Instead of the old oil-stained denim coveralls they used
to wear, all four of them sported crisp blue shirts that
they put on fresh each morning and sent out to be laun-
dered every week.
After so much rain, the air was washed clean and
fluffy white clouds drifted across a clear blue sky. A soft
spring breeze ruffled my hair as we stood in the sunlit
yard waiting for Dwight to pick me up. I accepted their
offer of a cup of coffee and we talked about the changes
in the neighborhood and of all the new people that had
moved in and wanted him to service their cars with-
out trying to build a relationship. “Like, just because
they got the cash money, they think they’re gonna get
moved to the front of the line ahead of people that’s
been here all along.”
James, who had graduated from high school a couple
of years behind me, said, “What gets me hot though’s
when they don’t trust us. They’ll want us to give the
car a tune-up and if we say we had to replace one of the
belts, they’ll want to see it and half the time they act
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HARD ROW
like they think we cut it so we could charge ’em for a
new one.”
Jimmy snorted. “That’s when we tell them they need
to go find theirselves a new mechanic.”
I glanced at all the cars lined up around the yard and
said, “Looks like you’ve got more work than you can
handle anyhow.”
He nodded with satisfaction. “I’m just glad I listened
to you and bought them two acres next door and let you
do all that paperwork about the zoning. We’re gonna
break ground next month, finally build that fancy new
garage James here’s been planning and we probably
couldn’t do it if we were starting fresh today. Not with
all the big money houses going in on this road.”
I had handled some of their legal matters before I
ran for judge. Seven years ago, Jimmy hadn’t seen the
need to have his property legally zoned for business.
He’d run a messy, sprawling garage out there in what
used to be the middle of nowhere for twenty-five years
and he’d expected to run it for twenty-five more. It was
the typical rural land owner’s mind-set: “It’s my land
and I can do what I want with it.” But when the plan-
ning commission started getting serious about zoning,
I had encouraged Jimmy to get a proper business per-
mit so that he could expand if he wanted to without the
limitations often imposed on businesses that have been
grandfathered in. I’m not saying the planning commis-
