The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
“Hey, I’m Michael.”
“Roy.”
“We turned off the heat for you so you don’t sweat your ass off walking up and down these hills with the GPS receiver.”
“Did you forget you turned it off? You froze the pond.”
“It’s a lot of hills, and I don’t want a lazy survey.”
“You don’t want the guys frozen to the Total Station either.”
“Fair enough --- Tanner, forget that door lock for now and pull down these clouds and let the sun in.”
“Nice shed. Where’d you find those guys?”
“They found me. I put some bait out on Facebook, and they wandered right in the trap.”
“Oh, they’re not a shed company?”
“Nope, but it sure looks like they are don’t it? Just a couple smart kids.”
“You did a lot of work up here. I looked at this place a couple years ago when the lot down the hill went up for sale. I came up and saw the pond, and I wanted both, but I couldn’t find who owned this.”
“A surveyor can’t find an owner. Promising.”
“Cute, I found the owner, but I couldn’t get him on the phone, and then some lady bought the piece down the hill before I could reach the owner here.”
“I have the opposite problem. I can’t get the owner of the easement on the phone. I’m close with the lady that owns this one.”
“I would never buy a piece with an easement like that one. I wanted both this and the easement piece.”
“I’m trying to get the six acres, but I guess the lady died. The son owns it now. We found it at the courthouse, but the phone number’s no good.”
“Well, you did a lot of work up here, I’ll tell you that.”
“You did tell me.”
To Tanner, “He always like this?”
“He’s different.”
“When I came up here back then, I had to walk. You got a driveway in. My coffee spilled a little, but I’m here.”
“Labor of love.”
“I see that. Two by four racks for the solar panels; that’s a bold move.”
“Proof of concept.”
“Prove out?”
“Yup.”
“So four solar panels, sixteen hundred watts get the whole place off the ground?”
“That’s the hope. Test the sun, stick the Unistrut, and we’re a modern crew.”
“Inverter in the shed?”
“Yup, batteries too.”
“No way! Is that a voo-swarz Bridge you’re building back there?”
“It is.”
“It’s almost done. When you pulling the frame?”
“It’s locked. Rubble today, curbs, gravel. It’ll be done this week. Took a month.”
“He’s different alright. Buys long forgotten land and first thing he does, dig into frozen ground, chip at a dozen two-hundred pound rocks, lay them out and build a ten thousand year arch that starts a million years into the holler’s history.”
“Trying to fit in.”
“So what are we doing here?”
“Well, I gotta get a full survey for me with boundaries staked every hundred feet, and I need septic permits, so I also need a site survey for the septic fields.”
“Plural?”
“Yes. I’m building a workshop over there, and I need a bathroom in it.”
“So the bridge is to get to the bathroom?”
“The bridge is – just first. We don’t even have house plans yet, but while we’re here, we can site plan the house septic too.”
“K, so marked survey and two site plans.”
“And I’ll pay you a little extra so you can buy the red lights and sirens for the truck if you make my poor planning into your emergency on the site plan portions.”
“How long you talking about?”
“I need the site plans last week, of course. I can’t get the septic permits without it.”
“I saw the easement pins coming up, and they weren’t here when I was shopping, so those will help. Obvious tree blazes set me up too.”
“And here’s the last survey that I have. The guy that owned this lot to the north was a surveyor, Rusk.”
“He didn’t do the easement though. Easements get recorded with the Registrar of Deeds. I looked it up in the truck; it was recorded last year.”
“Did you see the Title?”
“Yup, just changed hands this year. Boyd, like the battle.”
“That’s what I got. Land’s vacant, phone goes to voicemail…”
“Spam calls. Nobody answers anymore. I sent you to voicemail when it came up Athens. I don’t do McMinn County.”
“When I moved to Tennessee in 2006 for college, I moved to Athens.”
“You seem a little old for fraternity life.”
“Ha! Yeah. Bucket list, get a degree. Check.”
“And now Seymour. What did you do as a grown-up?”
“Commercial Development.”
“There it is. Nobody calls for a survey already has a survey in hand when you get there.”
“Occupational hazard. Too much information, ten percent true.”
“That’s my job. Untangle the truth. Let’s get started.”
“I’ll give you Tanner’s number in case you need something. I got a lung thing, I can’t climb those hills at kid speed.”
(Sure, a Rook is good, but you gotta love a Knight.)