The People vs. Thomas Ritchie
Monday, July 26, 2010 at 10:16AM 
Tom Whitefeather wakes at two in the morning on the days he has to go to court. He scarfs a quick breakfast, then bundled against the cold and the Wonder Valley night, he heads out from the old rock-walled cabin where he lives, threading a path through the high desert greasewood scrub. A dim headlamp bobs a blue-white orb ahead of his bike as he rides in the pre-dawn stillness following his own tracks, cutting across abandoned homestead parcels, through the sandy washes and brittle bush thickets until he reaches the washboard dirt track of Godwin Road. Down Godwin he peddles to the lonely asphalt of the paved road, then turns his back to the rising sun for the last twelve miles to the bus stop in town. He’ll make this trek a dozen times—the arraignment, the fact-finding hearings, the readiness hearings, postponements, postponements, postponements. On the mornings he goes to court, he gives himself plenty of time, arriving at the bus stop with time enough to scrounge discarded butts and roll a smoke. He gets there early and he waits. To miss his court appearance would mean another felony, and more time in jail.
;)