“Who’s asking?” “Walter Briggs,” he said. “That’s my property you’ve been running over. You’ve been keeping me up every night with your trucks. I can’t live like this. I’m seventy-one years old. I can’t manage this kind of noise.” The foreman crossed the dirt lot, boots grinding into the gravel.
Up close, he looked more like a man used to paperwork than machinery; clean nails, a neat clipboard. “Mr. Briggs, right? I heard about you.” He smiled, almost kindly. “I get it. Change is hard. But there’s nothing personal going on here. We’re just doing our job.”