Chapter 28: The Rules
A year on, Heron Court is a quieter instrument than it used to be, and far better tuned. The board meets in Nora Fenn's sunroom now, and the fines have gotten rare enough that when one does go out, people talk about it at the mailbox the way they used to talk about weather β a genuine local event. Most hearings end in something closer to a potluck. The Hendersons' fence dispute last spring concluded with a shared ladder, a borrowed level, and a peach cobbler whose recipe is now on file with the minutes. I wish I were joking about the minutes. Nora writes everything down. It is her form of law enforcement, and I respect every single word of it.
The Ruiz place and the Donnelly place shared a drainage problem and, by June, a borrowed pump and a working afternoon that ended with both families at one table. I keep using the word *hearing* because that's what the notices still call them, but the resemblance to the old proceedings ends at the folding chairs. Nora opens with the item, the item gets discussed at the temperature of human beings, and somebody's spouse inevitably produces food, because on Heron Court food has become a parliamentary procedure. I have attended three meetings this year in my capacity as β and I quote the minutes β "consulting neighbor." Titles accrue to a man whether he wants them or not. I have decided to want that one least of all.
The hearing procedure I drafted after the recall β notice in writing, fourteen days to answer, a neighbor allowed to speak for you, every fine appealable to a panel that does not include the person who issued it β the street calls them the Reyes rules. I did not name them that. I want that in the record. Three neighboring subdivisions have photocopied them, which Prue Alvarez reported to me with the pride of a woman reading box scores. Apparently my little constitution is circulating the county like a church cookbook.
At the retirees' alumni breakfast in March, Ray Delgado β my deputy for eleven years, now a sergeant with a desk and opinions about both β clinked his coffee mug against mine and said, "You're still chiefing, Sam. You just do it with lemonade now."
Ray has been on the department twenty-six years now, long enough that the rookies assume the stories about the old days are exaggerations, which some of them are β mostly his. He asked how the car was running and I said like a sermon. He told me his brother-in-law's board had once fined a man for the *color* of his mailbox β the color, Sam; it was a mailbox with ambitions β and that after the rules made the rounds, that board's president had resigned to spend more time with his grievances. "You ended a reign of terror with a photocopier," Ray said. "Career highlight. Put it on the plaque." I told him lemonade was harder to spill on a report. He laughed, but he also asked for a copy of the rules for his brother-in-law's subdivision out by the lake. That's four, if anybody's counting. Prue is counting.
The Saturday wash has grown, too. It used to be just me and Midnight and a bucket, a small private liturgy. Now Tyler Corbett brings his Camry down the two driveways β he bought it tired and has been bringing it back to life bolt by bolt, and he keeps it cleaner than his mother's conscience, which I say with genuine respect, because these days her conscience is fairly clean β and Sofia, my granddaughter, ten years old and already a union negotiator, has claimed the job of rinsing her own bicycle and supervising mine.
"You're missing a spot, Abuelo," she tells me, on a car she is not allowed to drive, in a tone she did not learn from her mother.
"File a report," I tell her.
She does. On notebook paper. With exhibits.
Tyler works quietly, mostly. He asks questions β about torque, about why you never wax a hood, about what Ernesto charged in 1974 for a valve job, which was forty dollars and sometimes dinner β and he writes nothing down and forgets nothing, which is more than I could say for some deputies I trained. When his bucket runs empty he refills mine without being asked. Sofia has begun, in her reports, to refer to the whole arrangement as "the Saturday detail." She is ten years old. The street is raising her in its own image, and I find I cannot object.
The street runs on paper now β kind paper, mostly. Notices that ask instead of accuse. Minutes with cobbler in them. And underneath it all, the same plain machinery it always needed: somebody willing to read the whole report, and somebody else willing to answer the door when the answer is no and the coffee's still on.
Chapter 29: The Keys Someday