Of course, except for the Possum Creek bottom and one other back-country stretch, I’ve pretty much quit speeding since I came to the bench. And for the record, no, I never asked anybody to fix a ticket for me before that. You can’t preach responsibility to others and then weasel out of the consequences of your own actions.
Unlike our new “family values” congressman who washed in on the ultraconservative tidal wave last year.
When his car passed another in a no-passing zone and caused an oncoming van to flip over, he swore to the patrolman that his wife was driving, even though five witnesses had him behind the wheel and two more said they saw him changing places with her immediately after the accident. The DA kindly offered to let him plead nolo contendere and he took the deal because, and I quote, “I didn’t want to spend the next six months proving that my wife was guilty,” which, I suppose, says something about family values?
Some local wags said his greatest fear was that Jesse Helms would find out he’d been caught going left of the center, while others went out and made up a bumper sticker that said MY WIFE WAS DRIVING.
Fortunately, I didn’t have anything quite that colorful on the day’s docket. We finished up shortly before four and I went looking for Dwight Bryant. He’s not seeing anyone right now and with Kidd a hundred miles away and most of my women friends tied up at night, I’m usually at loose ends during the week, too.
I found him at his desk in the sheriff’s department. “Want to drive over to Raleigh and catch the early show at the Longbranch?”
“Can’t. I’m overseeing security at East Dobbs’s football game tonight. It’s a makeup game.”
As Sheriff Bo Poole’s chief of detectives, Dwight wasn’t exactly earning a shabby salary and I raised my eyebrows. “Moonlighting?”
“Yeah,” he said dejectedly. “Got a call from Jonna last week. Cal’s front teeth are coming in crooked and he’s going to need braces.”
Braces on top of the maximum child support for his income bracket? Wasn’t going to leave him much walking-around money. Most of Dwight’s friends think Jonna took him to the cleaners in their “amicable” divorce, but we never hear him gripe about it.
I was ready to gripe for him. “Cal inherits her teeth, and she can’t pay for the braces?”
He shrugged. “What can I tell you? C’est la damn vie.”
Sitting in domestic court a few days later, I thought of Dwight as I listened to a long string of excuses from the men who’d been hauled before me because they refused to recognize their responsibilities toward the children they had fathered. One man with a half a pound of gold around his neck and wrists explained that he’d gotten behind on his child support because he had to buy a new suit and a plane ticket to California. His brother was getting married and he was the best man.
Best man.
Right.
Three more said they’d been laid off. No jobs, no money.
I could have sent them to jail, but why should taxpayers support them and their kids, too? Instead, I’ve picked up on something a colleague over in Goldsboro’s been trying. When deadbeat dads (and the occasional deadbeat mom) quit paying because they aren’t working, the Honorable Joe Setzer fills their days with community service. They get to sweep gutters, pick up litter, rake leaves, mop floors, or wash windows—eight hours a day, zero pay. After a few days of working for free, most of these young men miraculously find jobs that let them resume their child support obligations.
Along with everything else today, I also had a contested paternity suit from a few weeks earlier. Clea Beecham, the mother; Timothy Collins, the alleged father; and Brittany Beecham, a perfectly adorable two-year-old baby girl.
The young mother swore that Collins was the only man she’d been with for six months before the baby was conceived.
Collins admitted that he’d lived with Ms. Beecham during the pertinent time period, “But I’m not the first guy she ever slept with and I certainly wasn’t the last. That’s why we broke up. She was seeing the same guy she’d been with before me.”
As is not unusual in proceedings like this, both parties had insisted on blood tests and I’d agreed to the postponement. My good friend Portland Brewer was representing Timothy Collins and from that kitten-in-cream look in her eye this morning, I didn’t really have to hear the testimony to know that the blood test had turned out well for her client. She stepped forward now to question the witness, a qualified technician from one of the medical labs in the Research Triangle who had taken the stand with a thin manila folder.
Mrs. Diana Henderson was in her early forties. She wore a black skirt and a white silk blouse that was neatly knotted at the neck. Despite her businesslike air of competence as the clerk swore her in, Mrs. Henderson hadn’t entirely forgotten she was a woman. Her blouse was demurely styled, but so sheer that when she twisted around to retrieve a dropped document, I could clearly see the lace on her slip and even a dark mole on her left shoulder blade. That plain black skirt did nothing to disguise her slender hips, and her black patent T-straps had three-inch heels that drew attention to her slender ankles. Ash blond hair fell softly around her thin face.
Not the most attractive face, unfortunately. She had nice eyes, but her nose was too long and her chin was almost nonexistent.
Her voice was music though—soft, yet every word distinct and deliberate as she told in measured tones how she’d taken blood samples from Mr. Collins and Ms. Beecham and the baby girl. She described the tests she’d performed and explained how the results proved conclusively that Mr. Collins could not possibly be this baby’s father.
Ms. Beecham’s attorney gamely tried to get the technician to admit that the tests weren’t absolutely positively one hundred percent accurate, but Mrs. Henderson wasn’t having it “While they can’t prove conclusively who the father is,” she said authoritatively, “they do prove who the father isn’t. There is no way that the man who provided this blood sample could have fathered this particular child.”
As I thanked Mrs. Henderson and dismissed the case, young Timothy Collins triumphantly kissed his new girlfriend—at least I assume from the length of the kiss that she was not his sister.
And judging by the baffled yet grimly determined expression on Clea Beecham’s face, I had a feeling I’d be seeing her back in court as soon as her attorney could serve papers on her other ex-lover.
They left my courtroom and a social worker came forward to petition for the termination of parental rights to two young half-brothers barely out of diapers. The mother was a seventeen-year-old crack addict who left the boys alone for hours at a time. They had been in foster care several times. The final straw for Social Services was when she left them locked in a closed car on a hot September day and they nearly suffocated before someone noticed and broke open the door.
Several witnesses, including her own aunt, took the stand to testify as to her unfitness to care for the boys.
“I’d take ’em myself,” said the aunt, as tears cut new furrows in her cheeks, “ ’cepting I’m already raising one for my boy and two for my girls and I just can’t do no more.”
Both fathers were unknown.
The mother had not bothered to come to court.
The woman who had fostered the boys almost from birth wanted to adopt them permanently. After testifying on the sorry state of the boys’ health and physical dirtiness each time they were returned to her care, she took a seat on the front row and watched me anxiously.
I went back through both case jackets and still saw nothing to indicate that the natural mother had half the maternal instincts of the average alley cat. Carrying a child in her womb for nine months doesn’t automatically turn any female into a mother; and much as we’d like to think every baby’s wanted and loved, wishing’s never made anything so.