Trial of Washington, The

The stage is dark. Tracked by a spotlight, wearing a tattered three-piece suit, a plump Jimmy Flynn enters from stage left. He talks with an Irish brogue as he walks. Flynn: My name is Jimmy Flynn and I used to practice law in Boston. Then I died. The dead do come back. During my life, I rarely entered a courtroom. I settled wills and estates, and handled the occasional high-end divorce. I represented some of the best families in the city.

What those people could do to hold on to their fortunes! I was part mortician, part loving cousin, part priest. You develop certain skills, and you use them discreetly. I was once a proud man, but away from the office I sought out the dark corners of "the life." Perhaps we were part of a fraternity. However, I stayed too long at the fair. I never saw it coming. I was never the bookkeeper I should have been. The storms caught me out of my element. Perhaps I should have been a brawler or a murderer. A nasty, brutish, and short life would have suited me.

One day I was nailed. I had a family, I had children, I had a patient wife. She was devout in her faith. Against that background, I took chances. I sang in my chains, I befouled my burdens. A shock here, a shock there, a move on the chessboard and I was done. Trapped on the wheel, I sought refuge in the Church, and a functionary skinned me alive. I was given a Hobson's choice, and I rolled the dice. Wherever you are, my Lord, I hope you're listening, because my penance is too mysterious for a man of my limited talents.

Can you see my errors as tragedy? Can you invoke a clause in the contract that lets me off the hook? Is there a book I can make, a worm I can turn before the final sun comes up on me? Can you shine a halo on my progress! My shoes are wearing thin! Give me a ride on the trolley to the next station!

I diverted what others said was not mine to divert. Do the big men earn the same fate for that crime? If so, where are they? In castles above rivers with servants and with gentle time for reflection? I was a lover, and a secret lover of men. We can't build our dams too high. There is always a leak. I had a minor folly, and I was shuttled into mortification for it. Suddenly there was evidence! A threat! A grievous threat. I was no longer Jimmy Flynn. I was the dark half of someone else. Is justice simply one grand ironic jolt? Is hoping for your intercession my central mistake? Am I supposed to strip naked and run out on the streets of heaven and flay myself? Did the optimism behind my eyes betray me at every turn? What I would give for a wallet stuffed with cash and a blanket on the banks of the Charles on a summer afternoon.

Then let the vipers puncture my fat neck and inject their poison. I'm going mad and I've gone mad, and the madness has no payday. I was never corrupt enough. I was a simple soul with an eagerness for the exotic. I went to Church. I was far too familiar with the conventional niceties to support my instincts. I loved my wife a little too much. I had our burial places picked out and paid for. I occasionally read Emerson on the train. I wore a hat. I took it off. I knew the legal anatomy of promises. I gave to charities. I ran on the fields as a child. I felt the rain on my shoulders. I should have stepped off a cliff and sung on the way down and relished the explosion of the impact. Lord, I should have abandoned you, like a nightmare, to the wild dogs.