Digging Out the Septic Tank

On the tenth day of life in Alabama, the contents of the septic tank backed up into the bathtubs.

My middle child, Danny, was taking a shower at the exact moment the septic system failed. He yelled something unintelligible. Our loud and busy household quieted for just a fraction of a second… a mere second… and he began screaming.

It was April 29, 1996, a Monday evening. Peter had flown to either California or Canada the previous day. Remnants of a junk food dinner were strewn across the avocado green countertop, the living room, and the breakfast table. When Peter traveled, I picked one evening when the kids chose whatever they wanted for dinner, so I wouldn’t have to cook. Their food choices were treats, and they ranged from pizza to cookies and chips. Sodas. We couldn’t afford to eat out very often and the town had few options, so after picking them up from school we went to Winn Dixie and they filled a cart with goodies.

People stared at us in the grocery store. We were the new people, the outsiders. The four of us pushed a cart filled with brightly colored packages of artificial food, with little nutritive value. We were a ragtag and haggard looking group. I bought a pack of ‘emergency’ cigarettes. Smoking relieved my stress. I’d step outside for a time-out, then be ready to tackle the problem. It had been a tough couple of weeks. Our relocation to Wetumpka had been met little of that rumored southern hospitality.

The tv blared in the family room. Music blasted from the boys’ bedroom. Over the noise I heard Danny screaming. I ran down the hallway to the kids’ bathroom and found him, wrapped in a towel, standing on the floor. Sewage percolated from the drain into the tub.

“Stick your feet under the running water,” I told my embarrassed son, then 12 years old. “Then go get dressed.” He rinsed his feet, which looked surprisingly clean. I turned off the shower.

The toilet gurgled.

I ushered him out of the bathroom. The smell gagged me. I turned on the exhaust fan, stepped out of the bathroom, and closed the door. All three kids assembled in the hallway.

“Don’t use the toilets, okay? No showers, no running water.”

That was it. That was all the problem solving I could muster. I knew it was up to me to fix this, as when, as a young mother, a baby had projectile vomiting or diarrhea and I looked at the mess and knew it was mine. Welcome to Adulthood! The crystalline moment of tag, you’re it is a brutal one. Reality hit hard on that night, our tenth in Wetumpka. There was no one to lend me a hand with this mess.

The septic tank was full.

“Let me think a minute,” I told the kids, and grabbed that pack of Marlboros and a lighter. I stepped through the back door from to the covered porch and eyed the corner where a racoon mother and two babies had taken up residence the week before. She had pushed through an area of loose screen. Peter had shooed them back into the woods, but I was apprehensive each time I went onto the porch. I had just lit a cigarette when the doorbell rang.

I stabbed out the smoke and rushed inside as Jacob opened the front door.

“Howdy, son. What did you do to yourself?” he asked my eldest son, whose right arm was in a sling. He’d broken his collar bone in a skateboarding accident after an administrator refused to admit my sons to school the previous Monday, despite having all their school records from Florida. She and I had exchanged terse words that morning. She held the power to keep my boys out of her school that day and Jacob tumbled down a hill and broke his collar bone.

The man pushed into the foyer. He studied Jacob’s black tee shirt with white stick figures and this motto:

Friends Help You Move. Good Friends Help You Move Bodies.

“That’s a strange shirt you got there, son,” he said, frowning. Then he plastered a smile back onto his face and clapped his hands once. “How are y’all settling in?” He studied Michelle. “You’re just as cute as a button.” I pulled her closer to me. He had a creepy vibe.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Pastor Bill, from the Baptist church. I came to welcome you to the neighborhood.” He stuck out his hand, and I shook it. “You must be Susan.”

How did he know my name?

“Is Peter at home? I’d sure love to meet him.”

“He’s on a work trip,” Michelle offered. I squeezed her shoulder.

“He’s at work. He’ll be back shortly,” I lied. “Do you know him?”

“No, ma’am, not yet. Some of your neighbors are members of my flock,” he said. Danny, now dressed, wandered down the hallway to the foyer. Pastor Bill introduced himself, while I wondered who he was talking about. So far no one had welcomed us into the neighborhood…well, except for the woman next door who invited us to her church. Aha.

“We’d love for you and your beautiful children to join our church family this Sunday,” Bill continued. I glanced at my children. The man was laying it on a bit thick. The boys needed haircuts. Jacob had dark circles under his eyes, worn-out from his injury. Michelle had chocolate icing on her shirt. They looked feral and unkempt. We all did.

The odor from the bathrooms drifted down the hallway to the foyer.

“What does your husband do?” he asked. “What church did you attend in Florida?”

I ignored him. He was fishing around for information, and I found this line of conversation insulting. I’d lost track of the number of times I’d been asked the same questions over the past ten days. Everyone we’d met asked the same thing. “What does your husband do? What church do you go to?”

This was their way of assessing which side of the railroad tracks we came from. Were we rich or were we white trash? Just a week earlier, when we purchased our home insurance, the agent asked, voice dripping with condescension:

“Did you rent your last home? Was it a single or double wide?”

What? Surprised, Peter and I looked at each other.

“We each owned houses,” I said. She raised an eyebrow.

I had intuited there was also a deep division between the Methodists and the Baptists, something akin to the opposing sides of the Civil War, known in the South as The War of Northern Aggression. I’d never given either strand of Christianity much thought, but this was apparently a big deal in Alabama. Where you worshiped indicated who you were and who you associated with.

Pastor Bill eased into the family room, where the tv volume was loud and a plate with the remains of someone’s cookie and potato chip dinner lay on the coffee table. He looked around, taking stock of our furnishings, as if to assess our finances. Judging us. I was in no mood. The sewage odor was building.

“Hey kids, go around and open all the windows please,” I said. “Jacob, hit that switch in the hallway and turn on the whole house fan.”

“Mister, uh…” what was his name? “Bill. Listen, thank you for stopping by, but this is not a great time for a visit. We’re having plumbing issues and I need to figure out a solution.”

“Well, bless your heart,” he said, a bit tersely, not accustomed to getting the bum’s rush. “Is there anything I can do to help? Let’s join hands and pray.” He held his hands out to me and Michelle. “Seems you all could use some divine guidance.”

And so help me, I opened my mouth, and this gem flew out:

“Unless either you or Jesus can pump out my septic tank, I don’t think prayers are gonna fix this.”

Pastor Bill’s enthusiasm evaporated. The smile disappeared, replaced by a frown. He bid us a hasty farewell. Within days we would reap the consequences of my blasphemy.

The neighborhood kids taunted my children on the bus and at school.

They called us devil worshipers and drug dealers.

Welcome to Alabama.

I took out my large metal mixing pans and filled them with warm water. With soap and wash cloths, we managed to clean ourselves. After they’d gone to bed, I had a washer full of their clothes, but didn’t dare run any water through the system, although Michelle flushed the toilet adjacent to the laundry room with no repercussions.

The next morning, they got ready for school and brushed their teeth and washed up the same way. I promised to find a solution by the time they came home from school. Promptly at 8 a.m. I pulled out the phone book and began calling septic companies. Most had answering machines and I left messages and kept calling others. I was desperate.

Finally, one man answered the phone. I explained the situation and he vaguely said he’d come by that morning. No one else ever returned my calls. I discerned a pattern: few men here took women seriously. I realized I would have to enlist Peter to arrange all types of services.

Figuring I had a little time, I brushed my teeth and drove to the nearby McDonalds. I needed a restroom and coffee. I returned home quickly to wait.

Finally, just minutes before noon, the septic guy showed up. He had stringy long hair and no front teeth. He looked like Iggy Pop on a bender, all skin and bones with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

“Nice place,” he said, assessing the property. “What’s your husband do?”

That question again. “Computer stuff,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” he shrugged. “Where’s the septic tank?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ve lived here less than two weeks.”

“That so? Where’s the bathrooms?” I walked him behind the house and pointed out the kitchen and bathroom windows. He began poking holes in the grass and found the septic tank.

“Your tank is full, that’s why it’s backing up into the house,” he mumbled. “It’s got to be pumped out.”

“Okay, I assumed so. How much will that cost me?”

If memory serves, he charged $200. I wasn’t going to haggle. I was just relieved he showed up. I went inside to get my checkbook. When I returned, he handed me a shovel.

“What this for?” I asked.

“The tank needs to be dug out,” he said. “It’ll cost more if I have to do it.”

I thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t. I looked at the shovel and followed the holes outlining the tank. It was a big area, and the day was a scorcher, at least 90 degrees.

“How much more?”

“Fifty bucks.”

“Fine.”

Inwardly I raged. If he wanted $250, or any amount, he should have just asked. I was desperate. He knew it. He took off his shirt and began digging. I went inside to put the house in order. I was grungy and out of sorts.

It took about an hour to completely clean out the tank. The smell was overpowering and nauseating. I closed the windows and turned on the air conditioning. When he’d finished pumping, he knocked on the door. He wanted to show me something.

He had me stand at the edge of the emptied tank, a sight I never need to see again. The drain field had failed, he explained. “That means the tank ain’t draining, and it will just fill right back up. I’d have to pump it again next week.”

“Why? Do we have to replace the tank?”

“No, ma’am, the tank’s fine. You need a new drain field. This one ain’t good no more. Someone’s gonna have to trench a new field and put in some new lines.”

Less than two weeks in the house and the entire plumbing system was shot. We’d had an inspection done. Did we receive any information about the septic system? Had the sellers scammed us by not disclosing this problem? Maybe, maybe not. The sellers lived out of state and the house had been rental property. The tenants stole the built-in refrigerator when they moved out, an issue that required an immediate resolution. I’d wanted to chase them down and demand the return of the avocado green refrigerator, but Peter said it was wiser to buy a brand new, gleamingly white one. ¹

“Do you think the people who lived here knew there were problems with the system? Has this been going on for a while?”

“Oh, yes ma’am. How old is this house, fifteen, sixteen years?”

“Yes, built in 1980.”

“Yeah, that’s an old system. They wear out, break down. You need a new drain field.”

“And what’s that going to cost me?”

“I don’t know. I don’t do those.”

He told me who to call. I stewed and fumed while he closed the tank. This problem was not resolved. We could function for a few days, but I damn sure never wanted to see this guy again.

After I’d scrubbed the bathrooms and taken a shower, I called the local company he’d recommended. I spoke with a woman and explained the problem. She said her husband would call me. That was Tuesday. I called Thursday and spoke with the woman again. Her husband never called me. On Friday morning Peter went to their office and made arrangements. We had a new drain field by the end of the next week.

Welcome to Alabama. We’d had a rough start, yet I was optimistic we’d settle in. But the die had been cast. Our tenure would be rocky and lonely.

1. Within weeks of the purchase, Peter declared his hatred for the new white refrigerator and vowed to never buy a side-by-side again. We lived with that side-by-side fridge for the next 12 years.