“That’s me. Seth Chapin. You’re Meg?”
“Yes.” She slammed the door shut behind him, bemused. He was not what she had envisioned as a plumber. Her mental image ran more to a middle-aged guy in a baseball cap, with a gut hanging over his low-slung jeans. Seth was about her age, in good shape, and clean. And not bad-looking.
Seth was looking around her hallway with clear admiration. “Nice. Sorry about bailing on you yesterday, but something came up at the last minute. So, what’s the problem?”
Meg sighed. “I just moved in a couple of weeks ago, and things have been falling apart ever since.”
“Yeah, these old places’ll do that. Gotta love ’em.”
“Well, yesterday’s happy surprise was the plumbing.”
Seth was in no hurry to follow her, but was studying the architecture. “You’ve got a great place here.”
So everyone kept telling her. Meg was torn between pride and impatience to get on with the nasty business at hand. “You’ve seen it before?” she said, edging toward the kitchen and hoping that he would follow.
“Sure. I think my dad did some work on the place years ago. My brother and I used to tag along. So, where’s the problem?”
“What I’ve seen so far is in the kitchen. I’m scared to look any further.”
Seth followed her to the kitchen and headed directly for the sink. He took one look at the pool of noxious sludge in the sink and shook his head. “Yep, that’s what I thought. Septic system’s backed up.”
That did not sound good. “I have a septic system? What does that mean?” Feeling stupid, Meg tried to keep her voice from quavering.
Seth turned and leaned against the counter, regarding her with a look of pity. “Where did you think your waste went?”
“Sewers?”
He shook his head. “Nope, you’re too far from town. You’ve got a septic system here. Your drains flow into a holding tank, and then there’s a septic field beyond that where it disperses. I don’t suppose you know where your lines are? Your holding tank? Or maybe how old it is?”
Meg wrestled with a feeling of desperation. “No to all of those. But why did it just stop like this? I haven’t done anything to it.”
“It happens. This has been a hard winter. Really cold, and the ground froze and stayed frozen. Those old cast-iron pipes get brittle, and sometimes you get tree roots working on them, too. Maybe that was just the last straw for the system. Let me poke around outside a bit and locate the parts of the system and where a break might be.”
“But what am I supposed to do?” She could avoid flushing for only so long.
Seth looked amused. “You got a friend you can stay with?”
“No. I’m new here, and I haven’t met many people yet. Look, what’s the worst-case scenario?”
“Replacing the septic system.”
Ouch. That sounded ominous. “That’s the most extreme solution?”
He nodded. “How many baths you got?”
Meg counted quickly in her head. “Two, and one’s just a half. There’s the kitchen. And a washer, out there.” She waved vaguely at the door at the back of the kitchen, which led to a rather ramshackle room that linked the main house to the sagging barn.
“Pretty standard, then. A few thousand, anyway. Depends.”
Meg shut her eyes. Sure, another few thousand.
Ka-ching, ka-ching
went the cash register in her head. She wanted to cry.
“Hey, you all right?”
Meg opened her eyes to find the nice—if expensive—plumber looking at her with concern. She nodded. “Sure, I’m fine. I think my checkbook may be seriously ill, though.” Surely he must see this response a lot if he threw around figures in the thousands just to clear up a drainage problem.
“Listen, can I take a look at the basement?”
“Oh. Right. Basement.” It took Meg a moment to recall where the door was—she had been avoiding the basement since she had arrived. She had been down there once, reluctantly, to take a look at the ancient furnace, and had no intention of going down again. She had even let Frances check it out unaccompanied. She led Seth into the hall. “That’s it. Watch your head. I think the stairs were built for someone about five feet tall.”
“Not a problem,” he said, plunging down the rickety wooden stairs.
Then she could hear him banging on pipes. She refused to think about what Seth might find in the way of new plumbing disasters. Blast the man, he was whistling. At least he enjoyed his work.
Meg sat down at the dining room table, resolutely ignoring the mess in the parlor and the stink emanating from the kitchen. She gazed out the window that overlooked the grassy field—the view was pretty, though it offered little comfort. Her eye fell on the bowl of apples she had set in the middle of the table a couple of days earlier. She’d found the bowl, an old salt-glazed blue one with an ominous crack, in the sideboard; the apples were Red Delicious she had picked up at the market outside of town. The colors had looked pretty together. How often had she bought apples without giving a thought to where they had come from? Now she had to think about that, with Christopher’s condemnation of commercial apple varieties ringing in her ears. She wondered what varieties she had growing in her orchard. Christopherwould know—she’d have to ask him, the next time she saw him.
A few minutes later Seth reappeared, looking less cheerful than before, and Meg’s heart sank. “All right, hit me with the bad news.”
“Doesn’t look good. Like I guessed, the system’s just plain old. If we’re lucky, could be as simple as a broken pipe near the house. That’d be the easiest and cheapest thing to fix. If you have to replace the septic tank, it’ll run you about two thou. If you need a new leach field, that’s another two or three thou. If you have to reinstall the existing field, it’ll get a lot more expensive. But let’s not worry about that just yet, okay?”
“I don’t suppose you can stick a Band-Aid on it?” Meg said faintly.
“Nah. The system’s at the end of its useful life. Sorry.” He looked at his watch. “Listen, today’s clear. I could have this done by the end of the day, if you can handle that.”
“Do I have a choice?” Meg asked faintly.
“Not really. Outhouses aren’t exactly approved anymore.”
“Then I guess you’d better go ahead.” Meg felt sick. How many more four-figure fixes were going to sandbag her like this?
“Let me poke around outside, then, get the lay of the land. The good news is, there’s plenty of room for a new septic field, if you need one. How much land is there, by the way?”
“Somewhere around thirty acres, I think. About fifteen acres is orchard, I’m told. Up that way.” Meg waved vaguely.
“Oh, right—the grove.” Seth had pulled a PDA out of his pocket and was scrolling through something. “Let me make a couple of calls—I’ll need to bring in a Bobcat to dig a trench, so I can get a look at things. And if we need to go for the new tank, I’ll line someone up to bring it over.”
We?
At least it looked like Seth was someone who could get things done. Meg sighed.
Seth looked up and grinned. “Don’t worry—you can pay it off in installments.”
Meg mustered a smile. “Thanks, Seth. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t found you.”
“Hey, that’s what neighbors are for.”
“You’re a neighbor?”
“Yup, just over the hill there—for the last three centuries, give or take.”
“Wow,” she said, feeling stupid. One more thing she didn’t know about her house: who the neighbors were.
When Seth started punching numbers into his cell phone, Meg turned to survey her latest mess. She couldn’t use the kitchen. The rug she had pulled up still lay in a crumpled heap in the front room. One more thing to add to the discarded stuff she had been piling up in the barn. She made a mental note: find out about trash collection, or whether there was a town dump. While Seth was making calls, she might as well finish clearing out the rug and its shredded underlay, and pry out the tacking bars.
After half an hour or so, she heard the sound of machinery outside. Looking out the window, she saw what she assumed was a Bobcat, with a narrow shovel attached in the back. She heard a rapping at the front door, and hauled it open to find Seth. “We’re going to dig a trench now,” he said, looking for all the world like a boy with a new toy.
“You guys want some coffee or something? Is there anything I need to do?”
“Coffee’d be great, but let’s see how the trench goes, with the ground frozen and all. You’re lucky—we can keep it narrow. And it’s a good thing you don’t have a paved driveway, because then you’d have a real mess.”
Meg laughed. “Thank heavens for small favors. You mind if I watch?”
“As long as you stay out of the way. I don’t want you falling in.”
Meg bundled up and stood on her back steps, bouncing from foot to foot to keep warm, and observed while the small machine slashed into her driveway, as well as into the flower bed under her kitchen window. She sighed inwardly: she hadn’t been here long enough to know what might have been growing there, but whatever it was wasn’t going to grow again.
Seth kept a critical eye on progress, but occasionally he would bend down and pick something up. After the third time, he motioned her over. “You want to get a box or something?”
“Why?” Meg had to shout over the noise of the machine.
“Anytime you dig around these old places, you turn up artifacts. I thought you might want to save them.”
“Sure. I’ll get something.” In the kitchen she located a shoe box she had been using for receipts and brought it out to him. He emptied his pockets of several unidentifiable lumps.
Chilled and bored by the process of digging, Meg went back inside and busied herself with small chores. In less than an hour she realized the machine had fallen silent. She went out the kitchen door and contemplated the trench that ran some twenty feet from her foundation to the lawn. Peering in, she could clearly see that the system was in trouble: a heavily rusted cast-iron pipe had fractured, and even now yuck was seeping out through the dirt that had clogged it. Seth came over to stand beside her.
“Sorry, it’s not good. The main pipe gave out, and the septic tank is pretty well shot.”
At least he’d prepared her for the worst. “How long will it take to replace them?”
“Tank’s on its way, and I’ve got pipe in the van. The vendor’ll haul the old tank out and drop the new one in. I can have things hooked up by the end of the day. I’ll give my brother Stephen a call, tell him to head over here and help out.”
Meg had no idea if the speed of this process was normal for plumbers, but she had the feeling Seth was making a special effort. The least she could do was let him warm up. “Are you ready for coffee now?”
“Sure. Oh, and here’s your archeological trove. No treasure chests loaded with gold, I’m afraid, but some neat stuff.”
“Thanks.” Meg eyed distastefully the sodden clumps in the shoe box he handed her. He followed her into the kitchen, where she laid the box on the table and filled two sturdy mugs with hot coffee. She heard the Bobcat start up again, and then the sound faded into the distance. “He’s leaving already?
“Yup. Tight schedule—I had to sweet-talk him into fitting you in. Look, I’m sorry about yesterday …”
“You’ve already apologized, you know.”
“Yeah, but I try to avoid screwups like that. Gives us plumbers a bad name, you know.” Seth pulled the shoe box of artifacts toward him and poked around. “This is part of the job I love. You never know what’s going to turn up. Let’s see.” He rummaged through the muddy fragments with one finger. “A coin—looks like an 1895 Indian head penny, nice. A spoon, definitely twentieth century. A couple of marbles. You know, it seems like any place where there’s been a kid over the last century, I end up finding marbles. And here’s a nice piece of china. Too bad it got broken.” He handed Meg a shard. He was right: it was a pretty piece of blue willowware, almost half of its original bowl shape. It looked old.
“Neat. Don’t you find yourself wondering how these things got lost? Did somebody miss them? Or was it trash? What did they do with trash in the old days, for that matter?”
“Threw it down the privy, up to a point. Then town dumps. You have to remember, people didn’t make as much trash as we do now. And there were plenty of thrifty Yankees around here— if you could save something or reuse it, you did. So I’d guess this pretty little bowl was broken a long time ago, from the look of it.”
Meg pointed to a piece he hadn’t mentioned, a much-rusted, large, and ornate multitoothed gear. “What’s this?”
Seth picked it up and turned it in his hands. “Part of a—” He stopped himself and grinned at her. “Maybe I’ll let you figure it out.” He dropped it back into the box with a thunk, then turned his head to listen. “That’ll be the guy with the tank. Damn, where’s Stephen?” As Seth left the kitchen, he was pulling out his cell phone again. Meg peered out at the newly arrived truck carrying a bulky concrete object she assumed was her new septic tank. For its cost, it was disappointingly prosaic, but if she was lucky she’d never see it again anyway.
The truck was soon joined by a dented, not-new sports car. The man who climbed out bore a clear resemblance to Seth, although his hair was darker and he walked with a swagger.
This must be the brother, Stephen.
Seth approached him, clearly annoyed, and they argued briefly before Seth directed him toward the Chapin van while he went to talk to the truck driver.
In short order the old tank was hauled out, and the new tank was off the truck and in the ground, even though Stephen looked a bit sulky about taking orders from Seth, and moved slowly.
It was little more than an hour later when Seth knocked again. “You’re good to go. Want to try out your drains?”
“With pleasure,” Meg answered. She went to the kitchen sink and turned on the tap. The water disappeared with no hesitation. “Hallelujah! It works! And it’ll keep working, right?”