They Cut Down My Trees for a Better View So I Shut Down the Only Road to Their Homes

They didn’t believe him at first, the way people never quite believe you’ll actually use the leverage you have. But the chain across Pine Hollow Road was real, the padlock was real, and the easement his grandfather negotiated decades earlier turned out to be sharper than any of their chainsaws. While Cedar Ridge argued in group chats and conference calls, groceries came the long way over gravel and every commute stretched by forty resentful minutes.