I sat in my truck at the edge of the cul-de-sac and stared at it, waiting for the ordinary explanation to present itself. Perhaps it was being loaded for a trip. Perhaps it had been moved from the street for a repair. Perhaps somebody was in the middle of rearranging vehicles and would be along in a minute. I had scarcely unfastened my seat belt when Patricia appeared at the split-rail fence separating our lots.
She was wearing the same sunglasses and had the lanyard around her neck. The woman stood with her forearms resting on the top rail and watched me through the windshield. She had the confident patience of someone waiting for a passenger to reach the baggage claim. By the time I stepped out, she was smiling.
"This has been my parking spot for three years," she said.
"It is my driveway."
"The driveway is wide, and the house was empty. It made sense. Nobody was inconvenienced before you arrived."
"I'm inconvenienced now."
"You're new here. You'll understand how we do things. You can park on the street. There is plenty of room."
I looked at the motor home, then at her. "You understand that I own the pavement underneath it."
She shrugged. "I understand that the neighborhood has arrangements older than your purchase. You can't move into an established community and expect every arrangement to disappear because you don't like it."
There was a sentence available to me then. Three words, ordinary words, and in that setting they would have been a weapon: I am a judge. I could almost hear them leaving my mouth. I imagined her smile fading as she calculated what it might mean to have a man who wore a black robe for work standing on the other side of the fence. I imagined the motor home disappearing before morning and the neighbors suddenly remembering their manners.
I did not say it.
I had been appointed to the county bench after a long career in private practice. The appointment was new enough that I was still learning which door of the courthouse opened fastest in the morning and which coffee machine could be trusted. When I was a young clerk, an older judge told me the robe was the only piece of clothing that grew heavier every time you wore it outside the courtroom. I had laughed then. Standing beside Patricia's motor home, I understood what he meant.
A judicial office is not a private tool. It belongs to the public that entrusted it to the officeholder, and its authority does not follow him home to settle parking arguments. My neighbors had no obligation to treat me as anything more important than the person named on the recorded deed. If I could not protect my driveway using the same documents and procedures available to everyone else, I had no business borrowing a courthouse to do it.
I told Patricia I expected the vehicle removed. She said she would think about it. I told her she had until the next day to make a plan, and she answered with a thin smile that I ought to learn how to compromise. Then she went inside and closed her door. I got back into the truck, backed away from the driveway, and parked along the public curb behind the motor home.