One day I heard a sound I never want to hear again.   I was all alone, a rarity.  I had spread myself on the bed in a general starfish shape on top of the bedspread.   The house was clean.  The kids were in school, and my husband was at work.  I was feeling rather good about myself. Meatloaf and veggies cooked in an old roasting pan my mother gave to me. I was stirred from my reverie when I heard all the toilets flush at the same time and no one but me was home.

I went into each bathroom and what I saw and smelled brought me to my knees in reality.  All of the drains in the house gurgled with an ooze from hell.  My clean house became a sewer.  I called Bob’s Septic Service, and I recalled the truck with the sentence painted on the back:  “Don’t hit me, I’m full of sh-t.”

It was an emergency call.  Bob came alone to handle the situation, or so I thought.  He called the situation a blowback.  My stomach still rolls over recalling that word.  He located our septic tank port and unwound this huge snake of a hose.  I stood, to watch.  That was my mistake.

Bob took the lid off the septic tank, and inserted this obscene hose into its port.  He had mysterious things to do.  I was the only one with him.  He looked at me and smiled:  “I need a third hand.”  All the color drained from my face.  “For what?” I asked.  He directed me to the tank’s port and told me to grab the hose and hold it.  The tank was full.  He gave me a shitty pair of gloves and I had to keep the hose in the roiling sewage sludge.  He worked the pump on the truck and other mechanical things.  This suction made the hose move in my grasp.  I wanted to throw up, however, that would just make the mess worse.

Once the job was done he turned off the truck and rolled up the stinking hose to travel to a new location, with a partner, I assumed.  He asked me how many people lived in the house.  I weakly said, “Six”.  I also ran the dishwasher all day and did at least four loads of laundry a day.  All went to the septic tank eventually.

He took the gloves off my hands and said he’d send the bill.  The lid to the septic was secured and he tamped dirt and lawn down over the port.  I went into the house defeated.  I worked wearing panties.  It was a horrid job to clean up the mess in the house. I looked at the clock and saw that I had a mere two hours before the kids got off the school bus.  I finished in time, and was green when I greeted them after showering and dressing.  The smell was not gone.  It was familiar to a Port-O-Potty that had been sitting in the sun, abused by people who had bowels from hell.

The bill came the next week.  It was expensive, and I did not see any mention of the fact that I was the third hand in my service call.