hold it, hold it! Hey, isn’t that the guy who was in court with us?”
Walking ahead of us, traveling in the same direction, he carried the same dead movement as the rest of the city. Now, though, thanks to our brief encounter, the movement has a voice, however low and indistinct. In his right hand he held the “gas” he needed to buy: a bottle of cheap wine.
I motioned to a convenience store: “Pull the car in there.”
I jumped out of the car before it stopped and ran into the store. I quickly made my purchase, and grasping it tightly in a paper sack, I ran back out to where the man was walking along.
At first he seemed embarrassed when I approached, and makes a motion as if to hide the bottle behind his back. But the embarrassment fades quickly back into that same vacant stare. I glanced at him, then laid the sack gently at his feet.
Without looking back, I jogged to the car and hopped in. “Okay, let’s go.”
Jon looked at me, puzzled. “ What was in the sack?”
I smiled faintly, my thoughts elsewhere. “A loaf of bread.”
copyright 1998 Torsten Scheihagen