Fence Line by Laura J. Oliver

When I was very little, the milkman drove his delivery truck off the shoulder of Eagle Hill Road, plowed right through the wooden plank fence my parents had built, and came to a stop, upside down, in the pasture. 

My father laughed. Said the milkman was unhurt because God protects drunks. I have no memory of how the milk truck was righted, and more to the point, what happened to the driver. Nor do I know if he had a drinking problem. But I know who in this story did. And he rebuilt the fence.

I wonder now why it was one of the first things my parents did—post by post, hole by hole, painstakingly fencing in nearly three acres of land when there were no intruders to keep out, nor animals to keep in. Eventually, long after the milkman’s antics, the fence would keep a horse we boarded from roaming and provide a death-defying balance beam on which to test our courage and poise. It seems like an odd prioritizing of energy and yet, one I think I’ve inherited.  

The first fence I built as an adult was white picket, of course, because I was building a dream, a rose-covered cottage with a white picket fence to enclose it and a happy family to reside inside— and I painted every picket of it pregnant with my first. Years after we sold the house because we had outgrown it, I could drive by, see my fence, and marvel that subsequent owners hadn’t replaced it. 

Later, we bought a house with a large yard and no fence, and the neighbors decided that because the historic property line between us was angled and they wanted to straighten their driveway by owning the land we were allowing them to use, they would sue for adverse possession. It is an archaic law still on the books, originally enacted to discourage claim jumpers in the Gold Rush. It states that if (in this case, out of the goodness of your heart), you let someone use your property and don’t use it yourself, they can claim it as theirs.

After successfully defending two frivolous lawsuits dismissed at the expense of our wellbeing and bank account, we moved to a house enclosed with not only a fence, but a five-foot-high wall made of bricks. Subliminally, I guess, I was attracted to the fortress of it—to the unequivocal boundary it represented. But neighbors planted tall trees along it in an effort to afford themselves privacy from our upper-story windows, and massive roots grew under and through the wall. It cost us months of labor and thousands of dollars to repair, and guess what?

 I can see you.

I have a hard time with boundaries in general. If you walked up and asked me for $10, I’d give it to you, just because you asked. I suspect I have lived my whole life thinking, if you have a need, it is my job to meet it. I do not recommend this.    

I was once asked who taught me this, and I thought, “There isn’t a time I didn’t know this. Isn’t it the law?”  

The brick wall that encloses my property gives way to brick pediments and wrought iron railings on the street side of the house. The fence shoulders yellow black-eyed susans, silver-violet sage, and pink roses, but it is decorative and in desperate need of repainting. I once tried to hire it done. A man knocked on my door asking for work. He had a need, and I thought I could meet it. I paid him in cash up front, then supplied him with paint and a brush. He worked for about an hour and disappeared. 

A few days later he showed up and explained he had had to have a colostomy. He raised his T-shirt to reveal a plastic Ziploc sandwich bag he had Scotch-taped just below his ribs as proof. It was incredibly creative. I could appreciate that. (I did not give the painter more money, nor dispute his claim. My father, the fence-builder, taught me the worst of sins is unkindness—the other—to shame.)

The man lowered his shirt, shifting from foot to foot on my porch. High overhead, a white contrail divided a blue sky, but aside from some clouds you could not have told one side from the other. I wished him well, and he carefully descended the steps; the difference between us, nothing but fate.

Boundaries are a challenge for every willing heart.

I will repaint my own fence. Make love the gate.