The President Blocked Our Morning Walk With A Trespass Notice

Mabel stopped before I saw the chain.

Her ears tipped toward the wash, then toward me. Fig pressed her nose into Mabel's flank. Both burros had come out of bad places, and neither liked a new thing stretched across an old path.

I tapped my dented yellow feed tin twice. That meant wait. They knew it better than most people knew a stop sign.

“Good girls,” I said. “Nobody needs to hurry.”

“Those animals need to leave.”

Trudy Sikes stood on the other side of the chain with a clipboard held against her chest.

Trudy Sikes was a white American woman of sixty-three, with a stiff silver bob, pink cheeks, and white shoes that never seemed to meet dirt.

She had a gift for looking hurt while making someone else miserable.

“You're blocking the wash,” I told her.

“I'm protecting association property.”

Behind her, the dry channel ran between rabbitbrush and the back walls of our Carson City neighborhood. The Sierra ridge still held thin strips of snow. Down here, dust had already settled into the cracks of my hands.

At forty-seven, I was a broad, freckled Irish American man with a red beard going gray and pale eyes that narrowed in the wash glare.

My name was Declan Horgan. I trimmed hooves part-time and volunteered at a small burro rescue east of town. On paid mornings, I took a rasp and hoof knife to backyard horses and stubborn little donkeys. On free mornings, I helped rescued burros learn that a rope didn't always mean trouble.

The wash gave us level ground without traffic.

“We've walked here for years,” I said.

“As a courtesy.” Trudy lifted her clipboard. “Courtesies may be withdrawn.”

She handed me a notice in a plastic sleeve. It said TRESPASS AND ANIMAL NUISANCE. Beneath that sat a $220 fine, due within ten days.

“What nuisance?”

“Livestock.”

“You wrote the animal's name where the offense should go.”

Her mouth tightened.

Mabel shifted a hind foot. I lowered my voice.

“Easy, sweetheart. I've got you.”

Trudy glanced at my work apron, rolled behind my belt. There were hoof shavings in its folds.

“You may know how to file a toenail,” she said. “That does not make you qualified to read a property map.”

“A hoof wall,” I said. “And you haven't shown me a map.”

Her yard rose above the west side of the wash. Little red flags marked a long curve through bare dirt. A rolled sheet of artificial turf lay near her patio.

“We're creating an attractive private recreation space,” she said. “The board supports neighborhood improvements.”

“Private for whom?”

“My guests will use it responsibly.”

That was when I understood the flags. She wanted a putting green where the trail bent around her retaining wall.

I looked past her toward my place, a low cottage on three rough acres outside the association boundary. My aunt Mae had left it to me eighteen months earlier. Trudy still called it the rental by the wash.

Mae had kept a long survey tube above her coat hooks. Before she died, she told me, “Keep the land papers together. A friendly path can get unfriendly owners.”

I'd kept them exactly where she left them.

“You rent that cottage,” Trudy said. “Speak to the owner if you're confused.”

“I don't rent it.”

“Then speak to an attorney.”

Fig reached for the plastic sleeve. I moved it before she could test whether association rules tasted like oats.

“Back up, love.”

Across the wash, my neighbor Rosa Bell opened her kitchen door.

“Trudy, those burros are quieter than your leaf blower.”

“This is a compliance matter.”

Rosa looked at the notice in my hand. “Two hundred twenty?”

I nodded.

“Same as mine.”

“For what?”

“My trash bin stayed out past six.”

Trudy snapped her clipboard shut.

“I will not conduct association business over a ditch.”

“You brought the clipboard,” Rosa said.

I almost smiled. Then Mabel pulled against the rope, scared by the snap. I put my palm against her neck until she settled.

We turned home. I wouldn't teach two frightened animals to push through a chain just to win an argument.

At the cottage, I brushed dust from the survey tube. Inside were a map, a folded grant with a recorder's stamp, and Mae's neat list of document numbers.

One line on the map crossed the exact bend beneath Trudy's red flags.

I called the surveyor whose name Mae had written in the margin.

“Warren Cho's office,” a man said.

Before I could answer, a truck rattled past my gate. Steel fence posts rang in its bed. The driver stopped and handed me a work notice.

INSTALLATION TOMORROW, 7:00 A.M.

The customer named at the bottom was Trudy Sikes.