The Inspector Parked His Truck Across My Kiln Yard Gate

I knew the clay was too dry before I saw the crack.

I rolled a piece between my palms, bent the thin cord around my thumb, and watched a small split open. The crescent needed water. That was how I checked each batch at my adobe kiln yard outside Las Cruces.

I was Esteban Lucero, a Mexican American man of fifty-six, with brown skin, a gray braid, and thick hands stained red at the nails.

I made earth blocks for walls and fired clay caps and pavers in a small kiln. Folks called me the adobe kiln man. I let them. My work stood in garden walls from Mesilla to the edge of the Organ Mountains.

That morning, Harlan Voss parked across my gate.

Harlan Voss was a white man of forty-five, with a broad red face, pale hair cut close, and a silver belt buckle that pressed against his shirt.

He stepped around my drying racks without looking at them.

“Shut it down,” he said.

“The kiln isn't lit.”

“Your operation, Lucero. All of it.”

He handed me a county drought enforcement notice. Three illegal pumping visits. Three penalties of $4,950. Total due: $14,850.

At the bottom, a box said the county would seek a court order to impound equipment used in the violation. Someone had listed my mixer, kiln blower, and flatbed trailer.

“You saw my well running?” I asked.

“June sixth, tenth, and thirteenth. It's all there.”

“My well was disconnected in May.”

His voice rose. “Don't start with me. We know what a running well sounds like.”

There was a loose rattle in his truck's front wheel cover. I heard it as the engine idled. I could also hear wind lifting a corner of shade cloth. There had been no sound from my well for weeks.

I turned to the first report. It claimed my meter had gone from 064120 to 065960 gallons during a ten-minute test.

“Can you show me where you stood?”

“I'm not doing the inspection twice.”

He pointed at my palms.

“You make mud. I make reports. Guess which one the court reads.”

I set the clay crescent on my bench.

Behind him stood my dry well shed. Its power cable had been removed. A well contractor had capped the pipe and put numbered wire seals through the cap and the open disconnect box. I had paid $460 for that work.

I had also asked for something the contractor thought was odd.

“Leave the seal numbers facing the door,” I had told him. “I want to photograph them.”

I had learned to keep paper when a builder once claimed I had delivered six pallets instead of eight. After that, I saved every weight slip, every paid bill, every picture of a load leaving my gate.

Voss saw the plain yard, my patched sleeves, and an old flip chair. He did not look toward the steel drawer under my bench.

Inside it, four water-delivery weighbridge tickets lay in date order. Beside them were photographs of the cistern seals and the sealed well. I had kept the original image files, too.

“I bought water,” I said.

“Then you should have plenty of money.”

He offered me a separate sheet. It was a settlement form with $8,000 written in a blank.

“Pay by Friday. No hearing. We forget the equipment.”

“Does that say I admit pumping?”

“It says you cooperate.”

I read the line. It said I admitted all three violations and gave up review.

“I need a copy of everything you relied on.”

He slapped the form against his thigh.

“People who drag this out lose more than money.”

My largest order was for $18,400 in wall caps for a courtyard job. The buyer had paid a $4,600 deposit. If my mixer and blower went away, I could not finish. I had $6,230 in the business account, and some of that belonged to the gas bill.

I asked where to file an objection.

Voss leaned close enough that I could smell his coffee.

“They'll tell you at the courthouse. Bring a check.”

He left his truck blocking the gate while he made a call. I waited beside a pallet. There was room to argue, but no room to drive out.

When he finally moved, I washed my hands, unlocked the steel drawer, and laid the tickets beside his report.

Each delivery had cost $190. Each slip carried a scale number, a loaded weight, an empty weight, and my cistern's seal number.

I had saved them because water cost money.

Now I read the last page of his packet again.

The county's request for an equipment order had a hearing date already stamped on it: next Thursday, nine in the morning.