Chapter 17
The birds started singing with the rising sun. I sat on the porch with coffee in one hand and my phone in the other, the Merlin app open and listening.
The app catalogued each call as it came in, stacking little cards with names and photographs. Dark-eyed junco. Spotted towhee. Pacific wren. The wren had been singing for three solid minutes, that impossibly long and complex song pouring out of a body no bigger than my thumb.
The morning was cool and still, waiting for the heat to come. Mist hung low in the trees at the edge of the clearing. My coffee steamed.
I'd offered her the Airstream three times now. The trailer was just sitting there, hooked up, warm, dry, with an actual bed and electricity. Each time she thanked me and declined with the same playful but deliberate politeness.
I knew her answer wasn't about comfort. It was about something she needed that was more important to her.
Her own space. Her own walls, thin as they were.
The knowledge that she could turn the key and leave if the moment required it.
I understood that. You don't push someone on the thing that keeps them feeling safe.
She'd been at Irma's for three weeks now, and Irma had already told me twice, unprompted, that the girl was a natural.
Grace opened the bakery at four-thirty, prepped dough, ran the register, learned the display case.
She came back smelling of yeast and butter and looking less tired than the day before.
Today was her day off. She'd mentioned doing laundry at the place near the motel in Port Chasten, and I'd been thinking about joining her.
My dirty clothes had piled up. We could throw everything in the machines and go to Charley's for lunch.
Spending time with Grace was like spending time with one of my construction buddies.
My phone buzzed. A new card appeared on the app screen.
Bald eagle.
I stood up so fast that the chair scraped against the porch boards. I set my coffee down and stepped off the porch into the wet grass, craning my neck.
The app said it was here. Somewhere. I scanned the treeline, the tall firs, the dead snag near the pond where raptors liked to perch.
Nothing. I turned a full circle, searching the pale sky above the clearing.
I held my breath and listened for the call again, that thin, high, chattering sound that never matched the bird's fierce reputation.
Empty sky. The rising light of dawn.
"Where are you?" I muttered, still turning.
Then I heard something that wasn't a bird.
An engine. Low and heavy, grinding up the gravel drive.
I turned toward the sound. Through the gap in the trees where the drive entered the clearing, a dark green SUV emerged. It had a light bar on top and a county emblem on the door.
Sheriff's vehicle?
My stomach dropped. My mind went to Scout first. Then Abner, with his damaged lungs. Then Claire and DJ, running around the farm with Wendell. Every person I cared about in this place flashed through my head in the time it took the SUV to enter the clearing.
I walked towards it. My legs felt stiff. The SUV rolled to a stop just short of the solar panel array, and both front doors opened at the same time.
The driver was older, probably late fifties, built like a man who'd spent twenty years in a patrol car eating drive-through. His gut pressed against his duty belt. He had a round, red face and small eyes that looked apologetic before he even opened his mouth.
The passenger was young, early thirties at most, lean and angular, with a sharp jawline and mirrored sunglasses pushed up on his forehead. He came around the front of the SUV and leaned against the hood with his arms crossed.
"Mr. Harmon? I'm Deputy Lyle Meacham. This is Deputy Blades. Sorry to bother you this early."
"Is something wrong? Did something happen to someone?"
Meacham held up a hand. "Nobody's hurt, nothing like that. But there is a problem that needs to be addressed."
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a folded document. He handed it to me.
I unfolded it. Read it. Then read it again.
"What the hell is this?"
"That is a citation for public nuisance and littering, Mr. Harmon. Two separate violations."
"I can see what it says. What I'm telling you is I don't understand what it means."
Meacham shifted his weight, his thumbs hooked in his duty belt. A Glock pistol creaked in its holster on his hip.
"We received a complaint this morning regarding illegal garbage dumping on your property, specifically at the entrance to your driveway off the main road.
That constitutes the public nuisance portion.
Some of that garbage has spilled out onto the county road itself, and that's your littering violation. "
A car door closed behind me. I heard bare feet on gravel, then Grace appeared at my shoulder. She was wearing the shorts and tank top she slept in and nothing else. Her hair was flat on one side from the way she'd been lying on it.
The young deputy's gaze dropped from Grace's face to her chest and stayed there, lingering over her cleavage, her jutting nipples.
Grace looked at him blearily, seeing where his gaze was fixed. She rolled her eyes so hard that her whole head moved.
Meacham cleared his throat. "Morning, miss."
"Hey." Grace crossed her arms and read the citation over my shoulder. "What the shit?"
"Deputy, I have never dumped garbage on my property," I said. "Not at the driveway, not anywhere else. I've never dumped garbage anywhere in my life."
"I understand that may be your position, Mr. Harmon. But we received the complaint through proper channels and we're obligated to issue the citation. You might want to go down and check the situation for yourself."
"Check what situation? There's nothing to check. This is wrong."
"Be that as it may. The littering fine is one hundred and thirty dollars for a first offense.
" Meacham tapped the relevant line on the citation with a thick finger.
"You've also got seven days to clear the illegal dump site on your property.
If the material is still present after seven days, the fine escalates to five hundred dollars per day. "
"This is bullshit."
The young deputy pushed off the hood of the SUV. He spoke for the first time. His voice was flat and nasal.
"You want to fight it, you need to make a court appearance in Port Angeles. Courthouse on Lincoln Street, second floor, Room 214." He grinned, an ugly leering smile that set my teeth on edge. "Have yourself a good morning, Mr. Harmon."
His eyes drifted back to Grace. They started at her bare legs and worked their way up, slow and deliberate, settling on her chest again before he gave her a nod.
"Ma'am."
They climbed back into the SUV. Meacham gave an awkward wave through the windshield. The young deputy was still grinning as they backed up, turned, and drove down the gravel drive.
I stood in the clearing, holding the citation. The paper was warm from Meacham's pocket.
"I'm going to get my truck keys."
"I'll be waiting there," Grace nodded.
I went into the cabin. My hands were shaking. Not from fear, but from anger mixed with confusion. I grabbed the keys from the hook by the door and pulled on my sneakers without tying them. My mind spun through possibilities and came up empty.
Garbage dumping? On my property? A formal complaint through proper channels? A goddamn visit at six in the morning?
Grace was already in the passenger seat when I came back out. She'd put on her sneakers and grabbed a hoodie from the RAV4. I started the engine and drove down the gravel drive.
We came around the last curve where the drive straightened out toward the main road.
"Oh, shit," Grace whispered.
I stopped the truck.
The wide gravel shoulder where the driveway met the county road looked like a landfill had vomited. The small clearing where Grace had parked was worse. Bright orange garbage bags, at least twenty of them, were scattered across the area.
Most had been ripped open, their contents flung in every direction. Fast food containers. Plastic bottles. Wet cardboard. Something dark and liquid that had soaked into the gravel and stained it brown. Diapers, swollen and gray. A mattress pad, filthy and wadded.
Smaller bags inside the orange ones had burst, sending ribbons of plastic and aluminum cans into the roadside ditch. A few pieces of trash had drifted onto the asphalt of the main road itself, pressed flat by passing tires.
The smell reached us through the closed windows, pungent and rank.
I sat there staring at it. My hands gripped the steering wheel, my knuckles turning white.
"How the hell did this get here?"
I reached for the door handle. Grace grabbed my forearm.
"Don't. Not without boots and gloves. Big-ass boots, not those." She nodded at my unlaced sneakers. "There's probably used needles in there. Fucking dirty diapers for sure. You step on a needle out there and that's a whole different kind of morning."
I let go of the handle. I looked at her. Her jaw was set and her eyes had narrowed in a way I'd come to recognize. Grace thinking, Grace processing.
"What are you seeing that I'm not?"
"I want to check something out. Drive south on the main road."
I pulled onto the county road, turning right and heading south. The garbage receded in my mirrors.
"Where are we headed?"
"So... when I first came out here," Grace said, "before I started parking on your drive, I was staying at a county campground about a mile south of here. Chasten Creek Park."
"You mentioned you left. Said it got bad."
"Yeah. I mean, it was fine when I got there.
Quiet. A few people living in their cars like me, a couple older RVs, everyone kept to themselves.
Then this whole crew rolled in. Six, seven vehicles.
Busted-ass vans, a trailer with no wheels they brought in on a flatbed.
Tweakers, dude. Full-on meth camp within a week.
Loud shit all night, people screaming, stealing from the other campers.
They trashed the place. Garbage everywhere, just...
everywhere." She paused. "The county did nothing.
A church group came out and handed out food and stuff.
And also those orange garbage bags. Bright orange, right?
The idea was if they gave people bags, they'd use them. Keep things sanitary."
"And they didn't."
"They did. They stuffed them full of crap and threw them in a pile by the dumpster. The dumpster was always overflowing with those same orange bags. Exact same color as what's on your driveway right now."
"You think someone went to the campground and grabbed bags from the dumpster?"
"I think someone loaded up a couple trucks at three in the morning, drove a mile north, and dumped it all on your property, yeah. Then picked up their phone and called the sheriff before the sun came up."
The park entrance appeared on the right. A brown wooden sign, the kind the county used, with the name routed into it. Half the letters were obscured by spray paint.
"Pull in."
I turned into the park. The access road was cracked asphalt, barely one lane wide, with weeds pushing through the seams. The first campsite appeared on the left.
A blue tarp stretched between two trees, sheltering a nest of sleeping bags and plastic bins.
A shopping cart sat beside it, loaded with aluminum cans in clear bags.
The road curved and more sites appeared.
A gutted RV with a generator running outside it, extension cords snaking through a broken window.
A sedan with its trunk open, two people asleep in the back seat under a quilt.
A tent so weathered that it sagged in the middle like a broken spine.
Everywhere, the wreckage of lives compressed into outdoor spaces.
Coolers, buckets, tarps, rope, blackened fire rings, milk crates used as furniture.
People watched the truck pass. A woman in a lawn chair tracked us with flat eyes. Two men standing by a fire pit stopped talking. A kid, maybe twelve, sat on the roof of a van and stared.
"Keep going," Grace said. "The dumpster's at the back."
I drove slow. The road dead-ended in a cul-de-sac ringed by portable toilets, four of them in a row, all leaning slightly. Behind them sat a green metal dumpster. Its lid was open.
Grace let out a slow breath through her nose.
"The dumpster. It's got a few orange bags in it, but it's not full. Not even close." She leaned forward, studying it through the windshield. "Last time I was here, that thing was buried. Orange bags piled three feet above the rim, more stacked around the base. Someone cleaned it out."
"Except they didn't clean it out," I said. "They just moved it."
The math was simple. The orange bags from here were now scattered across my driveway. Same bags, same garbage, different locations. Someone had loaded them, driven north, dumped them in the dark, and filed a complaint with the county before breakfast.
I thought about the young deputy's grin. That smug, rehearsed grin. Like the punchline was already written and he was just waiting to deliver it.
I knew who had written that punchline.
A tap on my window made me flinch. A man stood inches from the glass.
Young, late twenties maybe, but the years had been hard ones.
Patchy beard, hollow cheeks, pupils like pinpoints in wide, watery eyes.
His teeth, what remained of them, were brown and broken.
He was smiling. He motioned with a circling finger for me to roll down the window.
I put the truck in reverse.
"Yeah," Grace said. "Go."
I backed up until I found enough space to turn around, then drove out the way we'd come. The kid on the van roof watched us leave. The woman in the lawn chair hadn't moved.
We pulled back onto the main road heading north. Neither of us spoke until the park entrance disappeared behind us.
"So what are you going to do?" Grace asked.
I stared at the road ahead, anger burning in my gut. The dump site in my drive was coming back into view. Orange bags bright against the gray gravel. A filthy diaper had blown into the road.
"I've got a mess to clean up," I said through gritted teeth. "I might as well start there."
"I'll help," Grace said. "Fuck Harlan Foster."
"Fuck Harlan Foster," I agreed.