***

You are thigh-deep in mud, in a narrow trench, digging through muck and clearing it away from a leaking, spurting water pipe. The main is fractured, and you’ll have to turn off the source before making the repairs. You’ve got everything cleared away, but now you realize that you don’t have the proper wrench. That spanner is in the truck, and you’ll have to go back for it. The only thing you have with you is a spade and a small socket wrench.

Instead of getting out of this trench, you’re walking along through it, legs heavy and soaking wet, jeans drenched, boots filled with water and mud. It’s a miserable slog. The water main leak has become rain, a steady downpour, or maybe that’s just the spray of the busted pipe, but it’s washing into the ditch and filling it up with water. Leaves and yard debris are floating in the water, and starting to clog the ditch, too. The wide yellow and red spans of the leaves are pasted to your stomach, your hips, your crotch, your forearms and the backs of your hands. The truck is only just across the road, but you seem to be following this ditch in an elliptical path around the edge of a field. You’ve barely completed a 10 degree span. Progress slows, and the truck seems just as far away, as if you’d never taken a step.

But you make it. The back of the truck. It’s dry here. Not overcast, either; rather, incredibly sunny and bright. A VW van drives by, its radio pumping the shaking upbeat rhythm of reggae. As the van pulls away, you pull open the tool box, root around, and find the spanner you’ve been looking for.

“Dude.”

You look around, but see no one.

“Hey bro. Down here.” The spanner is talking to you.

You look at the wrench quizzically, arching a brow.

“You need to effing relax, man. You’re so uptight about this whole water thing, bro.” The wrench’s voice was lazy and soothing, with a hint of richness and texture.

Your response is vehement.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yes, I know. It’s all right. The water’s not safe, and now it’s flooding the yard and the basement. I know. But really, you’ve got to take it easy. Take me over there where I can have a look and maybe make heads or tails of this thing.”

Loathe to return to the muck, you nevertheless return to the ordeal of the main. The wrench continues talking, and finally you ask his name.

“Jack. Nice to meet you. Pleasure, dude.”

You think, or perhaps you mutter, as he overhears, that Jack seems a more fitting name for a hammer than a wrench.

“Look man, lay off. I didn’t get personal about your heritage.” The wrench laughs, though. You ask it if it was just kidding.

“Jah, mon. Relax. You need to pack that socket with something and smoke it.”

The van playing the reggae pulls back around the corner, as you step back down into the mucky, leafy ditch.

***

A reassuring hiss kissed the porcelain. Ethan’s eyes nearly rolled back in his head. The pressure in his abdomen receded and he sighed his relief. He washed his hands and stumbled back to the bedroom in the dark, with the green of the glow in the dark lightswitch to guide him.