Probably Fine

IV. After the Water

11. Copy

Cass

The story ran small, but it ran.

Page three, under the council recap and above a column about garden pests that used the phrase “uninvited guests in your soil.” No photo. Just a gray rectangle of text with my name at the top.

Most mornings I don’t go looking for my byline. Self-preservation. On days I know something of mine is in there, I do a slow flip, pretending I’m checking layout for the good of the paper. Really, I’m casing the page for my own name.

There it was, lower left.

When heavy rain hit the Brookside subdivision Thursday evening, some residents reached for towels.

One of them reached for a rake instead.

For the past several months, Brookside resident Eldon Hart has been quietly documenting the way water moves through his neighborhood…

You don’t often get to keep your lede. Sometimes it comes back better. Sometimes it comes back unrecognizable. This one survived mostly intact. I had written “old rake.” Denise took out the “old,” pointing out that no one cared about the rake’s emotional journey. Fair.

The piece did what it needed to do. It mentioned the side drain on Hazel Court. It quoted Lily: “I didn’t know that little box did anything until the water started heading back down instead of in.” It quoted a Public Works spokesperson using “community awareness” twice and “resilience” once, as if those were sandbags.

It quoted Eldon saying he didn’t like “not knowing how things worked” and wanted “to be less surprised.”

The line I liked best didn’t make it.

In my longer draft, he’d said:

“If I do all this and nothing ever happens, that’s probably the best outcome. But if something does, I’d rather not be starting from zero.”

Denise had circled it and written in the margin: good, too long. She wasn’t wrong. It was a mouthful, and newsprint is stingy. She let me keep the shorter version. You pick your battles.

I saved the full draft to my own drive. I have a folder there called “Reasons To Stay,” pieces I like enough to use as an argument the next time I’m tempted to wash up in a bigger market and spend my days rewriting press releases with better verbs.

Most of the files in there are small. A three-paragraph profile of the woman who runs the laundromat and knows everyone’s business but refuses to weaponize any of it. A story about a kid who organized a clothing swap in his church basement because his friends were pretending ripped jackets were “a new style.” A photo essay on the old roller rink the week before it closed, with quotes from people who still kept their skates in the trunk.

He went in there too. A man who chose to learn something boring so that, if boring ever mattered, he’d be useful.

At my desk, I watched the online version go up. Same text, different costume. A stock photo of rain on asphalt at the top, no photographer free that night. The hed: Brookside resident turns storm drains into a neighborhood project. Not inspired, not embarrassing.

Then the comments started.

You learn not to live there. You also learn to glance, the way you glance at a radar map you know can’t change what’s already on the ground.

First:

this is actually pretty cool

Then:

my HOA would write him a ticket

Then:

at least one person is doing their homework

Someone else jumped in to argue about whether the city was “outsourcing infrastructure checks to random guys with clipboards,” which was not what was happening, but the internet likes its villains simple.

A few more:

we had a flood on our street last year, wish we had a guy like this

shoutout to the rando who probably knows more about this subdivision than the council

if you’re reading this, drains guy, THANK YOU, my parents live on Hazel and you saved their floor

That last one made me stop scrolling. Not because it was dramatic, because it was specific.

Across the room, Denise walked by with a stack of proofs. She tapped my paper with the back of her hand.

“Nice,” she said. “People like a story where someone does something small and it matters. Also, no one got arrested. Treat yourself.”

“High bar,” I said.

She smirked. “Don’t get used to it,” she said. “You’re on the zoning meeting tonight.”

She moved on. Different stack, different fire.

I looked back at the column. From inside the newsroom, you never really know who’s reading. Maybe Eldon would skim it once, uncomfortable seeing his name in print. Maybe half of Brookside would tape it to a fridge. Maybe it would end up under a litter box. That part’s out of my hands.

The piece did the one thing I get to ask: it existed, in public, for a day. It said that in this very ordinary place, someone had looked hard at a thing everyone else assumed was probably fine.

I closed the browser tab, opened my personal folder, and dragged the longer draft, the one with the cut line, into “Reasons To Stay.”

When council meetings blur together and budget numbers start to sound like rainfall totals, I open that folder and read the first lines of things. They’re not inspirational. They just remind me that, sometimes, this job is standing still long enough for other people to notice the person who’s already been doing that.

On my way out that night, I passed the rack of leftover papers by the door. One copy was folded to the crossword. Another had the coupons neatly torn out.

On the top one, page three was still intact. His story sat under the garden pests, his name there between fungus gnats and “uninvited guests in your soil.”

It felt about right.

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12. Drift

Miles

After the storm and the story, the street went back to pretending nothing had happened.

That’s how routes work. Yesterday’s emergency becomes today’s scenery. You still see it if you know what to look for, water stains a little higher on certain fences, a rolled-up strip of ruined carpet leaning against a garage wall, a new bead of caulk along a door, but the volume drops fast for everyone else.

By October, plastic skeletons were zip-tied to railings again. A ten-foot inflatable ghost appeared in a yard that had never bothered before. Someone on Willow put out an animatronic zombie that lurched every time the truck went past. It was funny the first day. After that it just became another thing the scanner beeped through.

The dip on Hazel dried like it always does. Grass that had been briefly underwater carried on. If you didn’t know a drain had almost lost an argument there, you’d never guess.

Eldon walked more. Measured less.

I’d gotten used to the bright yellow measuring wheel. It had become a piece of the landscape: trees, boxes, kids on scooters, one man pacing off distances only he cared about. Now, some mornings, the wheel stayed in his garage. He did a loop on foot instead. No clipboard, no flagging tape. Just a guy walking, hands in his pockets, eyes taking in more than he let on.

When we crossed paths, we traded the standard route talk: weather, holidays, garbage pickup delays. Once he said, “City vacuumed the grates on Willow last week,” like he was still testing whether he believed it. He didn’t sound proud. Just slightly less tense.

One Tuesday a padded envelope showed up in his box. Medium size, heavier than junk. He was already out there, so I handed it over. He bounced it in his palm, feeling for contents.

“More gear?” I said.

“Labels,” he said. “If I can’t write on curbs, I can at least write on paper.”

He smiled, quick, then headed in. A week later he showed me a notebook page in passing, small rectangular stickers, each with a storm name and date: “trash day gullywasher,” “Friday trickle,” “July rerun.” Over-organized, maybe. Or just someone who has learned that “last year” covers more ground than your brain thinks it does.

At the depot, talk about route bids got louder. The form went up on the bulletin board, and everyone started lobbying their backs and knees.

“You going for 14B?” Jenkins asked one morning, powdered sugar blooming across his shirt like fresh snow. “They say you can do that one half-asleep. All clusters. No hills.”

“Thought about it,” I said.

“You should,” he said. “Brookside’s long for a man of your distinguished vintage.” He grinned so I’d know he meant it as a joke and a half.

Easier routes come with tradeoffs. More boxes in one place, fewer faces. Mail goes into slots instead of hands. You learn building codes instead of names.

He kept at it. “No one down there’s going to stop you in the rain to ask about drains,” he said. “Could be a selling point.”

He wasn’t wrong. My knees liked everything he was saying. My notebook didn’t.

On my next day off, I took the bid form home and put it on the table. It sat there for two days beside the salt shaker, heavy for a single sheet of paper. I’d pick it up, read the options, put it down again.

On day three, I walked the route in my head. Depot. Strip mall. Turn into Brookside. The familiar sequence: the woman whose dog barks until I say its name, the house where the twins race the truck, the retired teacher who meets me in her driveway with a story half-loaded.

Hazel. The dip. The corner. A small drain behind a hydrangea. A man with labels on his storms and a binder full of streets no one paid him to understand. A neighborhood that now knows, vaguely, that someone is paying attention even on days when they are not.

The form had two boxes: one for “Preferred New Route” and one for “Remain on Current Assignment.”

The pen felt heavier than the decision should have been. I checked “Remain.” My hand didn’t shake, but it thought about it.

That night, I opened my notebook and flipped to the back. Under Eldon’s name I’d already written:

E. Hart --> knows the low spots.

I added, on the next line:

Staying on Brookside. Seen too much to start over elsewhere.

I closed the notebook and slid it into the drawer with old route sheets and pens that had earned their retirement.

Outside, a light rain started. Nothing dramatic. The scanner would have called it “minor delay potential.” The forecast called it “scattered showers.” I listened to it tap the driveway and, for once, could more or less picture where it was going next and why this street would probably be fine tonight.

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13. Afterimage

Claire

Time went by in the usual way, quietly, until you realized how much of it had stacked up.

The plastic skeleton three doors down stayed in place long after Halloween. Someone added a scarf in December, a knit hat in January, a sagging heart balloon in February. A family on Brookside replaced their sun-faded “WELCOME” with a blunt “HI.” Our maple dropped another year’s worth of helicopter seeds, more ammunition for the gutters.

I took a part-time job at a medical billing office. Low building, humming lights, windows that looked out onto a parking lot and a patch of grass pretending to be landscaping.

All day I called people to tell them numbers they did not want to hear.

“Just following up on a balance.”

“We’re calling about the portion insurance didn’t cover.”

“I understand you’re frustrated.”

It wasn’t work you bragged about, but the hours were steady and the coffee didn’t taste like my own thoughts. There’s a small relief in dealing with other people’s problems on a schedule.

On the way home I’d pull into Brookside, the subdivision folding around me the way it always had, familiar as a pair of jeans you’re trying to decide if you still like.

At home, the window ritual stuck.

Not every morning. Some days I left too early to stand there with a mug and check on the corner. Some afternoons I came home fried from hold music and just sat on the couch. But when I could, I found myself at the glass again, making sure the picture outside still matched the one in my head.

He was there less, at least in the obvious way. Sometimes I’d see him doing a normal loop in running shoes, earbuds in. Once I watched him nudge a clog of leaves off the curb cut with his foot and keep walking, as casually as flicking lint from a sleeve.

The flags faded. The pencil line on the curb smudged into nothing. The laminated map in the trailhead box collected other people’s additions, a kid’s sticker of a raindrop, “NO SWIMMING” scrawled next to the retention pond, a smiley face by one of the drains. The tape at the corners browned.

The article arrived one morning with the rest of the paper. I read it standing at the counter, eating cereal that went soft while I stared at my own street in newsprint.

When heavy rain hit the Brookside subdivision…

There was his name, clean and official. My porch and neighbors turned into copy. Lily got a quote. Public Works got a paragraph. It was small and steady, no heroics, no exclamation points.

I didn’t mention it to him. I didn’t clip it. For a week or two I thought about taping it to the board by the mailboxes under the old HOA notice about “unauthorized markings” and leaving it there without comment.

I didn’t do that either. Some days, not picking a fight is the right kind of energy.

We ran into each other at the grocery store in March. Of course we did. That’s where all suburban plotlines intersect.

I was in produce, debating whether I would actually eat spinach before it dissolved. He appeared next to me with a basket and the look of a man praying there was no one from PTA in this aisle.

We both reached for the same bag of green beans and did the quick choreography of “after you.”

“Sorry,” he said.

“Go ahead,” I said.

He glanced up properly, recognition clicking into place.

“Oh,” he said. “Hi. Hazel side. Tree committee.”

“You really hang onto that maple,” I said.

“It’s a good tree,” he said. “Still.”

We hovered there a second, calibrating.

“I saw the article,” I said. “In the Herald.”

He winced. “Yeah. My mother mailed me a clipping. In case I’d missed it. And my neighbor taped it to the mailbox cluster. In case my mother hadn’t done enough.”

“Thorough,” I said.

“Relentless,” he said. “I’m going to be ‘Drains Guy’ forever now.”

“It was a good piece,” I said. “Straight.”

“I begged for ‘straight,’” he said. “Told the reporter if she tried ‘local hero’ I’d have to move.”

“Still watching the drains?” I asked.

“More quietly,” he said. “Less chalk. More… background processing.”

He made a small circling motion with one hand, encompassing the store, the ceiling, gravity, everything.

“I think I’ve had my quota of attention,” he said. “I’d like to go back to being ‘that guy who walks a lot.’”

“Manageable goal,” I said.

We parted at the bananas. He chose a modest bunch. I bought the spinach, fully aware of the odds.

My son came home for a weekend in April. Less wide-eyed, more tired, taller in some way that wasn’t height. We walked the greenbelt one afternoon. He scrolled occasionally, thumbs busy, attention half here.

He pointed at one of the remaining flags, its color bleached to a pale, uncertain orange.

“What’s that from?” he said. “Survey?”

“Guy on the corner mapping how the street drains,” I said. “He ended up in the paper for it.”

“Of course he did,” my son said. “Is he retired or just really into water?”

“Bit of both,” I said.

We passed the trailhead box. The map was still up, edges browned, corners curling. Someone had added the cartoon raindrop sticker. He glanced, kept walking.

“Seems like a lot of work,” he said. “For free.”

“Some people like knowing things,” I said. “Even if no one asked them to.”

He made a neutral sound that translated to: I might be one of those people eventually, but not in front of you.

Spring slid toward summer. I cleaned out the hall closet and discovered we’d apparently been storing three winters’ worth of lost gloves. I took his old soccer trophies to the donation center, then back out of the trunk, then back again. I called a gutter company about the sag at the back corner and stuck their estimate to the fridge, where it migrated from one edge to another.

One evening in late May, the forecast started stacking up clouds again. Morning: “light rain possible.” Afternoon: “scattered thunderstorms.” By dinner, the radar had smeared a bright band right over us.

I stood at the front window with a mug, out of habit more than thirst, watching the first dark freckles appear on the asphalt. Not anxious. Just alert.

The gutter under the maple was already wearing this year’s mix of leaves and seeds. The curb in front of our driveway had its usual drift of them, gathered there by tires and negligence.

Three years earlier I would have watched from the couch and hoped for the best. Now another picture sat on top of that one: Lily in her yard, water at her threshold; him at the fence line, clearing a hidden drain; the way the water had changed its mind as soon as it had someplace easier to go.

I put the mug down, went to the garage, and got the old rake.

Outside it was still only misting, the air thick and cool. Porch lights came on up and down the block, automatic and synchronized.

I dragged the rake along the curb, pulling leaves and seeds and whatever else away from the cutouts. Concrete showed pale underneath. Nothing heroic. Just making sure the obvious paths were open.

Along the side of the house, near the back patio, I noticed a little square of concrete with a metal grate I’d almost never looked at. A twin to the Delgados’ drain, tucked behind a planter. I’d filed it under “decorative” in my head. Now it looked more like a piece of equipment.

I crouched and cleared the mess off that too, shouldering damp leaves away. My knees popped on the way back up. I accepted their complaint.

Across the greenbelt, at Hazel’s corner, a figure in a hood stood near the grate. Too far to be sure, but the shape was familiar. He wasn’t measuring. Just there.

Maybe it was him. Maybe it was someone else checking the same thing for their own reasons. Either way, the corner was covered, the little square by my patio was clear, and the street felt a notch more prepared than it had an hour earlier.

Inside, the house smelled like whatever I’d left simmering. The rain thickened, tapping the windows, finding its paths. The gutters muttered and swallowed. Somewhere under the lawn, a pipe I’d never seen did exactly what someone, once, had drawn it to do.

I went back to the window long enough to see the water slip into the gap I’d cleared, then turned away and let it keep going. The corner, the drain, the street, the whole small system. Probably fine, for now, in a way I could finally picture instead of just hoping for.