The name on the permit was Dale Lloyd. My son.
He had been standing in the back of the hearing room in his work jacket, a big quiet man of forty-six with sawdust in the creases of his hands. He ran his own logging outfit out of Myrtle Point. I had taught him to run a saw when he was fourteen.
The hearing officer read the name of the contracting company, and my son stood up before she finished.
He said, Dad, I did not know. He said it first to me, and then to the officer, and then to the whole room. Casey called him in September and hired him to take four firs off the east side. He said he had a permit. He said the trees were on his line and that the old man, meaning me, was getting forgetful and had been complaining about the shade.
My son believed him. He looked at the permit paper Casey showed him. It was a copy of the application, not an approval. He did not know the difference then.
He stood in that room and told the truth, with his hat in his hands. He said, I did the cutting. I should have checked. And I should have called you before I did it, Dad. I am sorry.
It is a hard thing to watch your boy stand in front of thirty neighbors and say a sentence like that. I did not look away. I wanted him to see that I was not going to.
I was seventy-five years old and I had spent my life in the woods, and it took a flip phone with a cracked screen to prove that the oldest man in the room still knew where his own trees were.
The hearing officer dismissed the charges against me that day. She also directed the county to refund any fee I had paid and return my saw. Casey was cited for the harvest of protected riparian timber without an approved permit, for misrepresentation on an application, and for filing a false complaint with the county. The fine came to thirty-one thousand dollars. His lawyer from Eugene did not argue. A restoration order required him to replant the creek bank with native Douglas fir and monitor the seedlings for five years.
Dale cooperated with the county completely. He gave them his job file, his time sheets, and Caseys texts. The county fined his company a small amount for cutting without verifying the approval, a thing they say any contractor is required to do. He paid it from his own pocket and said it was cheap at the price.
Casey did not come around. I heard he sold his boat dealership and moved up to Portland. I do not wish him ill. I wish that someone had told him sooner that you cannot take trees from a man who knew them as saplings.
In April, Dale and I went down to the creek together. We brought three flats of seedlings, forty to a flat, and a planting bar. It took us two days. His hands knew the work and so did mine. We did not talk much. At some point he said, Dad, I think you were right to teach me to check the paperwork. I said, I did not teach you that. I should have.
Dixie brought lunch out on the second day. Sandwiches and a thermos. She sat on a stump and watched us plant the last row, and when we finished, she said, Those are going to be tall someday. I said, Not in my time. Dale said, In mine.