Dale Pruitt had been called many things in sixty-six years, but weak had never been one of them. Quiet, yes. Methodical, definitely. Stubborn, according to his late wife Caroline, with enough regularity that the word had once become an endearment in their house. But weak? Never. The trouble with quiet men, Dale often thought, was that noisy people liked to mistake silence for surrender.
That mistake had cost Brenda Hollister one Escalade bumper, fourteen HOA violations, and eventually her title as president of the Sycamore Falls Homeowners Association.
The morning she called his new trash can ugly, the October air in Alpharetta still held the damp chill of dawn. Dale stood on his porch with a coffee mug warming his hand and watched her march across the narrow strip of lawn between their driveways in a cream tracksuit and oversized sunglasses, even though the sun had barely cleared the rooftops. Behind her, her white Cadillac sat crooked at the curb, its rear bumper caved inward like someone had pressed a giant thumb into it.
That is the ugliest trash can I have ever seen, Brenda announced, stabbing a finger toward the steel-green container standing at the end of Dale’s driveway. It is absolutely disgusting.
Dale took a sip of coffee before answering. Morning to you too, Brenda.
Don’t play cute with me. You set that thing there to damage my car.
It’s in the same place my trash can has always been.
This is a booby trap.
It’s a waste container.
It’s a hazard.
It has a lid, Dale said. Most people find those reassuring.
The next morning he opened the engineering notebook to the very first page where he had written PROJECT: INDESTRUCTIBLE TRASH CONTAINER. Beneath it, in smaller letters, he added one final line.
RESULT: PROBLEM CONTAINED.
He preferred useful endings to loud victories. Always.
