The Wall My Neighbor Wanted Gone

One neighbor, a widow named Melissa who had lived on the Ridge almost as long as I had, spoke up for me, said she remembered exactly how bad that hillside had been before the wall went in and did not see the sense in tearing out something that had worked for two decades to solve a problem nobody could even name. Another neighbor, newer, backed Rita, said the neighborhood needed to modernize and a stack of old rock did look a little rough next to the newer builds going up on the far end of the street.

The board voted three to one to uphold the violation, with Rita’s own vote breaking what would have otherwise been a tie between the remaining two members. Fines would begin accruing on schedule. I drove home that night past Norm’s old mailbox, still labeled with his name because nobody had gotten around to changing it, and thought about how he would have voted if he were still sitting in that room.

Before the meeting broke up, Rita stood at the front table and reminded everyone, almost gently, that this was not personal, that the board was simply upholding a standard the community itself had voted to adopt, and that she hoped I would come around once I saw how much nicer that corner of the Ridge would look once the work was finished. Melissa leaned over to me on the way out to the parking lot and said what half the room was thinking. A woman who has lived here four months does not get to decide what this neighborhood has looked like for twenty years. I did not say much back. I was already running numbers in my head, the fine against the cost of a lawyer against the cost of simply proving, once and for all, exactly what that wall was doing and what it would take to replace it properly if it truly had to come out.

The Crack

I did not tear the wall down. I did not pay the fine either, not yet. I told my attorney to send a formal objection buying me time while I figured out my next move, and in the meantime I kept doing what I do for a living, which is pay close attention to ground that other people walk over without a second thought.

Ten days after the vote, on a Tuesday morning, I was out back checking my own drainage lines when I noticed a hairline crack running along the top course of stone on my side of the wall, thin as a pencil line, but running in a direction I did not like at all. Straight toward the corner of Rita’s property, toward the fresh concrete slab her pool contractor had poured two weeks earlier.

I have seen cracks like that before, on other people’s jobs, usually right before something expensive goes wrong. I did not call Rita. I did not call the HOA. I called a structural and geotechnical engineering firm out of Springfield that I had worked alongside on a county retaining project a few years back, and I asked them to come look at my hillside, on my dime, before anybody put a single tool to that wall.