With Liberty and Justice for All By Laura J. Oliver

With the Fourth of July this Friday, I’m thinking about justice, or the lack thereof, specifically about crimes I’ve witnessed and can’t prove.

Or committed and gotten away with…there’s that.

The worst of these always involve watching someone else be victimized. Like when my oldest sister got married and moved to El Paso, and my pretty 46-year-old mother and I drove cross-country to see her. Somewhere in Texas, in the heat of the desert, the car broke down. We were towed to a tiny town where there must have been a sign reading, “Welcome to Nowheresville, Sucker: Pay to pass ‘go.’”

The car had most likely overheated, but the technician at the only repair shop in town took one look at Mom and her adolescent appendage and insisted we needed a new battery. A very expensive one. Top of the line. Parts and labor. Otherwise, we weren’t leaving this town. Like, ever.

I was barely 14, but the reason I remember this is my mother’s impotent fury and my intense discomfort that in her frustration she might be impolite to the man ripping us off and hurt his feelings.

Geez, I know, don’t tell me.

She knew she was being lied to, and she also knew there was nothing she could do about it. She bought the unnecessary battery with money we could ill afford to spend. When the garage owner told her he would do her a favor, free of charge, and keep ours… (you don’t want this lady, you’ll get battery acid on your suitcases), she insisted he turn it over, lugged it to the trunk, dropped it in, and we hit the road.

Then there’s the drunk who totaled my car in front of our house in the dead of night when I was newly married. I was alone and sound asleep in our bedroom overlooking the street when the silence was broken by a massive crash outside, metal on metal, and shattering glass.

Disoriented, I ran to the window and saw my car heaved askew onto the sidewalk and another car in the middle of the road, its interior lights on because the driver’s door was open and the motor still running. I threw on a robe and ran out into the street, which was devoid of all signs of life at 3:00 a.m., and found a man sitting cross-legged on the pavement. He was trying to stand, having clearly collapsed as he got out of his car after impact. Muttering incoherently, he was attempting to scramble back in his car to drive away, whiskey bottles in evidence.

I really, really, really hope the first words out of my mouth were, “Are you all right?” Let’s believe that is possible.

His first words were “Wasn’t me!” In slurred monosyllables, he claimed someone else had been driving. Someone else had totaled my car. That rascal had run away.

That was when I saw that he had hit both our cars, bouncing off the first one to roll a few more yards down the street past a neighbor’s car, to total this one!

So, we went to court. And I told my story on the witness stand, under oath, thinking surely there would be some justice. But when the public defender asked me if I’d seen the moment of impact, although I desperately wanted to say yes, I had to say no. That oath thing is very intimidating. It just squeezes the truth right out of you. Because in all honesty, I had not seen the crash. I’d seen the aftermath 30 seconds later.

So, he got off.

I have to admit here, however, that I have committed crimes myself that could not be proven. When my middle sister went out on dates, I’d slip into her room and play with her makeup. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the brains to screw down her lipsticks after trying them and just jammed the tops back on.

Oops.

Wasn’t me! The real offender ran away.

So here we are approaching the Fourth of July, which is all about the freedom to seek an agreed-upon justice. An imperfect system because we are imperfect people. A system that is still evolving as we try to work out the kinks, make it as foolproof as it is beautiful—a system that lets us all say how we feel, hurt no one, educate, feed, and house the least among us with compassion and grace.

So many Americans died for this dream, this fragile vision. I just asked Microsoft Copilot how democracy can be saved. And it instantaneously provided a six-point answer that is detailed, thoughtful, and spot-on. It then added, “This is a tall order, but history shows that democracies can renew themselves, especially when people believe they’re worth fighting for. What part of this feels most urgent to you?”

“It all feels urgent,” I wrote back, “I have to think about it.” To which Copilot replied, “Take all the time you need. Big questions deserve deep thought. If you want to dig deeper, I’m here.”

I was contemplating the strange, seductive power of this artificial intimacy when it added, “In the meantime, here’s something to chew on: every time someone questions how democracy can be saved, it’s a quiet act of hope. And that’s worth honoring.”

Wow. Here’s to quiet acts of hope and those who gave their lives so that we might have that privilege. As Katharine Lee Bates penned in 1893:

America, America

God mend thine every flaw

Confirm thy soul in self-control

And liberty in law.

Happy Birthday, America. Happy Fourth of July.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.