Midday Clouds - The Charlie Swan Story

Chapter 28 (New Moon 17)

I was washing the ol' cruiser out front when Bells came rushing out of the house like water past a blasted dam.

"Headed to see Jake?" I asked as she rushed past me. It was a pretty easy guess; she had a smile on her face from ear to ear.

"Yep!" She said

"I'll be at the station later." I had to go in on the weekend to organize a response to the troubling wildlife findings we'd been having. A few rangers would be coming out east to help out.

"Okay," Bells yelled back.

"Where's the fire?" I asked jokingly, though I think between the roar of her engine, and crush of gravel, and the tear of rubber, I doubt that she even heard me.

—

"You sure we can't handle this ourselves?" Steve asked, ever the eager deputy, as I sat back in my creaking chair.

"Steve, you know as well as I do that we're spread thin as it is. With the town, the surrounding woods, and helping out La Push when needed—we just don't have the manpower."

A grunt from the general direction of Janet's desk had me rephrase.

"...Personpower, sorry, Jan. But either way, we need the forestry department to come in and take their look around. It's not even our jurisdiction, for crying out loud."

Steve, clearly, wasn't convinced. "Well neither is La Push, if we're getting into the weeds about it. Maybe we let them take care of their issues for once and redirect that... personpower towards the bear?"

"One, we don't even know if it is a bear, and two, the Quileute do take care of their own issues, Steve. And they do a damn good job of it. If we left Forks to its own devices as much as we do La Push, I can tell you there probably wouldn't be a town left to come back to after our romp in the woods." I could tell that Steve was itching to get out there with a team and maybe a few shotguns, but marching into the woods guns a blazing simply wasn't how my station handled reports of monstrous animals.

"Fine, chief. You're the chief. But I just think we should probably be doing something. The people, they're getting scared, is all."

"I know. We'll put out more advisories, keep the people out of the trails. It's early season for hiking, anyway. Anyone going out in those woods likely knows what they're about. And if they don't, well, there's only so much we can do when inexperienced hikers want to venture outside their experience level—advisories or no."

"Sound good chief."

"And Steve," I said, sitting up in my chair and looking the younger man dead in the eye. "When the forestry guys do get here, and if we do end up heading out there... I just need to know you're not going to be treating it like a game of duck hunt, right?"

"Sure thing. You know I got respect for our weapons. And for anyone, or anything, we might need to use 'em on."

"Good man."

—

I arrived home from work that day to a house filled with the smells of one of Bell's specialties; chicken enchiladas. While I don't care much for the heat down Phoenix way, they sure do know their way around spices, and Bells had apparently picked up a few things from her mother in that department.

But it wasn't the food that had me wide-eyed as I made my way around the corner into the kitchen; it was the nasty cut on my daughter's forehead.

"Bells, what the hell happened?!" I shouted a little too intensely. I was worried that maybe Edward had returned, that something happened, that she'd "fallen down some stairs" again.