The client was a liq­uid bulk stor­age ter­mi­nal in San Pedro, Cal­i­for­nia. A faulty pipe cou­pling spilled twen­ty-two gal­lons of an acetate chem­i­cal com­pound at the foot of a huge tank. Tech­ni­cians cleaned it up quick­ly but not before the wind blew nox­ious fumes into a near­by trail­er park. The res­i­dents filed com­plaints with the county’s air pol­lu­tion agency about the hor­rif­ic stench, and the agency charged the ter­mi­nal with a crim­i­nal mis­de­meanor for caus­ing a pub­lic nuisance.

I was a fresh­ly mint­ed mem­ber of the bar when the case fell on my desk. My job was to appear at the arraign­ment and plead it out. “This’ll be an easy first court appear­ance for you,” my Lath­am super­vis­ing attor­ney said. “Meet with the pros­e­cu­tor before the hear­ing. Tell him you’ll plead nolo con­tendere (no con­test). Try to nego­ti­ate a fine under a thou­sand bucks, but any­thing up to two grand is okay. The judge will rub­ber stamp what­ev­er the pros­e­cu­tor agrees to.”

“What if the pros­e­cu­tor won’t agree?”

“He’ll agree. Pros­e­cu­tors hate these piss-ant cas­es. So do the judges.”

I arrived at San Pedro Munic­i­pal Court ear­ly and found the pros­e­cu­tor in the hall­way out­side the court­room. A short guy with black hair that fell to his shoulders,

he was as inex­pe­ri­enced as I was. He sneered when I offered to plead nolo and pay 500 dol­lars. Fash­ion­ing him­self as a young Ralph Nad­er on a cru­sade to destroy cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, he refused to agree to anything.

I was in a state of semi-pan­ic when the judge took the bench. In his six­ties, port­ly with dark bags under his eyes and a reced­ing hair­line, he asked me to enter a plea.

“Nolo con­tendere, your hon­or,” I said, my stom­ach bathed in acid.

Young Ralph Nad­er object­ed, stat­ing he want­ed to try the case to a guilty verdict.

The judge looked at him like he was crazy. “I’ll accept the defendant’s plea. What fine have you agreed to?”

“We have no agree­ment,” Ralph snapped, obvi­ous­ly miffed that the judge wouldn’t go to tri­al. “The dis­trict demands a fine of twen­ty-two thou­sand dol­lars, a thou­sand dol­lars per gal­lon spilled.”

I almost fainted.

Twen­ty-two thou­sand smack­ers would con­sti­tute a world record fine for a pub­lic nui­sance mis­de­meanor. I’d nev­er live it down. “But this was an acci­dent,” I said, my voice crack­ing. “The com­pa­ny cleaned up the spill imme­di­ate­ly. Any­thing over five hun­dred dol­lars would be a travesty.”

The judge threw up his hands. “You’re miles apart. How am I sup­posed to decide this?” Frown­ing, he paged through the case file. “I have no idea what this chem­i­cal smells like.  One of these cit­i­zen com­plaints says vom­it. Anoth­er says ran­cid milk. Some cre­ative soul describes it as burned ass.” He held up one of the forms to us. “This one says human feces, using the four-let­ter word.” He slapped it down on the bench and glared at Ralph and me. “I can’t rule until I’ve smelled this chem­i­cal for myself. Col­lect a sam­ple from your client, Mr. Oder. We’ll recon­vene tomor­row morning.”

Stunned, I limped back to my office. “I didn’t think it was pos­si­ble to screw up a mis­de­meanor arraign­ment,” my Lath­am men­tor said. “You’ve proved me wrong.”

The client’s in-house coun­sel was equal­ly impressed. “When the judge gets a whiff of this stuff, he’ll give us the death penalty.”

He brought a four ounce vial of the chem­i­cal to my office. When I was a teenag­er, I went rab­bit hunt­ing with a friend. His bea­gles caught a skunk. The dogs retched. My friend and I did, too. The four ounce sam­ple of the acetate com­pound smelled worse than skunk juice. I agreed with in-house coun­sel. Death by asphyx­i­a­tion in California’s gas cham­ber seemed like a fit­ting penal­ty for spilling twen­ty-two gal­lons of this stuff.

I placed the vial inside a card­board box and jammed pack­ing mate­r­i­al around it in a vain attempt to con­tain the fumes. The next morn­ing, unsus­pect­ing vic­tims I passed as I walked down the hall to the court­room made sour faces and stopped to look at the heels of their shoes.

The judge want­ed to inspect the sam­ple in cham­bers. Ralph and I sat down across the desk from him. I unpacked the vial, pulled the stop­per, and held it out to the judge. “Be care­ful, your hon­or. It’s powerful.”

He stalled out two feet from the lip of the vial, clamped both hands over his nose and mouth, fell back in his chair, and fran­ti­cal­ly cranked open the win­dow behind him.

“Twen­ty-two thou­sand dol­lars!” Ralph crowed triumphantly.

So this is what I gave up a reward­ing career in teach­ing for, I thought, oppos­ing this jerk in a futile effort to per­suade a judge twen­ty-two gal­lons of human feces doesn’t stink to high heav­en. Wel­come to the prac­tice of law.

I put the vial back inside the card­board box and braced myself to face the judge’s wrath.

It didn’t come. Instead, he gazed out the win­dow somber­ly. A full minute passed. He didn’t move. He didn’t say any­thing. His behav­ior seemed strange, but he was the judge so I kept qui­et. Ralph did the same.

The judge final­ly turned to me. “I can’t believe your name is Oder,” he said.

That was close to the last thing I expect­ed him to say, but with a name like mine you learn to roll with the punch­es. “Yes, well, it’s a safe bet I won’t name my first child Acetate,” I said.

The judge chuck­led, then stared at me pen­sive­ly. “How long have you been with Lath­am?” he asked.

“Since June.”

“Where are you from?”

“Vir­ginia.”

He perked up. “Beau­ti­ful coun­try. I was sta­tioned at Quan­ti­co in the Marines.”

“I grew up south of there, near Charlottesville.”

“I dat­ed a girl at Mary Wash­ing­ton from Char­lottesville. She showed me around Mon­ti­cel­lo, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Virginia.”

“I went to UVA. Under­grad­u­ate and law school.”

“Spec­tac­u­lar cam­pus. The colo­nial archi­tec­ture, the man­i­cured grounds, the moun­tains in the back­ground. You must have loved it there.”

“I did.”

“Why the hell did you move out here?”

“To join Latham.”

He nod­ded, a wist­ful look on his face. “I see.”

“Shouldn’t we be dis­cussing the amount of the fine?” Ralph said.

The judge looked at Ralph like he was the one who smelled bad. “The fine,” he said. “Yes, of course.” He gave me a sad look and sighed. “I’ll rule from the bench,” he said.

We went into the court­room. The judge took the bench and the clerk called our case. “The defen­dant will pay a fine of one hun­dred fifty dol­lars,” the judge said. He rapped the gav­el, stepped down, and exit­ed the court­room through a back door.

Ralph looked like he’d been hit in the face with a base­ball bat.

I was sur­prised, too, but on reflec­tion, I under­stood. The judge presided over noth­ing but small claims. A thought­ful man, he was bored out of his mind. Our con­ver­sa­tion took him back to his youth and Vir­ginia, a time and place he much pre­ferred over the present. I went there with him. Young Ralph resent­ed the diver­sion and dragged us back to the court­room, there­by deft­ly snatch­ing defeat from the jaws of victory.

Back at Lath­am, the reac­tion was mixed. The fine was spec­tac­u­lar­ly low, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the judge got a snoot full of skunk juice, but it took me two court appear­ances to get there so the legal fees were dou­ble. A mediocre result in a “piss-ant” case.

My first court appear­ance was noth­ing to brag about, but its lessons stayed with me for forty years: When the mer­its are com­plete­ly against you, the best argu­ment may be no argu­ment; and in every case there’s more at play than the merits.

I stood at the gate and pressed the buzzer. The speak­er crack­led, and the deep voice of the secu­ri­ty guard respond­ed. “Can I help you?”

“Mike. It’s me, Ken. Bear broke out again. I’ve got him down here with my dog.”

“Oh, Christ,” Mike said. “Be there in a minute.”

Bear was a Box­er. He was crazy about my Amer­i­can Bull­dog, Zoey. Every time I took Zoey for a walk, he made a jail break to play with her, and I had to herd him back to his house.

Mike appeared at the top of the dri­ve­way in his black uni­form, walked down the steps to the gate, and punched in the code. The gate hummed elec­tron­i­cal­ly and slid open. Built like a weightlifter, Mike grabbed Bear’s col­lar. “Don’t know how he got out this time. We fixed up all the holes he dug.”

“He jumped the fence at that low spot when we walked by,” I said, point­ing down the hill.

“I’ll tell main­te­nance. Sor­ry for the trouble.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“Thanks again.” Mike dragged Bear up the hill. Roxy, his sis­ter, wait­ed for him, wag­ging her tail. She was timid and nev­er tried to get out. They dashed through the port au cochere toward the back yard, and Zoey and I con­tin­ued on our walk.

Cindy and I had moved to Hid­den Hills to be clos­er to our grand­chil­dren. Although we didn’t know it when we bought our house, a num­ber of celebri­ties lived in the neigh­bor­hood, includ­ing Jen­nifer Lopez. She lived in a state­ly white brick house two doors down from us, and Bear and Roxy belonged to her.

I’m not into the enter­tain­ment scene. When we moved here, I knew Jen­nifer Lopez was a big deal, but I couldn’t have picked her out of a line-up. One evening at twi­light a year or two before Bear and Roxy showed up in her yard, I was walk­ing Zoey around our block when I came up on a stun­ning­ly attrac­tive woman push­ing a dou­ble-seat­ed stroller car­ry­ing a lit­tle boy and girl. “See the dog­gy,” she said to the tod­dlers. “Hi, Dog­gy,” she said a cou­ple of times, smil­ing at me.

Zoey’s friend­ly, but her rough play with kids can cause prob­lems. “Hi,” I grumped and moved on quickly.

When I told my daugh­ter about the woman, she was flab­ber­gast­ed. “That was J Lo, Dad, you idiot.” The tipoff, along with the stun­ning­ly attrac­tive looks, was that J Lo had twin two-year-olds by some singer I’d nev­er heard of who she’d recent­ly divorced. Being clue­less, I had dissed the mega-star.

I hoped I’d get a sec­ond chance, but no such luck. My encounter with her was an anom­aly. Celebri­ties of her stature don’t nor­mal­ly ven­ture out­side their enclaves with­out an entourage. Sev­er­al times I saw her Rolls Royce motor through her gate, but the back win­dows were tint­ed. All I could see was her chauf­fer in the front wind­shield, glar­ing at me like he hat­ed me. In research­ing this post, I learned he and J Lo lat­er had a falling out and she fired him. He sued her and she coun­ter­sued him for black­mail­ing her, so maybe his dark scowl wasn’t about me.

After Bear and Roxy came along, my many trips to the secu­ri­ty gate didn’t pro­duce any con­tact with J Lo either, but one Sun­day morn­ing I man­aged to snare a con­so­la­tion prize. Mike must have been off duty that day because no one respond­ed to the buzzer at first. Then a young guy wear­ing swim trunks jogged through the port au cochere and shout­ed down to me, “Yeah, man? Whad­daya want?”

“Bear’s out again.”

“Oh, wow!”

High school age, short and mus­cu­lar with a buzz cut, the kid ran down to the gate and pulled Bear inside. Bear wan­dered up the hill and began root­ing around in the bush­es. My gar­den­er had found a huge rat­tlesnake in my front yard the pre­vi­ous day. Most hous­es in Hid­den Hills have rat­tlesnake fences around the back yards, but the front yards are exposed because of the dri­ve­ways. I warned the boy about the risk of a rat­tlesnake bit­ing Bear.

“Oh, man, that sucks! What can we do about it?”

“Put him in the back inside your rat­tlesnake fence.”

“What’s a rat­tlesnake fence?”

It turned out J Lo didn’t have a snake fence, so I gave the boy the name of the con­trac­tor who installed mine.

“Wow, man! I’m gonna call that guy right now. We’ve got lit­tle kids in here. God, I mean, thanks so much, man!”

“That’s okay, man. Stay safe.”

When I asked my daugh­ter if J Lo had a son in high school, she gave me the hairy eye­ball. “What did he look like?”

I told her.

“That’s Casper, Dad, you idiot!”

This idiot thing was begin­ning to get on my nerves, but she had me dead to rights again. My age esti­mate was slight­ly off. Twen­ty-sev­en years old, Casper was the lead dancer in J Lo’s troupe and he was her main squeeze. On You-Tube, I watched her pro­claim to some dit­sy inter­view­er her undy­ing love for Casper. She want­ed to have his child, she said. On anoth­er tape, they did a sexy dance rou­tine togeth­er. I was mys­ti­fied. Casper was short­er than she was, fif­teen years younger, and far from stun­ning­ly attrac­tive. Cer­tain­ly she could do bet­ter, I thought.

A few days lat­er when I walked down to the mail­box, Casper jogged up the road at a good clip with Bear and Roxy in tow. With­out break­ing stride, he waved and flashed a big smile. “Hey, man!”

I waved back. “Hey!”

“Called that snake guy! Weird dude, but we bought the fence, man!”

“That’s great, man!”

“Thanks again, man!”

“No prob­lem! Any­time, man!”

I watched him run over the hill. Well, at least he’s nice enough, I thought. And he seems to be in good phys­i­cal condition.

A few days lat­er the lady who lives next door appeared on our doorstep with a ban­dage on her hand the size of a water­mel­on. She said Bear had mauled her on her morn­ing walk. She’d heard I had trou­ble with him and want­ed to know what happened.

“He jumps the fence to play with my dog,” I said, “but he’s always been friendly.”

The next day I got a call from her lawyer. He’d filed a mil­lion dol­lar law­suit against J Lo and want­ed me to tes­ti­fy that Bear was aggres­sive. “He’s not aggres­sive,” I said. “He just likes my dog.” I argued with him for a while and then hung up.

A few hours lat­er, Cindy answered the phone. A woman said she’d heard we’d com­plained about J Lo’s vicious dog.

“Who is this?” Cindy asked.

She said she was from Enter­tain­ment Tonight, the tabloid tele­vi­sion show.

Cindy dropped the phone like it was a live rattlesnake.

The fol­low­ing week, Bear and Roxy dis­ap­peared from J Lo’s yard. My daugh­ter told me she and Casper had bro­ken up. On the inter­net, I learned Casper got cus­tody of the dogs.

A month lat­er, the lady next door told me J Lo paid her a large dam­age award to set­tle her lawsuit.

Short­ly after that, a fleet of mov­ing vans pulled up to the secu­ri­ty gate; an army of movers loaded up enough fur­ni­ture to dec­o­rate the governor’s man­sion; and the trucks con­voyed out of Hid­den Hills.

An osteo­path­ic sur­geon bought J Lo’s house and moved his fam­i­ly in. Nice peo­ple. Kind of bor­ing, though. Like us.

That all went down a cou­ple of years ago. J Lo has moved on with her life since then, hook­ing up with Alex Rodriguez, so it’s clear she’s gone for good.

I’m still bummed out about it. I miss all the excite­ment. J Lo, the twins, Mike, the Rolls Royce, Bear, Roxy, all gone from my life, and it’s real­ly hard to accept that I’ll nev­er see my good bud­dy, Casper, again.

Worst of all, I didn’t even have a chance to say, “Good­bye, man!”

I found the bot­tle nes­tled between two feed bags in the back of the ware­house. Pab­st Blue Rib­bon Beer, the big forty ounce size, emp­ty except for a few lit­tle bub­bles on the bot­tom. I was sev­en­teen, work­ing a sum­mer job at the Crozet Fruit Grower’s Co-op. I fig­ured anoth­er work­er, Wal­ter, drank the Pab­st. It was three o’clock and he’d been M.I.A. since lunch time.

I took the bot­tle to Jack, the senior man. In his for­ties, five feet three, built like a fire hydrant with a bowl­ing ball head and bristly buzz-cut red hair, he didn’t have much use for Wal­ter. “Tongue-dick,” he grumped, an epi­thet Jack reserved for the worst among us. I didn’t know what it meant and I was too timid back then to ask. “Best we tell Miz Pugh,” he said.

Mrs. Pugh was the Co-op’s Man­ag­er. I fol­lowed Jack across the ware­house and up the stairs to her office where he set the emp­ty forty ounc­er on her desk.

She stared bale­ful­ly at it, the lens­es of her horned-rim glass­es glint­ing in the light. “Wal­ter?” she said.

Jack nod­ded. “Sumbitch.”

“Please don’t curse, Jack.”

“Sor­ry, Miz Pugh.”

A wid­ow in her fifties with polio, Mrs. Pugh walked on leg braces while lean­ing on hand crutch­es. Know­ing Wal­ter had a his­to­ry of binge drink­ing, she had hired him any­way out of com­pas­sion. He had a wife and three kids and no one else would give him a job. She had every right to be angry at him for let­ting her down, but she betrayed no hint of frus­tra­tion that after­noon. Despite her chal­lenges, or maybe because of them, she was the most patient boss I ever worked for.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “Y’all go on back to work now.”

Mrs. Pugh let Wal­ter go, and Jack and I had to cov­er his work­load. Jack made it easy for me. He was the strongest small man I ever met. He tossed around hun­dred pound feed bags all day long with an unfil­tered Camel Gold con­stant­ly dan­gling from his lips, smoke curl­ing into his squint­ing green eyes, yet I nev­er saw him break a sweat or even breathe hard.

Work­ing shoul­der to shoul­der with Jack wasn’t exact­ly a bar­rel of laughs. Tac­i­turn and qui­et, he didn’t seem to have much of a life. He lived alone, could bare­ly read or write, didn’t have any inter­ests out­side his job at the Co-op, and didn’t have any friends oth­er than Mrs. Pugh, whose kind, fair treat­ment had earned his devo­tion. My attempts to cheer him up only rarely broke through his stiff-jawed frown to pro­duce his ver­sion of a smile, a short-lived uptick at the cor­ners of his mouth and a sin­gle quiver of the ubiq­ui­tous Camel.

Then one morn­ing near the end of the sum­mer, he walked into the ware­house, grin­ning all over him­self. “My girl­friend said we get mar­ried if I give her a ring,” he crowed.

He’d nev­er men­tioned a girl­friend before, but from there on, Becky was all he could talk about. She was beau­ti­ful with silky brown hair and a just-right curvy fig­ure, and she was kind, sweet, and fun to be with. Jack had been crazy about her for months, but he didn’t think the feel­ing was mutu­al until she said she’d mar­ry him if he gave her a ring.

I was hap­py for him. Then I met Becky.

Jack and I walked down Three Notch’d Road to a store to buy lunch. When we stepped inside, Jack sucked in his breath and rushed over to a woman stand­ing with a man by the drink machine. “Hi, Becky,” he said, his voice trembling.

She was in her thir­ties, Jack’s height, and a good hun­dred eighty pounds. Pim­ples and black­heads cov­ered her chub­by face, and greasy brown hair fell limply to her ample shoul­ders. She rolled her eyes at the mid­dle-aged bean-pole with yel­low teeth stand­ing beside her, and mut­tered, “Shit, Bob­by, here he is again.”

Jack danced around in front of Becky like a pup­py dog des­per­ate for a pat on the head while she ignored him and flirt­ed with Bob­by. There was noth­ing sub­tle about the sig­nals she sent them. She had no inter­est in Jack, and she want­ed to get it on with Bobby.

She was lean­ing against Bob­by and he had just slipped his hand inside her blouse when Jack blurt­ed out that he planned to give her a ring next week. Becky and Bob­by exchanged sly looks. She went up on tip­toes and whis­pered some­thing in his ear. They laughed. She winked at Jack, took Bobby’s arm, and pulled him toward the door. “Bet­ter be a nice ring, Jack,” she said over her shoul­der as they left the store. Jack waved to her with a lit­tle-boy grin on his flushed face.

On the way back to the Co-op, Jack was elat­ed. “I seen a ring in the drug store. It’s real nice.”

The fol­low­ing week was my last at the Co-op. Thursday

morn­ing, Jack showed me a ring he’d bought at the Crozet Drug Store. “Give it to Becky tonight,” he said, his eyes shin­ing. “Then we get married.”

I want­ed to warn him, but Jack was more than twice my age and I didn’t think it was my place to give him advice. I told him the ring was nice and kept my mouth shut about Becky.

Jack didn’t show up for work the next day, Fri­day. At quit­ting time, Mrs. Pugh called me into her office and hand­ed me my last check. After we said our good­byes, she men­tioned Jack. “I’m wor­ried about him. He didn’t call in. It’s not like him.”

I told her about Becky and the ring. I real­ized only then that Mrs. Pugh was the one per­son in the world who might have been able to get through to Jack about Becky. “I wish I’d told you ear­li­er,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be. Jack’s a grown man, respon­si­ble for his own actions.”

True, I thought, but I still wished I’d told her.

After I went back to school, I heard that Mrs. Pugh con­vinced Jack to return to work, and I thought he’d be okay.

Time passed. I con­cen­trat­ed on my senior year in high school and didn’t think much about the Co-op.

Then one cold Decem­ber morn­ing I was stand­ing by the wood­stove in the Pied­mont Store in White Hall when Wal­ter walked in. He got in my face, told me it was my fault he got fired by the Co-op, and threat­ened to kick my ass.

My tem­per flared, but as he rant­ed at me, the look in his rheumy eyes gave me pause. He was drunk again. By then he had to know drink­ing was killing him, but he couldn’t stop. He was help­less and hope­less. My anger drained off. I backed down and walked away. I nev­er saw Wal­ter again and don’t know what became of him.

I know what became of Jack. He stopped com­ing to work. They found him at home, dead by his own hand, a gun­shot wound to the head. I don’t recall who told me or when it hap­pened. All I remem­ber is the heart-wrench­ing shock. Fifty years lat­er I can still feel it.

As I wrote this, I thought about Becky. I won­der how she felt when she heard about Jack. Did she know he loved her? Did she care?

Ten years ago, I wrote a nov­el, The Killing Tree, inspired by Jack and Wal­ter. I haven’t tried to pub­lish it. I don’t like it. It fes­ters like a thorn in my hand. I tin­ker with it from time to time, but noth­ing makes it bet­ter. I can’t find a way to rewrite their lives to deliv­er a hope­ful out­come. But I keep trying.