A man was leaning into his backseat, buckling in a toddler. “Hey there,” Eli called. The man looked up, annoyed. “Yeah?” “You’re parked on private property,” Eli said. “This is a working field.”
“I’ll be gone in a minute,” the man said, not even pretending to apologize. “You ran over a crop row,” Eli said, pointing. The man glanced at the dirt. “Didn’t see anything there.” Eli opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out.
Instead, he turned and walked back toward the house. When he reached the garden, Margaret was already waiting, kneeling near the tomatoes. “Well?” she asked. “They don’t care,” Eli muttered. “It’s just easier to ignore me than walk an extra thirty feet from the other side of the road.”
“You should call Rick.” Rick was an old friend from school, a part-time lawyer who still took the occasional civil case for friends. Eli called him that evening. “I hate to tell you this,” Rick said after hearing the story, “but unless you’ve got a fence or posted legal notice with consequences, there’s not a lot you can do,”