Maureen gave the man a store-brand Creamsicle from the porch freezer. He took it and looked at her and said, “I don’t have a dollar. One of these is worth a dollar.”

“I don’t need a dollar,” she said. “You might like something that tastes good given what appears to be the car trouble you’re having.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m lactose intolerant. But I guess sometimes you just got to say: what the hell.”

“Um, yeah,” she said. “I tend not to swear when it comes to frozen snacks.”

“What do you swear about?” he asked. “If you don’t swear about a frozen snack now and then?”

“Enjoy,” she said. “You should have a plan for how to get your car out of this neighborhood before too long. My father doesn’t like it when cars park on his curb uninvited.”

“Can you invite me?”

“Not without my father’s permission,” Maureen said. “We stand on tradition here. He’ll be around, and it would probably be prudent to have a plan or to move along. Just a word of warning.”

“This is a public street, ain’t it?”

“That’s his other peeve,” Maureen said. “He doesn’t like it when a person speaks so informally, even on a public street.”

“What?” he asked. “What did I say wrong?”

“Ain’t isn’t a word,” Maureen said.

Sometime in the night the gold Honda Accord had stopped moving at the curb at the edge of the Hough household in a sixties-era subdivision built a block from Pacific Highway South above Puget Sound.

The highway was a backwater that had long been a tertiary route along the sea between the neighborhoods on the shore and I-5. Old travel hotels had turned into rent-by-the-week places for migrant workers and sex workers. In the last two years, casinos and poker joints had replaced the diners and office buildings. A string of espresso stands that employed scantily-clad women dotted the path, with names such as Bikini Barista, Two Cups Cakes, and Steamed Milk. Two blocks in either direction drivers found themselves in quiet neighborhoods dominated by gigantic Douglas fir trees, canyons that held streams carrying salmon in the autumn, and run-down elementary schools.

Johns picking up women from corners on the highway would find empty lots and wait. This traffic brought with it a constant police presence, and increased the vigilance of the neighbors. The neighbors close to the highway felt they were at the edge of a dangerous swamp. They didn’t let their daughters go to the convenience stores or catch buses. The broken cars that made their way up and down Pacific Highway sometimes drove into the neighborhoods and finally stopped moving.

The Hough house sat on a lot that was nearly twice the size of the more recent construction. These lots were large enough to house stands of trees, orchards, vast vegetable gardens, expansive front lawns that gradually yellowed in the summer heat when water rationing began.

Mr. Hough and his family attended a church that referred to itself as “The Community.” Their children attended summer school. Each child was escorted to the curb to be carried in a white van to a compound above the Green River in a dense stand of tall trees—this was what the entire neighborhood looked like in the 1950s before the first large subdivision went in. There remained a rural aspect here even as the suburbs grew denser. Near the highway stood sprawling four-story apartment complexes. Facing the ocean were the newer mansions that barely fit in their lots. But in the Hough neighborhood some of the houses had become rentals while others remained family homes of the men who had been machinists in the plants in the Kent Valley along the Green River where in the 1970s and 1980s airplane parts and rocket engines were built.

Maureen had attended the community school. She went to the elementary school in a dense cluster of ‘good children’ and they hung out at skating parties at the roller-rink where their fathers and mothers had met and where their grandparents had met a generation before that, all listening to the same music, only slightly repackaged by each generation. Elvis gave way to the Beatles who gave way to The Eagles who gave way to Garth Brooks who gave way to Blake Shelton. They wanted their children to do well in life, but life was meant to be lived in the confines of the cul-de-sacs and parks between I-5 and the sea.

When the car appeared there in the morning, Maureen watched the man get out of the car. It had not been there when they had gone to sleep. And now it was there when she woke. Her father had already gone to work. Maureen was at home during the summer and only attended the community school two days a week now that she was seventeen. She was taking an online college course.

The man had a bad haircut like he had cut it himself. He had odd stubble it being morning. He stood outside the car, opened the engine, and leaned in to do something. Maureen figured the interloper would be gone by noon. Her father usually returned from the plant at 3:30. She gave the man his Creamsicle, and then she could see that he kept glancing back at the house across the big lawn. The backyard with its orchard and forest was behind a massively tall fence. In that backyard, Maureen felt like she was out in the country but the arrival of people like this guy reminded her that they were just a block from Pac Highway. He seemed to her like someone with maybe a drug problem. He had been in his car all night and maybe because he was drunk or something he would call someone for help. But he was there doing something to the car’s engine. At two o’clock he left. And the car was still sitting there.

When her father arrived, he parked his truck in his spot in the driveway. He opened the locked mailbox and then walked around the outside of the property. He picked up some loose trash that had blown onto the lawn, and then he picked up the Creamsicle wrapper the guy had thrown on the ground. Maureen thought he shouldn’t have done that. Mr. Hough frowned at the wrapper and looked at the house. Maureen knew he couldn’t see in it being bright and sunny outside and it being dark and cool inside with the windows open and the fans on.

Mr. Hough walked around the car and leaned toward it like he smelled something.

When he came into the house, he yelled out, “Hello darlings!” He changed out of his work clothes, and he sat down with Maureen’s mother to talk. While drinking a cup of black coffee with her, they looked out to the lawn and the car parked there on the curb. No one said anything because cars like this sometimes washed up on the streets and usually vanished in a few hours. The man returned to his car. He looked up at the house and then noticed Mr. Hugh’s truck in the driveway.

Maureen had read that dogs had evolved white pupils so that humans could understand what the dog was looking at, and she supposed she understood what this guy was looking at. Her father made a grunting noise and then he went to the garage and walked around the edge of the yard.

He shook the man’s hand and leaned in.

The man nodded his head. And then they opened the hood of his car. Her father did something there while the man sat in his car. The car made a noise like a grunt and a wheeze and then smoke came from the muffler. Mr. Hough was out there for about half an hour. He came into the house and washed his hands with the grease soap in the kitchen.

“Did you talk to that man?” he asked Maureen.

“Yes, I took him a Creamsicle,” Maureen said.

“He repaid your kindness by throwing the Creamsicle on the lawn,” Mr. Hough said.

“I saw you pick up the wrapper, Daddy,” Maureen said.

“His Honda is probably destroyed. It’s a junker for sure. He might get it running again. But he is going to need the help of a good mechanic and some parts.”

“Is he getting a tow truck?”

“I don’t think so,” Mr. Hough said. “I don’t think he can afford a tank of gas much less the cost of getting that thing fixed.”

“Did you call a tow truck?”

“I offered,” Mr. Hough said. “He said he couldn’t accept the help, but thank you. He is there now. I don’t know how long he thinks he can stay there.”

“He’s only been there since this morning,” Maureen said. “Isn’t there something you can do?”

“I don’t have the skill, the tools, or the parts,” Mr. Hough said.

“He must be in a real state,” Maureen said.

“He needs to move on,” Mr. Hough said.

“I’m sure he’ll be gone by tomorrow,” Maureen said. “He must have somewhere he needs to be.”

Mr. Hough wouldn’t let it go. He paced around the upstairs of the house. Near dusk, he went out to the car to talk to the man. Maureen followed him. “You should go stay in the house. I don’t want him to see we are vulnerable here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want him to know he can get to me.”

“Do you mean through me?”

“He has already taken advantage of you,” Mr. Hough said. But he failed to turn his daughter back and so together they moved up to the man who now leaned against the side of his car and looked at them. The man lived in his Accord. It was broken down and so he now lived at the edge of their yard.

“I am going to have to ask you to get your car towed,” Mr. Hough said. “I know you may not have the money for that.”

“Even if I did…” the man said, “Where would I tow it to? As far as I’m concerned one place is as good as another.”

“I know a man with a garage who is part of my congregation. He may be able to fix your car for a reasonable rate.”

“I can’t pay for the tow,” the man said. “My ride is here, and I know where it is.”

Mr. Hough handed the man a card with his friend’s number on it. The man held it and said, “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Here is my position,” Mr. Hough said. “Seems like you have had a run of bad luck. I wish you the best, but this is probably your best option.”

“I was fine before you came along,” the man said. “I was just fucking fine. Mind your own business.”

“You can call him…”

“Do I look like I have a fucking phone?”

“I can call him, and he will be out here with his truck. I’ll handle it with him. He’ll get you back on the road again.”

“You mean you’ll pay to get my car fixed?”

“I don’t know what is wrong with your car. I can’t agree to that. You can work that out with him. But I’ll pay for the tow.”

“You’ll pay to get rid of me but not to actually help me. How much do you think the tow will be?”

“Hundred bucks or thereabouts,” Mr. Hough said. “Someone’s got to pay it. I’m saying I’ll pay it to help you, son.”

“Why don’t you give me the cash? I’ll figure out how to get my car moving again.”

Mr. Hough stood on the edge of his lawn. The man held the card in his hand like he was studying it.

“I know you didn’t plan on being here,” Mr. Hough said. “I know you need your car to work again. It isn’t going to start itself here. My friend runs an honest shop. You could do a lot worse than him.”

“I’m not asking for help.”

“You need to move your car.”

“I have a right to be here as much as you.”

“I pay a mortgage for this land,” Mr. Hough said.

“Oh?” The man dropped the card. He walked around to his Honda and got inside even though it was hot on the street and must have been sweltering inside of the cab.

“You should go inside, Maureen,” Mr. Hough said. She went and sat on the porch and then Mr. Hough made a call with his cell phone. He squinted at the screen and found each number and poked it with the tip of his pointer finger. Maureen could tell he was calling the police because he leaned toward the ground and wouldn’t look at the man in his car. When Mr. Hough finished talking to the police on the phone, he stood in the shade.

The man was about to get out of his Honda after Mr. Hough moved, and then he saw him standing at the edge of the grass, and so he stayed in the truck. A police sedan arrived and parked across the street. Two officers got out the car. Mr. Hugh waved and then they had a consultation on the street. The two officers looked around and then walked up to the gold Honda Accord. The man rolled his window down.

“Hello, friend,” the office said. “You might want to get out of there. I can feel how hot it is in there.”

“I have a right to be in here,” the man said.

“Sure, you do. But I’d like to have a few words with you if you don’t mind. You look uncomfortable in that heat.”

The man got out of the car and stood on the pavement. The other officer went to the police sedan, opened the trunk, and came back with three bottles of water. “Do you want a bottled water?” he asked Mr. Hough.

“No thank you,” Mr. Hough said.

The two police officers and the man talked. And then one of the officers spoke on his phone.

The man grabbed his bag and then got in the back of the police car with his bottle of water.

One officer came up onto the lawn and said, “A tow truck will be here shortly and this vehicle will be removed from the neighborhood. This man shouldn’t be bothering you or your family”—he looked at Maureen—“again.”

The sedan drove away. Maureen and Mr. Hough went inside the house and watched from the front room when the tow truck came. It took the man car’s away.

There was just a paper cup and a sock left on the road where his car had been. Mr. Hugh picked them up with a plastic grocery bag and then dropped them in the curb-side trash can. There was no sign of the man now. When he came in Maureen asked her father, “Daddy, couldn’t you give him another day?”

“I’m not in the business of distributing days,” he said.



Matt Briggs grew up in the Snoqualmie Valley and lives near Pacific Highway South in Des Moines, Washington. His books include The Remains of River Names and Shoot the Buffalo. You can find out more about his work at mattbriggs.com.

Alex Garland is a freelance photographer based in Seattle. His work has appeared in Real Change, Seattle Met, and Yes! Magazine. Find out more about his work at alexgarlandphotography.com.

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About the photo: Clayton, age 60, is a former pressman (running newspaper presses). He has been living in his RV  almost 5 years and says the biggest issue he deals with is the lack of sanitation.

Photo by Alex Garland.

To learn more about the 2,000 people in Seattle who sleep in their vehicles each night because they can’t afford the cost of housing, read Will Sweger’s feature When Home Is a Parking Spot at Cascadia Magazine.