The Night Nolan Sayer Called My Walk To The Pier Theft

Nolan Sayer held up my photograph before I had taken off my coat.

It showed me at the pier gate, with one hand on the latch and my knitting bag on my arm. He had printed it large enough to show the loose yarn caught on my sleeve.

“This,” he told the neighborhood meeting, “is how community property gets stolen.”

I was a white woman of seventy, with pale blue eyes, a broad face, and gray hair cut just below my ears. In that picture, I looked like a woman trying to remember whether she had left the stove on.

I had actually been checking the wind.

For thirty-four years, I had worked at an oyster hatchery outside Cambridge, Maryland. Wind could change the water coming through our intake. I still looked for it in the reeds before I looked at the sky.

“What did I steal?” I asked.

“Access,” Nolan said.

Nolan Sayer was a white man of forty-nine, with a square jaw, neat brown hair, and a navy vest that never seemed to get wet.

He stood beside a drawing of new pier lights. Beneath it, someone had written COMMUNITY MEANS CONTRIBUTING.

“You used an unauthorized key,” he said. “Residents pay thirty-five dollars a month for that gate.”

I had moved into the little rental on Heron Lane six weeks earlier. Before that, I had lived out near Route 16. I had known the landing since childhood, but I had not known there was a price on walking to it.

“My mother gave me that key.”

A few people smiled. Nolan let them.

“Your mother didn't build our improvements.”

“Neither did your padlock.”

The woman beside me made a small sound into her fist.

Nolan turned toward the room. “Mrs. Fenwick rents. She doesn't have a property vote. I am asking her landlord to address this.”

My cheeks went hot. I could smell burnt coffee and the damp wool of my coat. Out the window, rain slid down the church hall glass.

I wanted to tell him about the narrow piece of shore my mother had left me. Instead, I set my bag on my lap.

Inside were two unfinished mittens and a tide chart folded into eight squares. Behind the chart was a yellow envelope. I had brought it because his meeting notice said all waterfront questions would be heard.

Apparently, only some answers would be welcome.

“Please put my objection in the minutes,” I said.

“You can object after you pay the sixty-dollar key deposit and your first month.”

“You said access was stolen. Please record exactly what was taken.”

The woman beside me lowered her fist.

“Oh, do,” she said. “Exact words are such useful little creatures.”

Her name was Hazel Brooks. She was seventy-three, a Black woman with silver braids pinned in a crown and a red raincoat folded in a perfect square. I had seen her carrying groceries, but we had never spoken.

Nolan ignored her.

“We have insurance. Repairs. Waterfront management isn't free.”

“May I see the accounts?” I asked.

“Owners receive financial information.”

“Then may I see the rule that sets the gate charge?”

He tapped his drawing. “We are trying to improve the community, Edith.”

It was strange how quickly he had found my first name after losing my right to speak.

The meeting ended without a vote. Nolan took down my photograph and left the light drawing on the wall.

Hazel waited while I buttoned my coat.

“I spent thirty-eight years as a court clerk,” she said. “Men get taller when they think nobody keeps the paper.”

“Did you keep any?”

She smiled. “I keep everything.”

Outside, we passed a truck with bags of mulch in the bed. The air smelled of wet cedar and the Choptank. Somewhere beyond the houses, a halyard struck a mast.

“What was in your envelope?” Hazel asked.

“An agreement my mother told me to keep with the deed.”

“To your rental?”

“No.”

She stopped walking.

I took out my tide chart. A blue pencil line marked the next morning's low water. At the hatchery, I had learned to mark the level before opening a valve. Memory could make a costly mess.

“The landing was there before these houses,” I said. “So were certain promises.”

Hazel looked at the envelope, then at me.

“My kitchen table is clear at nine.”

When I reached home, a message from my landlord was waiting on my phone.

Nolan had sent him the photograph.

Below it was a typed demand: Stop your tenant's unauthorized use, or the committee will seek removal of her access and recovery of all related costs.

I opened the yellow envelope and unfolded the first page.

Across the top, above my mother's signature, were the words PERPETUAL RIPARIAN ACCESS AGREEMENT.