Probably Fine
III. The Big Rain
8. Interview
Cass
When I finally interviewed him, he looked more nervous than I felt, which took effort on his part.
He was posting a new laminated sheet inside the trailhead box on the greenbelt path. The old one had curled at the edges like a leaf left too long in a book. He peeled it up carefully, smoothed the new one against the plexiglass, and pressed the tape down with the slow, practiced hand of someone who hates air bubbles.
Up close, the map was even denser: more arrows, more tiny notes in the margins, little circles marking dips in the path, numbered driveways, a star beside the date of the old flood.
“Hi,” I said, raising my notebook like a hall pass.
“Hi,” he said. His eyes dropped to my press badge. A blink, then: “You’re from the paper.”
“Thanks for emailing back.”
A small nod, the kind people give when they’ve prepared for the worst version of a conversation and haven’t ruled out this being it.
“Mind if I ask a few questions?” I said.
“Sure,” he said. “Answers might be boring. That’s ideal for drains.”
We stepped aside for a jogger and an ecstatic off-leash dog. Neither of us sat on the bench. Interviews go better on your feet.
“Just to get it right,” I said. “Eldon…?”
“Hart,” he said. “Eldon with one L. Not that anyone spells it with two. My mom just… pointed it out a lot.”
I wrote it.
“So what started all this?”
He took a long breath and glanced down Hazel toward the lowest point of the street.
“There was a storm,” he said. “Three summers ago. Forecast said ‘light showers.’ The sky took offense.”
He gestured with his palm, raising it slowly from his shin.
“Street filled up to here. Then it wrapped around the curb and came up the driveway. Not a disaster movie. Just water doing what made sense to it.”
He wasn’t dramatic. He wasn’t selling it. He sounded like someone reading back a log entry.
“The garage door held for maybe a minute,” he said. “Weatherstripping bowed in and out like it was breathing. Then the water pushed under and came in.”
“And after?” I asked.
“After,” he said, “the city called it ‘historically unprecedented.’ Insurance called it ‘an act of God.’ The adjuster called it ‘one of those things.’”
He shrugged.
“It felt more like concrete and slope than God,” he said. “So I started paying attention to the concrete.”
“You started with your driveway.”
“Then the gutter. Then the corner. Then the eight decisions uphill that feed into the corner.”
He tapped the plexiglass of the map lightly.
“How long have you been doing this?” I asked.
“Since January,” he said. “On and off. More on lately. My job is mostly staring at error logs. This is the outdoor version.”
“You work in tech,” I said.
“Internal support,” he said. “Servers. Systems. People want magic fixes. Drains are simpler. Gravity never files a ticket.”
“Do you have an engineering background?”
“No,” he said. “I read a few city planning blogs. I like diagrams. That’s the résumé.”
“Why the flags and chalk?”
“My memory’s optimistic,” he said. “I needed actual marks. Patterns only show up if you’re honest about what’s happening on the ground.”
“And the laminated map?”
He winced.
“I thought if I put one out here, people might understand what I was doing. Or at least stop assuming it was some kind of… ritual.”
“Has it helped?”
“A couple people clear the grate before storms now,” he said. “That’s something. Not to the city, but to them.”
A runner passed, oblivious to the map under her elbow.
“What’s the best outcome?” I asked.
“That nothing happens,” he said. “Rain comes, everything keeps up, and nobody ever needs to think about why.”
“And the worst?”
“That it happens again and everyone is surprised for no reason. Or,” he gave a small grimace, “that I’m wrong and I’m just a guy who made the neighborhood look like a craft store exploded.”
He looked at my notebook when he said “story,” and winced harder.
“I’m not saving anyone,” he said quickly. “I just don’t like being blindsided by preventable things.”
“And what do you call all this?” I asked.
He looked at the faint rings dried into the concrete near the bench, as if the word might be scrawled there.
“Paying attention,” he said. “On purpose.”
He said it without pride. Just accuracy.
Most people want to sound interesting. He wanted to sound normal.
9. Margins
Miles
The letter from the city changed the way he stood.
I saw it arrive. Thin envelope, official weight, stamped with the crest they use when they want to sound apologetic without apologizing.
I slid it into his stack, thought nothing of it, then thought about it for the rest of the block.
When I looped back on the other side of Brookside, he was already on the porch, envelope torn open. His other mail (circulars, offers, a gutter-cleaning flyer) sat untouched beside him. Shoulders sunk. I’ve seen that posture more times than I’d like. Bad news doesn’t require bold type.
“They noticed my map,” he said.
“Good notice or bureaucratic notice?” I asked.
“The polite kind,” he said. “Commendable initiative.”
He read from the letter:
“‘We appreciate engaged residents taking an interest in stormwater infrastructure… however, for reasons of safety and liability, please refrain from placing markers or materials on city-owned structures or rights-of-way. Do not interact with city-owned infrastructure without prior authorization.’”
He lowered the page.
“They like the word ‘interact,’” he said. “Used it three times. Interact with grates. Interact with culverts. Interact with retention basins.”
He folded the letter once, then again, like trying to make the message smaller.
“What did you actually do?” I asked.
“Chalk lines,” he said. “Some flags. A laminated map in a box. According to this, I’ve compromised the integrity of the municipal drainage system.”
“Are they threatening you?”
“No,” he said. “This is their friendly voice. ‘We kindly request.’ ‘We remind you that.’ There’s a number I can call for ‘approved channels for citizen feedback.’”
“Going to call?”
He stared at the phone number like it had personally let him down.
“I’ve worked the other side of those lines,” he said. “You read the script, feel vaguely guilty, then fix what you were going to fix anyway. Or don’t.”
The quiet at that corner felt heavier than usual. Hazel and Brookside looked calm, too calm for a place that had once tried to swallow itself.
“Are you going to stop?” I asked.
“I’ll stop drawing on curbs,” he said. “Apparently chalk is a gateway offense.”
“And the rest?”
He gave a little helpless shrug.
“I can’t un-see it now,” he said. “The low spots. The way the drains sound when they’re already full. I don’t need a wheel for that.”
He tucked the letter back into the envelope like storing something fragile.
“I don’t want to be responsible for anything,” he said. “I just hate being surprised in ways you didn’t need to be.”
Reasonable. Doesn’t scale, but reasonable.
Down the block a kid kicked a soccer ball into his garage door in rhythmic defiance. Sprinklers came on across the street where puddles were still drying. Life doing its usual impression of calm.
That night I opened my notebook. The route sheet sat underneath, covered in my private notations. Stars. Slashes. Circles. Nothing official. Just my own way of understanding who lived along this loop.
Under “Local Expertise,” I had already written:
E. Hart --> knows the low spots.
I added:
City told him not to touch the drains.
Still watching them anyway.
I had a bid form on the table, an easier route closer to the depot. Fewer hills. Less bending. Cleaner sidewalks. My joints were lobbying hard.
But easier routes don’t come with people you’ve known through three sets of Christmas lights. They don’t come with kids whose capes you’ve outlasted. They don’t come with neighbors who stand in storms because they refuse to be surprised again.
I let the form sit. The kettle whistled. I didn’t choose that night. I didn’t un-choose either.
Sometimes you don’t decide about a route. You just keep walking it until the meaning shakes out.
10. Overflows
Claire
The forecast said “showers,” which meant nothing. Around here “showers” ranges from a polite tap on the windows to the street remembering it used to be a creek.
By afternoon, the little cloud icon on my phone kept adding lines like it was leveling up. By evening, it had evolved into “periods of heavy rain,” which is meteorologist for “start moving the doormats.”
I’d noticed he’d been out less since the city letter. No chalk. Fewer flags. Some mornings just a walk, hands tucked in pockets, eyes not searching so much as scanning.
Then, sometime between chopping garlic and burning the first handful, the rain smacked the kitchen window hard enough to startle me. By the time I walked to the front room, it had gone from “rain” to “scenario.”
Streetlights came on early, halos blurred by the downpour. From our front window, Brookside and Hazel looked like smudged watercolors someone kept brushing before they dried.
The neighborhood text thread woke up.
anyone else getting water near back door
our power flickered
trampoline is NOT floating josh
brookside looks bad
is this another july thing??
Then, through the moving blur outside, I saw him.
Ankle deep at the corner. Hood half-on, jacket zipped to the chin. He stood in the dip where Hazel meets Brookside, watching the swirl near the grate, the same grate we all pretended was “handled” after the last time.
A car rolled through the water, waves slapping against his shins. He stepped back, let it pass, then moved right back into place.
More texts:
water coming up fast
anyone know which drains connect????
He suddenly turned and jogged up Hazel Court. Not a panic run, a purposeful one. He cut between two yards, vanished behind the Delgados’ hydrangeas, then reappeared beside the small drain box near their back fence, a feature I’d never noticed in twenty years of living here.
Lily Delgado followed him out, barefoot, sweatshirt plastered to her arms. They dropped into a crouch at the drain, hands scooping clumped leaves and soaked grass away from the metal grate. He worked like someone who’d already rehearsed it.
On the thread:
water coming in under my parents’ back door at hazel help
I didn’t need to type anything. I watched the help happen.
The waterline at the Delgados’ sliding door stopped advancing. The patio reflections thinned. A small whirlpool formed above the drain as the blockage loosened, pulling debris down like a throat finally clearing.
Another text:
whoever helped my parents THANK YOU
was that the wheel guy??
sorry for calling you weird earlier
He stayed until the drain stopped sulking and behaved. Lily said something to him, drowned out by the rain, and ran inside, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind her.
By midnight the storm moved on. The street went back to being a street, littered with twigs and an occasional rogue recycling bin. The low point near the corner held a shallow puddle and nothing worse.
Most people called it “crazy weather.” Something to roll their eyes about at work. A near miss. A story to shrug at.
But from my window, it was the first time I’d ever seen someone outrun a text message.
And the only time I’d seen anyone treat our flooded little corner like something worth paying attention to before it was too late.