McMansion by Justin Scott Page B

now.”
    He picked up a board, sighted down it, penciled an X on the crooked end, measured six feet, drew a cut line with a square and went to his radial saw and looked surprised that I was still standing there. “Goodbye, Mr. Abbott.”
    â€œDo you know how to drive a bulldozer?”
    â€œWhat kind?”
    â€œHow about a Caterpillar D4?”
    â€œGoodbye, Mr. Abbott.” He put on eye protectors and ear protectors and turned on his saw, which made a remarkably loud and piercing noise.
    We had here a classic meeting of two alpha dogs, only one of whom could become alpha-alpha. The trouble with being alpha is you don’t always think that straight. Or think at all. Which can be a great advantage. Or a terrible mistake. Maybe it was because he reminded me of prison, but the blood suddenly storming through my mind told me that I could not survive if I backed down.
    I yanked the power cord from the wall.
    Sammis was remarkably quick. Moving as fluidly as a skater, he snatched up a battery-powered circular saw and held the long-toothed rip blade inches from my face. I looked at his index finger curled around the trigger switch.

Chapter Six
    I tried to gauge his eyes through the safety glasses. They were glazed like marble with a mad dog stare. Again I looked at his index finger on the trigger and said, “You don’t have the balls, dude. You’ve been out too long and you don’t want to go back.”
    Sammis shocked me. I really didn’t believe he would trigger the saw. But he jerked the switch with all his might.
    I was right about one thing. He had been out of prison too long. He had not lost his anger, nor his desire to survive. But he had lost his edge. He had gotten so heated up that he forgot to press the saw’s safety switch with his thumb. And, thanks to the federal rules that were supposed to protect do-it-yourself handy men and women, the saw did not start. That surprised him long enough for me to pick up a whippy length of quarter inch steel rod he was building something with, point it at his face and announce, semi-truthfully, “I fenced for the Naval Academy. Why don’t we stop the rough stuff before you lose an eye?”
    He glared at me, glared at the steel rod, and glared at his saw, saw where his thumb had missed the safety, and threw it down on the bench. He looked angrier than scared, but he sounded weary when he said, “Get the fuck out of here and don’t come back.”
    Sensible again, I backed out the door, went home and Googled him, which I should have done earlier. It took a lot of scrolling, but I found that Andrew Sammis had indeed done time. In Maine. Not for assault with bulldozer, but close. He’d been convicted of running over his wife with a pickup truck, which he had denied vehemently but unconvincingly. After a year in prison, his conviction had been overturned by an appeals court. Which not only freed him, but permitted him to inherit his wife’s considerable estate and collect her life insurance.
    I found it hard to believe that he would risk throwing away his new-found freedom and fortune to avenge some stolen trees. Still, I’d seen his anger in action, so I wrote an asterisk beside his name and continued down my list.
    I spoke with a homeowner who went red in the face about Billy’s trucks roaring through his neighborhood on Sundays. I found the president of a community group that had formed to try to stop Billy from scamming a grandfather-clause loophole in the zoning regulations to force single-acre housing into a two-acre neighborhood. I found people who blamed him for crowded roads, noisy leaf blowers, and bad-mannered newcomers with too much money. Everyone damned him for rising school taxes.
    â€œWelfare!” one apoplectic geezer sputtered. “It’s like we pay welfare to Billy Tiller. Our taxes go up to educate the kids who move into his houses. He keeps the profit.”
    None of them