Charge of the Shite Brigade

Apologies up front, as there's simply no way to share this story without it becoming indelicate.

The arrival of the plumber (artist's rendering)

We’ve all been living through the same metaphorical shitstorm in recent weeks. But last week at the Traynor household that shitstorm was made incarnate, and came to dwell among us.

That Biblical vibe is intentional. Not only because a shitstorm seems a perfect complement to the plagues of blood, frogs and pestilence that God rained down on Pharoah to free His people in Egypt—but because all of this happened on Good Friday.

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Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of home plumbing knows that severe plumbing issues are most likely to occur after hours, on weekends or major holidays. We were lucky enough to hit the trifecta-- #blessed, really—as our issue developed literally as the sun set on the regular-billable-hours workweek, just as we were settling in to enjoy the celebration of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as a family.

The first sign of trouble was a clogged toilet. Daunting, but not DEFCON 1 or anything. We’ve been sequestered at home for a month now. Seven people, nearly half of us teenagers. Clogged toilets have become as commonplace as the sounds of video games, ostentatious sobbing, and the fridge door opening. I’m suspicious when they don’t clog.

This was different, however, which became apparent once I discovered the other, unused toilet on the second floor was backed up as well. As I worked up a lather, desperately plunging away at the master toilet, brown water began to rise from the shower drain behind me, announcing its presence with a noxious odor, as if a vent had opened to release a warm breeze from the very bowels of Hell.

Had it been any time before 5 PM on a weekday, I would have sprinted for the phone to call a plumber. But I knew in my heart that we were looking at rate-and-a-half, if not double-rate, to call in the cavalry on this day of Calvary. So I decided to try and fix it myself. Because I was desperate.

Not only have I been largely unemployed for two months with no return to work in sight, but after a month of self-quarantine I had serious concerns about inviting strangers in to labor-- and breathe-- in the most frequently-visited rooms of our house. I didn’t want to put the health of my entire family at risk. Especially at weekend holiday prices.

---

Google suggested that I was looking at either a clog in the sewer main or prostate cancer (all of my recent searches seem to wind up at that diagnosis, somehow). I decided to focus on Problem A, and so did enough exhaustive research over the course of the next three minutes to decide that an immediate, possible & cheap solution would be to open the clean-out valve, which allegedly existed on my property somewhere between the house and the street. It didn’t seem the most likely fix, but definitely the easiest. So I threw myself into it.

A friend-of-a-friend of Google assured me that said action might relieve pent-up pressure in the system, and thereby release the released contents of our household in one powerful torrent.

It might work? I mean, of course it would work!! It had to work. Any other course of action led to physical and/or financial ruin.

I’d gleaned that the clean-out was most likely to be in the form of a white PVC pipe, with a large square bolt sitting atop a tightly-threaded cap. This would require a pipe wrench to open. Not having one handy, I decided adjustable pliers would have to do the trick. So armed with a small pair, I slipped my flip-flops on over my stockinged feet and headed out into the gloaming.

---

The light was dying fast, and within minutes it was too dark to see. Thankfully I’d come prepared and was able to swipe up the control panel on my iPhone to flip on my flashlight. This light is extremely handy, especially for finding ones’ way to the bathroom in hotel rooms in the dead of night, or for perusing the menu at any restaurant with “ambience”—but it wasn’t quite as powerful as I needed it to be.

Undaunted, I hunched over in the cold grass and held the phone closer to the ground. This provided sufficient light but gave me a maximum field of vision of about eight inches in diameter. I was covering the entire property, but it was taking much longer that it should have. I found myself cursing God for allowing us to purchase a home on a corner lot.

This type of anger had been commonplace back when I mowed my own grass, all through my thirties and early forties. I had to do twice as much mowing as my neighbors—and three times as much sidewalk edging! It was wildly unfair, of course, even though to be honest I edged the sidewalk a total of maybe 1.5 times over the course of ten years.

Back then I scoffed at neighbors who employed professionals to cut the grass. Most of them were old and had clearly given up on life. I was a proud male homeowner that would never be like them. Somewhere in my forties, though, it finally hit me that spending two solid hours cutting the grass to avoid spending thirty-five bucks perhaps wasn’t as smart or principled as I’d thought—and I was always tired. I’d grudgingly given up my last defense against joining the local bourgeoisie, and hired a lawn crew to do it.

---

My lawn care might seem like a tangent to you, but it seemed painfully relevant at 8pm on Good Friday, as I groped around the yard in my flip-flops, pliers and phone light held aloft. Because the memory of running my mower over the top of what might have been the clean-out each week-- wincing as I waited for the blades to shriek-- came flooding back. Everything except for the precise location, which hovered right at the tip of my brain.

Not finding anything after a half hour or so, I decided that the lawn guys must have filled over it. Bastards. I had given up control of my own land, and now it had come back to haunt me. I would have to add that to the Shame pile, so I could ruminate over it later.

I went back inside, defeated. The odor was now accessible from the lower floor, and I knew I had to call in the professionals, no matter the cost to health and home.

It was 8:30 PM.

---

I have a fairly consistent system for procuring home service professionals. I login to Angie’s List, describe my problem and submit my personal details so that providers can contact me. Then I immediately become impatient with waiting and call the first emergency service I find listed on Google. After unsuccessfully trying a few local options I dialed the 800 number for Roto Rooter. They told me that I was extremely lucky, because a technician had just finished a job in Palatine (a nearby town which sounds Biblical, but isn’t) and could be to our house within forty-five minutes.

I asked what safety procedures they had in place because of Covid-19, and after half-listening to the response I basically shouted, “I don't care. Yes! Please send him! Please send him now!!”

It was 8:45 PM.

---

At this point all I could do was wait. But time passed quickly, because immediately after hanging up with Roto Rooter my phone began to blow up with calls and texts from half a dozen service providers, all following up on my request to Angie’s List. As I told each of them I was all set the responses varied. Some were polite, and a couple simply hung up without another word. I assumed they were eager to get home to their families for Crucifixion Day.

After fifteen minutes of fielding calls, I answered to a man that said, “This is Dispatch. The plumber is on his way and will be there in twenty minutes.”

“Oh,” I said. “Is this Roto Rooter? Because someone just told me he’d be here in forty-five minutes, like, fifteen minutes ago.”

“Nope, twenty,” he said.

“That’s great news—but this is Roto Rooter, right? Because I just spoke with another dispatcher there. A woman…?” I posed this as a question, as if he’d be able to name the person.

“Yep. Sure. We all work out of a different office.”

“Oh, okay. But will you cancel the other one? Because I don’t want to drag two different plumbers out here. In fact, it’s only thirty minutes, now… maybe I should stay with the original guy. I don’t want to cause trouble on a Friday night,” I replied.

Meaning that I didn’t want to be gouged twice as I was about to start hemorrhaging money.

“Right, your choice. But that guy is just a water supply plumber, not a repair plumber.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he can assess the problem, but he probably won’t be able to fix it for you. He’ll just take a look and then come back later—probably Monday.”

“That’s no good! Why would they send an emergency plumber who can’t unblock a toilet?”

“That’s why I’m calling you with a repair plumber, who’s only 20 minutes away.”

“Uhm. Well, okay, I guess… but what about the other plumber? Can you tell the dispatcher to cancel that one?”

“Well, like I said, we’re not in the same office…”

“Yes, but I don’t know which office anyone is in. I don’t even know where your offices are. I just called the 800 number. But I don’t want the other guy to waste a trip.”

“Okay. I’ll try.”

---

I hung up relieved, but still somewhat confused. His answers weren’t quite clicking, but I knew my brain had been caught in a quarantine fog for several weeks and wasn’t firing on all cylinders. I chalked it up to my own fatigue and distractedness. Besides, I was still getting quite a few calls from service providers I needed to cancel.

After a while I saw a pair of headlights idling outside my office window—the tell-tale sign of someone looking for, and not finding, our house. As I mentioned we are on a corner lot, and our official address is on a different street than our front door. This usually isn’t an insurmountable problem, but this guy idled for quite a while, and then drove around the block twice—once in each direction—until I went outside to greet him.

It turned out there were two of him. They were parked on the street just around the corner, and even by the dim light of a lamppost their vehicle was unimpressive. An older, beat-up custom van towing a fourteen-foot flatbed trailer from its ball hitch. I’m no plumbing expert, mind you, but it looked less like a corporate service vehicle and more like one of the many garbage scows which navigate the alleys of our neighborhood, looking for perfectly good household items and furniture amongst our upper-middle class garbage.

---

The men came over to greet me; one a polite and serious young man in his early thirties, the other an affable, shaggy and somewhat rotund fellow in his late fifties.

“Are you guys Roto Rooter?” I asked.

“We’re the plumbers,” this older fella told me good-naturedly.

After introducing himself, the younger man went back to the van for a face mask and his tools. The old fella seemed content to keep chatting with me. I made the mistake of assuming the older guy was in charge, as he was clearly the voice and face of the operation. He was chatting away, and offering answers to questions I hadn’t even asked.

As he spoke another van pulled up to the intersection, and began idling. This one was white and neat, a late-model vehicle with “Roto Rooter” across the side, visible even in the dark.

“Wait. You guys aren’t from Roto Rooter, are you?”

“No, we’re the guys you called. You talked to our dispatcher,” said the friendly old fella, in a tone that seemed more appropriate for addressing a cornered animal.

“But you’re not Roto Rooter. What company are you from?”

“We’re Aqua Docs!” he exclaimed with a thick Chicago accent, pointing to the small insignia on the right side of his dirty shirt. The logo was invisible to me, as he was silhouetted in the headlights of the other van, and my brain simply couldn’t process the sound “weerakwadax” into understandable English, despite my repeated requests for him to clarify the name. A sick feeling descended on my stomach as reality dawned.

“Look, I’m sorry but there’s been some confusion. I called Roto Rooter, and the dispatcher told me that’s where you guys were coming from.”

“Our dispatcher?”

“Both dispatchers.”

“You talked to two dispatchers from the same company?” The way he said it made it sound ridiculous.

Suddenly I was struck with fear. These two strangers had shown up to my doorstep under false pretenses and the cover of darkness, and were wanting to come into my home. The home which I’d been stuck in for the last month, trying to keep my children safe from exposure to a deadly global virus.

“Listen, I appreciate you coming out here. But see, I called Roto Rooter. That’s them, right there. It just wouldn’t be fair of me to send them away now.”

Without hesitation the old fella said, “No prob, but they’re gonna charge you double what we do.” My eyes flickered, and he sensed an opening. “At least double.”

---

My deep concern for my family’s health, my sense of obligation and basic fairness—all evaporated on the instant as I found myself being offered the one thing I never thought I’d get on this God-forsaken night: a good deal.

“Well…” I said. “What is the name of your company again?”

“Akwadax,” he shrugged.

“Okay, fine,” I responded quickly. “But you guys are on Angie’s List at least, right?”

“Of course! They love us on there.”

I shooed these complete strangers inside, told them the problem was upstairs, and wandered over to break the bad news to the Roto Rooter guy. I felt extremely guilty and was probably too apologetic, given the nature of my offense. He took it well, and seemed just fine to be able to drive away and get on with his night.

It was 9:30 PM.

---

Inside I found the old fella standing in the front hallway, smiling at me. He had a very friendly smile, which really stood out due to his lack of a face mask. I passed him and hovered in the dining room, unsure of what to do next. Our house was an utter catastrophe, which is usually the case, and I felt the familiar pangs of shame that came from others witnessing our laundry-strewn and dusty home—even if those others were there to drain the shit out of our shower.

The old fella seemed unfazed, and chattered on in a friendly matter. “Man have we been busy. It’s been just insane, ever since the pandemic hit. First call at 5am, working without a break until midnight most days,” he told me, despite the fact that he didn’t seem to be working at all, at the present moment.

“Where’s your partner?” I asked, in a tone I hoped would convey that he should go and find him.

“Oh, he’s upstairs checking everything out. So how many kids ya got?”

“Um, five. And actually. Listen, I don’t want to be rude… but do you have a face mask or something you can wear?”

“What? Oh! You want me to wear a face mask?”

“Yeah, you know, we’ve been working hard to minimize contact with everyone for several weeks, now—and your dispatcher said you’d wear one.”

Or maybe it was the other dispatcher, I thought.

“Oh no, problem—I’ve got something out in the van,” he said, and slipped out the front door. I stood staring at the entryway, pondering just how many droplets he’d discharged while talking my ear off for the last five minutes.

The younger man returned downstairs. “You got a clog somewhere between the first and second floor,” he told me.

“Don’t you think it’s the sewer main, since everything backed up at once?” I asked.

“Is your downstairs toilet working?” It was. “Then it’s not the main. We’ll try to snake it out through the shower drain. If it’s not too far down it should be fairly quick and easy.”

This made my heart sink, because I knew this meant we were doomed to a long visit. It’s like when someone tells you, “I just want to tell you a quick story”, and you know in your heart that you’d might as well pull up a chair.

---

A few minutes later both men tramped back into the house, loaded up with gear. The old fella was only able to carry things with one hand, as he was holding what seemed to be a rag of some sort over his face. He nodded, and I could see the corners of his smile at the edges. This was his mask, apparently, and he seemed pleased to be complying with my request.

I was pretty sure this meant that just as soon as he reached the bathroom he’d have to put this rag down, so that he’d have both hands free. I thought briefly of challenging him but let it pass. If he’d made a special trip to get this he probably didn’t have a spare N95 mask sitting out in the van.

Now I understood the dynamic, and the roles switched in my head. The younger man was the boss-- and clearly the brains of the operation-- while the old fella was his amiable assistant, there to get messy or to lift things, as needed.

It was 9:45PM.

---

What followed was a harrowing ninety minutes, full of terrible grinding and banging noises. I lay down on the couch to begin my nightly CNN vigil, knowing that there was nothing I could do & that I was better off not to be in the same room with them, to avoid both Covid-19 and a sharp rise in blood pressure.

The noises were incredibly loud and shook the walls of our old house. I glanced from the walls to the ceiling, wondering just where our family’s excrement would start seeping through the plaster once a pipe had been ruptured. My wife was camped out in our youngest girls’ room, as they were already in bed, but had zero chance of falling asleep right now. At one point she came down to ask me what the Hell was happening upstairs, and to tell me our twelve-year-old was weeping with fright, convinced that all of us would soon be getting, and dying of, coronavirus.

Just like Don Lemon on CNN, I could only sit quietly and shake my head.

---

Not long after 11 PM the plumbers came back downstairs. They had been breathing heavily for long stretches in our bathrooms, bedroom and upstairs hallway—but still had not been able to resolve things. The younger guy explained it to me.

“Something is seriously wrong with your plumbing. Whoever installed it made some very odd choices, because nothing connects like I’d expect it to. Can I see the basement?”

I led him back through the dining room to the stairs, then down into the basement. By this stage I was fairly confident that both men had been within 6-10 feet of every surface in our home. If they—or any of the people they’d done work for eighteen hours a day, seven days a week for the last month—had the virus, we were all just gonna have to get the virus. Right now I wanted to get the shit water out of my shower, and the use of our toilets back.

Down in the basement the younger man was even more aghast at the crazy zig-zagging, the seeming randomness of our plumbing. This wasn’t surprising, as the guy we bought the house from in 2005 had done extensive renovations. Nearly all of them, we found out later, by himself. We’d seen stunned electricians, HVAC guys and general contractors come and go for years, so this was nothing new.

None of the pipes connected where they should, nor went where he expected them to. He was clearly tired, as it was closing in on midnight on a Friday (and a holiday! my inner accountant reminded me). The one bright spot was that he found the clean-out, on the side of the big PVC pipe outside the laundry room. So, that’s where I’d seen it last.

---

“We can try to open up this clean-out and see if we can unclog it from here,” he explained. “But these pipes are so weird and unpredictable, I can’t tell where anything is going. If it doesn’t work your only option is going to be to tear out your plumbing and start over, I’m afraid.”

I was suddenly afraid, too. Deeply afraid.

“Tear out which plumbing?”

“Well. All of it.”

“Well let’s give it a try!!” I squeaked. He nodded but didn’t seem thrilled.

“Okay, then. But you’ll need to clear out everything within about a ten-foot radius of this pipe.”

“Just like social distancing,” I said cheerily, before the knowledge of what he meant had settled in.

“And you’re gonna need some kind of bucket or tub to catch everything,”

“Catch everything?” I asked, my fear increasing.

“Yep. Because if we’re lucky enough to get the clog cleared, everything up above is gonna come rushing down through this pipe, and this open clean-out on the side of it.”

I took his point. The pipe was probably ten inches in diameter, the clean-out cap only slightly smaller.

“Do you have a plastic bag, or something I can use to try and direct the flow?”

“A plastic bag? Seriously?? You don’t have a tool for that? Some sort of funnel or something?”

“Nope. But if you can invent one I’ll share the profits with you,” he said curtly.

We stared at each other. He was annoyed, but I felt I had a right to be miffed about this, too. Then I thought of the very specific frustration each of us was facing.

“I’ll get you one before I go back upstairs,” I said meekly. I cleared the immediate vicinity of the clean-out of boxes of children’s clothes, books and extra glassware that lined the nearby shelves. Then I beat a hasty retreat. I wanted no part of what was about to occur.

It was 11:45 PM.

---

Back upstairs I resumed my vigil. A replay of Anderson Cooper 360 was on, and I hoped that D Lemon would be able to relax & get some quality sleep tonight. Lord knows we all need it.

I pretty much held my breath for the next half hour or so—partly out of fear of failure, and partly out of fear of the stench I expected to come wafting up from the basement at any moment. I’ve made it a point over the last few years to not ask God for specific things when I pray, but I’ll admit I put in a direct request or two that night.

---

At 12:30 AM the men returned upstairs, victorious. The relief I felt was palpable, as was the glistening dampness all over the younger man’s sweatshirt. He was holding his hands up like a surgeon waiting for gloves, both forearms pink and raw-looking. The old fella was his usual cheery self, holding the rag casually across his broad grin. Of course, he wasn’t the one covered in my family’s shit.

“Can I use your sink?” the younger man asked. He sounded as if he was in pain.

After I showed him where to wash up, the old fella asked me, “Did you pour Drano down the toilet before we came?”

I had. An entire bottle. But it had never occurred to me to tell them when they first arrived.

“Oh, that stuff is horrible. Never use it. The only ones who like it are plumbers, because it’ll eat through your pipes faster than anything.” He told me a few stories, working his jaw steadily just a few feet above our dining room table. The face rag was little more than a prop at this point, used to add an occasional emphasis but serving no real practical purpose.

When the younger man returned from washing up it was patently clear that he, at any rate, did not love Drano. “My arms are burning,” he said. “Everything just gushed out of the clean-out and poured right into my gloves, and all over my chest.” I’m usually pretty good with words, but I could think of absolutely nothing to say to him.

It was 12:40 AM, and our problem was solved.

---

They carried their stuff out of the house. The younger man told me the mess wasn’t huge, all things considered-- but I made a silent decision to stay out of the basement until after the sun rose. Whatever the reality, it could wait until (later that) morning.

After a few minutes he returned with a clipboard and began writing out an invoice. “Mind if I use your table?” he asked, setting it down on the tablecloth in the dining room.

He stood over the table, writing, still wearing the same dark sweatshirt. It was dark enough that I couldn’t see the extent of the mess, which I was grateful for. But I felt my fear and revulsion rise, as he lingered at the table where my family shares its meals.

I didn’t say anything, though. I suddenly felt like it would be deeply inappropriate to do so. My family might all come down with coronavirus, or perhaps even e coli, but this man was deserving of nothing but my complete and utter gratitude.

Not only did he deserve gratitude, but it occurred to me that he stood before me with complete and unquestionable moral authority, as well. This man and his sidekick had been in and out of people’s homes for eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, throughout the pandemic. Whatever extra money they were earning was A) not enough and B) completely secondary.

The much larger issue was that they were risking their health—and so their family’s health-- a dozen times each and every day, walking blindly into the places where people’s germs were most concentrated, and completely unavoidable.

Sure, their dispatcher-- and whatever criminal cabal he works for—might ask potential clients if anyone in their household is sick (or was that the other dispatcher?). But would they really refuse to come out if someone had a bad cough, and a backed-up john? Moreover, would desperate customers on the North Shore of Chicago give 100% accurate descriptions of their own well-being, when faced with a disgusting plumbing emergency? That seemed even more doubtful.

(heathen artist's blasphemous rendering)

---

As he finished up writing my bill, I saw clearly that these guys were heroes. Not those flashy, attention-grabbing heroes who work in hospitals and grocery stores, perhaps. But the down-and-dirty heroes who careen headlong into the very lairs of humanity, knowing that the best-case scenario is that nothing save voluminous quantities of shit and piss await them.

I try to lead a spiritual life these days, and one of the great spiritual maxims is to do the right thing no matter how scary or unpleasant it might be. As he finished the transaction it occurred to me that this was exactly what this young man was doing, here in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Even Jesus had split by that point, and would be taking all of Saturday off.

The other great maxim is that humility is essential for spiritual growth. And here I had to stop and acknowledge my own humility, usually a sign that one is not being humble, at all.

This was a clear exception. Because nothing breeds humility like standing in your dining room after midnight & handing your visa card to a stranger who’s covered in your own shit.