a cloud of dark brown hair, a perfectly oval face with cheekbones to kill for, a size six figure draped in softly feminine dresses or suits of tailored silk, a collection of high heels that would turn Imelda pea green.
'I'll bet you a dollar she's a closet Republican,' Minnie, my sister-in-law and a yellow-dog Democrat, said darkly when I discussed Cyl with her once. 'I'll bet that's why she lives out of the district—so nobody'll know how she's registered.'
Minnie's usually a political realist, but she has a hard time understanding why any black person would, of her own volition, deliberately choose to join the same party as Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond or David Duke. For Minnie, a black Republican was hot ice and wondrous strange snow indeed.
My guess was that if Cyl DeGraffenried were actually registered anywhere, it would be as an Independent. * * *
She read through the calendar briskly. Many of the cases had already been disposed of because Doug Woodall always dismisses a few after the calendar's printed. Before I even entered the courtroom, a dozen or more minor traffic violators had decided to plead guilty and were lined up to pay their automatic fines and leave. Others would be held over because of personal conflicts with work or child-care schedules or because their lawyers had previous commitments in other courts. Seven pages of names could dwindle to three or four in no time.
But now all the preliminaries were done and Cyl half turned in her chair to call, 'Jaime Ramiro Chavez?'
A Mexican migrant came forward and took the place Cyl indicated behind the opposite table. His hair was neatly combed and he wore faded but basically clean jeans and T-shirt. He was charged with driving without a valid driver's license and failure to wear a seat belt. There to stand with him and speak in his behalf was a local farmer who said that Chavez possessed a Florida license but it'd been lost and he was, in fact, on his way to take the North Carolina exam when Trooper Ollie Harrold pulled him over.
Cyl asked for a hundred-dollar fine and costs, but I was feeling sentimental.
Jaime Ramiro Chavez.
My very first judgment.
I wanted to reach out and pat his wiry brown arm and assure him that he had not fallen into the hands of an unjust system. Instead I had to make do with memorizing his features. For some reason it felt crucial to me that I not let this moment and this man pass out of my memory, and I wound up concentrating so hard on the swoop of his brows and the cut of his chin that his deepset eyes shifted uneasily from me to the farmer who employed him.
Both waited stolidly.
I said to the farmer, 'Are you prepared to see to it that he does go take the driving test?'
The older man nodded. 'I can take him over Thursday evening.'
'Very well,' I said. 'I'm going to suspend judgment. All charges against Mr. Chavez will be dismissed if he can bring me a valid driver's license before Friday at noon.'
Relief crept over the defendant's face. Evidently he could understand more English than he wanted to admit.
'Call your next case,' I told Cyl DeGraffenried.
She always takes a patrolman's schedule into consideration and the next ten or twelve were more traffic cases from Trooper Harrold: speeding, driving while impaired, improper passing, driving while the license was revoked. Depending on circumstances, I fined, accepted prayers for judgment, sent to drivers' refresher courses, or gave suspended jail terms.
One of the young black males was an army lieutenant who had been driving a government vehicle. 'I just got back from Germany, Your Honor,' he explained.
'You thought Highway Forty-Eight was an autobahn?' I asked, quirking an eyebrow.
He smiled sheepishly.
'Pay the court costs and try to stay inside this state's posted limits,' I said, smiling back.
Reid's client pleaded guilty to failure to yield to an emergency vehicle and to speeding fifty-two in a thirty five zone, something I take a lot more seriously than doing eighty on an open interstate. Despite his attempt at boyish charm, I gave him a hundred-dollar fine and a thirty-day suspended sentence.
A cynical young man who was on probation for four counts of obtaining property by writing worthless checks asked me to activate his two-year sentence.
All morning Phyllis had been guiding me through the routine judgment forms. Now she handed up form AOC- CR-315—Judgment and Commitment upon Revocation of Probation—and I checked the appropriate boxes and signed on the back under 'Order of Commitment.'
It went against my grain, but there was nothing I could do about it. He thought it'd be easier to do a month of real time than to have a probation officer looking over his shoulder for three years. He was probably right.
By eleven, we'd disposed of thirty-one cases and I called a fifteen-minute recess.
Phyllis leaned back from her computer screen and flexed her shoulders. 'You're doing good,' she said.
I thought so, too, but I knew there were heavier things to come.
A quick trip to the lavatory (making sure both doors were locked), fresh lipstick, a fresh cup of coffee, and I was ready to go again at 11:17.
So was Cyl DeGraffenried. 'Number sixteen on the add-on calendar, Your Honor. Lydia Marie Duncan, three counts of issuing worthless checks.'
Lydia Marie Duncan. White female, approximately nineteen or twenty, and not exactly what a lot of people around here would call a credit to her race. Her lanky blonde hair was three days past needing a shampoo, the neck
