Gus’s water log

Sunday night, the thermometer by the back step seemed to hover near freezing, and I pulled the strips down from the shelf to get ahead of the first hard freeze. The two drums in the garage get rotated now, so I tested them first. Both barrels tested fine. I ran a strip on the well…

Saturday I had the ladder against the shop gutter with a coffee can full of the grey sludge that collects in the first-flush diverter, and Ruth’s voice in my ear from the phone call the night before, asking if her wooden well lid was supposed to smell like the creek after that hard rain. In…

Thursday morning the short cycling started. I was filling the dog’s pan at the kitchen tap and heard the submersible kick on, run four seconds, stop, then kick again before the pan was full. That is a bladder losing its air, or a tank waterlogged. I killed the breaker, drained it through the hose bib,…

Saturday morning I had the siphon hose coiled over one shoulder and the headlamp on, crouched between the drums, when Ruth called from the east road. She calls after every hard rain. Tuesday’s storm had knocked something loose in her head, I think, more than in her well. I told her to draw a glass…