Celeste said she had personally documented storage capacity of one thousand gallons within a few hundred feet of family homes.
She mentioned insurance exposure.
She mentioned resale comparables along the southern streets.
Then she said the board had exhausted informal remedies and intended to pursue a lien and refer the matter to counsel if compliance was not achieved.
Finally, in a tone pitched perfectly for sympathy, she said she understood that some people worked with their hands and that she respected that.
“But Cedar Hollow is a professionally managed community,” she said, “and not a place where anyone gets to make up his own rules.”
There is a particular feeling that comes from sitting in a room while thirty of your neighbors are being told what kind of person you are.
It is not rage.
It is quieter than rage.
More useful.
During the open portion of the meeting, I raised my hand.
Celeste called on me by my first name with such warmth that two people in the front row smiled.
I asked whether the board had obtained a legal opinion regarding jurisdiction over a parcel outside the recorded plat.
“Counsel is comfortable,” Celeste replied.
I asked whether the board had located any recorded instrument giving the association an ownership interest in the equipment behind my fence.
“That is not the issue before us tonight.”
So I asked the question I had come there to ask.
I asked it slowly.
And eventually I asked it three times because I wanted every person in that clubhouse to hear the answer.
“Celeste, are you telling me to stop using the tank?”
“I’m telling you to comply.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I kept my voice level.
“I need something specific. Is the association directing me to cease operation of the propane system on my property?”
Celeste gave a small laugh at what she apparently considered unnecessary repetition.
“The directive has been in writing for weeks.”
“I’d like it stated aloud for the minutes.”
Celeste looked around the room.
Everybody was watching her being reasonable with the difficult man at the back.
Then she gave me one word.
“Absolutely.”
Graham Pike did not type anything for the rest of the agenda item.
I noticed because his fingers stopped moving.
He leaned back and stared at me for a long moment.
The way a man looks at somebody who has just calmly asked the same strange question for the third time.
Graham knew something.
I did not yet know exactly what he knew or how long he had known it.
But that was the night I stopped thinking of him as furniture.
On my way out, Tessa Monroe caught up with me at the door.
“I hope we can find some middle ground.”
“So do I.”
I meant it far more than she probably believed.
The following morning, I drove into town to the county administration building.
It is a flat brick box with a parking lot that floods whenever it rains hard.
I went into the records office and asked for everything filed against my parcel number since the year Cedar Hollow was first platted.
The clerk who helped me was Naomi Brooks.
She had the particular patience of someone who had spent twenty years explaining to angry people that the file was the file.
I told her I was looking for an easement, a license, or anything else involving a fuel line.
“How far back?”
“Far enough that whoever signed it is probably retired.”
Naomi brought me three bound volumes, a microfilm reel, and a stack of loose recorded instruments inside a gray box.