It's All In The Wrist

The above picture has nothing to do with today's flash. It was just too funny not to share. Today's post is only half of what I had planned to post, but thanks to Savanna and Pat, I ended up "enhanccing" the scene, so it was much too long for a single post. I hope you enjoy it!

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“Jane, you’re up!”


Jane looked up, a mixture of excitement and nerves making her stomach churn. The look on her new boss’s face confirmed it; she had her very first call as a public defender. This was her lifelong dream: to help those who were less fortunate get a fair deal from the law. When she was eight years old, her father had spent six months molding inside a jail cell because of a false id by a burglary victim. His public defender had been next to useless. Dad lost his job, the family lost their house, Mom left Dad, her whole childhood had become a horrible nightmare. And when they finally figured out her father was innocent and let him go, they didn’t even bother to say sorry. Jane decided at then that she would go to college and then law school so she could become a public defender and keep that from happening to some other little girl’s family.

“I’m on it, sir,” she said with all the dignity she could. She smile as her boss handed her the paperwork, glanced over it, and the gathered everything she might need. With one self-indulgent full body shiver of delight, she headed out the back entrance to the courthouse to find her old, reliable Toyota hatchback.

And she walked right into a storm of flying… apples?

She stood there, still as a rock, as the sound of childish giggling faded. She looked down at her cheap but pretty business suit, now liberally spotted with brown juice spots and apple pulp. The smell told her the apples that had been flying were not the freshest things around. They hadn’t erupted on impact like the tomatoes over at Ratigan’s had, for example. But they had been mushy enough to leave some splatters behind.

Jane looked around, not seeing the perps at first. Finally, one brave soul stepped out from behind a dog biscuit shaped park bench. He was maybe nine years old and had that look. Everyone who has spent time with young boys knows which one: the look that says “I know I screwed up and I’ll say sorry to stay out of trouble even though I’m not the slightest bit sorry but still trying to look cute…” Yeah, she knew that look from having two younger brothers.

“An explanation would be nice,” she said, not letting her annoyance show in her face or voice. Yelling at boys like that never worked, she reflected.

“Um, we were having an apple war,” he muttered.

“I see. Who is we?” Jane asked, as she set her brief case down on the bench and began brushing bits of apple guts off her suit. Thank goodness the apples hadn’t been wet mushy piles of ick. She might be able to salvage this.

“My buddy… Tim and I.” Jane looked at him from over the top of her scholarly reading glasses. She didn’t need them full time, but she did tend to wear them a lot because they made her look more serious. She was a classic blond bombshell who most people tended to write off as a mental lightweight. For some reason, the ugly black reading glasses convinced people—men and women alike—that there was a brain between her ears.

“And where did you get the apples?” she asked as she dabbed her handkerchief at one stubborn brown spot on her thigh. She wetted the cloth with her tongue and scrubbed a bit more. There, she was more-or-less presentable now.

“F-f-f-from that truck over there.” Jane looked at where the boy was pointing: a huge pick-up truck, the kind she always associated with small men with bandy rooster syndrome. They had a huge truck and a huge ego and probably a small package. She shook her head, realizing that probably wasn’t the case with that truck. For one thing, it wasn’t spotlessly clean and heavily waxed. There was a cow-catcher on the front that looked like it might have actually stopped a cow from coming through the windshield at some point. For another, it didn’t have oh-shit bars or step rails—a dead give-a-way that the person who drove it was tall enough to actually get in it without help.

“Did you have permission to grab those apples?” she asked as she picked her brief case back up.

“Well, they was just going to use ‘em for throwing at things anyway.” Jane looked at the kid and raised one eyebrow in disbelief. “Really, I heard them say so. The lady tried to give ‘em to Louie for throwing at the wall in his pub but Louie didn’t want them. Me and Tim figured that we could have fun throwing them since Louie didn’t want ‘em.”

Jane sighed and shook her head. Whatever. The kid did have a point; those apples were too rotten for anyone to want to eat them. Even horses would probably not want to eat them. And Louie probably wouldn’t have wanted them for throwing at the wall, either, since they were too dry to make much of a splatter.

“I think maybe you should go find the person whose apples you swipe and say you’re sorry?” The kid nodded wildly, agreeing with anything she said if it would get him out of trouble. “I will be checking to make sure you actually do it,” she warned sternly, as she slid behind the wheel of her car. The kid was still nodding his head like a freckle-faced bobble head doll when she backed out and drove away. Jane hoped the apple incident wasn’t a prophetic sign of how her first PD case would go.