jumpingfish

1. Empaneling

I’ve been called for jury duty and am sitting in the second row of the district courtroom. I am candidate #18. The lawyers are asking questions, trying to figure out which of us to nix.

Candidate #2 raises his hand at virtually every question. He’s making stuff up, sometimes saying he’d be biased against the plaintiff, sometimes the defendant, in a transparent bid to get out of serving. And there are others doing the same thing.

One has an uncle who’s a policeman in Connecticut.

Another has a pastor who is also a lawyer.

#8 was blinded in a car accident and never got pain-and-suffering compensation.

A man with an artificial leg from a motorcycle accident long ago feels the same way.

A recovered alcoholic on the far side of the chamber has many things to say.

A ham radio operator from Louisiana talks about being harassed by policemen in New York City for his portable radio.

Someone else talks about how they once knew someone who died in a sleep disorder clinic.

No questions come my way. As #18, I know my fate is sealed.

2. Going Downtown

There’s not much parking around the courthouse, and everyone who works around there jockeys for the few spots along the street. So I decide to take the express bus downtown on first day of the trial.

I leave at 7:25am, thinking that it would only take ten minutes to get to the bus stop but realize on the way that it will take longer. I need to hustle.  It’s still early morning with temperatures just in the 70s, but by the time I get to the corner, sweat is streaming down my face, and my shirt is wet.

I wait at the stoplight where the stop used to be, but there is no bus sign there, and I get nervous, thinking the route had been cancelled. But it hasn’t been. After a few minutes a bus comes into view far up the feeder road… but it slows down and stops about 50 yards from me with flashers flashing.

I run to catch it while the driver waits.

“It’s been a while,” I say as I get on board.

The driver smiles and says, “I figured you didn’t know the stopped moved.”

The air in the bus is mercifully cool, and I sink back into a seat and watch the world go by as we race downtown.

3. In the Chambers

There’s a special door to the right of the fifth floor elevator at the courthouse that leads down a long hall directly to the jury room. They told us to use that door when we arrived.

I am the first one here. I put my drink into the refrigerator, pin a “Juror #12” tag to my shirt and sit down.

Gradually the others arrive. Some of us have books to read. Others have magazines. Some have phones or computers to punch at. Others start chatting. The man across from me seems to be sleeping.

Time passes.

And now it is time for the proceedings to begin, but two jurors are missing. One shows up a few minutes late complaining about the traffic. But the other, a Mr. Hunter, is nowhere to be seen. The bailiff says she can’t reach him at home or on his cell phone or at work.

We wait.

The bailiff comes in again to give us an update. No news. This has never happened before, she says.

We wait.

I have one of my snacks, because the morning is fleeting.

The judge comes in and apologizes. He is clearly not impressed. We’re all wondering what it would be like to be Mr. Hunter and walk into a waiting court of 11 jurors, one judge, one bailiff, one clerk, one stenographer, three lawyers, two plaintiffs and a representative of the defendant who all managed to make it on time. The judge talks about an arrest warrant and about sending deputies to get him. He confesses that since this has never happened before, they don’t quite know what the process should be.

We wait.

And finally the the judge calls us all into the courtroom where he tells us that even if Mr. Hunter were to appear (coerced or not), at this point it’s doubtful he would be a reasonable choice for a juror. In fairness to both parties, he says, he is dismissing us and that they’ll select another jury later in the afternoon. He thanks us for doing our civic duty and dismisses us all.

4. Going Home

Taking the bus back home at this time of day would be a multi-bus affair with a fair amount of walking since the express bus I came on only runs at rush hour. So in a way, I’m stranded. I call Ben, since I know he’ll get off work relatively soon.

I wait in the library, nominally a good (cool) place to hang out, but there are no comfortable places to sit in the entire place, and there’s a scrappy-looking guy in there with a croupy, hacking cough who won’t cover his mouth, and he seems always to be just one aisle away from me. I check out a book and go outside.

It’s almost 2:00 when Ben calls to say he’s on the way. He was delayed due to some office confusion, and he had to ride his bike home to get the car. It’s now sweltering outside, but I found a cool spot, and I have some snacks. So I sit by the curb in the shade and read until he pulls up.

We stop for lunch. It’s almost 3:30 when we get home. I am a wreck.

I am fifty-one years old, and I have never served on a jury (although I’ve been called several times). Frankly, I was looking forward to this. And now it’s been cancelled, and I’ve wasted a day and a half of my time, because of the absent Mr. Hunter.

On the notice they sent to us, they say,

YOUR LEGAL DUTY: You MUST report as directed. Failure to report may result in a special appearance before a judge and a fine of up to $1000.

I hope they throw the book at him.

Blue sky. Warm breezes. Sunny days. Just couldn’t stop taking pictures of the Canadian flag.

He was standing on the patio in the sun. He was staring into the back yard with great concentration.

This struck me as odd. He was neither relaxed nor was he in his hunting-the-wiley-squirrel pose. Those are pretty much the two positions he assumes back there, and this one was neither.

Something was up with the dog. So I stood at the window and watched.

I watched as he trotted off the patio out into the grass came to a stop. Then he trotted a bit further and stopped again. He was making a straight line toward the garden, toward the tomato plants.

When he got there, he lowered his head and sniffed around the edge of the garden bed: a quick, innocent survey. First the near end, then the left side, then around to the right. At first, he didn’t show any direct interest in the tomato plants themselves. Rather, he casually walked around the bed inspecting the periphery.

But then he looked up at them. Just a glance. And then it was back to checking out of the grass and sniffing the pine straw mulch. And then he looked up again. And then he stepped up on the edge of the garden bed to inspect the real object of his desire: a tomato ripening on the vine.

I opened the patio door.

“Hey!” I shouted, “What’s going on out there?”

He quickly hopped down and turned away from the tomatoes and trotted back along his little trail thru the grass to where I stood. And the look on his face was just as if nothing at all had happened.

Our plan was to rent a couple bikes and ride up the Rideau Canal and back and around the city a bit.

We didn’t find the rental place where we expected it to be. And we didn’t find it down the block or up. And we didn’t find it on the next street. Finally, we asked a woman in a haunted tours booth, and she pointed us up the street, down some stairs to a place under a bridge where there were racks and racks of bikes just waiting to be rented.

In no time, we were off...

We rode away from Parliament Hill. On the bike trail. Beside the canal. Under bridges.

Past joggers and walkers and boats coming thru some upstream locks while the wardens cranked the doors shut.

We crossed the canal at the locks and rested on the other side in the shade. Then we continued thru the Experimental Farm, where we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in a traffic jam. But when we got back on the trail, we found a farmers’ market where we bought some raspberries and a tavern with an outdoor patio where we ate the berries and waited for pizza and a sandwich.

The day got away from us, and in the end it was a sprint back along the Ottawa River and into downtown to return to the rental place under the bridge before they closed. In fact, we were in such a rush that we ended up carrying our bikes up the stairs of a bridge and down the other side in order to get back on the right side of the canal. We were (or at least I was) huffing and puffing at the end.

When we rolled back into the rental place, all the bikes had been put away, and the box of helmets was nowhere to be seen. They were getting ready to leave. We were just in time.

Ok, let’s finish this steam train story.

The four of us enjoyed the train ride in our little coach room with a light breakfast served as the woods and river rolled by outside the large window.

(Apologies to Khadija for capturing her out of focus.)

And after about and hour and a half we arrived in Wakefield. We had another hour and a half to walk around town, the explained and told us that as the designated hour approached, the train would blow its whistle to warn us that is was about to leave and then blow again a while later and then again just before they left.

“It is very important that you be back on the train by then, because if you are not, then we hope that you have a nice overnight stay in Wakefield,” they said.

So with that caution in mind, we set out on foot. Dad and Khadija went to find the covered bridge. Trudy and I walked in the direction of town, which was a set of restaurants and shops and other buildings strung out along the road that ran parallel to the train track along the river.

When we reached was seemed like the far limits of town and a timely time to turn back, Trudy and I picked out a pre-made sandwich in a bakery in the back of one of the buildings.

The whistle of the train blew once. The couple in the line in front of us had a pile of things they were buying and were contemplating each item and whether or not they really wanted it. Trudy and I looked at each other and, well what could we do?

We waited. And we waited. We stood there in line as the woman ahead of us asked what the various things were that she had selected. I began to break out in a sweat and had a glistening face and arms. Trudy had a concerned look on her face. (We didn’t want to spend the night in Wakefield.)

Finally the couple ahead of us paid for their purchases and bagged them all up (very neatly with care while they stood at the cash register and the rest of us there, including the girl behind the counter, waited for them to leave). We paid quickly and promptly walked briskly back down the long street to where the train was blowing the second whistle.

Now, the train tickets came with a coupon for free fudge at the shop across the turning yard, but we were pretty focused on catching the train, so we walked past the candy store without climbing the stairs. And by the time we realized we actually had plenty of time, we no longer had plenty of time. So we lost out on free fudge that day. On the other had, we did make it back to the train on time!

As trips often go, the ride back seemed to go faster than the ride up to Wakefield. We had the same great views of woods and water out our window, but before we knew it, the train was passing homes and people waving and then streets with cars waiting for us to pass and then the fire station on the corner. And then we arrived back at the station.

It was a wonderful way to spend a day.