“Don’t worry about it,” Richard said.
“You were talking about Mr. Miller.”
Richard studied his son.
“The man thinks he can move into our neighborhood and start telling us how things should be run. He wants to act like an authority? Let everyone see what he’s like when someone challenges him.”
Trent felt a spark of resentment. Joseph’s calm voice in the driveway had made him feel smaller than a shouting match would have.
“He won’t fight,” Trent said.
“Then he’ll look scared. Either way, you’ll have a video.”
Richard patted him on the shoulder.
“Just make sure Eli gets a clean shot.”
Trent nodded.
He told himself it was no different from the videos he already made.
But the next day he asked Eli to keep the camera rolling even if someone told him to stop.
Eli looked at him for a moment.
“Why would they tell me to stop?”
Trent smiled.
“Because the guy we’re filming doesn’t know he’s part of the show.”
Chapter Four: The Small Print
The drainage problem announced itself during a thunderstorm in July.
Rain hammered the roof of Joseph’s house for two hours. When the worst had passed, he found Mrs. Weller from number nine standing beside the cul-de-sac’s storm drain with water halfway up her boots.
“That thing’s supposed to take water away,” she said, pointing at the grate. “Not make a lake of my yard.”
Joseph went home, brought back a flashlight and a long-handled tool, and cleared a nest of leaves and plastic cups from the grate. The water began to move, but slowly. Too slowly.
He knew enough about pumps, drainage, and building maintenance to recognize a restriction farther downstream. He also knew enough about municipal infrastructure not to treat a public drain like a private repair project.
The next morning, he called the township engineering office.
The employee who answered asked which subdivision he lived in. When he said Oak Creek, she was silent for a moment.
“There’s a drainage modification proposal open for public comment,” she said. “A developer filed it.”
“Which developer?”
“Harrington Residential Group.”
An hour later Joseph was reading a forty-seven-page proposal at the kitchen table, with two mugs of coffee going cold beside him.
