"It is now," I said. "Because you can't install that cable without somebody resolving it."
Luis nodded. He did not like the situation, but he was not offended by the truth of it. He told me he had a daughter in college and a son apprenticing as an electrician, and neither one would thank him for losing his livelihood over a line on somebody else's map. Before he walked away, he gave me his business card and asked me to call if I saw any of his crew crossing the fence. That card would matter more than either of us expected.
At home, I pulled my father's old field plan from the cabinet and studied the western water system. The proposed electrical trench would pass near a junction box that had been repaired several times, then cross a pasture where the irrigation pipe ran just below the working depth. A bad excavation could leave me without water for an entire summer. Even a carefully constructed installation would impose restrictions on future digging and equipment placement if the line had to be protected.
I made a rough estimate of what that meant in lost flexibility. There were cattle lanes that would need rerouting, maintenance roads that might have weight limits, and field sections that could no longer be improved without checking the new utility owner's requirements. The figure I came up with was more than I wanted to see, though money was not the most troubling part. A permanent utility right could outlast Margaret, the developer, and everybody currently arguing at my gate.
My grandfather understood that sort of permanence. He had lived through enough changes to know that a short promise and a recorded right are not the same thing. When a neighbor asked to cut through a corner of the pasture, he sometimes said yes for the afternoon and sometimes said no, depending on whether there were calves or equipment in the way. He never confused that neighborly decision with granting a permanent road across the ranch.
A photograph on my refrigerator showed him holding me at three years old beside the western gate. The gate was wooden then, painted a shade of green so faded that the color survived mostly around the hinges. My grandfather's hat was tilted back and his face was turned toward someone outside the frame. He looked happy, and for a while that was enough of a reason for me to keep the picture where I could see it every morning.
The first serious truck convoy arrived two weeks after Robert finished his survey. It was a little past sunrise when the engines came up the ranch road, four utility trucks followed by two equipment trailers. A crew in reflective vests stopped near the western gate and began unloading stakes. One man carried a handheld device; another had a rolled plan set under his arm.