Malpractice © 2018 R.D. Girvan

I bounced down that slope as though fleeing for my life, my car bottoming out on the hummock that split the deeply-etched driveway.

Frank had told me it was over two miles long, his road, and it hadn’t been plowed properly since the County had installed GPS trackers on their equipment and started charging folks for the grader. He wasn’t about to pay for crews to come out and take care of it.  It was their road.
If you looked on a map, you could see a little dotted line that cut clean across his property, and that was the County’s road allowance. They stopped maintaining it, he said, when he fenced in his entire section of land. He said they claimed he blocked their way and denied access to other residents. He said no one should be using the road anyhow, it led right past his house to the lake and Devil’s Lake had been in his family for generations. Sometimes, he sounded almost reasonable.

From the top of the hill, I could see that the gates were now shut, and as I bounced closer, something glinted sullenly in the tepid sunlight: fresh chain joining the two rusted cattle gates. I would have to ram them. In a Civic, no less.

***

Hello, Gang of Glorious Readers, Rhea here.

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Best always, RDG

(Never!!!)