The Pump in the Side Yard

Hand over hand

I pulled my leather gloves on and knelt at the casing. Ruel and Cletus took up the pipe behind me, Ruel first and Cletus behind him, standing in a line out across the red dirt patch at the side of the yard where the grass gave out.

I lifted the pump and lowered it into the casing slowly, feeling for the walls. It went in nose first, the wire and rope beside it, and I let it down hand over hand.

You learn a feel for it. The pipe slides through your gloves, and you feed it a foot at a time, keeping your eyes on the hole so nothing hangs up on the lip of the casing. Behind you, the men feed you slack, steady, without being told.

“Easy,” Ruel said at one point, when a coil in the pipe tried to flip on itself. Cletus stepped sideways and took the twist out with one hand. Nobody hurried. Nobody had to raise his voice.

Wilma sat down on the porch steps and watched. She had a cup of coffee in her hands that she never drank.

I glanced up at her once and she gave me a little nod, the way she does from the second pew when the grandkids sing.

At about forty-four feet down I felt the pump go into the water. You can feel it, a little give, the weight changing in your hands. Cletus felt it too.

“There’s your dry well,” he said, low, and that was all anybody said about it.

The tape on the wire went by every ten feet, like a ruler. Seventy. Eighty. Ruel moved up behind me as the coil got shorter, until he was standing close enough I could smell his coffee.

At about ninety feet, the pitless came up to the top of the casing. I screwed the T-handle into it, and with Ruel holding the pipe steady, I lowered it the last four feet down inside the casing till I felt the adapter catch the slide on the side wall.

I pushed down, firm, and it seated with a little clunk you could feel more than hear. I unscrewed the T-handle and pulled it out.

The whole thing, from the time I knelt at the casing to the time the pitless seated, took a little under an hour.

Wiring it back

The pump wire came up out of the well through the cap and ran to a gray disconnect box on a post beside the casing, then underground to the switch in the lean-to. Boone had unhooked it at the disconnect and left the leads hanging.

I checked the leads with my meter one more time from the top, now that the pump was down in the water. Same reading as in the barrel. Nothing to ground.

I hooked them back up, black and red to the two lines, green to the ground lug.

Cletus stood at my shoulder and handed me each screw as I needed it, though I could have reached them myself. I think he just wanted to be doing something.

We put the well cap back on and bolted it down. Ruel picked up the feed sack and the brick that Boone had left on top and carried them to my truck without saying anything.

Then I went to the lean-to and wired the new switch, and I put the cover on.

It was eleven forty.