Frank Harper fixed leaks for a living. That was what he did. He drove a van, carried tools, knew which pipes were old and which were new. He was not a man who thought about things too much. He fixed what was broken and moved on.

One Saturday he got a call from Raymond Torres, a farmer he had worked for a few times. Raymond's well water tasted wrong. Not bad exactly. Just wrong. Like metal. Frank went out to the farm, checked the well pump, tested the water with a strip. The strip came back with numbers Frank did not recognise. High levels of something. He told Raymond it might be a seasonal thing. It happened.

Frank went back to his other jobs. He fixed a leak in a restaurant on Main Street. He replaced a water heater in a trailer park. He sat in his truck at lunch and ate a sandwich and watched the dust blow across the valley.

A week later he thought about Raymond's water again. He looked up the numbers he wrote down on the strip test. He found a pamphlet from the Environmental Protection Agency online — his ex-wife's computer, he used it sometimes. The numbers were above the acceptable limit. Not by much. But above.

He called Raymond. Raymond said, "I know. I called the county. They said they'd look into it."

"How'd that go?"

"Same as last time. Same as the time before that."

Frank did not think about it again for a while. He had his own problems. His van needed a new transmission. His son wanted new shoes and his ex-wife did not ask him about it but he noticed.

Then he got another call from Raymond. The water was worse. The cows were drinking less. Raymond's neighbour — a Black family that moved in last year — their youngest child had been sick. Rashes. Stomach problems. Raymond did not connect these things. He just said the water was worse and asked if Frank could come out again.

Frank went out. He tested the water again. The numbers were higher. He drove back to town and stopped at the county health office. He talked to Nancy Kowalski, a woman who looked tired all the time. He showed her the test results. She said she had received complaints about the same well from three other people. She said the county did not have the budget for proper testing. She said people needed to bring their own samples to a private lab, and the results to the state.

"Who can afford that?" Frank asked.

Nancy shrugged. "That's how it works."

Frank went home. He sat in his kitchen and drank a beer. He thought about the numbers on the strip. He thought about Raymond's cows. He thought about the sick child. He thought about his son's shoes.

He did not file a complaint. He did not call the newspaper. He did not organize a protest. He went back to work the next Monday and fixed leaks.

He fixed a leak in a mobile home on Highway 61. He fixed a leak in a church where the roof was leaking and the congregation was too poor to fix it. He fixed a leak in a bar where the owner told him to keep the change and not to make a thing out of it.

Outside, a dog lay in the dust by the side of the road. It did not move. Frank saw it from the highway and did not look back.

He sat at his kitchen table that night and drank a beer and watched television. The news said it had not rained in forty-three days. The sky was grey with dust. Frank turned off the television and went to bed.

The next morning he turned on the tap and the water ran brown. He let it run for a minute until it cleared. He did not think about the pipes. He thought about the van. The transmission was going. He needed to get it fixed before it broke completely.

He loaded his tools into the van and drove to his first call.

OTMES v2 Objective Codes: - M1(Tragedy): 6.0 | M2(Comedy): 1.0 | M3(Satire): 5.0 | M4(Poetic): 7.0 - M5(Scheme): 2.0 | M6(Suspense): 2.0 | M7(Horror): 1.0 | M8(SciFi): 0.0 - M9(Romance): 1.0 | M10(Epic): 1.0 - N1(Active): 0.20 | N2(Passive): 0.80 - K1(Individual): 0.70 | K2(Supra-individual): 0.30 - Theta: 270 deg (Existential type) - TI: 52.0 (T3 Martyrdom) - V=0.50 I=0.50 C=0.40 S=0.40 R=0.05 - Code: V4W6-T1M6-M47-M32-N220-K170-T270-TI52