“Clark. Ladder?”
“You need it today?”
That question always irritated me.
Why did I need to justify wanting my own property back?
Still, I usually avoided making a fuss.
Nancy used to tease me about that.
“You’d rather spend three weeks annoyed than five minutes arguing,” she’d say.
She wasn’t wrong.
But what I saw on that recording wasn’t borrowing.
[Clark approached Earl carrying a gas can.]
Then he pulled out a hose.
I watched him remove the fuel cap.
Feed the hose into the tank.
And begin siphoning gasoline.
My mouth actually fell open.
There wasn’t any possible misunderstanding.
He hadn’t mistakenly walked onto the wrong property.
He wasn’t checking whether something was wrong with the truck.
My neighbor was stealing gasoline from me in the middle of the night.
Ten minutes after watching the recording, I was standing on his porch.
Clark opened the door in sweatpants, holding a mug of coffee.
“Morning, Frank.”
I didn’t bother with pleasantries.
“Have you been taking gas out of my truck?”
His expression changed.
Only for a second.
Then, unbelievably, he laughed.
“Okay. Yeah. Sometimes.”
I stared at him.
“Sometimes?”
He shrugged as though I’d asked whether he’d borrowed a garden hose.
