I moved the tomatoes further from the fence.
Year four, my apple trees produced their first real crop. Not many apples—maybe twenty on one tree and fifteen on the other—but actual beautiful edible apples. I watched them carefully. I picked them the moment they were ready. I thought I had outpaced Gary. I thought the distance from the fence had solved the problem.
Then came year five and the forty-seven peaches.
My peach tree is in the corner of my yard furthest from the house, but closest to the fence line on Gary’s side. I had not moved it because the tree was established and moving an established fruit tree is complicated and stressful for the plant. I had told myself that by the time the tree was producing real fruit I would figure out a solution.
I had not figured out a solution, and now I had four peaches instead of forty-seven.
I stood at my kitchen window that morning and I watched Gary come out his back door and fire up his grill, and I felt something that I can only describe as the specific cold, clear anger of a woman who has been patient for five years and has reached the end of her patience with mathematical precision.
I went inside and I made a list.
The list had two sections.
Section one: evidence collection.
Section two: solution.
Evidence collection.
I am a retired biology teacher. I know what careful observation looks like. I know what systematic documentation looks like, and I know that before you take any action you establish that your hypothesis is correct.
My hypothesis: Gary Hutchins had been harvesting my fruit over the fence for years, and the forty-seven peaches had been taken by Gary on the night of July 14th.
I needed evidence.
I bought a trail camera—the kind hunters use that takes photos automatically when triggered by motion. I mounted it on the back fence post at an angle that covered the peach tree and the fence line. It cost me sixty-two dollars. I considered it an investment.
I also talked to my neighbor on the other side, a woman named Frances Odom, who is eighty-one years old, sharp as a tack, and has the particular observational powers of someone who has lived in a neighborhood long enough to notice everything. Frances has a kitchen window that looks directly over our shared fence into my yard from a slight elevation because her lot is graded higher than mine.
I knocked on Frances’s door and I said, “Frances, can I ask you something?”
She said, “Ask.”
I said, “Have you ever seen Gary Hutchins in my yard or near my fence line?”
Frances said, “Not in your yard. Over your fence. Several times.”
I said, “Over my fence how?”
She said, “He has one of those lightweight aluminum step ladders. He sets it up against his side of the fence, steps up, reaches over. He did it with your strawberries. He did it with your tomatoes. And I saw him do it twice with those peaches.”