What the Scrap Pile Was Really For

The letters

In the second week of September three letters came to my house in one mail. They were from the City of Vandalia, in the thin envelopes with a window.

The first was a courtesy notice. The second was a formal notice of violation, outdoor storage of salvage. The third said that if I did not abate the nuisance within thirty days, the city would do it for me and place the cost as a lien on the property.

I called the number and got Rich Hollis, the city’s code officer. I’d known Rich since he played Pony League ball. He sounded like a man who had been put in a bad spot.

“Marvin, I don’t want to do this one,” he said. “Nobody’s said a word in years. But the Pettibone lot next door sold in June, and the council told us to sweep everything on the north side that’s been left alone. Yours was at the top. It’s a lot of pile, Marvin. I can’t say it isn’t.”

“No,” I said. “It is a lot of pile.”

“Last time we cleared one this size it ran about eleven thousand dollars. Dump truck, excavator, the landfill in Effingham. It’d be billed to you. If you can’t pay, it goes on the property.”

I thanked him and hung up. I could have called Opal then. There were thirty tons of iron out in that lot, worth maybe seven thousand dollars, nearly the girl’s whole bill, if I could ever get it to the scale.

I did not call, and it isn’t to my credit why. I was embarrassed. I had failed at the one thing I had promised Opal, and now I was sitting over a notice that said my life’s work was a nuisance, and I thought, well, it’s what they always thought it was. Maybe the city has it right.

Joanne found the letters on the table the next morning and read all three standing up with her coffee.

“I’m going with you,” she said. “To the meeting.”

“You don’t need to.”

“Dad, I’m going.”

Item 6

So that is how I came to be in the back row on a Thursday night in October with a walker beside my chair and my daughter’s purse pressed against my arm.

They did the culvert first. The mayor, a trim woman named Gail Bergmann in a navy blazer, ran a clean meeting. Item 5 passed, and she turned the page.

“Item 6. Abatement of public nuisance, Old Brownstown Road. Mr. Hollis?”

Rich stood up in the second row with a folder and gave the facts without any adjectives. Two prior notices, an acre and a half of salvage, abatement by the city and a lien for the cost. He sat down. He did not look at the back of the room.

“Is the owner present?” the mayor asked.

I put my hands on the walker.

When I stood, with the whole room turning around in their chairs and my face going hot, all I had was what I’d planned in the truck.

“I’m Marvin Krumm. That’s my pile. I won’t fight it. I can’t move it myself. You do what you have to do, and I’ll sign what I need to sign.”

Nobody said anything. A chair creaked. I heard somebody in the second row say “poor man,” and I was glad Joanne’s hand was on my elbow.

“Thank you, Mr. Krumm,” the mayor said, gently. “I’ll entertain a motion.”

“So moved,” said an alderman named Gebhardt.

“Second,” said another.

“Before you vote.”

It was not a loud voice. It did not have to be.

Opal Ebner stood up in the last row on the far side of the aisle. I hadn’t known she was in the room. She was seventy-nine years old and wearing her good gray coat, and she had the green tin box in both hands.

I had not seen that box in nineteen years. Not since the morning I put it on her desk.