Just Leaving on
a Bus
by Bill Tope
Francis stood at
the busstop one Sunday
morning basking in the sunlight, shortly
before the churches let out. He was
dressed in jeans, a really old leather
jacket and a blue stocking cap. He
looked up boredly as a police car rolled
silently up the street in his direction.
Francis heaved a tired sigh.
The policeman behind the wheel of the
cruiser took immediate notice of the
disheveled teen and flipped on his
gumball cherry dome light. Francis
yawned extravagantly at the cop, patting
his mouth with his hand.
He watched the cop speak into his radio,
probably telling his dispatcher where he
was
and what he was up to, Francis thought.
He
furrowed his brow. Alighting from the
vehicle,
the officer stepped up to the young man,
hovering over him daughtingly. When the
kid
didn't move an inch, the cop said, "Name."
It ran around in Francis's mind to play
the
smartass but then he thought better of it.
"Francis," he replied. "First
or last name?" the
policeman asked impatiently. "Yes,"
answered
the teenager. The cop frowned. "Well,
which
is it?" he demanded next.
"First," said Francis, and in
response to the next
three questions, he answered: "Bailey;
eighteen;
nothing." When the cop gave him that
"I've heard
everything" look, Francis
acknowledged that he
was in fact waiting for a bus.
"Yeah, where you headed?" asked
the cop.
"Aw, but that would be telling,"
replied Francis.
"Turn around, up against that fence,"
growled the
cop. "I wanna frisk you."
Francis made no move to
turn to the fence. "You have
heard of the Fourth
Amendment, I suppose?" he asked
archly. "How
about probable cause?" The cop
hesitated for a
moment.
"It's cause I says so,"
retorted the cop, trying to
ensnare one of the teen's wrists in his
handcuffs.
"And let's no forget unlawful
restraint, false
imprisonmet, and..." The cop
stopped dead in his
tracks. At that moment the bus
roared up. "Get out
of here, Kid," snarled the cop.
"And to hell with you!"
The youth climbed aboard, calling after
the cop,
"The statutes on slander, defamation
per se, and
with malice...." as the bus pulled
away in a haze of
dust and exhaust fumes..
And thus did future attorney F. Lee
Bailey set off for
Harvard College from his home in Waltham,
Massachusetts in the fall of 1951. |
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