These people I went over to see about, I didn’t see the woman. I just saw the man. Frankie took the call. Frankie’s just a kid, a large one. He wears these boots you wouldn’t believe the size of, with cleats on the bottom like he’s going to climb a mountain any minute. He answers the phone and calls me on the radio and tells me where to go next.

Me, I’m a plumber.

It was already quitting time that evening and I was thinking about a few cold beers and a few racks of eight ball at Ireland’s. But here was this problem waiting for me back at the shop.

“One eighty-four Vance,” Frankie said. “Man called and said his toilet was stopped up.”

I checked my watch. It was after five.

“What’d he say?” I said.

“I don’t know, he just said his toilet was backed up and water was running all over the floor,” Frankie said. “I think his wife was yelling at him. I could hear somebody yelling in the background.”

So I told him okay, I’d go take care of it. I told Frankie to go on home before I left. He gets time-and-a-half after five.

This man met me before I even knocked on the door. I had my hand lifted and he just opened it. He was a big man with gray-black hair and a loose shirt cut evenly around the bottom hanging out of his pants. He had on some of those deerskin moccasins. I couldn’t hear his wife yelling.

He said his toilet was stopped up, so I got the sewer snake and an adjustable wrench and crawled under the house. That was when I heard them talking. But they weren’t talking. They were yelling.

“And another thing!” this woman’s voice said. It was odd hearing it like that, under the house. I decided I’d just take my time and see what all they were yelling about. I turned on my flashlight and found the cleanout. It was plastic with a one-inch nut. The house was pretty high off the ground, so I crossed my legs and lit a cigarette. I didn’t take the nut off, though, not while I had that Marlboro going. I didn’t want to blow myself to Kingdom Come. You know, with sewer gas.

“I’m tired of you talking about how fat I am!” So evidently she was fat. But maybe not. Maybe he just thought she weighed too much and stayed on her ass about it all the time. I had a half pint schnapps in my overall pocket and I got me a little drink. I mean, after all, it was after five o’clock.