The Orange Cord Across My Lawn: A Feud in Five Days

Day Two: The Stew and the Sign

Lou answered with a covered bowl of stew on my step and a note: Hungry men plug in slower. I ate it standing up in the garage, out of principle. It was very good. That made it worse.

I posted a sign: OUTLET CLOSED. Lou parked so his awning threw shade on my mailbox from three to five. Mags issued Memo 301, Shared Utilities and the Resolution Thereof, and pinned it to the HOA bulletin board, where it will be cited by everyone and read by nobody.

Wendell came by with my gas bill and Lou's flour order. He looked at the cord, at the sign, at the awning, and said, "Signed for, as always," though I had signed for nothing. I think it was a comment.

That evening Raj and Priya walked up with a silver brick and a laptop open to a spreadsheet. The tab was titled Neighbors Who Need Power. Lou and I were in adjacent cells. In red.

The cord lay in the dew like a dare.

Day Three: Four Things, One Brick

The brick is an EF ECOFLOW power bank, a little over six inches long and 20.46 oz, heavier than it looks and exactly as heavy as a thing with 25,000mAh inside ought to be. Priya set it on my workbench and plugged in four devices before I could object: Lou's tablet, Lou's phone, her own laptop and Raj's phone.

Two of the cables are built in. One pulls out to 2.2ft, the other is a stub of 0.8ft, and they are the only cords on that bench I have not tripped over. A USB-C port and a USB-A port handle the strays. A little digital display ticked along like a man tallying a bar tab.

I went looking for the catch, which is my trade. Priya read it to me off the box: 170W in total, and no single port gives more than 100W. So the laptop can have its hundred, and then the phones and tablet divide what is left. Four devices on one brick share the supply; they do not each get a banquet. I was delighted to find a flaw, and then Lou said that was how he ran the truck's whole kitchen on a Friday, and I lost my appetite for it.

I said I could build that. Priya asked kindly what I would use for the cells. I said I would look into it.

Day Four: The Hearing

Raj added that the bank also takes power in at 100W and reaches 50% in 26 minutes, so it need not sit dead on a shelf, begging. I said that was a lot to ask of a wall outlet. Raj wrote that down.

Mags convened a hearing on my lawn, with folding chairs, a gavel borrowed from the Lending Ledger and the Admiral on a cushion between Lou and me. ORACLE was patched in by speaker and asked for precedent. ORACLE, consulted for precedent, cited the Cord War of Belgium, in which two dukes quarreled over a single outlet until both retired to the Alps, which it located in Florida.

Nobody had the strength to correct it. Lou made his statement, which was mostly about stew. I made mine, which was mostly about my lawn. In the middle of my rebuttal the Admiral stood, stretched to his full length, stepped down off the cushion and walked out between our two chairs without a glance at either of us.

Mags announced that the Admiral, by walking between us and leaving, had found no fault on either side, a finding the Caucus accepts because its members hold that to live with a cat is to have finished the work of being human. Per section four, the matter was closed. Lou and I shook hands, mostly to end the proceedings.

Day Five: The Mail

Wendell, who has carried this lane's mail for twenty-two years, checked his tray, then the dark gap under the porch at No. 2, and told me with great gravity that once again there was nothing for Brenda, our domesticated bear, who has never received so much as a flyer. I said I would keep an eye out. He nodded as if that were a service.

Lou returned my orange cord this morning, coiled so neatly I checked it for knots. The sign is down. The awning has been moved four feet to the left, which Lou describes as a gesture and I describe as adequate.

The Menons' bank is still on my workbench. Raj says the spreadsheet has a tab for taking it back. I have looked at it for an hour with a flashlight and a magnifying glass, and I want it on record that I cannot build that.