“Cho Lon,” piped up Roland, who was leaning against the bar nursing a schooner of Rainier with a shot of tomato juice. He had put his quarter against the cushion by the coin slot and was waiting to play the winner of this game—most likely me unless Steve managed to run the table. But I’d carefully nudged the eight ball right near the side pocket and if he accidentally sank that before he’d cleared the table of his balls I’d win.
“Where?” asked Steve.
“That’s across the river from Saigon,” I said.
“I thought so. You fuckers’er Nam vets, not hippies. You ain’t foolin’ nobody. Lot of them seem like children and you two sure as hell ain’t.”
Coming from one of the Tar Heels, that was as close to a complement as I’d heard in years. Clearly, Steve had some respect.
The gas tank was full and I was jolted from my daydream as the nozzle clicked off. Steve put the nozzle back on the pump and shut it off. Water was still dripping from the bed and puddled up around the tires from where I ran the water tank over down at the well. I followed him into the office. “That’ll be $8.10. You musta been on fumes. Good thing it was down hill. So why ain’t you usin’ crick water for the garden?”
“For one thing, the creek’s almost dry and for another I didn’t know about the weir or the cistern.”
“I haven’t been up there for years but when Mitchells lived there there was a weir across the crick and a settlin’ tank feedin’ into a cistern. It was high enough above the house to make some pressure. Do you still have the cook stove with the water back?”
“We still use the stove. Wood’s lot’s cheaper than propane.”
“Is the hot water tank still there?”
“Yeah, but we don’t use it. We have electric. But now I think about it, there’s still pipes that go from the cookstove to the electric water heater. Bunch of valves too.”
The driveway bell rang as another pickup pulled up to the pumps across from my rig.
“Gotta run,” said Steve. He hit the door at a trot bound for the pump island. Pretty light on his feet for a man in his seventies, I thought.
“I’ll look around for the weir when I get back,” I hollered from the cab as I slammed the door and stepped on the starter pedal.
“You do that. And let me know. Oh, hey. You got some cord showing on that one rear tire.” he hollered back, cranking the handle on the pump to reset it for the next customer.
Shit! All this water hauling was taking its toll on everything. Maybe Snuffles’s wreckers had a radiator and a tire with some tread on it. I’d stop by tomorrow. I had to deliver a cord of wood down that way. I’d get $30 for the firewood, five bucks extra because it was dry — cut last January and to stove length too. Maybe I could talk Snuffles out of a tire and a radiator for 30 bucks. Maybe he’s take firewood in exchange. They heated the shack in the junk yard with wood.
When I reached the Y where I could usually just lug the motor for a few seconds while I rounded the corner, I had to drop a gear as the motor failed to pick up speed and rattled hard. Spark knock. I looked at the temperature gauge. It was somewhere north of 212, as high as the gauge went. No steam yet. I could just run a lower gear to keep the fan spinning and turn the heater on. I hated that. It was hot enough already.
In The Belly Of the Beast 