Remember when I told you about the county commissioner who was using community service workers as free slave labor for his own personal business? Well, it finally made the local paper - on the front page, no less.
It wasn’t a big article. Just a few paragraphs saying that “rumors have circulated” and the “matter is being investigated by an outside agency” and that neither the commissioner nor Judge Hardass could be reached for comment.
So there I was, walking down the hallway towards Officer Ratchet. She’s snapping her latex gloves and grinning at me like some moronic cat with a piehole full of canary. All I can think is How ‘bout acting like a professional, you fucking cow? Is it really necessary to enjoy this so much? But I wisely kept my mouth shut and entered the interrogation room.
The interrogation room was in the sheriff’s office. The sheriff wasn’t there. He’s rarely ever there. I think I’ve only seen him in passing two or three times. It was the first time I’d ever been in his office. I guess since the sheriff is never there, there’s never any trash to be emptied so I’d have no reason to go in there. The sheriff’s office is attached to the investigators’ office. The investigators chew tobacco and spit it into their trashcans. All the women community service workers hate cleaning the investigators’ office.
The sheriff’s office is just inside the back doors of the courthouse, first door on the left. It’s the busiest entrance/exit to the courthouse due to its proximity to the parking lot and jail. The room had a cluttered desk, two chairs and a big glass case against the wall. The only thing I remember being in the case was a box of cheap beer – Bud Light, I think. Probably confiscated at some traffic stop. The glass case didn’t really look like what I thought of as an “evidence locker.” It looked more like the beer was a trophy on display.
There were two doors. One led to the investigators’ office (which also has its own door that led to the hallway). The other was the door I came through, the one that opened to the public hallway next to the back doors of the courthouse.
The investigator, who I’ll call Johnny Law, was sitting at the desk. I sat in the second chair. Officer Ratchet stood silently a few feet away, next to what I can only assume was the evidence locker.
Johnny Law put a piece of paper in front of me. It was a consent form that needed my signature before Officer Ratchet could see my titties. It listed my right to remain silent, my right to an attorney, blah, blah, blah. Oh yeah, I could’ve refused the search. I probably could’ve also wound up back in jail wearing an orange jumpsuit. No, better to just sign the paper and get it over with. Just accept that you are a powerless pawn in Judge Hardass’ Kingdom of Justice and if they want to humiliate you, they will humiliate you one way or another. I’d rather get humiliated early and be home in time to lock up the chickens. So I signed the form.
Johnny Law asked me a bunch of questions. Name, address, occupation? I don’t really have an occupation. People ask me what I am or what I do and I’m kinda stumped. I am a lot of things and I do a lot of things but none of those things are what people expect – or want – to hear. I blurted out that I was a farmer. Johnny Law started asking me about what I raised on my farm and I could tell my answers did not impress him. I was too small-fry to be a real farmer.
From now on, I think I’m just going to tell people I’m retired. Or maybe that I'm on hiatus - which is just big-city yankee talk for mid-life crisis.
Which offices were you in today?
Did you steal the money?
Do you know who stole the money?
Do you have any money on you right now?
After exhausting his list of questions, Johnny Law exited the room, leaving me and Officer Ratchet alone for a very special episode of Tales From Community Service.
First I emptied my pockets. I pulled out a handful of latex gloves. I always carry a wad around with me when I’m doing community service. I also had a lighter and my cigarette roller case. As Officer Ratchet reached for the cigarette case I warned her to be careful because it contained loose tobacco. I’m pretty sure I rolled my eyes when she clumsily spilled half the tobacco on the desk. Involuntary reflex.
Lastly, I pulled out half a dozen cigarette butts. (I may be a drunk driver but I’m no litterbug.) Since I roll my own smokes, my cigarette butts look like roaches. Nobody here under the age of 70 rolls their own cigarettes. People are fascinated with my cigarette roller. I have given dozens of demonstrations of my cigarette roller to curious CS workers during breaktime. They all want to see how it works. Sometimes it makes me feel like I’m showing a Zippo to cavemen.
Somebody always has to make a comment about how easy it would be to roll joints with my little machine. I usually tell them joints are for shitty weed. Whatever they say next usually lets me know if they partake or not. Not surprising, many community service workers are pot smokers. Perhaps a tad more surprising (but not really) is that so are some of the courthouse workers.
But I digress…
I watched for Officer Ratchet’s reaction as I set the thin, filterless cigarette butts on the desk but I don’t think she even saw them.
She directed me to remove all my clothes. Everytime I took off an article of clothing, I had to hand it to her for inspection. I watched as she he pawed through each piece of clothing with her rubber-clad hands, turning sleeves inside out and checking pockets. I couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or not that I was wearing clean underwear. The power distribution in the room was way out of whack and it would’ve felt like a small victory on my part if Officer Ratchet had to get up close and personal with my dirty underwear.
She was still manhandling my panties when she barked at me to take off my shoes and socks. I silently complied but, in my head, I was thinking Give me a second, Hoss. I’m working on it. I undid the multitude of laces on my combat boots and handed them over. Then I gave her my socks to root through.
Once I was completely butt-ass nekkid and Officer Ratchet had finished looking at my laundry, she ordered me to turn completely around. I resisted the urge to pirouette. This was no time for theatrics. Once it was apparent that I didn’t have a hundred dollar bill on me, she told me to put my clothes back on.
I’d almost finished dressing when the door unexpectedly opened. It was a guy delivering some paperwork from the office across the hall. One minute earlier and he – and anyone who happened to be using the busy courthouse doors just to the right – would’ve gotten a eyeful of me doing a little spin in my birthday suit.
What the fuck kind of Barney Fifedom had I gotten trapped in? Fer chrissakes, lock the door to the public hallway! Or at least have somebody posted by the door. And why the fuck didn’t that guy knock? He works for the sheriff’s department and surely had to know what was going on that room. Where the fuck were all the lawmen that were in the hallway just before I went in?
Officer Ratchet laughed it off. “Good thing you didn’t come in her a few seconds ago.” Har-dee-fucking-har. I hurriedly re-laced my combat boots so I could get the hell out there. I was shuttled out into the hallway and out the backdoors where I was told not to come back into the courthouse until I was given the okay.
I rolled a cigarette and spied Really Fat Black Girl across the parking lot. I descended the stairs and went to hear her story.
So far, I’ve been giving aliases to the locals I write about. That’s to protect the guilty as well as the innocent. The names may be fake but the people I write about are real. Aliases seem like a wise idea because who knows if Judge Hardass ever Googles himself?
I’ve only ever told one local that I keep a blog but she doesn’t have a computer so she’s not gonna read it. I will give her the alias Chickenfight Girl. She was arrested in the big cockfight bust this spring and we met at community service. In fact, on her first day, she and I were the only women there and I was the one to show her the ropes. She didn’t live far from me and, since my license was suspended, she ended up giving me a ride every week to the courthouse.
Even though our service is over (we both finished on the same day), we continue to hang out. She’s the only person I met through community service that I became friends with. Lots of the people I had to work with were nuts. Some were straight-up certifiably batshit insane. I hope I never see them again.
One such crazy person is Thief Girl. That’s not an alias I came up with for this blog. That’s what me and Chickenfight Girl call her. We have nicknames for many of the community service workers, simply because we don’t bother to remember their real names. Thief Girl, Fat Girl, Fat Black Girl, Really Fat Black Girl, Crazy Girl, Pregnant Girl Who Always Wears Really Low-Cut Shirts, Girl Who Looks Like She’s Thirteen, etc…
Thief Girl didn’t always used to be Thief Girl. She used to be The One Who’s Still In High School. I think she originally got community service for fighting. Back in March, on her very last day of CS, she stole a hundred dollar bill out of a purse in one of the courthouse offices. Now she’s doing community service for that.
Chickenfight Girl and I were both at the courthouse the day it happened. There were about 12 women working that day. When there’s that many women, it’s hard to stay busy all day. There’s barely enough work to keep three or four people busy, much less a dozen (though most of the women are lazy as shit and will spend half the day hiding out in the utility closet).
Chickenfight Girl and I would keep ourselves busy by spending hours in an office, supply closet or bathroom - giving it a really good (and slow) cleaning. Most CS women just empty the trash in an office but we would dust shelves, wipe off the tops of filing cabinets, clean windows, etc… Once I even unclogged a breakroom sink that maintenance couldn’t be bothered to fix (they had given the office some bullshit excuse about the plumbing being so old).
On the day Thief Girl stole the money, Chickenfight Girl & I were giving the public bathrooms a good going over - scrubbing walls & stalls that probably hadn’t seen a wet rag in years. I think the only soap that ever touched those walls was the industrial orange goo that dripped from the sinkside containers, leaving sticky skidmarks down the tile. You don’t even want to know what the underside of the mens’ urinals looked like.
After completing the upstairs bathrooms, we wandered off to individual projects. I was the midst of cleaning the jury room when I heard someone in the hall ask Chickenfight Girl where I was. I can’t remember anymore if it was Chickenfight Girl or that someone who appeared at the door, but I was told to drop what I was doing and come downstairs for an important meeting.
I saw the other CS women milling about near the bottom of the stairs, next to the investigators’ office. None of the workers knew what was going on - except Thief Girl - and nobody in a position of authority was talking - except to tell us to bring the folding chairs from the other end of the hallway, sit down and wait.
There we were: A dozen women in orange vests, sitting in a row of folding chairs against the wall – feeling like we’re in a line-up in full view of anyone and everyone who happened to be the courthouse right then. Word filtered down the line that money had been stolen. No one knew how much. One person said $11, another said $100. (I think the actual amount was $111 but I’m not sure because, even when it was all over, nobody bothered to fill us in on what really happened).
Most of the investigators and other law personnel were at one end of the line and I was second from the end at the other, Chickenfight Girl to my right and Really Fat Black Girl to my left. I assume the info we got came from women at the head of the line who overheard the investigators talking.
Apparently, they suspected a CS worker of stealing the money and Judge Hardass was bound and determined that the cash would be found before any of us left the building. We had to wait for a female officer from the jail to come over and search us.
A man stood before us and asked if there was anyone who wanted to confess now and save everybody else a lot of hassle. No one said a word.
Eventually, the female officer from the jail showed up. I will call her Officer Ratchet because she struck me as the kind of person who would root for Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Just my luck, they chose to start at my end of the line. Really Fat Black Girl went in first while the rest of us waited in line. After about ten minutes, Officer Ratchet stepped out of the office back into the hallway. Next!
I started the long walk to Officer Ratchet, past the line of my fellow workers in folding chairs. Officer Ratchet grinned at me, playfully snapping the fingers of her freshly donned latex gloves. At least one of us was having a good time.
