Frederick Busch - The Stories of Frederick Busch

I went by the hill roads, and near Excell’s farm I turned the motor off, drifted down the dirt road in neutral, watching. The deer had come down from the high hills and they were moving carefully through the fields of last year’s corn stumps, grazing like cattle at dusk, too many to count. When the truck stopped I heard the rustle as they pulled the tough silk. Then I started the motor — they jumped, stiffened, watched me for a while, went back to eating: A man could come and kill them, they had so little fear — and I drove home to Bella and a tight house, long dinner, silence for most of the meal, then talk about the children while I washed the dishes and she put them away.

AND THEN I drove back to the house that was dark except for one lighted window. The light was yellow and not strong. I turned the engine off and coasted in. I went downstairs on the tips of my toes because, I told myself, there was a sense of silence there, and I hoped she was having some rest. I uncapped the well pipe and gases blew back, a stink of the deepest cold, and then there was a sound of climbing, of filling up, and water banged to her house again. I put the funnel and hose on the mouth of the pipe and filled my jeep can, then capped the check valve, close the pipe that delivered the water upstairs, poured water from the jeep can through the funnel to prime the pump, switched it on, watched the pressure needle climb to thirty-eight pounds, opened the faucet to the upstairs pipes, and heard it gush.

I hurried to get the jeep can and hose and funnel and tools to the truck, and I had closed the cellar door and driven off before she made the porch to call me. I wanted to get back to Bella and tell her what a man she was married to — who could know so well the truths of ice and make a dead well live.

SATURDAY MORNING the pickup trucks were going to the dump, and the men would leave off trash and hard fill, stand at tailgates, spitting, talking, complaining, shooting at rats or nothing, firing off, picking for scrap, and I drove to see the professor and his catastrophe.

His house was tilted. It needed jacks. The asbestos siding was probably all that kept the snow out. His drain-pipes were broken, and I could see the damp spots where water wasn’t carried off but spilled to the roof of his small porch to eat its way in and gradually soften the house for bad winter leaks. The lawn at the side of his drive was rutted and soft, needed gravel. The barn he used for garage would have to be coated with creosote or it would rot and fall. A child’s bright toys lay in his yard like litter. The cornfield behind his house went off to soft meadow and low hills, and everything was clean and growing behind where they lived; for the view they had, they might as well have owned the countryside. What they didn’t own was their house.

He met me at the back steps, all puffy and breasted in his T-shirt, face in the midst of a curly black beard, dirty glasses over his eyes like a mask. He shook my hand as if I were his surgeon. He asked me to have coffee, and I told him I wouldn’t now. A little boy came out, and he was beautiful: blond hair and sweetly shaped head, bright brown eyes, as red from weather as his father was pale, a sturdy body with a rounded stomach you would want to cup your hand on as if it were a breast, and teeth as white as bone. He stood behind his father and circled an arm around his father’s heavy thigh, put his forehead in his father’s buttocks, and then peeped out at me. He said, “Is this the fixing man? Will he fix our pump?”

Samuels put his hand behind him and squeezed the boy’s head. He said, “This is the plumber, Mac.” He raised his eyebrows at me and smiled, and I liked the way he loved the boy and knew how the boy embarrassed him too.

I kneeled down and said, “Hey, Mac.”

The boy hid his face in his father’s behind.

I said, “Mac, do you play in that sandbox over there?”

His face came out and he said, very politely, “Would you like to play with me?”

I said, “I have to look at your pump, Mac.”

He nodded. He was serious now. He said, “Daddy broke it last night, and we can’t fix it again.”

I carried my tool pack to the cellar door — the galvanized sheeting on top of it was coming loose, several nails had gone, the weather was getting behind it and would eat the wood away — and I opened it up and started down the stone steps to the inside cellar door. They came behind me, then Samuels went ahead of me, turning on lights, scuffing through the mud and puddles on his concrete floor. The pump was on the wall to the left as I came in. The converted coal furnace in front of me leaked oil where the oilfeed came in. Stone foundation cracking that was two hundred years old, vent windows shut when they should have been opened to stop the dry rot, beams with the adze scars in them powdering almost as we watched: that was his cellar — and packing cartons and scraps of wood, broken chairs, a table with no legs. There was a stink of something very bad.

I looked at the pump, breathed out, then I looked at Mac. He breathed out too. He sounded like me. I grinned at him and he grinned back.

“We’re the workers,” he said. “Okay? You and me will be the workers. But Daddy can’t fix anymore. Mommy said so.”

Samuels said, “We’ll leave him alone now, Mac.”

I said, “How old is he?”

Mac said, “Six years old.”

Samuels said, “Three. Almost three and a half.”

“And lots of boy,” I said.

Mac said, “I’m a worker.”

Samuels said, “All right, Mac.”

Mac said, “Can’t stay here? Daddy? I’m a work er.”

Samuels said, “Would we be in the way? I’d like to learn a little about the thing if I can.”

Mac shook his head and smiled at me. He said, “What are we going to do with our Daddy?”

Samuels said, “Okay, buddy.”

Mac raised his brows and shrugged his little arms.

Samuels said, “Out, Mac. Into the yard. Play in the sandbox for a while.” He said, “Okay? I’ll call you when we need some help.”

“Sure!” Mac said.

He walked up the steps, arms slanted out to balance himself, little thighs pushing up on the steps. From outside, where we couldn’t see him anymore, the boy called, “Bye and I love you,” and ran away.

Samuels held his arms folded across his chest, covering his fleshy breasts. He uncrossed his arms to push his glasses up on his face when they slipped from the bridge of his flat nose. He said, “The water here — I tried to use the instruction book last night, after I talked to you. I guess I shouldn’t have done that, huh?”

“Depends on what you did, Mr. Samuels.” I unrolled the tool pack, got ready to work.

“I figured it wouldn’t turn off on account of an air block in the pipes. The instructions mentioned that.”

“Oh.”

“So I unplugged the pump as you told me to, and then I drained all the water out — that’s how the floor got so wet. Then it all ran into that hole over there.”

“The sump.”

“Oh, that’s what a sump is. Then that motor like an outboard engine with the pipe—”

“The sump pump. The water collects in the hole and pushes the float up and the motor cuts in and pumps the water out the side of the house — over there, behind your hot-water heater.”

“Oh.”

“Except your sump pump isn’t plugged in.”

“Oh. I wondered. And I was fooling with the motor and this black ball fell off into the water.”

“The float. So it wouldn’t turn itself off if you did keep it plugged in. Don’t you worry, Mr. Samuels, we’ll pump her out later. Did you do anything else to the well pump?”

He pushed his glasses up and recrossed his arms. “I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t make it start again. We didn’t have any water all night. There wasn’t any pressure on the gauge.”