My World Got A System

# Chapter 1: The Second Read

I was standing in a trench, a shovel in my hand.

The morning was cold but not unpleasant. The kind of cold that comes off concrete in March — present, unhurried, willing to wait. Above me the sky was the pale white-gray that meant the sun was up there somewhere but had decided not to commit. Somewhere two blocks over a truck was backing up, the beep steady and methodical, the way those things are when nobody is in a rush.

I had been down here since seven.

The drain had been backing up for three weeks, which meant it had been on the work order for two and a half, which meant I had been thinking about it for two. The blockage was about four feet down, where the old clay pipe met the newer PVC. The joint was the problem. It was always the joint. Two different materials, two different eras, two different ideas about how water should move through the ground, forced together with a rubber coupling and a prayer. The coupling had shifted. Sediment and root matter had packed into the gap like it had been invited.

I had known before I started digging exactly what I would find.