My career was reduced to a “little art project” by the man who had me trapped in my own driveway, just minutes before the most important client meeting of the year.
My neighbor Gary treated our shared driveway like his personal loading dock. His massive pressure-washing rig was a constant, noisy monument to his own self-importance.
The roar of his machines was the soundtrack to my semi-retirement, a daily assault on the quiet life I had worked thirty years to build.
I tried talking to him. I even tried following the official rules and filing a complaint with the HOA.
That earned me a condescending pamphlet and a smirk from Gary the next day.
Gary believed his power came from a gas engine and a high-pressure nozzle, but he failed to account for a forty-pound bag of bird seed and the beautifully simple, incredibly messy laws of physics.
The Encroachment: The Geometry of Impatience
The silence was the thing I’d paid for. Not just with the mortgage, but with thirty years of hustling pixels for demanding clients, of raising a daughter through the noisy chaos of adolescence, of navigating a world that seemed to be in a constant, screaming rush. My semi-retirement was supposed to be a reward, a quiet harbor. My meticulously landscaped yard, with its Japanese maples and river rock beds, was the view from that harbor. My home office, my sanctuary, looked right out onto it.
From this sanctuary, I could see the enemy. Gary. His house was a near-identical model to ours, a beige suburban box, but where our property line breathed with hostas and ferns, his was a staging ground for his enterprise. Gary’s Pressure Washing, his side-hustle-turned-main-hustle, was a beast that lived in his driveway and fed on the neighborhood’s peace.
Today, the beast had me cornered. Its chariot, a Ford F-250 so large it probably had its own zip code, was hitched to a flatbed trailer. On the trailer sat a grimy, gas-powered pressure washer the size of a small refrigerator, along with a tangle of thick, greasy hoses. The entire rig was parked at a perfect ninety-degree angle behind my sensible sedan, forming the short leg of a right triangle of pure, unadulterated inconsideration.
I checked the clock on my monitor. 10:50 AM. Mr. Sterling, a man whose company logo I was redesigning and who was famously allergic to tardiness, was due at 11:00 AM. A bead of sweat traced a path down my temple. The proofs were printed on expensive, high-gloss stock, sitting in a pristine portfolio on my desk. They were perfect. The presentation would have been perfect.
But I couldn’t get out of my own driveway. And through the window, I could see Gary, the architect of my entrapment, holding court in his front yard. He was demonstrating a surface cleaner—a thing that looked like a push lawnmower crossed with a UFO—to a potential customer, its roaring engine a perfect soundtrack for my rising panic.
A Symphony of Grime
I took a deep breath, the kind you take when you’re trying to convince yourself not to start screaming. I smoothed down my blouse, grabbed my keys as a prop, and walked out the front door. The air, usually fragrant with the lavender I babied in my flowerbeds, was thick with the smell of gasoline and damp concrete.
The noise was incredible. A high-pitched, mechanical whine layered over a deep, throaty rumble. Gary, oblivious, was gesturing wildly at a patch of his sidewalk that was now several shades lighter than the rest. His customer, a thin man in a polo shirt, nodded along, looking vaguely impressed.
I walked the ten yards to the edge of my lawn, where the grass met the shared asphalt. I stood there for a moment, hoping my presence alone would be enough. It wasn’t. Gary was in his element, a maestro conducting a symphony of grime removal.
“Gary,” I called out. My voice was swallowed by the machine.
I took a few more steps, now technically on his side of the invisible line we were supposed to respect. “Gary!” I said, louder this time.
He glanced over, his face a mask of annoyance at the interruption. He held up one finger—the universal sign for *wait a damn minute*—and then turned back to his client, shouting over the din, “SEE? CUTS THE TIME IN HALF! NO STREAKING!”
My jaw tightened. My heart was doing a frantic tap dance against my ribs. This wasn’t just about being blocked in. It was about the utter lack of acknowledgment, the assumption that his world, his business, his noise, was the only thing that mattered. The seconds ticked by, each one a tiny hammer blow against my composure.
The Art of Dismissal
Finally, he killed the engine. The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by the chirping of a very distant, very brave bird. Gary wiped his hands on his cargo shorts and sauntered over, a smirk playing on his lips.
“Helen,” he said, like he was greeting an old friend at a barbecue. “What’s up?”
I held up my car keys, trying to keep my hand from shaking. “Gary, I need you to move your truck. Right now.” I kept my voice as even as I could manage. “I have a client arriving in ten minutes, and you are blocking me in again.”
His smirk faltered, replaced by a look of weary impatience. “Whoa, hold on,” he said, putting his hands up defensively. “I’m in the middle of a demo here. This is how I make a living, you know.” He gestured back toward his customer, who was now awkwardly checking his phone. “You’ll have to wait. It’s not a big deal.”
A hot flush of anger spread across my chest. “It is a huge deal, Gary. This is a shared driveway, not your personal commercial parking lot. Your business is impacting my business.” I took a step closer, my voice dropping. “You have absolutely no respect for my time or our agreement.”
He actually laughed. A short, sharp bark of a laugh that scraped my last nerve raw. “Agreement? Lady, it’s a piece of asphalt. Relax.” He waved a dismissive hand toward my house. “Your little art project can wait. My guy here needs to see the turbo nozzle in action.”
He turned his back on me then, a gesture of such profound dismissal that it left me speechless. He was walking away. He was actually walking away. The phrase “little art project” echoed in my ears. Thirty years of building a career, of managing international branding campaigns, of winning awards, all reduced to a “little art project.” The rage I’d been suppressing broke through its dam. It was cold, sharp, and clarifying.
The Price of Asphalt
“Gary,” I said. My voice was different now. It was quiet, but it cut through the air and stopped him in his tracks. He turned back slowly, one eyebrow raised.
“Move your truck. Now.” I didn’t shout. I didn’t plead. I just stated a fact. “Or I’m calling a tow service and telling them it’s an abandoned vehicle blocking a right-of-way. And I’ll be sending you the bill, along with a complaint to the city about running an unlicensed commercial operation in a residential zone.”
The smirk vanished completely. His eyes narrowed. We stood there for a long moment, the space between us charged with a new kind of energy. His customer was now backing slowly toward the street, clearly not wanting any part of this.
Finally, with a muttered curse, Gary stomped over to his truck, yanked the door open, and climbed in. The diesel engine roared to life, spewing a small cloud of black smoke that settled right over my prize-winning azaleas. He pulled forward just enough for me to get out, the trailer’s wheels scraping the edge of my lawn and leaving a muddy gouge in the perfectly manicured turf. He didn’t look at me as he did it.
I ran to my car, my hands fumbling with the keys. I backed out, my tires crunching over the gravel he’d kicked up. As I pulled away, I saw Mr. Sterling’s silver Lexus turning onto our street. I was late. Flustered. And the fresh damage to my lawn was a burning red flag of a battle I had won, but a war I was clearly losing.
The meeting was a disaster. I was distracted, my carefully prepared presentation coming out in stilted, apologetic bursts. Mr. Sterling, a man who valued precision and calm above all else, was unimpressed. He left with a noncommittal, “We’ll review this internally.” I knew what that meant. I’d lost the next phase of the project.
That evening, I told my husband, Mark, about it. He listened patiently, a deep furrow in his brow. “He’s a bully, Helen,” Mark said, stirring his pasta. “But you can’t let him get to you like this. It’s what he wants.”
“What he wants?” I shot back, my voice rising. “He wants the entire driveway. He wants our street to be his personal loading dock. He cost me thousands of dollars today, Mark.”
“I know, honey. I know,” he said, reaching for my hand. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll talk to him again, together.”
But I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that talking was over. You can’t reason with a brick wall. You can only find a way to tear it down.
The Escalation: A Compendium of Transgressions
This wasn’t an isolated incident. This was a death by a thousand cuts, or in my case, a thousand engine revs and blocked access points. Mark called it “Gary being Gary,” as if it were an unchangeable law of nature, like gravity or taxes. But I had a list. A mental compendium of his transgressions.
There was the time his crew, a pair of sullen teenagers who communicated only in grunts, used my garden hose to fill their water tank and then left it running, creating a miniature swamp in my petunia bed. There was the Sunday morning, at 7 AM, when he decided to “test a new wand” on his own siding, the sound like a jet engine taking off next to our bedroom window.
Last month, he’d had a client’s RV parked on the street for three days, forcing the mail truck and the garbage collectors to navigate around it like it was a beached whale. When I’d pointed out the city ordinance about oversized vehicles, he’d just shrugged. “Helping a guy out, Helen. You should try it sometime.”
My daughter, Chloe, had come home from college for a weekend and found her car completely penned in by Gary’s trailer. She’d missed a brunch with her friends. When I confronted him, he’d told me she should have parked on the street if she “needed to make a quick getaway.” The implication was clear: his business took precedence over our lives. Every interaction was a subtle power play, a way of establishing dominance over our shared space.
Mark’s approach was to kill him with kindness, to wave cheerfully as Gary’s truck tore up our lawn, to offer him a beer on a hot day. I’d tried that, too. In the beginning, I had brought over a plate of homemade cookies as a welcome-to-the-neighborhood gesture. Gary had taken one, grunted, and asked if I knew what day the bulk trash pickup was. The plate was never returned.
The Futility of Proper Channels
After the Mr. Sterling incident, I decided I was done with direct confrontation and feigned kindness. It was time for official channels. Our subdivision was governed by a Homeowners Association, a mostly toothless organization run by a board of retirees who were more concerned with lawn height than with quality of life. Still, it was a channel.
I spent an entire afternoon drafting a letter. I kept it professional, unemotional. I documented dates and times. I cited the HOA covenants regarding commercial activity in a residential area and the obstruction of shared property. I was meticulous. I described the noise pollution, the blocked access, the property damage. I even took photos of the gouge in my lawn and Gary’s rig parked behind my car. I printed it all out, put it in a crisp manila envelope, and mailed it with a certificate of receipt.
“Do you really think that’s going to do anything?” Mark asked, watching me affix the stamp with surgical precision.
“It’s the proper procedure,” I said, my voice tight. “There are rules for a reason. He can’t just ignore them.”
Mark just sighed and went back to his newspaper. He had no faith in bureaucracy, but I clung to it like a life raft. There had to be an authority, someone who could see the clear violation and enforce the agreed-upon standards of civilized living. I had followed the rules my whole life. I paid my taxes, served on the PTA, and always, *always* returned my shopping cart to the corral. Surely, the system would back me up.
The Paper Tiger’s Roar
A week later, I received a response. It wasn’t a phone call. It wasn’t even a personalized letter. It was a form letter, printed on cheap paper, with my name and Gary’s filled into the blanks.
It read: “The Board of the Oakhaven Homeowners Association has received your complaint regarding your neighbor at [Gary’s Address]. The HOA encourages all residents to resolve disputes in a neighborly fashion. We have included a pamphlet on ‘Effective Communication for a Harmonious Community.’ We consider this matter closed.”
A pamphlet. They sent me a goddamn pamphlet. It had cheesy stock photos of smiling, multi-ethnic neighbors sharing a barbecue. I crumpled the letter and the pamphlet into a tight ball and threw it so hard against the wall it left a small smudge on the paint.
The humiliation deepened the next day. I was out weeding my flowerbed when Gary pulled in. He killed the engine, hopped out of his truck, and grinned at me over the roof.
“Get a little letter in the mail, Helen?” he called out, his voice dripping with mock sympathy. “Something about… harmonious communities?”
My blood ran cold. Someone on the board had told him. Of course they had. They probably all played poker together. I was the uptight woman who couldn’t take a joke, the tattletale trying to ruin a man’s livelihood.
He chuckled, shaking his head as he unhitched his trailer. “You gotta learn to relax, Helen. Life’s too short.”
He whistled a tuneless melody as he went inside, leaving me kneeling in the dirt, clutching a fistful of crabgrass. The proper channels were a joke. The system wasn’t there to protect me; it was there to protect the status quo. And the status quo was Gary, whistling while my world slowly shrank. The rage was back, but this time it wasn’t hot. It was ice-cold and razor-sharp. If the rules didn’t apply to him, then they no longer applied to me, either.
An Unlikely Arsenal
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, my mind racing. Mark snored softly beside me, oblivious. I felt utterly alone, trapped in a low-grade, suburban war zone. I gave up on sleep, went downstairs, and fell into the rabbit hole of the internet.
I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I was just scrolling, clicking, trying to numb the fury that was buzzing under my skin. I clicked on an article about urban wildlife, which led me to a forum for birdwatchers. I read a thread about the surprising intelligence of crows, then another about the best type of feeder for attracting finches.
Then I saw it. A post from a user named “AvianAvenger.” He was complaining about a commercial power-washing company that had blasted a nest out of a tree in his yard. The thread that followed was a litany of similar complaints. These guys, with their powerful chemicals and high-pressure water jets, were the natural enemy of birds. They hated the nests. They hated the droppings. A clean, sterile surface was their entire business model. Bird crap was their kryptonite.
A new thread started, titled: “What birds make the biggest mess?” The answers came fast and furious. Starlings. Grackles. Pigeons. They traveled in huge, noisy flocks. They were voracious eaters. And their droppings were copious and notoriously difficult to clean.
I scrolled down further. Someone posted a link to a study about birdseed preferences. Black oil sunflower seeds were like a five-star meal for a huge variety of species. Cracked corn was a close second, especially for larger birds like grackles.
An idea began to form in my mind. It was small at first, a tiny, wicked spark. I thought about Gary’s pristine truck, his gleaming trailer, the rows of perfectly clean nozzles he kept in a special case. He wasn’t just a pressure washer; he was a priest in the church of immaculate surfaces. And I had just discovered a way to profane his temple.
I opened a new tab and typed “Farm and Fleet near me” into the search bar. It was open until 9 PM. A slow smile spread across my face. It was the first genuine smile I’d had in days. I wasn’t going to fight him with noise or bureaucracy. I was going to fight him with nature.
The Symphony of Droppings: Articles of War
The next afternoon, I found myself in an aisle that smelled of earth and molasses. The Farm and Fleet was a cathedral of rural pragmatism, a world away from my curated suburban life. Bags of feed were stacked to the ceiling, their burlap sides printed with pictures of happy livestock. I felt a strange sense of transgression, like a spy acquiring components for a secret weapon.
I bypassed the cute little bags of finch food and the colorful hummingbird feeders. I was on a mission. I found what I was looking for in the back, near the deer blocks and the fifty-pound sacks of salt for water softeners. “Black Gold” Black Oil Sunflower Seeds. The bag was heavy, nearly forty pounds. The label promised it would attract “a wide variety of songbirds.” I knew it would also attract their less melodious, more prolific cousins.
Next to it was a pallet of cracked corn. Perfect for the grackles and blue jays, the avian hooligans of the neighborhood. I heaved a bag of each into my cart, the plastic crinkling loudly in the quiet aisle. My cart, usually filled with organic kale and artisanal cheese, now looked like I was preparing for a poultry apocalypse.
On my way to the checkout, I passed a display of bird feeders. I stopped. A feeder would be too obvious. It was an invitation. What I was planning was more of an infiltration. I needed the seeds on the ground, a natural-looking buffet laid out right along the border of our properties. It had to look like an act of God, not an act of Helen.
At the checkout, the cashier, a teenage boy with a wispy mustache, grunted at the weight of the bags. “Gonna be feeding a whole army with this,” he said.
“Something like that,” I replied, a thrill of nervous energy shooting through me. I felt like a general purchasing her first articles of war. The battle wouldn’t be fought with engines and angry words, but with seeds and wings.
The First Salvo
That night, I set my alarm for 4:30 AM. When it went off, the world was still cloaked in a deep, pre-dawn gray. I crept out of bed, careful not to wake Mark, and slipped into an old pair of jeans and a dark sweatshirt.
Carrying a plastic scoop I’d repurposed from an old container of protein powder, I tiptoed to the garage. The bird seed bags were waiting for me, like loyal soldiers. I filled a small bucket with a mix of the sunflower seeds and cracked corn. It was heavier than I expected.
Outside, the air was cool and damp. The only sounds were the hum of a distant highway and the gentle tick-tick-tick of a neighbor’s sprinkler system. Streetlights cast long, eerie shadows across the manicured lawns. I felt a ridiculous, giddy sense of purpose. This was insane. Utterly, completely insane. And I had never felt more alive.
I moved like a shadow along the edge of my property, staying on my side of the invisible line. I worked quickly, my heart pounding a steady rhythm against my ribs. I scattered a generous line of seed along the entire fifty-foot border that ran parallel to his driveway. I paid special attention to the area near the maple tree whose branches overhung the spot where he always parked his truck. I imagined it as creating a kill zone.
By the time I was finished, my bucket was empty and the first hints of pink were appearing on the horizon. I slipped back into the house, washed my hands, and disposed of the evidence. I slid back into bed, my skin buzzing. Mark hadn’t even stirred. I lay there, listening, waiting for the sun to rise and for my new allies to arrive.
The Flock Descends
I didn’t have to wait long. The first arrivals were a small squadron of chickadees, flitting nervously from the fence to the ground. Then came the sparrows, a chattering, squabbling mob. They were the scouts. The main force arrived around 6:30 AM.
It started with a flash of iridescent black and a loud, creaking call. A single grackle, perched on the power line, surveying the scene. It let out another call, and suddenly the sky was filled with them. A flock of at least thirty grackles descended on my lawn, their yellow eyes gleaming. They were soon joined by a gang of boisterous blue jays, screaming their approval of the feast.
I watched from my kitchen window, a mug of coffee clutched in my hands. It was more than I could have ever hoped for. My yard, normally a serene oasis, had been transformed into the busiest diner in town. Birds were everywhere, feasting on the seeds, squabbling, chasing each other.
And then they started perching. On the fence. On the branches of the maple tree. And, most gloriously, on the roof of Gary’s gleaming white Ford F-250 and the attached trailer. They sat there, digesting their breakfast, enjoying the view. And as nature dictated, they began to leave little gifts. One here, one there. A white splat on the windshield. A greenish-brown streak down the driver’s side door.
By the time the sun was fully up, his truck looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. It was a masterpiece of petty vengeance, a beautiful, organic act of defiance. I felt a surge of triumph so pure it was almost dizzying. This was better than any HOA letter. This was poetry.
A Masterpiece of Spite
Gary emerged from his house around 7:45 AM, a travel mug in his hand. He took two steps out his front door and froze. His head tilted, as if he was trying to process the scene. The sheer number of birds, the cacophony of their calls, the state of his truck.
His face went through a series of rapid transformations: confusion, then disbelief, then a deep, mottling red of pure fury. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He just stared at his truck, which was now less of a vehicle and more of a public avian restroom.
A blue jay, perched on his side mirror, let out a particularly loud squawk and punctuated it with a fresh dropping.
That’s what broke the spell.
“GET OUT OF HERE!” he roared, waving his arms wildly. “GET!”
The birds, startled, took to the air in a massive, swirling cloud, only to settle back down in the nearby trees, waiting for the crazy man to leave so they could get back to their breakfast.
Gary threw his mug to the ground, where it clattered on the asphalt. He grabbed the hose from the side of his house and turned the nozzle to a jet stream, blasting the side of his truck. The water sluiced away some of the mess, but mostly just smeared it around. He was yelling, cursing the birds, the sky, the world in general. It was a glorious, unhinged symphony of rage.
I stood at my window, hidden behind the curtain, and I laughed. It started as a small chuckle, but it grew into a full, body-shaking laugh, the kind I hadn’t had in years. I was a fifty-six-year-old graphic designer, a pillar of the community, and I was orchestrating a campaign of biological warfare against my neighbor.
And then, as I watched him furiously scrubbing at a particularly stubborn spot on his windshield, the laughter died in my throat. A cold knot formed in my stomach. Was this who I was now? A person who took pleasure in someone else’s misery, even if they deserved it? The victory suddenly felt… smaller. Dirtier. The line between justice and spite had become terrifyingly blurry.
The Unraveling: A Cold War of Wings and Water
The next two weeks settled into a bizarre routine. It was a silent, undeclared war. Every other morning, under the cloak of darkness, I would replenish the seed. And every morning, the birds would arrive for their feast and their subsequent constitutional, redecorating Gary’s equipment with their abstract expressionist art.
Every day, Gary would emerge to find a fresh canvas of droppings. His morning ritual was no longer a peaceful cup of coffee, but a furious, high-pressure battle against nature. The sound of his pressure washer became a near-daily occurrence, a roar of frustration that echoed through the quiet suburban streets. He was using his own weapon against the consequences of mine.
He tried deterrents. First, a plastic owl with unnervingly large glass eyes appeared on his fence post. The grackles used it as a perch. After two days of it being relentlessly targeted, the owl was more white than brown. It disappeared.
Next came the shiny tape. He strung long strips of holographic “scare tape” from the branches of the maple tree that overhung his driveway. For a day, it worked. The birds were wary of the flashing, crinkling ribbons. But I was smarter than the tape. The next morning, I laid my line of seed further away from the tree, in the open lawn along the property line. The birds simply adjusted their flight path, ate their fill, and then flew back to the convenient perch of his truck to digest. The tape flapped impotently in the breeze.
Mark watched all of this with a growing sense of unease. “Helen, don’t you think this is getting a little out of hand?” he asked one evening, as we listened to Gary cursing at a particularly stubborn spot on his trailer.
“He started it,” I said, my voice flat. “I’m just finishing it.” But even to my own ears, the words sounded childish, hollow. The initial thrill of victory had faded, replaced by a grim, joyless sense of obligation. I had to keep going. To stop now would be to let him win.
A Crack in the Armor
One afternoon, I was trimming my rose bushes when a car pulled into Gary’s driveway. It wasn’t a client. A woman got out, looking tired. It was Sarah, Gary’s wife. I hadn’t seen much of her; she worked long hours as a nurse. She was juggling a bag of groceries and her purse.
A plastic bottle of ketchup fell from the overloaded bag and rolled across the driveway, coming to a stop near my foot. I bent down, picked it up, and walked over to hand it to her.
“Oh, thanks,” she said, giving me a weary smile. Her eyes were shadowed with exhaustion. She glanced at Gary’s truck, which was still streaked from that morning’s assault, and then at my pristine, bird-filled yard. She sighed, a small, quiet sound of defeat.
“He’s under a lot of pressure,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. She wasn’t looking at me, but at the house. “His brother co-signed on the loan for that truck. Business has been slow. He’s just… trying to keep his head above water.”
She didn’t accuse me. She didn’t have to. In that moment, Gary wasn’t just the one-dimensional villain of my story. He was a man with a wife who looked worn to the bone, a man with a loan and a brother he didn’t want to let down. It didn’t excuse his behavior, not at all. But it did complicate it. It made him human.
“I’m sorry,” she said, finally meeting my eyes. “For the noise. And the… blocking.”
I just nodded, unable to speak. I handed her the ketchup bottle. “Be careful,” I said, a line I had not intended to say. She gave me a quizzical look, then a small, sad smile, and went inside. The brief interaction had punched a hole in my righteous anger, leaving me feeling deflated and mean.
The Sonic Escalation
My wavering resolve was shattered two days later. I was woken not by my alarm, but by a sound. It was a high-frequency, pulsating chirp, like a smoke detector with a dying battery crossed with a dental drill. It was faint, but it burrowed directly into my skull.
I went to the window. A new device was mounted on Gary’s fence, aimed directly at my yard. It was a small, solar-powered box: an ultrasonic bird repeller. The noise it emitted was supposedly in a range that was intensely irritating to birds but inaudible to most humans. Unfortunately for me, and for my beagle, Walter, we were not most humans.
Walter was whining by the back door, his head cocked, his ears twitching. The sound was a constant, maddening presence. It was a needle of sound, stitching its way through the peace of the morning.
This was a new level of warfare. My birds were a nuisance to him. His device was a form of torture for me. It was no longer about his truck or my driveway. He had invaded my home, my head, with this invisible, inescapable noise.
By noon, I had a splitting headache. I couldn’t focus on my work. The entire day was ruined, held hostage by that incessant, piercing chirp.
That evening, Mark came home to find me sitting in the living room with cotton balls stuffed in my ears. He stood in the doorway for a moment, listening.
“I can hear it,” he said, his face grim. “It’s faint, but it’s there. Like a mosquito you can’t find.”
He sat down next to me on the sofa. “This has to stop, Helen,” he said, his voice gentle but firm. “Both of you. This isn’t a war. It’s a race to the bottom. And we’re all losing.”
He was right. The rage was gone, burned out and replaced by a bone-deep weariness. I had set out to reclaim my peace, and in the process, I had obliterated it.
An Unspoken Surrender
The next morning, I didn’t set my alarm. I didn’t sneak out with my bucket of seeds. I let the sun rise on an empty lawn. The birds, finding the diner closed, mostly moved on. A few sparrows pecked around hopefully, but the great, messy flocks were gone.
The ultrasonic device chirped on for another day, a pointless, piercing testament to the absurdity of it all. But the morning after that, it was silent. I looked out the window and saw that the little black box was gone from the fence post.
Later that week, I was pulling weeds from the gouge in my lawn—it was finally starting to grow back—when Gary came outside. He walked to the edge of his driveway and stood there, not looking at me, but at the shared strip of asphalt between us. My heart tensed.
He cleared his throat. “My guy’s coming in the afternoon from now on,” he said, his voice gruff. He finally glanced at me. “So the morning’s clear.”
It wasn’t an apology. There were no handshakes, no promises of neighborly barbecues. It was a statement of terms. A truce. He wouldn’t block me in during my work hours. It was the bare minimum of consideration, but it felt like a monumental concession.
“Okay,” I said, my voice quiet. “Thank you.”
He just nodded, a quick, jerky motion, and went back inside.
The war was over. There was no victory parade, no vanquished foe. The rage that had fueled me for weeks had been replaced by a quiet, hollow understanding. I had drawn a line in the seed, and he had crossed it with soundwaves. We had pushed each other to the brink and, finding it an ugly and exhausting place to be, had both taken a single, grudging step back. Our shared driveway was no longer a battlefield, just a piece of asphalt again, scarred with the memory of a stupid, silent, and deeply human war
About the Author
