Ragnarok
an excerpt

“Great,” I muttered to myself, kicking a browned pile of snow left over from the weekend flurries and shoved aside by a mighty snow-plow. It didn’t make the bus appear. But I pretended it was the judge’s head. “Take that.”

“Why, thank you, lady,” a voice drawled behind me. I turned, and found myself at the opposite end of a bent-up old shopping cart. Across from me, a skinny old man held precariously to the handlebars with one hand, and held the other out, expectant. His scraggly beard looked like a blizzard had struck half his face, and a sandstorm the other.

“Oh, I was just—I didn’t mean—oh, here,” I sighed and drew a couple dollars from my pocket. I knew better than to look for money in my billfold. On the one hand, that’s dangerous in some parts of New York. On the other hand, I knew I wouldn’t find anything in it. It was that kind of month.

“Gods bless, lady,” said the old man as he turned and rattled away. The cart rattled in tune with him as he began to sing – which is to say, he sang about as much in-tune as the cart on pot-holed Manhattan streets. I winced.

I waited, stamping my feet, blowing on my hands, and wishing I’d had the foresight to buy a warmer coat last spring. I couldn’t afford one, now. They say lawyers get rich, roll in the dough, make a lot off man’s suffering. Some do – those big-shot corporate types at the major firms do. The starting salary at one of those places is embarrassing for how much they pay wet-behind-the-ears, idealistic law students who don’t know Marbury from Madison. But they soon have them trained to croon the corporate song and beg when the Man walks by.

Me? I hadn’t taken that route. I blazed out of college an idealistic young woman with plans to change the social welfare system in this backward country of ours. I slid into law school with those same expectations. I did well, too – top quarter of my class – but I’d learned that change starts small, one person and one lawsuit at a time.