Walk in the Park

“Doc Massey couldn’t talk his way out of a paper bag,” Bud Ryan, the Assistant D.A. had said today. Doc Massey over-heard him say it. How someone could find themselves inside a paper bag to talk his way out of was easy to argue.

Now, if Bud Ryan had said, “Doc couldn’t find his way out of a public park,” it would be true. Incontrovertibly so.

Doc Massey had apologized to his hand-cuffed client, left the courthouse, and gone for a walk in the park. He walked and walked and walked and finally sat down in the growing darkness and leaned against a tree, defeated.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he roared in his best courtroom voice, “the evidence will show conclusively that I, Doc Massey, having no sense of direction and being dumber than dog-poop, am a lost in a park son-of-a-bitch!”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He imagined the jury from this morning. The jury that wouldn’t look him in the eyes. That found his client guilty of Public Indecency. Urinating in public. “When you gotta go you gotta go!” he had exclaimed. He had waved his arms and pounded the defense-table. “Am I wrong?” he had asked the jury.

Apparently, he was wrong indeed.

And now, as if to prove a point, Doc Massey stood to his feet.

“He’s peeing on a tree!” He heard a young voice exclaim and turned to find a boy standing next to a man holding a picnic basket.

“You can’t prove anything,” he told the duo, though he knew from experience, they probably could.

--300 Words--