The Walnuts on the Fence Line

He picked at the rim of his mug.

“Don’t make this into something it isn’t,” he said.

I nodded. Then I turned around and walked back down the hill.

“I can call the sheriff,” Janet said across the kitchen table.

I had been thinking about that on the walk down. I sat across from her and tried to explain it plainly.

“Honey, a deputy comes out, looks at the stumps and writes down property line dispute. It is a civil matter in his book. The prosecutor looks at it in a month, and a lawyer wants a retainer and a year.”

“And the logs?”

“Veneer logs do not wait a year. The mill scales them, the veneer buyer picks them up, and in a week they are sliced into sheets and shipped to Ohio. After that there is nothing left to get back.”

That gave us about three days. There are only a few mills within sixty miles that handle walnut veneer logs. I knew every one of them from buying shop lumber, and I knew which one Leon had been dealing with for forty years. That was the one I called first.

Brannock Hardwoods, outside Spencer. A woman named Lynette answered on the second ring. I knew her from church, where her husband helps with the sound system.

“Lynette, it’s Steve Hollander. Did a load of walnut come in this weekend?”

“Oh, Steve.” Her voice dropped. “I’m not supposed to give out account information.”

“I’m not asking for a number. I’m asking if there is a load on the yard.”

I could hear her thinking. Then I heard a drawer slide and the rustle of paper.

“There are twenty-four walnut logs on the yard under Leon Hollander’s account,” she said slowly. “They came in Saturday and Monday morning. The veneer buyer’s man is coming Thursday to grade them.”

“Thank you, Lynette.”

“Steve, what’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you when I get there,” I said. “Tell Vance I am bringing paper.”

My father, Edgar Hollander, was the kind of man who kept every receipt he ever received. When Granddad Everett died in 1978, Dad and Leon divided the land, and Dad hired a licensed surveyor named Alton Frey to run the line properly. He did it because he knew his brother.

He told me that once, years ago, standing in that very spot. He said, “A good fence makes good neighbors, but a good survey makes good brothers.”

I found the survey in the second drawer of Dad’s old oak desk, folded into thirds inside a manila envelope with the date written on it in his square handwriting. A drawing, a legal description, and a copy of the recorded plat stamped at the county.

The drawing showed the boundary running dead straight from the county road to the creek. It showed iron pins set at both ends and every four hundred feet between. It showed my walnut row twenty-two feet south of the line.

Twenty-two feet. Not a fuzzy line. Not a close call. Twenty-two feet of Hollander pasture lay between those trees and my uncle’s property.

“Pins,” Janet said, reading over my shoulder. “Are they still there?”

“Dad would have said the ground keeps its promises.”

I got the metal detector from the shed, the one I had bought at a farm sale for my students to use on a geology unit, and I walked the fence line with it held low and swinging. Janet came behind me with a tape.