REPAIRS UNDER PRESSURE D. M. Kofer It was hot, and we were parched. The sun seared the Idaho desert like an oven set to broil; baking my skin red, wringing sweat, dry-roasting grass and fragrant sagebrush. There was no water because my uncle and I had a water pump halfway out of a well. He was sufering too, his thinning red hair soaked under his hardhat. “I need a break,” I said, putting down a pair of two-foot pipe wrenches. The work order said: Low pressure. Air in water. My uncle had said, ‘Probably a hole in the pipe.’ We were working behind a service truck itted with a tower and winch, extracting 21-foot lengths – called joints - of steel pipe and checking them for holes. Hence the wrenches. Two men made for a quicker job; one ran the hoist while the other unscrewed and wrangled pipe. “It’s not breaktime yet,” by uncle said. “Bet you had plenty of breaks at that liberal college.” I swallowed a retort embittered by the heat, and went to the cab anyway to slosh some warm water into my mouth. I eyed my water bottle, mentally rationing it for the rest of the job. It’s honest work. Folks build a home in the country, but there’s rarely any public water outside of town. And groundwater in Idaho can be deep – hundreds of feet below ground, tapped by a well and pumped to the surface. I walked back. “You done yet?” My uncle again, dirty and sweating, glaring at me as if the worth of a man is how dirty and sweaty he gets. I swallowed another retort, adjusted my hardhat, and hefted my wrenches. “Bet you voted Democrat so you could get your free stuf,” he said. In my mind, I smack him with a pipe wrench. Instead, I channel the anger into my wrenches, breaking old pipe grease with mad and muscle. There’s no repairing a broken piece of pipe – it has to be replaced. Hoist, unscrew, set aside. We ind the leak. Rust ate a pinhole in the steel, and water pressure had blown it out. “Better pull it all and make sure there aren’t any more.” I agree. Silently, because I’m irritated. I am done working with my uncle,
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