October 13, 2017
“Will the victim be okay?” Alex asks as we leave the scene of the moose accident.
“The moose didn’t make it. He’s dead.” I try to be funny.
Alex laughs out loud for the world to hear. And it’s magic. There’s a light in her eyes that I haven’t seen yet. A light I want to see, get to know. Something inside me clicks when I watch the lines from her eyes form deeper, the harder she laughs.
I grin, and before I know it, I’m laughing, too.
We’re both laughing uncontrollably.
Once we regain ourselves, it’s quiet in the truck. I side-eye her, and she’s still smiling, staring out the window. I wonder if she knows she’s smiling. Something inside my chest aches for her. Something I’ve never felt before. Maybe it’s fear. Fear that this won’t work. She won’t last here. She’ll go back to California and leave me in the dust. I want to hear her voice again. I need to hear it.
“What kind of books do you write?” I say, taking a left.
She hesitates. Like she doesn’t want to tell me. Or maybe she’s embarrassed.
“Come on, Cali, you can tell me. I’m a Paul Doiron kind of guy.” I try to ease whatever she’s feeling.
Her face slowly turns toward me. “What did you just call me?”
I deadpan. “Uh, Cali? Short for California.”
“Let’s be clear, Warden Young. Nobody, absolutely nobody, from California refers to themselves or the state of California as ‘Cali.’” She uses air quotes. “It’s California or nothing. The only time you can use the word Cal is when you are referring to Cal, Berkeley, and it’s usually when they’re playing UCLA. I’m not sure why that it is, but it is. Wait. No.” She stops, and she’s trying really hard not to smile. “You can call me Cali if I can call you … Maine Man.” And there Alex goes again with laughter. This time, she tips her head back, exposing her slim neck.
I shake my head, laughing. “There is no way in hell you’re calling me Maine Man.”
She looks back at me, her laughter starting to cease. “Then, it’s a deal. No Maine Man, no Cali.”
I nod.
It’s silent for a moment, just the low hum of the truck against the road.
“For what it’s worth, when I think of a Maine man, I don’t picture you.”
“What does that mean?”
“I picture a rugged guy with a big, bushy beard, a plaid shirt, and a bigger middle with a shotgun over his shoulder, who looks as though he just crawled out of the woods after a long winter’s nap.”
I’m curious now. I want to ask her how she sees me, but I don’t think we’re at that point yet. “That’s my cousin, Bert.”
She smiles. “Well, maybe I ought to meet Bert—you know, to get the full Maine experience.”
My phone rings. It’s dispatch, and this time, I put the call on speaker, so Alex can get an idea of what a call sounds like.
“Busy morning,” I say.
“We have a report of goldfish in an outside pond.” Dispatch gives me the address. “Neighbor called in. Didn’t want to be identified.”
I hang up, and we flip around and head back toward Granite Harbor. We’re ten minutes out from the address listed.
“Why would someone report a neighbor of dumping goldfish into their pond? Is that really a crime?” Alex asks, pencil in hand, ready to write.
“Outside goldfish ponds are illegal in the state of Maine. They’re an invasive species. They’re a bit of a nuisance because they breed like rabbits, bringing in disease and killing off native fish. So, we have to investigate any report called in.”
Alex is writing.
“Is this stuff interesting?” I side-eye her as I watch her bottom lip move slightly as she writes.
“Fascinating.”
Ethan’s truck is already at the residence as we pull into the driveway.
“Eclectic choice of decor.” Alex leans forward, staring out the window at the house with solar panels and a large lemon on wheels. “Is … is that a lemon on wheels?”
“Huh, guess so. Come on. Let’s go check it out.” I look at Alex, who’s staring at me. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?” I get out of the truck and look back at her.
“Do you have freckles on the bridge of your nose?”
I laugh. “A few.” My mom used to love them. I used to hate them. Nothing’s changed.
Alex gets out of the truck and walks to me. “I’ve always wanted freckles.”
Ethan meets us where we’re standing. “Eli, Alex.”
Of the twins, between Ethan and Aaron, Ethan is definitely the more reserved one. Get him drunk though, and he’ll talk your ear off.
“Woodchuck fair all right?” Alex asks, masking her eyes from the sunlight with one hand while pulling her jacket tighter around her shoulders with the other.
This weather must be quite a change for her.
“Yeah, he eventually made it back into the woods.” Ethan nods.
A man comes from behind the house. A ponytail, a long-sleeved tie-dyed shirt, and a hat with lemons on it. Might explain the lemon on wheels behind us.
“Hello, I’m Warden Young, and this is Warden Casey.” I extend my hand. “Seems there’s been a report of goldfish in a body of water on your property here?”
“Sam. Yeah, in the back. Would you like me to show you?”
“Please.” I get my notepad from my chest pocket.
“It was the tenants who were in my place when I went to prison.” Sam leads the way and points toward the pond. “I just left them, to be honest. Didn’t want to deal with them.”
Prison. Noted.
“It wasn’t anything big. Drug charges.”
We walk to the edge of the pond and see the mass of bright orange underneath the water’s surface.
“Does this body of water connect to any other body of water on your property that you know of, Sam?”
Sam takes off his hat and scratches his head. “Nah. Only one. You’re lookin’ at it.”
Ethan and I survey the habitat, walking around the pond. I motion for Alex to stay close behind me, keeping one eye on Sam.
Alex is scribbling in her notebook.
What could she possibly be writing down?
“What?” she whispers as she follows behind me.
“What are you writing down?”
“Hey, Eli, I’m a writer. Everything interests me. Except physics. And chemistry. And politics.”
I catch her eye, and right after I look away, I notice marijuana plants sixty feet away behind a chain-link fence.
Ethan and I finish our walk around the pond and make a plan.
“All right, Sam, we’re going to write a summons for the goldfish. I think you know why.”
He nods.
“And let’s talk about the marijuana garden behind your house.”