Felicia Pinned a Fine Beside My Shed While the Tide Rose

Felicia Stroud brought three people to watch her fine me. She could have put the notice in my mailbox. Instead, she waited until Saturday, when half our corner of Bremerton was out by the water.

"Two hundred forty dollars," she said. "Unauthorized use of the launch ramp."

I held the bow rope of my little work skiff. Behind me, the tide lifted my floating repair shed against its pilings. A ferry horn sounded out beyond the breakwater.

"Who authorized the fine?" I asked.

"The president. That would be me."

At sixty-seven, I was a Korean American man with close-cut silver hair, a broad face, and hands thick from years of turning wrenches. I had retired from fixing Washington ferry engines that spring. I still repaired small outboards for neighbors, mostly because a silent engine bothered me.

Felicia looked at my patched work vest as if it answered a question.

"Your landlord should have explained the rules."

"I don't have a landlord."

"Then whoever lets you keep this shack here."

I pulled the skiff clear of the ramp so another man could pass. It was easier to move a boat than to move Felicia once she had picked a story.

She was fifty-five, a white woman, and president of the North Inlet Waterfront Association. Felicia had pale skin, a sharp blond bob, and a white raincoat with a gold anchor pin.

The association served the newer houses above the shore. My narrow upland lot and five older lots sat outside it. Our sheds and homes had been there before its streets had names.

Before retirement, I had mostly come down on Sundays. Now my shed door stood open every weekday, and neighbors brought motors by truck. Felicia had started stopping on the path to count them. She had never asked whose name was on the deed.

One of her witnesses raised his phone, then lowered it when I looked his way. The red border on the notice was bright enough without a picture.

"You've also brought that trolley through our fence opening," she said.

"You put a fence across my route."

The new cedar fence left a tight bend between its corner and a steel bollard. My skiff's launch trolley had scraped a post on Thursday. I had stopped using the ramp until I could check the clearance.

"Our route," she said. "Association property."

"Property can come with rights already attached."

She smiled at the people behind her.

"Everyone has a theory when a bill arrives."

One man looked down. The other two watched the water.

Felicia pinned the notice to my shed door. The pin went through a tide chart I had marked with a pencil.

"You can purchase an annual access license for seven hundred twenty dollars," she said. "That would prevent further incidents."

"Would it move the fence?"

"Don't be rude, Mr. Park."

I had asked about a fence. She had heard something about herself.

After they left, I untied my rope and brought the skiff along the outside float. My hands shook a little. I set the engine wrench down until they stopped.

Mara Finch came from the next old lot carrying a sack of garden peas.

"You should just buy the pass," she said. "It's awful, but it's less trouble."

"You bought one?"

"Four years now. They call it shore access."

I looked past her to the ramp. My late wife and I had hauled our first skiff down it in 1993. At the closing, our lawyer had made us initial the margin beside an old recording number.

Keep this page with the deed, he had said. The water won't change its mind. People might.

"Did anyone check your deed?" I asked Mara.

"Felicia said the old agreements expired when the association took over."

I carried the peas inside and opened the shallow drawer beneath my bench. The drawer held spare cotter pins, my wife's reading glasses, and a blue folder wrapped in a freezer bag.

I didn't open the folder right away.

First, I took a square from a scrap of clean packing paper. While I waited for my temper to settle, I folded a boat. Edge to edge, point to point. A crooked first crease spoiled every fold after it.

My wife used to put those boats on windowsills. She said our house had a paper fleet and no admiral.

I set this one beside the fine.

Inside the folder were our deed, an old harbor survey, and a recorded agreement dated 1986. The agreement described a twelve-foot access strip running from the road to the launch ramp. Six lots were named.

Mine was Lot Six.

I checked the recording stamp. Then I checked it again, the way I had once checked an oil pressure gauge before shutting down an engine.

The next sound was Felicia's knuckles on my door.

She held a second envelope.

"I forgot your deadline," she said. "Pay by Monday, or we'll treat your next crossing as trespass."