I'm pretty sure I can take him.
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A colossus in sock protectors, he's planted himself in front of the Aldi glass doors as the rest of us mill behind, hearts pumping hard and it's not even specials Wednesday.
Our alpha tradie and his steel caps appear built for power and traction rather than speed, so I'm thinking I can scoot around the outside as he negotiates the bananas.
I'm actually more concerned about the woman to the left who's waiting with her son.
Her ebony skin reflects the morning lambert with a nacreous pulse; simply beautiful and in stark contrast to my own prosaic hide; red, blotchy and querulous at being hauled into the predawn and onto the road for this fatuous excursion; a fool's errand already high with the stench of disappointment (my preferred cologne). Later, at work, I'm told my woollen vest is on inside out, completing the autumnal tableau of Early Morning Man (Unimpressive).
The uber-mum is Flo-Jo fit, her kid looks quick too and despite having cut a swathe through the women and children of our fourth-grade squash comp - before it, like everything else, was cancelled - I know I have little hope against this pair.
When the doors do part with a series of anticlimactic shudders, there's no jumping the blocks, no Boxing-Day-sale elbows in eye sockets. We all just sort of dribble inside.
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Despite our cunning prepping, we're quickly crestfallen because the toilet paper shelves are, of course, empty; the only comparable quarry a few scattered packets of paper towel, surely the cardboard roll equivalent of kissing your sister when it comes to securing the right tool for what's required in the water closet.
We trudge back to the checkout and glare at the cashier who's fiddling with that weird steel box before she shoots a look back suggesting: Don't you dare ask me when the next truck gets in.
Fair enough.
As I wait, my eyes wander to a bottle of the establishment's cut-price gin and I think how it would be the right tool to help me get over yet another fruitless quest for something once so abundant a generation of nocturnal celluloid teenagers used to patrol suburban Chicago and blithely drape entire Georgian-revival mansions in the stuff.
If only they knew. If only we all knew.
All young people deserve the unalienable right to live in a world insulated by reams of toilet paper, so, when I return home empty-handed, it's with genuine sorrow we inform the children their carefree days of luxurious four-ply pulp friction appear numbered and the family will soon be resorting to other means. They catch our drift fairly quickly because their mother, as if channeling Flo-Ni in a Crimean War field hospital, is sitting in front of the fire slicing an old sheet into neat squares.
Everything is on the table, no idea out of bounds (buckets of hot water steaming with Pino O Cleen, holes in the ground, the Karcher) and I'm proud of the kids, because they take the news quite well but their insouciance really should be of no surprise as family discussions about what goes down the loo and, more importantly, what's forbidden, are pretty common around here because we're on septic.
I do in fact harbour more pride for our upgraded pump-out system than any of the children's meagre accomplishments to date ("Fifth again? That's great, sweetie!") and I'm always fishing for compliments when the guy materialises for its quarterly service. Like the neighbour's dog, he seems to have an access-all-areas pass and heads down the back without ever knocking or announcing his presence.
"What's it like in there?" I yell.
"Beautiful. You could drink the stuff."
"Excellent."
We were forced to cough up for a new septic because our former, more primitive operation was a bubbling calamity of grey water and excess nutrients brought on by a stunted trench the previous property owner had half-heartedly carved out of the costive river of clay that flows under our place like the River Styx or that pink goo from Ghostbusters II (c'mon, you watched it, we all had to).
The inadequacy of the trench became obvious as each child grew old enough to make their own, more significant, deposits, but the lack of drainage did come with a bright side, giving birth to a miraculous wetlands in the bottom corner of the yard, attracting everything from coots and snipes to shelducks and spoonbills.
I miss the birds but not the smell.
I like to be there (my job is holding the hose) when the extraction is made because it's incredibly satisfying and not just a little bit humbling to watch it all be taken away.
Everyone in our tiny community is on septic; it's a binding force of familiarity and a bit like living with a manageable disease. The intrusions into life are minimal but negligence can lead to nasty flare-ups, so, given the chance at any (pre-pandemic) gathering, we're quickly up to our elbows in earthy conversations about tanks, trenches, reservoirs, gravel pits and reed beds, unabashedly mining for advice and useful information.
This sense of tribe to a septic town is further exemplified by the appearance of a lumbering vacuum truck on our streets. Its arrival is cause for much excitement, and social media lights up as if tracking Santa Claus. Getting your solids removed is expensive and you can usually save a few bucks if you engage the poo man (unfailingly brimming with Kennyesque alacrity) while already in town for another job, so he's soon being flagged down and peppered with proposals and demands and sob stories.
I like to be there (my job is holding the hose) when the extraction is made because it's incredibly satisfying and not just a little bit humbling to watch it all be taken away, sort of making you understand the palpable impact you're having on the planet.
Breaking the crust also seems to drip with symbolism, right up there with any similar ceremony (Christian bread, Greek plates, Jewish wine glasses). It suggests a fresh start, a new hope, and when the ritual is complete, you wave off the truck feeling more unburdened than any dump on a priest in a confessional could ever hope to provide.
That night, you surrender to the sleep of the just, deep and restorative, only for your eyes to spring open with 3am terror.
You forgot the grease trap.