vituperation

…continued

“My hands are shaking so bad from the adrenaline I can’t even get the piece back into the pipe.”

Robyn laughed and returned to drying the floor.

I sat there for a couple of minutes waiting for the adrenaline to work out of my system. Robyn finished up and went back to the kitchen.

Those of you who never made it to her site to see why we had a big laugh, here’s why: When I came lumbering through the kitchen and yelled MOVE! at Robyn, she concluded that I was being chased by the walkin’ dude and wanted her to get her butt in gear and run away with me. Hence the reason I heard her running behind me as I went out the back.

When she told me this, I said,I can’t believe you think I’d run away from the walkin’ dude and leave you to fend for yourself. I’d be running TOWARD him if he posed a threat.

So hmph to my wife for thinking I’d desert her in a crisis.

Once the shaking in my hands stopped, I put the faucet stem back in and tightened the cap.

“Bessie, I need you,” I called.

I asked her to stand in the bathroom while I went under the house to turn the water on. Outside, as I pried the crawlway access open I thought about just how much I didn’t like going under the house. Could be worse, though. Could be in the dead heat of summer, when God knows what has taken up residence. Yucko.

Once in position, I worked my cell phone out of my pocket and called Robyn’s. Technology, baby.

“I’m about to turn the water on,” I said.

I reached up and twisted the, um, valve thingy. There was a brief sound of water whooshing through the pipe, then silence from it.

Then, over the phone, the sound of running water. I shut the water off quickly.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Water was coming out.”

“Did the valve blow again?”

“No, the water was coming out down below, like when you’re running a bath.”

“Okay, I’ll be back up there in a second.”

Obviously it matters how you put the stem back in, I thought as I wriggled out from under the house ass first. I’m sure that endeared me to our neighbor.

Back in the bathroom, I took the whole thing apart and studied the individual pieces to see how they worked. I thought I saw the problem and carefully put everything together the right way. Back under the house, with the same results. This time, I had Robyn turn the valve to make sure it wasn’t open. It wasn’t.

I repeated the whole thing five or six times before concluding it was time to call a plumber. Apparently, faucets require some sort of advanced degree I do not possess. Luckily, we have a local phonebook at the Smallville house so I could start calling people without resorting to dialing 411.

Getting a plumber on Saturday was a clusterfuck roughly the size of Minnesota. Most weren’t working, so all I got was answering services. Rot0 Ro0ter called me back and told me it would be a minimum of $200 to put the valve stem back in properly because (a) it was overtime, and (b) something may have broken inside the wall.

Fuck that. We don’t live in the house; shutting the water off until a weekday wouldn’t be that much of a problem.

I was able to get Mr. Root3r to put me on their schedule, but they had no idea when someone would show up. Dispatch will call you when he’s on the way, they said. While I waited for the call, I tried putting the stem back on again, with no luck. And on that last time crawling out from under the house, I had a flash of inspiration. I hurried back inside to share my epiphany with Robyn.

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier,” I told her. “Want to take a road trip?”

“Where to?”

“Down to the store. I know one of those old guys knows somebody around here who does plumbing and would want the work. And they’ve got to be cheaper than Mr. Ro0ter.”

We made the quarter mile drive to the store. Outside, I noticed there weren’t many trucks this time. It was after noon by now; I guessed most of the old-timers had gone home for the day.

“We’re going to be the laughingstock of Smallville, aren’t we?” I asked.

“What’s this ‘we’ stuff?”

On that note, I shut the door and trudged around to the front of the store.

to be continued…