I looked him right in the eye and said, “You’re right, Dale. It is just grass.”
His grin got even bigger.
Then I pulled a folded survey map out of the folder I’d been carrying. I’d picked it up from the county office two weeks earlier while getting paperwork together to sell the house. I hadn’t planned on using it that morning. I just got tired of waiting for the right time.
I unfolded it on the hood of my truck where everyone could see.
“That’s interesting,” I said. “Because according to this, the strip you’ve been dumping on for three years isn’t actually mine.”
The grin disappeared.
A couple of neighbors had wandered closer by then. The buyers were standing on the sidewalk pretending not to listen.
I pointed at the map. “My property line is over there. Which means all those grass clippings, all that runoff, all those bags of yard waste you’ve been piling up?” I shrugged. “You’ve been dumping them on the utility easement.”
Nobody said a word.
Dale snatched the map and stared at it. Then he looked toward the marker stake the surveyor had put in the ground the week before.
I could practically see the math happening behind his eyes.
The thing was, everyone on the street knew the story he’d told for years. How I was picky. How I complained about everything. How I couldn’t leave well enough alone.
What they didn’t know was that I’d finally checked.
Dale muttered something under his breath, grabbed his rake, and started moving the pile without another joke.
The buyers walked through the house twenty minutes later. One of them laughed and said, “Looks like you have interesting neighbors.”
I smiled.
“Not for much longer.”
A month after the sale closed, I drove back through the neighborhood one last time. The grass between the houses was green, the easement was clean, and Dale was standing in his yard pretending very hard not to see me.
I gave him a little wave and kept driving.