Plumbing the Depths

As a teenager, I worked for a plumber, fetching tools and digging ditches (mostly), and sweating my balls off in the 99-degree North Carolina summers. But it was also lots of fun, the plumber was hilarious, and I got all the Slurpees I could drink (nothing like syrup and ice to cure heat stroke!). Plus, I learned all about ditch-digging.

One day, I was chiseling a hole through the brick foundation of a slum row house so we could run a water line through and attach a spigot. It was a real easy job--just make the hole about 3/4 of an inch, then solder on the spigot and you're done. The owner of the house also had bought up most of the other row houses on the block and she was a snake-mean, Korean woman who complained about everything and refused to fix any but the most egregious problems with her properties. That may sound like some sort of stereotypical, cutesy jab, or like a sketch in a bad comedy club, but there was nothing funny about her, first off; she is a real person, second; and the whole experience was meaningless and just sort of was. The kind of job you just want to be done with so you can get on with the rest of your life and try to feel good about the next day.

It was summertime. It was hot. I recall it as one of those gray days where it's overcast but somehow still one billion degrees. Triple that if you're up in the attic. However, I got to be in the crawlspace under a slum house and, as crawlspaces go, it was OK. Soft, dry red dirt, no bugs, and ample head room. However, because the outdoor temperature was, as I have said, one thousand million billion degrees, it was still quite warm underneath the structure. In short, sweaty me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a rag lying on the ground. It was a yellowy, canvas-looking thing that appeared to be quite dry. Just the thing to swab my neck and forehead. (I should add that, now, today, that seems very gross. But at the time, 16-year-old me thought it was very OK. I was, after all, already covered with dirt, sweat, and probably poo. You know, from plumbing. Yeah, that's it...)

So, I reached for the rag.

But it wasn't actually a rag at all.

It was the desiccated corpse of a cat, made leathery and light by long exposure to dry, hot conditions.

In fact, it looked a lot like this:


True story. Enjoy!