flux went soft and melted and kind of bubbled at the edges but when Fred touched the unwound solder to the joint it stuck and beaded like a little ball of mercury. It wouldn’t suck into the joint. The bright copper turned an agate color and the sticker with the bar code flamed and became a dark smudge. He pushed the solder into the joint again and again but the blobs nicked off the copper and fell like ball-bearings to the dirt floor. Maybe he hadn’t got all the water off. Maybe it was just too damn cold. The soldering had worked for the ½-inch but it had dripped into the torch nozzle and the bigger, ¾ joint wasn’t budging. Fred touched his fingers to the end of the pipe to melt off the excess flux and get his fingers warm again.
Two hours earlier he had been in his office faxing an offer on a brick Greek revival for one of his clients. It was a cherry place with a yuppie stainless kitchen, Viking stove and original moldings from the turn of the century. It had been on the market for two years, dropping a couple thousand with every downtick of the S&P, and the offer was a fraction of what the place was worth on paper. Didn’t seem right somehow. And now here he was saddled with his own property, a Christmas foreclosure, a rental he’d snatched up for a little more than what you’d pay for a car. He’d forgone the inspection because there was a bidding war and the place had been recently renovated. No contingencies. Now here he was. Fluxed hands. Cold. And money hemorrhaging out of him like blood from a new wound.
Fuck it, he said.
At the hardware store, he stood with a clerk in front of a shelf of new torches. This one, the clerk said, 30% faster, automatic ignition. That’s what you need, a hotter torch. Fred took it and went to the till and swiped his card and signed on the electronic line and within half an hour was back in the dark basement sixty bucks poorer.
But the clerk was right.
The flame was a brilliant blue, about an inch wide. It feathered out at the edges and when he put it to the joint it covered the copper in a wash of translucent blue. He waited ten seconds to be sure before moving in with the solder. It sucked in immediately and the excess dripped and splattered on the floor. Smoke poured from the open ends of the pipe, and for a moment, Fred was happy.
He fluxed the burnished ends of the old pipes and fit the welded piece into place. The coupling was just outside the slatted wood covering an old crawl space, and the February air blew hard through the gaps. Maybe that’s what did it. He’d have to get some spray foam insulation or they’d burst again for sure. Maybe wire-wrap, even. Always something that cost more money. But, for now, the pipes. He unwound the solder so there was plenty to push into the joint and then clicked the torch on. It felt good not having to light the thing, flame on, like the Human Torch. He lifted the flame to the coupling and caught a bit of the beam behind it. There’d be some charring, no big deal. Seven seconds this time and he pushed the solder in and it dripped around the joint and he was done.
He shut off the torch but the flame on the wall had picked up and was going strong. He pulled his coat sleeve over his hand and beat at it. The sleeve came back hot and charred. The flame started curling up the slatted wood, fed by the cold air. He would need water now, and lots of it. Fred clattered down the aluminum ladder and ran to the water main and turned the valve and heard it filling the pipes. He hadn’t soldered the other side of the patch and bursts of brown water sprayed from the joint. He jumped up and yanked hard but had no control; the water was at least a foot from where it needed to be. Fred moved the ladder and climbed up and held his thumb over the pipe and angled the flow as best he could at the growing flames. There. The flames hissed and smoke filled the air in wooly billows. Fred covered his mouth with his sleeve, trying to avoid his fluxed hands and he climbed the crumbled steps to the bulkhead doors and threw them open.
Outside he sat down, dizzy. He’d inhaled several lungfuls of smoke and felt like an asthmatic trying to get his breath back. He breathed through his nose and the cold set in his chest. His jeans were muddy from the knees down and the flux saturated the sides of his thighs where he’d wiped off the excess. His parka had silver stars of solder burned into it and the one sleeve was blackened. If Donna drove by right now, she’d see a bum, a little on the heavy side, face smeared with grime, sitting in front of his cheap-ass house on his frozen lawn. It would confirm everything she’d told him, how he was the kind of guy who could fuck up winning the lottery.
The smoke cleared. Not a bit of charring on the outside, protected by all that aluminum siding. Fred lumbered back down the steps and took his bearings. Moisture hung from the joists in beads. If he didn’t get these pipes fixed, didn’t get the water on and call the utilities to hook up the gas, they’d freeze that way, like little transparent teeth.
The charred wall was still steaming and the blackness spread out in a fan. At the center where he had pointed his torch was a hole the size of a quarter. And through this hole, light. Without thinking, he pulled the fabric of his parka over his hand and punched into the weakened wood. More light. He pulled off chunks of charred wood until the slats grew thick again and he had trouble getting it to budge. It was a crawl space. He went to get a pry bar.
He couldn’t tell at first how large it was, but the bar made quick work of the planks and Fred could see it had probably been put there after the house had been framed. The brick foundation leveled off to a dirt floor that was damp and smelled like moss. Weak light checkered the ground underneath an iron grate that Fred recognized from the back yard. What he thought was a drain was actually an old cistern. He made his way in but had to stay low, hunched over. The walls were worn concrete, ragged, exposing the brick beneath like moths had eaten its surface. The ground was soft and that meant moisture. He wondered if he’d have to fill this space in with gravel or sand. Another few hundred bucks down the drain.
The house had been his idea, not Donna’s. Donna was never on board. But even if they only had renters half the time, he calculated, over the next five years they’d still come out ahead on their loan. It’d be a long-term investment, just five years and it’d keep paying a profit. That was what he kept telling her, and later, what he kept telling himself. Long term. Who cares if they couldn’t make payments for a few months? It was a temporary pinch. A pinch and then a release of money filling up the coffers.
He scooted feet first along the dirt floor when his boot caught something. From the texture on the surface—a rough, mottled gray—he had thought it was a rock partially buried in the soil. But he pried up a corner with his shoe and some of the dirt fell loose. Then he kicked at it, heel first. A tarnished button. Denim. He continued to kick and then pushed out the entrance and reached back in to grab and pull it out. The material was faded blue and splotched with oil stains and dirt. But the shape was unmistakable: a pair of crumpled overalls. And they looked to be his size.
Fred took them home. To his tiny home. He’d been alone now for three months. In a way, he wondered if the new-to-him house was to fill the void. Something to take up the time, so that instead of eating dinner over the kitchen sink, or watching TV in the dark, he could be over in the basement soldering copper, flux on his hands, wiped in snot-like streaks on his pants. Or maybe it was to make up in the areas where he felt inadequate. He’d never made a lot of money, not even during the boom. But this would change everything. Property management. His chance to make an investment. A little elbow grease and then rent it out for double the mortgage. Or flip it for twice what he paid. It was a risk he was willing to take. If he didn’t burn the place down in the process.
Fred put the overalls in the washing machine in the basement. He could use a pair, especially for plumbing. The overalls had only a couple pockets, but they’d keep the grime off, like a second shell. He stripped down, turned off the lights, and chucked the rest of his work clothes in the washer too. Sometimes when Donna was on her period he’d come down here and jack off. He’d wipe up his semen with dirty clothes and then put them through the wash and hope she couldn’t smell it on him when he came upstairs. Now, in the darkness, he sat in a hamper full of clean laundry and his heavy body felt limp and deflated. It should’ve been enough for him, this house.
