“Hiya, Mista W’shansky?”

The driver is met with silence, but it’s the kind of drawn-out pause where one can tell the person is searching his memory, even if you can’t see him scrunching his brow and narrowing his eyes. The old man hasn’t heard this voice since well before his daughter ran off to California with that peculiar fellow who worked at the city lot. It clicks, but he’s far from elated. A simple “ah yeah” will have to suffice.

The driver’s best attempt at a friendly, “how’ve ya been? I know it’s been a while” is met with a very clipped “fine,” meaning, “hurry, up and get to the point already, you damned delinquent.”

“Well, I’m juss callin’ cos, ahm not sure if ya know, but Paula’s ah….you see Paula’s er….” Just as the driver is struggling with how to put it, the hitchhiker brushes past and pushes through the men’s room door. Panic rises up in the driver’s throat. He doesn’t know why, but he feels that having the hitchhiker catch that last, stuttering fragment of conversation will end up costing him a little further down the road.

The driver’s mind is still reeling with an indistinct fear, paranoia; as in “what’ve ah juss done?” He doesn’t have to say much more. Mr. Warshansky’s simple “mrhhhhhr” brings him back to the conversation and says that he already knows about the release of Paula’s ex-lover. If only he knew the rest.

The driver continues at a stuttering pace. “An he’s outta prison” -that “an” being tangential to nothing- “so’s you might wanna lay low fer a lil while. Seeing as you had a…you were involved in the proceedings as well, as I understand it.”

It was Mr. Warshansky who pressed charges on behalf of the poor Mexican man –really just a boy- who became half-disfigured when he dared to intervene in the attack on behalf of Paula. He was a stranger and certainly disdained, if not completely overlooked, in the community. Mr. Warshansky knew that this man did the honorable thing and wanted to acknowledge it, even if it meant he would be rendered an outcast as well. He testified in court and forced Paula to also take the stand against her boyfriend, who was charged with grievous assault.

The boyfriend was by no means a well-regarded figure, either. In fact, he was a shady drifter about whom people knew little, but they sensed enough to know that his contribution to Dearborn’s civic life would be nil, if not actually draining the city’s moral stock. Still, it was a case of a Mexican –for all purposes, a non-entity to the jury of white working-class peers- seeking justice against a menacing, criminally-involved, but indisputably White man. The verdict would have been all-too-predictable if it wasn’t for Mr. Warshansky’s –and therefore Paula’s- involvement.