Shadow Boxing with the Law in the Time of Corona

JOSHUA MOODY

I recently received a letter in the mail from a traffic court in a small town in upstate New York. Out of respect and/or fear of legal retribution I will refer to this small town exclusively as Small Town from here on out, but hey, Small Town—you know who you are.

The letter—or bill, really—informed me that the Small Town Traffic Court had graciously accepted my guilty plea for a parking ticket I’d found tucked under my windshield wiper about a month ago. While I had to appreciate the alacrity with which they reached out to collect their prize, I couldn’t help but take issue with two minor wrinkles in my speedily resolved case. Firstly, the ticket in question was—to put it gently—complete and utter bull, and secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I hadn’t pled guilty at all.

I discovered the ticket following a lovely day spent around a lake with my socially distanced pod of friends—we swam, we sun bathed, we discussed the possible scenarios of the apocalypse unfolding around us. It was very relaxing. The sudden appearance of this unfounded ticket, however, tossed all of my fleeting serenity out the window like so much bubonic diarrhea from a chamber pot.

You see the supposed infraction was listed as “parking in the street,” yet my car was very clearly parked on the grassy shoulder of the road, at least a yard away from the pavement. What’s more, while there were signs prohibiting street parking about a mile away, this part of the road had no signage whatsoever, and we all know the famous saying that isn’t actually a saying but let’s just pretend: “no sign, no crime.” What’s even more, my friend’s car, parked directly in front of my own—while still not parked in the road—was nonetheless at least a foot closer, and yet she found her windshield as clean as my driving record up until this moment.

As you can imagine, I was perplexed and incensed. I huffed. I puffed. I took photos of the scene, the lack of signage and the other three—miraculously ticketless—cars parked in the same area. When I got home I filled out the back of the ticket immediately, checking the box marked “not guilty” multiple times, writing so dark you could practically read it from the other side. Before stuffing the ticket into an envelope and dropping it into the mailbox I even took a picture of my ticket, filled out as plain as day, some wily part of me fully expecting shenanigans.

As the court date written upon my ticket approached I’d received not a word in response to my not guilty plea, so in an excess of caution, I dialed the listed telephone number for the Town of Small Town Traffic Court. An answering machine picked up with a message explaining that, due to Covid-19, the court was indefinitely shuttered, and not to worry, because court dates would be rescheduled and no warrants would be issued for outstanding payments.

This was a twist.

Perhaps the message was legit, I thought, and this was the explanation for the radio silence on the other end of the traffic ticket line. And yet, what if they forgot to change the answering machine message? Small Town is, after all, a pretty small town, and it’s entirely possible the limited employees simply hadn’t gotten around to it.

So, in an excess of excess caution, I decided to drive to the address on my ticket at the date and time of my scheduled court date regardless, just in case. I put on a shirt and tie. I pulled up my pants an inch higher than usual. I gathered my printed evidence photos and finally I entered the address written on the back of my ticket into Google Maps and headed out for Small Town. I pulled up in front of the Small Town Traffic Court with ten minutes to spare before my trial, but imagine my surprise when I discovered that the court was neither open nor closed—it wasn’t there at all. In its place was a private residence, a small log cabin home with a sky blue Toyota Tercel parked in the drive, yet nary a bailiff nor barrister wandering the yard. Thinking maybe the address had been written incorrectly on my ticket I then googled the Small Town Traffic Court. Sure enough, the address of this cozy summer cottage popped up on the screen of my phone. It was now confirmed—I was definitely in the right wrong place.

Perhaps they knew I was coming despite their little message, I thought. Perhaps they pulled up roots in the dead of night and fled before I could smite them with my hammer of righteous indignation and my sword of copious, multi-angled

cell phone photos. Or perhaps they never existed. Perhaps I’d parked on the forgotten burial mound of a colonial constable and I was being haunted by the long ago razed, Small Town Horse-Traffic Court. Whatever the case, without a number to call or an address to track down I was out of ideas, so I went home, assumed the answering machine of the court—wherever it might be hiding—was an honest one and moved on. A week later, however, the aforementioned letter-bill arrived from the Small Town Traffic Court thanking me for my guilty plea and ever-so-sweetly demanding a check for $175. A bill for a guilty plea that I never plead to a crime that didn’t happen from a court that does not exist— Small Town, you so crazy. This means WAR, I thought. This is outrageous, un-American and confusingly illogical! This shall not stand! The next move is mine, and woe unto my enemies, for the very earth shall quake with the fury of my retribution! Then I remembered that I couldn’t call the court, or find it, or send it a strongly worded letter, and so I poured myself a drink and declared the law itself deceased. Now, lest you think me rash in my surrender to the eternal knot of the Small Town Traffic Court, I’ll have you know my history with the law runs deeper than this debacle. It is, in fact, quite personal. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I come from a family infested with lawyers. My father is the Town Counsel of a small town—no relation—in eastern Massachusetts. My brother went to Columbia Law, where he met his wife, and they are both now highly successful practitioners of the so-called “law” in their own right. The law runs in my blood, you see, whether I want it there or not.

If somehow it wasn’t clear already, I most certainly do NOT want it there—it itches something fierce—so in protest of my ill-begotten law-curse, I jumped the family the rails as soon as I could. I attended Vassar College and graduated with a degree in Modernist Russian Literature, which for the low, low price of $45,000 a year practically guaranteed to take me as far in life as the parking lot. Continuing my rebellion, I then became a childcare professional, first working for a non-profit, afterschool children’s theater, and currently maintaining employ as a middle-aged male nanny—a manny, if you’re nasty. I won’t lie— I’m not a lawyer—this used to be a point of insecurity for me, comparing myself to my family members, what with their hefty paychecks and lofty titles. But as Bill Barr, Mitch McConnell and the Orange Menace gleefully piss away any semblance of legal precedence and judicial decorum in our government and beyond, oh how a part of me relishes the changing of the vocational-status tides.

I derive daily pleasure from torturing my litigious family members, texting each of them with the regularity of a vegan’s bowel movements.

To my father: “Would you please just retire already so I can finally stop telling people what you do for a living? It’s embarrassing.”

To my Sister-in-law: “Would you quit playing pretend with your be-wigged compatriots and get a real job? You have children!”

To my brother: “If your father wasn’t also a scum-sucking lawyer he’d be as ashamed of you as I am.”

Perhaps this is the karmic cause of my confusing war of attrition with the Small Town Traffic Court. Perhaps I’m being punished by the Gods of Law for my utter lack of respect for their domain. Or perhaps the law is, and always has been a conditional suggestion, a weapon to be brandished by those with the privilege to wield it and a shock collar to keep the rest of us from exploring the outer reaches of our predetermined confines. Perhaps, just perhaps, it’s nothing more than a collective illusion that only exists if we all believe in it together, like the mountains of money deposited monthly into my brother’s swelling bank account or Bill Skarsgård.

So, you may ask yourself, is there an answer to this legal conundrum or a thoughtful conclusion to my story of extremely low-stakes injustice? Does my stupid little problem with a stupid little traffic ticket in a stupid little town even really matter? Of course not, you silly geese! This is America, where the police can murder innocent, sleeping women and only the bullet hole speckled walls receive justice. If you’re looking for a solution to the unrelenting dry heave of reason that is the United States justice system from me, this isn’t that type of essay and I’m not the proper person to provide it.

Instead, I’m going to sit by the phone like a boy with a crush, hoping against hope that the Small Town Traffic Court will finally call me back and give me my day in court so that I can present my irrefutable evidence, prove my unquestionable innocence and, naturally, be found guilty and sent to prison without parole.

You? Go vote.

Josh Moody is a writer, illustrator and comedian living in Brooklyn, New York with his lovely wife and his lovely dog. He grew up in New England, graduated from Vassar College in 2006 with an extremely useful degree in Modernist Russian Literature and then wandered down to the city to fight for scraps with his eight million neighbors. Some of his work can be found in Black Veins: An Anthology of Horror Stories, A Monster Told Me Bedtime Stories: Volume 7 and The Weird… and Whatnot, all available on Amazon.