By Ashley Toland Editor

A very discouraged man sat at Martini’s bar on Christmas Eve night. He was staring into his double bourbon as if it was going to answer all of the questions in his head about what had gone wrong in his life over the past year or so. Though the bourbon remained silent, the man did not.

“Oh God, Oh God,” he said. “You know I am not a praying man, but hear me now. Please show me the way. I am at the end of my rope. Show me the way, God. Show me the way.”

The bartender, concerned for his patron, asked, ” Are you OK, Mr. Thomas?”

The man did not respond, but a woman two seats down said to the barkeep, “Did you say, Mr. Thomas? Which Mr. Thomas?”

“Why that’s former school board president David Thomas,” the bartender offered.

The woman jumped out of her seat and started slapping David on the head, screaming “You ran over my baby’s foot! You ran over my baby’s foot!”

Another man, across the room, saw the commotion and ran over to join forces with the woman. “You hit my truck with your stupid Land Rover and just kept on going. Thanks a lot, Thomas.”

Then the man punched him, causing his lip to bleed.

The bartender broke up the commotion and David stumbled out the door, saying, “This is how you answer my prayer, Lord. Gee thanks.”

He got into his white Land Rover and though he felt like passing out on the wheel, like he had before, a hopeless David drove, weaving all the way around downtown before crashing into a tree near the Cochrane Bridge.

As he got out of the rabble-rousing SUV, he kicked the tire and said, “all of this is your fault.”

He stumbled to the bridge and looked down into the swirling, murky brown waters of the Mobile River and thought about all he had lost – his position on the school board, his freedom for the weeks he spent in Prichard Jail and in Metro Jail, his dignity – all of the public humiliation. All he had to do was jump, and it would all be over.

“I don’t think you want to do that, David,” said a chubby little man who seemingly appeared from nowhere.

“Do what?” slurred the distraught David.

“Jump. That’s what you’re thinking about doing, isn’t it?”

“I think that would make a lot of people happy. Who are you anyway?” David asked.

“Clarence Oddbody, AS-2,” he replied.

“AS-2?” David asked, confused.

“Angel, second class,” Clarence explained. “I don’t have my wings yet.”

“Oh yeah, yeah, every time a bell rings, right?” David patronized.

“Something like that,” the wingless wonder answered.

“OK buddy. You must’ve been drinking the same stuff I’ve been all night. Or hell. Maybe I’ve just been hitting it a little too hard. I don’t know. I don’t know about anything anymore. I don’t care,” David said.

“That’s exactly why I have been sent here, David. To show you that you really have had a wonderful life. OK. Well maybe it hasn’t been wonderful exactly, but your actions, even though misguided, did cause some good things to happen.”

“Really?” David asked, as snow, a rarity in Mobile, began to fall and accumulate on the junk in Thomas’ trunk.

“You’ve been given a great gift, David. You get to see what the world would’ve been like if you hadn’t run over the little girl’s foot or paid for $9,000 worth of Mardi Gras beads with taxpayer money,” the angel explained.

“Well I wish I had never done those things. I can’t imagine things would be worse if I hadn’t,” David mused.

“Come with me,” the angel said, taking David’s hand.

The snow swirled around them and the next thing you know Clarence Oddbody and David Thomas were standing outside the doors of Mobile Municipal Court, peeking in.

“Well, that can’t be right. Judges Lackey, Rahman and Coleman are all still on the bench. The poor things lost their jobs because of me,” David moaned.

“Remember you never ran over the girl’s foot or were charged with that DUI on Mardi Gras day, so reporters never dug into your past. So they never found the police report of your 1998 DUI – the one your cousin Judge Herman Thomas asked Judge Rahman to expunge. So they never came under fire for the practice and the city council simply renewed their contracts,” Clarence explained.

“Oh, I see. They look so happy. What’s that Judge Lackey is doing?” David asked.

“He’s expunging someone’s record, David. See, if your expungement had never been found, then no one would have found out Lackey and the gang had expunged over a thousand others. And they would probably still be doing it today. But instead, we have four great new municipal judges who are restoring confidence in the court.”

“Wow, maybe I’m not such a bad guy after all,” David exclaimed.

“Let’s not push it, David. Come on, we have other places to go,” the angel said as they vanished into thin air, reappearing outside Judge Herman Thomas’ chambers. The duo listened in as Judge Thomas was talking to someone on the phone.

“Of course I’ll take your son’s case off another judge’s docket and put it on mine. Do you want me to go sign him out of Metro Jail too?..... Sure, sure….. I’d be happy to. Let me see if we can get him moved to Prichard jail. It’s so much nicer….Don’t mention it. I’m always happy to pull whatever strings I can for my friends, family or football players.”

“Yikes, I know my cousin still can’t be doing all that stuff since the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission is investigating him. From what I hear, he’s going down,” David said.

“You’re really not getting all this, David. He’s not under investigation. Remember you never ran over the girl’s foot. So you were never sentenced to a week in Metro Jail. So your cousin Herman never tried to pull strings for you to have you serve your time in Prichard Jail instead of Metro. So he never pissed off Judge Rusty Johnston, who sentenced you to Metro. Since those things didn’t happen, those other judges did not feel compelled to come forward with stories of Herman’s docket stealing and other sketchy behavior,” Clarence said in exasperation. “I know it’s kind of hard to keep up with, but trust me, you should be proud.”

“Well I don’t know if I can take total credit for that. I mean, they might have tattled on him eventually about the other people he helped,” David offered humbly.

“Well that’s true, but you accelerated the process, if nothing else, so good for you. And that’s not all you did, David. Some say the school board is ousting school board superintendent Harold Dodge by January 2008 because they are mad at the way he handled your situation with the beads and such. Although, I don’t think that is necessarily a positive change.”

“I do. That traitorous, a-hole!” David snapped.

“Whatever, but your actions definitely made people pay more attention to those idiots on the school board, especially that super idiot Hazel Fournier, who tossed the beads out the window with you. And now people have complained to their state senators that they want to reduce their idiot terms from six years to four. That would certainly help rotate some of those idiots out of there faster, and I think you can take some credit for that as well, David, since you were one of the first super idiots.”

“Gosh Clarence you’re right. My unethical behavior did stop all other sorts of unethical behavior, so mine shouldn’t even count. I want to live! I want to live!”

“Funny how a single man’s life, good or bad, touches so many others,” Clarence said. And just like that he was gone.

David ran down the streets of Mobile, passed his wrecked Land Rover, screaming, “I’m not such a bad guy, Mobile. I’m not so bad. I love you, you beautiful old Gayfers building that we will never sell! I love you Grand Central! I love you Barton Academy! I love you Bike Shop!”

Later that night at the Garage, David sat smiling into his double bourbon, feeling absolved and wondering if he got another DUI if it could help the situation in Iraq. He decided he wouldn’t chance it and would call a cab, especially since the Rover was wrecked anyway.

He closed out his tab and feeling good he left an uncharacteristically large tip on the bar. The bartender was so thrilled by its enormity she stood up on the bar and rang the tip bell.

As David walked out the door, he said “Atta boy, Clarence. Atta boy.”

Ashley Toland is Lagniappe editor. Contact her at ashleytoland@lagniappemobile.com.

Archives