McCarty watched his neighbor with mild amusement. His activities were enough to draw his attention away from his magazine, but not for long. He took a long sip of his lemonade, switched his feet to cross the other way on his pool recliner, then looked back down at the page.

Joseph, McCarty’s neighbor, stopped long enough to wipe the sweat from his brow with his arm (which he then wiped on his shirt) and looked up at the sun, his expression set and accusatory. He glanced over at McCarty — who never left his recliner on weekends, unless his wife forced him to — then hunched back over the length of pipe he was tending.

The black-painted snake slithered all the way from his house, off across McCarty’s yard, and tumbled down a low rise to the water’s edge. By a strange twist of real estate, Joseph had sold McCarty a lot between his own house and his pond. The agreement had been that Joseph’s line from the pond to his home’s water supply would remain, and that he would have access to maintain it. At the time, paying off his own mortgage had been more important to Joseph than a waterfront view. As he’d said many times to his wife since, “If we’d wanted the waterfront view, why did you have me build our house so far from the pond?”

“The children,” she usually huffed in a clipped tone, then spun on her heel and walked off.

Joseph stood and slowly walked along the line, kicking it now and again as if to check for signs of life. There were spots of chipped paint here and there, or short stubs of unpainted pipe between joining nuts, where he’d had to repair weak spots, but most of the pipeline was just faded and dirty with age, settled comfortably into a well-worn depression.

“Can it be any worse than last week?” McCarty suddenly called out. Joseph was slightly taken aback at the sound of his voice — they were perfectly amiable, but McCarty didn’t usually speak while Joseph was working on the line.

“What’s that?” Joseph stopped and turned to McCarty, shielding his eyes against the sun. McCarty sat up in his pool recliner and moved his feet, planting a foot on each side of it, his legs spread wider than polite company would allow.

“It can’t be any worse than last week, can it?” he repeated. “You check that line every week. I can understand in the winter, when it might freeze and break, but what could’ve happened in the last week?”

Joseph shrugged noncommittally.

“I don’t mean nothing by it,” McCarty added, misreading Joseph’s expression. “I’m just curious.” He swung his feet back onto the recliner and settled down again.

“A lot can happen in a week,” Joseph said thoughtfully. “I have to clean the pump and filter. While I’m doing that, I may as well walk the line, too.”

“I s’pose,” McCarty agreed, taking another sip of lemonade. “Did you ever sell that last lot?”

Joseph nodded once and turned back to his line. He didn’t want to talk about the last lot. The farm that had been in his family for generations had now been parted out and sold, bit by bit, leaving him just another plot of land trapped in suburban sprawl. As long as they’d had that other lot, Joseph had been able to fool himself that the farm wasn’t gone. Now, however, it was. Well and truly. He owned his own lot, plus the pond and a twenty-foot easement around it, but that was all. Renting space to store and launch canoes was all he had left. His wife thought that was stupid, too –if they hadn’t taken a waterfront view, why the hell had he kept the water?

Joseph kicked the line again sullenly and walked on, quicker than before. He had to check the pumps; make sure they were still clean and working, and that none of the kids had done anything mischievous.

***

McCarty stood on the gravel path that circumnavigated the pond and looked across to his house, while his dog sniffed around. He could see Joseph doing something with one of the pumps and he knew that the man’s next chore would be to walk this very path, noting where the gravel was thinning or puddles were forming. Then he’d rattle the canoe racks and methodically walk down each launch, noting the weak spots and chipped paint. McCarty had never been able to figure out the rationale, but he knew that, when some critical threshold of repair had been crossed, Joseph would wheel his cart down and make all the necessary fixes.

His dog tugged at the leash, breaking McCarty’s reverie. The walk around the pond was close to three miles, and he wasn’t the only one who appreciated it. Everyone but Joseph had direct waterfront access, and everyone used it for walking their dogs.

“Hey, McCarty!” a couple of kids yelled as he strolled past. He smiled and waved. No one on the pond called him anything other than McCarty.

“What’s he do with them pumps, anyway?” one of the boys called out. “I seen that pipe he has running through your yard.”

“He gets water from the pond,” McCarty said simply, waving again as he began to move away from them, not wanting to stop his walk.

***

In the middle of July, McCarty noticed that Joseph began to carry a yard stick with him as he walked his pipeline. Sometimes he’d tap the line with it, but McCarty could tell this was not the intended purpose. He was also walking the line more frequently, and this concerned McCarty more. After he’d passed, McCarty put down his magazine and swung off his pool recliner, trying to be subtle about following Joseph. He ran into him not too far away, hunched over and running his finger along one of the many repaired seams.

“Drought getting you, too?” McCarty asked, not sounding as casual as he’d hoped. Joseph looked up at him, his eyes squinted against the sun, and nodded once.

“The pumps cycle twice a day, then rest,” Joseph offered obliquely. McCarty couldn’t tell if he was thinking out loud or speaking to him.

“I know. I can hear them,” he offered. Joseph stood up, sucked in a sharp breath, and walked a few more feet toward the pond.

“It took me months to figure out how much they needed to pump to fill the tanks — no use sending too much into overflow, and it’s a real pain in the ass if you run out.”

“Right,” McCarty agreed. Joseph tapped the line with his stick. It clicked solidly against the thick metal pipe.

“Over the years, I’ve got it fine tuned.” He took several more steps, forcing McCarty to follow, or be rude and stand there, watching him go. McCarty thrust his hands into his pockets and stepped slowly after him.

“We’re not putting any water back in, are we?” Joseph asked. His tone was rhetorical and decisive; the old conversation, as it were, had ended and a new one had begun.

“What do you mean?” McCarty whispered. He hadn’t meant to whisper, and he seemed to surprise himself with the softness of his own voice.

Joseph looked to the rainless, blue sky and took another long breath. “We’ve lost almost an inch in the pond since June. Every drop counts.” He stopped walking and turned back to McCarty. “I heard the city has a ban on watering.”

“I heard that, too,” McCarty confirmed.

Joseph nodded. “I’ll get this old pipe off your property,” he said gruffly. “Have to fix the pumps for a lower drought level, anyway. Worst I’ve ever seen it.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” McCarty replied, waving off his neighbor with a bashful chuckle. “You know that.”

“Your lawn looks good, McCarty,” Joseph replied. He winked, turned around, tapped the line once with his yard stick, then moved off, perhaps a touch more hurriedly than before. This time, McCarty watched him go.

***

“He told me he’s got buried gold.” The boy’s face was feigning sincerity in the way only a ten-year-old can feign sincerity. And it was immediately believable to his friend.

“For real? Why’d he tell you that?”

The first boy shrugged and watched his fingers as he plucked some grass. It was getting late. The purple sky and hush of insects seemed the perfect backdrop to share secrets.

“We were the first family, you know? He used to babysit me.”

His friend finally saw through the expression and waved him off. “Baloney. I don’t care if your dad bought the first plot, there’s no way in hell that old man would tell you he had buried gold.”

“Why not?” He was aghast to be thought of as untrustworthy.

“Because he knows you’d tell someone like me, ya dope.”

The two boys stared at each other silently for several seconds, the slow whir and peep of frogs filling the space between their words. The first boy finally shrugged; his friend smiled.

“Think he’d help us make a lightning bug lantern?” his friend asked.

“Sure.” Another shrug, but he stood up and brushed the picked grass off his shorts. “I’ll go tell my dad.” He darted off into the darkness, his feet crackling momentarily against the gravel path.

***

McCarty stood on the other side of the pond and watched Joseph wrestling with some kind of structure. He’d moved the pumps — or so McCarty assumed — the week before, and this new structure befuddled him. Joseph was working like a man whose life depended on completing the scaffold — because that’s what it was: A scaffold. A rigged up wooden structure just outside the gravel path, right by the pumps.

“What’s he building?” the boy who lived across the lake asked. McCarty shrugged.

“Don’t know.” He didn’t even glance at the boy. He just turned and tugged on his dog’s leash, walking far enough away that the boy lost interest and went back to what he’d been doing.

McCarty stopped and shielded his eyes, gazing across the pond. He could see guy wires now. Joseph had clambered up the structure — maybe ten feet tall — and was tightening down some guy wires. There were two of them, at each edge of the scaffold, about three feet apart. McCarty tutted to himself and allowed his dog to pull him along, the rest of the way around the pond.

***

Joseph stood on his back deck, the steam from his coffee mug curling up into the languid air. He smiled at the new embellishment to his view. Normally, they could just see a wedge of the pond between houses, but now there was a new structure at the water’s edge, further obscuring the sight line.

“What did you have to do that for?” his wife said, walking up behind him. She didn’t sound angry so much as just someone who is well used to every small hope being dashed. “Our only semblance of a waterfront view, and you have to go and build that… thing.”

“McCarty was tapping the line,” Joseph said simply. His wife sighed and walked over to him, putting his arms around him. He put his arm around her and held her close. She sighed again and grinned secretly. The structure beside the pond had a twin just over into their yard, with taught guy wires strung between the two of them. Slung between the guy wires by thinner wires was the pipeline, now running ten feet off McCarty’s property.

“I don’t think he’ll get to it now,” Joseph added. “I wonder what he’ll do when he gets back from vacation and finds his lawn sprinklers dry?”

“Was it worth it?” his wife asked, separating from him. She walked over to the deck railing and shook her head slowly. “Does it really matter?”

Joseph shrugged. “I knew the drought couldn’t account for it. The pumps were deep enough.”

“Now they have to pump twice as hard, though.”

“Nah,” McCarty said, moving over to her side. He sipped his coffee thoughtfully, watching the sky blush over the pond. “The water just won’t run as fast. I’ll supplement it with rain barrels.”

“Rain barrels?” she laughed, turning to him incredulously. “It hasn’t rained in weeks!”

“Two months,” he admitted. “I’ve been counting. But I filled them up before I raised the line.”

“Got it all figured out, don’t you?” She shook her head and clicked her tongue.

Joseph shrugged and sipped his coffee. “All he had to do was ask.”

***

“You can’t walk through there!” McCarty yelled at Joseph. Joseph smiled and waved and called back, “We have a contract!”

McCarty blustered up to him. Joseph stopped, though he looked at the line, not McCarty. McCarty opened and closed his mouth like a fish a few times, then settled on a heavy sigh. Joseph turned and considered him.

“I thought you’d appreciate it,” he explained. “Your lawn looks so nice all the time — you don’t want that old line running through it.”

“It’s an eyesore!” McCarty spat. “Looks like something the city’d put up!”

Joseph nodded slowly. “That it is.”

“Look, is this because I tapped it? I didn’t think you’d mind, since it was going over my property.”

“I didn’t mind you tapping it,” Joseph replied quietly. “I minded you not asking. We use every drop we take. It took me years to set those pumps.”

McCarty’s bluster vanished and he sighed, shrugging apologetically.

“And we had a deal,” Joseph added. He scuffed the tip of his right shoe over McCarty’s brown grass, as if to make a point. “It’s in the deed.”

“You’re a good guy,” McCarty said, by way of apology. “Just take it down, huh? It’s ugly like that.”

“That it is,” Joseph agreed again. He looked McCarty in the eye.

“The city’s threatening water rationing,” McCarty said, sidestepping to a related topic. “I told the others I’d ask if we could… you know… share the pond?”

“What others?”

“You know — us. Your neighbors. The ones who bought your land.”

Joseph gazed up at his pipeline, and from there to the unblemished blue sky beyond. Even the cicadas sounded tired. He looked down the line, toward his pond, and considered the houses around it.

“Just to supplement,” McCarty added. “Maybe even just this year.”

Joseph nodded slowly. “We can work something out,” he said assuringly, then walked off, toward the pond, not even glancing at his line. He stopped several feet away and half turned to McCarty: “Thanks for asking.”

“No problem,” McCarty replied sheepishly, but he doubted Joseph even heard.

***

The knocking was incessant. Joseph rubbed his eyes and looked at his clock — only 5:30. He threw back the sheets and swung his feet out of bed.

“What is it?” his wife asked.

“Don’t know.” Joseph padded stiffly to the door and looked out. McCarty looked back at him, his face red and his eyes wild.

“What is it, McCarty?” He didn’t open, or even unlock, the door.

“The city’s here!” McCarty squawked. “They’ve got surveying equipment!”

Joseph ripped open the door and stepped outside. McCarty pointed vaguely and Joseph could see several figures moving around the scaffold near the pond.

“Who called them?” Joseph spat. “We had a deal–”

“No one!” McCarty pleaded. “I swear!”

Joseph left McCarty standing there and walked quickly down to the pond’s edge. He didn’t slow down until he was a few feet from the nearest man — dressed in a hardhat and city-issued safety vest — and he only stopped then because if he hadn’t, he’d bowl him over.

“This your pond?” the man asked, trying not to look too shocked by Joseph’s sudden appearance.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“How deep is it, do you know?”

Joseph sucked in a slow breath as McCarty finally caught up and stopped silently beside him.

“I asked you what the hell you think you’re doing. This is private property.”

“Not any more,” the man said nonchalantly, handing Joseph a sheaf of papers he’d just pulled out of his back pocket. “Eminent domain. We need this pond for the betterment–”

“The hell you do!” McCarty offered. Joseph held up his hand and McCarty fell silent.

“This pond can’t be used for more than the houses you see here, and we’ve already taken care of that. I’ve got twenty-five houses that’ll be off your supply soon enough.”

The man shrugged. He kicked the pipeline where it lay in the grass, back in its old rut. “Sorry, buddy. I’m just the messenger.”

Joseph nodded dourly. McCarty leaned over and slid the sheaf of papers from his hand. He skimmed the words and flipped the pages, then finally looked up and rattled them at the man. “You’re two days early!” he spat accusingly. “This is still his property.”

The man considered McCarty evenly. It wasn’t news to him, but it did put a damper on his getting a head start on the project. He turned and whistled loudly, waving to the other two men to join him.

“Let’s go, boys,” he said when they were close enough. “We’ll have to come back.” He glanced at Joseph as he turned and walked off, cutting through McCarty’s yard to a pickup parked in the street.

Joseph stood still, watching the sun rise on the pond. He looked calm, and a private grin flickered across his face: His wife was right. The view was beautiful.