Highway 71

For a while I saw the kitchen faucet when I closed my eyes at night, shaking its loose knobs and reaching up with lime stained copper arms. “I'm broken, Ryan. I'm broken and no one is going to fix me.” After a year the image is still there, but without urgency. More of a text message: “FYI still brkn”. I don't hope for closure. 

A vibrating spiral of red pex looped across the yard as I pulled the spool from under a doublewide trailer where the main supply emerged from the ground in a splintered cluster of pvc. The pvc unions were sloppy and old, with accents from when the trailer had been spray painted brown. Broken pipes stuck out like compound fractures, bones emerging from loose dirt and leaves. Fixing the supply to the trailer was Michael’s job, I was trying to get water to the other house across the driveway, a one story, one bedroom, handmade studio-barn. It had nice dimensions; a generous shaded porch, a vaulted ceiling over a single main living space which included the kitchen and living room. Carol had told me on the phone her late husband had built it, and he wasn't much of a plumber.

under the trailer

The house’s water came from the trailer, which, though it was a mobile home, pre-dated the house. Carol was unsure if anyone lived in the trailer. One room looked like someone might squat there from time to time. There were holes in the floor throughout. When pressurized, water sprayed in too many places to count under the floor. A one inch line went under the yard and came up at the edge of the studio-barn, where it splintered again. Our goal was to bypass this line with pex running across the ground to the house for Carol and put a faucet on the outside of the trailer for anyone else. 

The shutoff was a couple hundred yards down the hill, past a graveyard that separated these residences from the highway, on the nearest official street which ran the length of the graveyard. I walked its length, up into the woods, to find the neighbor who shared this caleche road to ask if it would be ok to be without water for a while as we made repairs. A large dog went berserk somewhere behind the house as I stood out in the road yelling “HELLO!” A middle aged white lady in loose pants and a dirty shirt walked out between large junk items on the side of the house. She didn't say much but amicably accepted the news that the water would go off for a while. I got the sense that there was a man of the house somewhere and that he collected derelict vehicles and appliances to repair or to absorb into the landscape. It was a strange conversation, I wasn't sure I was talking to the right person, and I didn't know how much time I had. 

you pipe with PVC? Yeah, you know me.

I pieced together from brief conversations with Carol that they were all an extended family living in this cedar thicket that had once stretched unbroken for miles. Fancy things were going in on 71. The Bee Caves Galleria with the Whole Foods was bizarrely close, a massive big box complex with a Lowe’s and a Spec’s had just gone in across the street. The next door neighbor was a new CVS. What is the reference standard of living here? This question doesn’t come up for real plumbers. 

I stretched the pex under the house, belly-crawled on my elbows, and threaded it behind the cedar stump foundations. I made an elbow into ½” copper which went up into the kitchen sink. When I go into strange people’s houses, I try not to look around too much. It's distracting, I fear that if I start examining my surroundings, stories will start to assemble themselves and I will fall into a deep well, and I can’t think clearly. So I try to keep blinders on, but when I'm back in my own home, I plunder the images in my mind and pour over them like glimpses of an alternate universe. It was impossible to miss the flat screen TV in the living room on mute, silently screaming into a dark house. I got the sense that someone else was here. Maybe a smell, maybe just the TV. Perhaps the person who sometimes squats in the trailer. I was not going to check the bedroom, but it was strange not to know if I was alone in such a small house and I could no longer sing to myself. As an interloper into personal spaces, I've learned that a surprising number of people like to have the TV on at all times, even when they are not there themselves. The faucet was straightforward. I got it hooked up and trudged down the driveway to open up the main, pleased with how quickly it had gone. 

“OFF! OFF!!!” Micheal yelled over the phone. Upon inspection, I saw the center cap had blown out of the faucet, ricocheting off the ceiling and coming to rest on the porch in front of the door. The sink was dry. Compressed air from the dry pex line must have provided the pressure, but why had it exploded? Not for the first time, I suspected something of not working prior to the freeze, but what did it matter? Carol needed water. I called her again. I texted her. We had never physically met. Maybe she was not all that functional a person, or maybe she lived in some difficult circumstances. The faucet looked rough, covered in hard water crust, the valves wiggled on the base and the stem wiggled on its mount. The center part seemed to have deformed when it blew off and it wouldn't go back on, and so the goal posts moved. To get cold water, she now needed a new faucet. So I drove to Tractor Supply down the road, but they were out of faucets and a lot of other things. It was getting dark when I returned, so I gave up and capped the line in the kitchen. Michael had succeeded in setting up a spigot at the edge of the trailer, so now Carol, or whoever lived here, had access to drinking water, just not in the house.

I texted Carol a week later. I asked her if the kitchen faucet was still broke. She texts, “Oh sweetheart… haven't had a spare moment to look at it.” Is she even living there? Why was the TV on? How does she not have time to look at a kitchen faucet? Does she use the spigot? Does she have time to wonder where she can get half a gallon of water to flush the toilet? 

My helpfulness had started to feel like harassment. I have no idea what’s going on over there now and it's not my business, but what if she needs help? I could text one more time. I could say it occured to me as I was at my normal, regular job. I could have gone out and fixed it months ago, but I've been busy. Is it still broken? Yes? No need to explain, I'll just go out and fix it. Just because I'm compulsive. Because I have white guilt. Class guilt. Because I cheated on my taxes, I lie when I pray, I killed a man once, a hitch hiker saved my life, Jesus died for my sins. Or, because I have enough to eat every day and shit in toilets with infinite water and have a daughter who eats infinite food. Or, I am your time traveling great grandfather, buried there in the graveyard, appalled at the state you live in. I'll do anything to make your life better. Not anything. Just this thing. Cold water in the kitchen.

This essay series is part of a project to document Texan’s experiences during the 2021 freeze. Do you have a story to share about the 2021 Texas freeze? Share it with my publication, Freeze Stories, on Medium. If its not filled with filth, I’ll publish it. Ok, I’ll publish it even if its filled with filth.