David Ohle - The Pisstown Chaos

"In other words, arriving early is rather pointless."

"No rhetorical gymnastics, please. I'd appreciate it if you'd speak to me plain and simple."

"The Reverend killed my husband. I want to press charges."

"Didn't you say it was a faulty parachute that killed your husband?"

"That was the proximate cause in a causal chain going directly to Reverend Hooker."

"That's enough of your smart talk. Please sit down. It may be a long wait." She handed Mildred a pad and pencil. "Use the time to write down the details of your case against the Reverend's company. In doing so, you should know beforehand that no one has ever prevailed in a legal tangle with Reverend Hooker. And you won't either."

Mildred sat down and pulled together her thoughts on the matter:

After Jacob took early retirement three years ago, he began to parachute for the thrill and pleasure of it. On the 4th of July last he attempted to parachute into Hooker Park with fatal consequences.

That day the butler pedaled the children and me to the park for a picnic. Jacob was going to dive right into the picnic grounds and the butler was going to roast an imp and make an urpflanz salad.

At about noon we saw an orbigator overhead, as high as a thousand feet I would guess. It was leaving a little trail of steam, or smoke. Roe said, "Look, Mildred, the door is opening. He's ready to jump."

A moment later we saw him leap from the orbigator into the air. He was just a small spot in the glare of the sun. When he was about halfway down, we heard him scream. "It's not opening! It won't open!" We saw him frantically pulling on the cord. I was frozen, I couldn't move. The children's faces were ashen. We heard Jacob's last desperate shout, "Sue the company!"

Then he struck the ground a few feet away. We heard every bone in him break. His lungs popped like balloons. It was a terrible shock and I intend to carry out his last wish, to take legal action against the Reverend, who owns the parachute company.

As Mildred sat composing, other would-be litigants entered the Templex legal office and were stamped with numbers. By the time she was finished, half the room's chairs were taken. After an hour's wait, the receptionist, who had been enjoying cat naps, called, "Number seventy-four? Where is seventy-four?"

An American standing in the rear came forward. "That's me." After a brief discussion with the receptionist, he sat next to Mildred. "It's cockeyed, the way things are done around here, isn't it? She's given me all this paperwork to fill out. I'm Frank. Pleased to meet you." He sat down and began to complete the paperwork.

"Mildred Balls. Likewise. What's your complaint?"

"I got side-shifted, did five years living in a broken-down movie house. Now I'm Willy addicted and I drink enough Jake every day to drown an elephant. My digestive processes have stopped. At times I can hardly breathe. I'm going to sue the Reverend's shifting authority. And yours?"

"One of his parachutes killed my husband. The fall broke every bone in his body. The grandchildren were traumatized for life."

"That's fairly common lately, isn't it, those faulty parachutes. I'm sure it's intentional. They tell me the Reverend loves to get out there with his spyglass and watch them fall. It's a sport for him. Please, excuse me now while I do my paperwork. They say nobody ever wins these suits."

Five hours and twenty-two numbers later, long after the American had been in and out, seventy-three was called. "That's me," Mildred said. She'd sat so long her legs had fallen asleep and when she stood up, she toppled over and fell onto the worn wooden floor, driving several splinters into her face. She rolled onto her back and pumped her legs, as if pedaling, until sensation returned. The receptionist watched all this with mild interest, but made no effort to help. "I'll be fine," Mildred said, turning over and getting on her knees, then standing unsteadily.

"The attorney will see you now, Mrs. Balls. He apologizes in advance for being a little bilious today, so bear with his belching. Now, go down the hallway and it's the first door to the right. No, the left. Wait, no, it's the right. It's the last door on the right, as I said."

Mildred tried the knob on the first door to the right. It was locked. Through a frosted glass window she could see an empty desk with its drawers open and a wastebasket full of yellow, shredded, pre-edible paper.

She tried the last door on the left. It was open and she entered a dark room that was extremely cold. A bright light came on when the heavy door closed, revealing a pale, sicklylooking stinker in a business suit, sitting on a rickety bench with a yellow pad in his lap and a fountain pen in his hand. Beside the bench was a wastebasket, also full to the spillingover point with balled-up sheets of yellow paper.

"You're number seventy-three and you want to sue the Reverend?"

"Yes."

"Sit down then." There was no place other than next to the attorney on the bench.

"It's very cool in here, isn't it?" she said.

The attorney burped acidly. "It keeps the stink down, the cool does. Used to be too warm in here. One of the boilers exploded last year. The heat doesn't come this far any more. I'm well adapted to it but I can understand how you might find it uncomfortable. If it becomes too unpleasant to continue, we can re-schedule at another time. I have some open dates in the latter part of next year."

"I'll continue."

"Fine, let me see your complaint. And let me know if my smell offends you. I have some scented oil handy if it does."

Mildred gave him her written account and he read it over quickly. "You must understand, Mildred, the Reverend will argue that your husband never tried to open the main chute. He will argue that it was a suicide. You won't get far in the higher courts with a claim of faulty parachute, not against the Reverend's legal muscle. I suggest you drop this claim immediately." He balled up her account and threw it into the wastebasket among all the others.

"I'm not prepared to do that. I'm determined to press this claim."

"We can't help you at all. I'm sorry. This office is not sanctioned to handle cases like this. You can plainly see how understaffed we are."

"Then what is a person to do?"

"I can tell you only this, that when the neighborhood judiciaries were set up, the intent was not to bring cases forward but to bottle them up at street level. All crime is local. And so is punishment."

"I suppose I have no more business here, then," Mildred sighed, getting up from the bench. "I'll be going now, to look for other channels to petition for legal action."

"All the luck in the world is what you'll need. I hope you understand the mission of the neighborhood judiciaries a little better than you did before."

"I do, I do."

Ray "Gluefoot" Bishop, eighteen years old, is the youngest Guard to die in the Reverend's service. He was run over by a Pisstown pedal bus at Second and Central on Thursday while in pursuit of an imp which had escaped from a woman who was carrying it in a cage and lodged itself in the eaves of a nearby precinct building. Bishop, known for his remarkable climbing abilities, helped by a running start, walked fifty feet up the side of a brick wall, took the imp by its feet, walked down again, and tumbled into the wheels and gears of the passing bus. The imp survived but was never captured.

Not many times has Wallace Hooker been seen in public of late. Those who have been so lucky describe him as smaller in stature than they had imagined, with a face that is pale, drawn, and dotted with liver spots and weeping sores. He has been seen sleeping in gutters, snoring like a buzz saw and attracting flies. He has been spotted in alleyways eating garbage. And thats not alL the Reverend said yesterday. "He has taken his Q-ped all the way to Indian Apple, frequented brothels and engaged in other revelries too sordid to repeat. "