Community Service by Dusty Miller

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
     
    This ebook is licensed for your
personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given
away to other people. If you would like to share this book with
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the hard work of this author.
     
    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