OCR Text |
Show 58 heading up the avenue toward Main Street and the Escalante Cafe, me about seventh in line, when a cop stepped into the street and flagged me down with a flashlight, said I was speeding. Said I was doing 29 in a 25 mph zone. He'd been laying for us because ordinarily there wouldn't have been two cars on that avenue all night, and he'd set a speed trap by standing back off the street with a stop watch and timing me from one intersection with an arc-light up to the next lit intersection two blocks further on, him standing two blocks further on yet. At that angle, over that short a distance, a hard-of-hearing blind man could have guessed my speed with more accuracy, but that cop scowled at me and I took the ticket as meekly as if I'd been doing 70 in a school zone. Still, since we had all been going at the same rate, Liz said it was unfair to signal me out, and kissed me warmly, in the moonlight her face shining with a bright chaste amorousness, and if I didn't know better I'd have thought I was being invited to go further. I felt very mature and protective of her that night. She told me not to worry about the ticket, that Pat Donahue and his friends got them all the time and just went to see the chief of police. So the next week I asked Pat about it and he said sure, tell the chief you're sorry and won't do it again and he'll tear the ticket up. He'd done it several times for Pat. But who was I to plead for special consideration? Who was I to subvert law and order? I was on their side, wasn't I? As soon as they saw that I was, and how innocent, they'd no doubt pat me on the head and let me go. Ha! That young cop who trapped me must have been psychic, picking me out of all those cars. But even at the worst, I thought, I would slip away from school for an hour, the J.P. would warn me (it was my first offense), and that would end that. But I didn't get the notice to appear until after school was out and |