Probably Fine

I. The Guy at the Corner

1. Windows

Claire

By the second week he had a clipboard.

Before that he was just a man across the greenbelt, standing by the storm drain like he’d wandered onto the wrong errand and didn’t want to admit it. No dog, no earbuds, no prop to explain himself. Just hands in pockets, eyes on the grate.

I already knew that grate. Last summer I watched water disappear into it faster than the city said it should. “Everything worked as designed,” the inspector told Hazel while she wrung out towels in her driveway. That phrase still floats up at odd times, usually whenever someone claims something is probably fine.

The first few days I wrote him off as a passerby taking a long pause. People do that. They search for a key that isn’t lost, check a message they already read, stall before going back inside. They don’t usually stare at storm drains unless something’s gone wrong in their life or their yard.

But he kept returning. And he stayed long enough that I wiped an already clean counter and pretended I was the reasonable one.

He never bent down to poke anything. Never took a call. Never looked around like he’d been caught. He just stood there, still as furniture, concentrating on the quiet.

The house was quiet too. Empty-nest quiet. Not sad, exactly, just acoustically honest. A home gets used to being full, and when it isn’t, everything else starts announcing itself. The fridge hum, the dishwasher click, the slight throat sound you make swallowing coffee.

For nineteen years mornings were loud without registering as noise: cereal boxes, cabinet doors, my son thumping through routines he denied having. “Do we have any more cinnamon toast?” “Where’s my form?” “Where’s my other form?” Then he left for college, my ex moved into a condo with a gym towel service, and suddenly my footsteps were the whole soundtrack.

So I kept the old ritual, standing at the kitchen window between 7:15 and 7:45, pretending it was deliberate and not just leftover muscle memory. The window faced the greenbelt and the outer curve of Brookside Drive. Oaks along the street dropped leaves into everyone’s gutters like they were running a competition.

After Hazel’s flood, I learned to track the water level without meaning to. I could hear the downspout choke on a single clump of maple seeds. Mornings became a quiet weather report.

Then this man added himself to the data set.

He was maybe early fifties. Or an exhausted mid-forties. Clothes practical enough to erase all guessing: jeans, jacket, sneakers that said “orthotics.” He held himself like someone who’d stood in a lot of lines.

Eventually he caught himself lingering. He looked up, made a small embarrassed circle with his head, and walked back along the greenbelt. When he passed under the Hazel Court sign, I placed him: the rental three houses down from the one with mismatched porch bulbs.

The next morning he reappeared. And the next. By day five the hat changed, the posture didn’t. Feet apart. Hands in pockets. Shoulders square to the drain.

Then came the clipboard. Yellow. Full size. The kind used by people who know where the spare keys are. He wrote in short bursts, held it at arm’s length, then wrote more. Once he crossed to the opposite curb, took a note, and returned to the drain to take another. Systematic. Quiet. Intentional.

He could’ve been drawing cartoons of us. But the rhythm said otherwise. He was measuring something, maybe remembering what that water had done last July.

Meanwhile, my days stretched in all directions. Seventeen hours is too much time for a single person if they’re used to background noise. I learned which dog walkers layered correctly for fall. Which neighbors pretended their porch lights were decorative and not necessary. Which minivans carried their dents proudly. The whole street turned into a slow TV show I watched out of habit.

And once you notice a stranger might appear in the same spot every day, you look up more often. You track the pattern. You check.

After a week of him and his clipboard, I opened the Brookside Residents group. I didn’t post there often, mostly lurked out of self-preservation, but boredom and curiosity teamed up.

I typed:

Anyone else noticing the guy with the clipboard at Hazel & Brookside?
Is he with the city?
He seems very committed to that storm drain.

I deleted “very committed” and put it back in. Accuracy won.

Replies trickled in:

He’s city.
He’s definitely not city.
Contractor?
Concerned citizen?
At least he’s quiet.

Someone suggested “lawsuit,” as if men with navy jackets and tired sneakers were the vanguard of litigation. One woman asked if anyone had gotten his license plate. No one had. A blessing, honestly.

“At least he’s quiet” was the consensus. For a neighborhood that once held a four-month debate about shed height and a near riot about trampoline placement, a silent man with a clipboard felt like progress.

I still knew nothing about him. Just his posture, his consistency, and the way he made the mornings feel slightly off-center. But I filed him under Not A Problem. Not yet.

You never know which strangers rearrange the shape of a place. They don’t announce themselves. They just keep showing up.

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2. The Route

Miles

You learn people by the way they take their mail.

Some pull everything out fast, like they’re trying to beat a timer. Some pinch envelopes like they’re handling evidence. Some sort on the spot: bill, junk, unknown, probably bad news. And some open the door just wide enough to snag the stack before you can say hello.

Do a job long enough and your brain starts categorizing for entertainment. I’ve been on the Brookside loop for years, and I keep a private system. Not official, not organized, just ways of noticing.

A scribble on my route sheet means “dog loose but friendly.” A star means “says thank you.” A diagonal slash means “timing me.” A circle means “heavy week, hand it over gently.” A question mark means “story forming; keep an eye.”

Management never sees these marks. They want the scanner to beep and the truck to keep moving. The scanner, for its part, would prefer I be 25 again. We disappoint each other daily.

I’m 58. Mailman-old, not people-old. Knees complain on inclines. Back registers its protests in the language of porch stairs. My doctor says I’m in good shape “for the job,” which is code for “your muscles and the federal system disagree about retirement.”

Brookside is a decent route. Flat enough. Trees for shade. Sidewalks mostly honest. You get used to the neighborhood’s rhythm: Halloween inflatables appearing overnight, trash cans migrating like lost livestock, the one house that switches to Christmas at exactly 12:01 a.m. on November first.

Every so often there’s a storm that reminds everyone this street slopes for a reason. Last July the bottom of Hazel turned into a shallow canal. Water flirted with garage doors. People in rubber boots stood around pretending the phrase “performed as expected” wasn’t sending a clear message.

The first time I saw him, he was waiting at his mailbox.

That happens. Folks expecting packages stand around pretending to enjoy the breeze. Usually you can guess the content. Gym shorts, electronics, a suspiciously light box someone doesn’t want a spouse to open.

This guy wore jeans, a plain shirt, a jacket that once had a logo. Hands in pockets like he wasn’t sure if intercepting your own mail was good manners.

His box was third in the cluster: Hart, E. I meet people as handwriting before anything else. His “E” was small and careful, like someone who didn’t rush forms.

He watched my hands instead of my face. System guy.

“Getting anything good today?” I said. Route-standard banter.

“It’s all data,” he said.

Not a typical answer. Not wrong. Just sideways.

Three items: hardware circular, refinancing ad, padded envelope with no logo. Could’ve held anything from a part to a personal project.

“Package for you,” I said.

He weighed it in his hand before reading the label. Not suspicious, more like calibrating.

“I appreciate you,” he said. Not “thanks.” Not “take care.” I appreciate you.

I put a small question mark next to his number.

A few days later I saw him at the corner. Standing by the storm drain like he’d been dropped there by a crane. Same posture: thinking without moving.

“Out early,” I said when I reached his box.

“I wanted to see where it all goes,” he said.

“Mail?”

“Water.”

Right. Water.

He started receiving more packages. Long ones, heavy ones. Tools, by the weight. A measuring wheel showed up. After that, I’d sometimes see him pacing the curb, rolling the wheel, jotting notes, doubling back to check something he didn’t trust the first time.

“New toy?” I asked once.

“Trying to understand the street,” he said. “Before it surprises me again.”

Literal man. Literal project. No drama, no flair. Respectable instincts.

That night I underlined the question mark.

I keep a small notebook at home, nothing official. Just lines I want for later. The dog that leaves tennis balls in exchange for gloves. The kid who wore a cape for two years and then went silent until high school softened him again. The woman who left iced tea in July “for whoever,” which always means “you.”

Eldon Hart went in with a single line:

Man with wheel studying drain. Consistent.

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3. Assignment

Cass

My desk at the Herald sat between a copier with emotional issues and a window facing the HVAC units of the building next door. The window didn’t open. The view didn’t count. The copier whined in three distinct dialects; I’d learned them the way some reporters learn police codes.

I was halfway through my second cup of newsroom coffee. Burnt, metallic, comfortingly predictable. I scrolled the police blotter for anything with shape. Most of it was the usual: loud music resolved before arrival, possible trespasser identified as UPS, a cow on County Road 8 reunited with its owner.

At nine-thirty, an email popped up. Subject line:

Drains guy

At our paper, anything labeled “___ guy” can be heartwarming or bizarre. “Train Guy” was a retiree with an elaborate model railroad. “Mall Guy” lived in a defunct department store for two weeks. Range varies.

The email, from Denise:

A few calls about a resident poking around storm drains on Brookside Court.
Non-emergency line checked. No crime.
Could be local color. 600 words max.

“Local color” is code for: don’t come back empty, don’t come back ambitious.

I pulled up the dispatch notes. They read like someone jotting down events from the edge of a parade.

Caller reports male subject examining storm drains.
Fifties, jeans, clipboard.
Measuring equipment.
Officers made contact; subject states he is “mapping runoff.”
No further action.

Mapping runoff. Could be earnest. Could be eccentric. In this town, often both.

I opened a map of Brookside. A polite tangle of curves, cul-de-sacs, retention ponds named like real lakes. Drone footage of suburban optimism. I knew the type. Streets planned by people who didn’t live on them.

Last July’s floods hit a few neighborhoods hard, Brookside included. The city blamed “unprecedented rainfall” and assured everyone the system had responded “as expected.” Residents described water climbing garages and said it was probably fine until it very much wasn’t.

A man mapping runoff didn’t sound so strange.

I wrote a sticky note:

Why drains?

Not rhetorical. The assignment needed an angle.
If he was harmless but meticulous, that was one kind of story.
If he was anxious because he’d lived the flood up close, another.
If he was the only one paying attention, that was a story too.

I grabbed my recorder, notebook, keys. The copier whined as I passed, refusing someone’s spreadsheet request. The unfinished mural across the alley, a woman’s hand reaching toward nothing, glared at the sky.

I headed to the parking lot. If the day was going to be slow, I might as well spend it watching someone else try to understand a problem the city preferred to wordsmith away.

Small stories pay better attention than big ones. Or at least they try.