Sure enough, Lucy stood at the corner waving her "Stop Abortion!" flag and chanting to it. Pittsburgh's most televised homeless woman in her black caftan, camouflage pants, army boots -- a waft of protesting gray dreadlocks framing her 68-year old wrinkled black face -- Lucy stood next to her plastic bottle-filled Giant Eagle shopping cart spewing forth her political diatribe WJIC-TV newswoman Caroline Chump. Morning commuters stared at the two of them as they passed by, their attention on the TV cameras if not on their Starbucks or smartphones, wondering how they'd look on TV but uncomprehending of Lucy's abortion rants.
Kurt didn't give a damn about abortion but he did care about public disorderliness, especially when the weather was so yucky and everybody had Dirt Smoothies on their feet. First Federal and U.S. Steel had complained for days about Lucy's incessant picketing near their offices. So what if their skyscrapers sandwiched Planned Parenthood's tiny red-bricked building, Kurt thought, knowing full well the uptight suits at the tops of those buildings couldn't stand the bad publicity. Abortion was like a boil to corporate America. No one wanted it.
Kurt didn't give a damn about abortion but he did care about public disorderliness, especially when the weather was so yucky and everybody had Dirt Smoothies on their feet. First Federal and U.S. Steel had complained for days about Lucy's incessant picketing near their offices. So what if their skyscrapers sandwiched Planned Parenthood's tiny red-bricked building, Kurt thought, knowing full well the uptight suits at the tops of those buildings couldn't stand the bad publicity. Abortion was like a boil to corporate America. No one wanted it.
"All right, Lucy, let's keep it moving here. You want to sit at the station like you did every day last week?"
"Ain't no way, Officer Kurt, I got my free speech rights. Ain't that so, Ms. Chump? You can't complain about my free speech rights, no you can't!"
"No one's complaining about that, Lucy. Just you're disturbing the peace. Now why don't you run along now? Lunch at the soup kitchen starts at 10:30 and if you start walking now, you'll be first in line."
"No use trying to bribe me with food, Officer Kurt. Somebody's got to protect the unborn babies --"
Kurt thought about Marla's baby, born dead in the operating room -- no one to protect her there, was there? He'd protected hundreds, no thousands, of Pittsburghers from unfulfilled crimes in the last fifteen years, but he couldn't protect his own baby when it came right down to it. He and Marla had cried for weeks after that, the dead baby's crib folded and hidden deep within the basement.
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