The driver, a young man named Hector, said quietly that he would not touch the garden without a court order, and that his company had never been told about any easement. Blaine tried to argue, but three neighbors had already walked into the alley with their phones raised. Walter, still kneeling, asked gently whether the machine was going to dig somewhere else, because he did not want it frightening the sunflowers. A few people laughed, and the tension in the alley cracked.

By evening, the association’s board met in an emergency session on our street. Two of its five members admitted that Blaine had never shown them the easement, and that he had pushed through the garden order alone. The county surveyor confirmed the fence line the next morning, and Blaine was ordered to remove it at his own expense within thirty days. The board voted four to one to remove him as president, and the lone vote against was his own.

Blaine came to our door a week later with his hat in his hands. He did not make excuses. He admitted that his wife had left him that spring, that he had been lonely and angry, and that controlling other people’s yards was the only thing that made him feel in charge of anything. Walter listened, nodded, and handed him a basket of tomatoes. This time Blaine took them.

Blaine moved the fence himself, and then he started coming over on Saturday mornings to help Walter water the rows. His hands are clumsy, and Walter teaches him patiently, the way a gardener teaches a seed. The garden has doubled in size, and half the street now keeps a bed of their own. The green filing box sits in my kitchen cupboard, though I no longer need it. Walter’s hands still shake, except in the soil, where they are perfectly still.