I spread it across the workbench, weighted the corners with pipe couplings, and studied the route from our tower to the clubhouse. I had modern plans too, but the modern plans depended on contractors reporting every modification. My father's map represented something different: a record of what had actually existed when he walked the ground.
The water complaints formed a rough cluster around the clubhouse and the southern streets. The pressure disturbance in the recorder coincided with those complaints. The irrigation system behind the clubhouse drew from a decorative pond, and the construction activity on the ridge had increased sharply in recent weeks. None of those facts proved a cross-connection, but together they gave me an area to search.
I put the map in a plastic sleeve, loaded my shovel and tools, and began walking the main.
You don't conduct that kind of search by driving past with the window down. You walk. You count valve boxes and utility covers. You compare distances. You look for fresh dirt, new pavement patches, sprinkler heads that have moved, and ground that settles differently over a buried line. You stop when something doesn't match what ought to be there.
At the first valve box the map agreed with the ground. At the next, it agreed again. I crossed the access road, moved around the tennis courts, and followed a buried main for almost three-quarters of a mile. A maintenance man sweeping leaves outside the clubhouse watched me pass. He knew me well enough to wave, but not well enough to leave his broom and ask what was wrong.
Behind the clubhouse, the map showed the main continuing south without an additional branch. The ground showed something else.
There was a fresh valve box halfway between two established ones. Its lid was darker and cleaner than the others. A twelve-foot rectangle of disturbed earth ran from it toward a patch of new sod. The topsoil was still loose enough to hold the pattern of my boot sole, and the sod seams had not knitted into the neighboring grass. Someone had tried to hide the excavation quickly, and someone had assumed nobody would think to compare it to a drawing forty years old.
I photographed the area before touching anything. Then I called the county utilities office to ask whether an excavation or connection had been permitted there. The clerk couldn't find a ticket under Cedar Hollow or the clubhouse address. She advised me not to disturb an unknown line until underground utilities were located. I agreed. I marked the area and waited while an inspector in a white service truck came to confirm the location of other buried services. It cost me hours I thought I didn't have, but an underground gas line doesn't care how urgently a man wants answers.