The Later Journeys - 6. Ever-flowing water

                
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Again, that mixture of emotions crossed Franklin’s face: hope, eagerness, weariness and caution. What were we about to spring on him now, I could almost hear him thinking.

“Follow me,” Trevor said gently, and retrieved a lamp from a side table. The four of us made a small parade down the short hallway to a closed door that one might have assumed was a closet. Trevor used a key to unlock it. The door pushed inward. Tevor entered, then beckoned to our guest. There wasn’t much space for more than two people, so Warren and I got as close as we could to observe.

In the chancy light, we saw Ben survey the tiny room. We wondered what he was seeing. To us, it was a welcome sight after a week of roughing it: A modern toilet, a sink, and against the wall, a bathtub with a shower head and a curtain. Built into the wall over the sink was a mirrored medicine cabinet.

“Can you guess?” Warren asked Ben.

“No,” he replied, after a long pause.

“All right,” said Trevor, advancing to the sink, which was closest. Slowly, so that Ben could follow every movement, he put his hand on the rightmost faucet and turned it counter-clockwise.

Out from the spigot came a trickle of clear water.

Ben watched for a moment; I was reminded of a cat pondering the sight of something completely new to assess the level of safety. Finally, with Trevor having stepped aside, he inched closer and put out his hand. He felt the cool water. He lifted his gaze and gave the smallest start as he noticed his reflection in the mirror of the medicine cabinet.

“Might I taste it?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” said Trevor.

He touched the water to his lips. “Quite good,” he said.

Warren reached past me and turned the cold-water faucet clockwise to stop the flow. “Can you guess what the other one is for?” he asked, gesturing toward the one on the left. Ben just shook his head, so Warren turned the knob. “We’ll wait a few moments; it has to come up from under the house.” Silence ensued, broken only by the subtle trickle of water from the faucet, followed by a faint gurgle as it went down the drain.

At first glance, it looked exactly like the stream from the right-hand faucet. But then we heard the distinctive hiss and change of pitch that signaled hot water coming up.

I put a hand on Ben’s arm. “Don’t touch it yet. Just watch. You’ll see.” And indeed, just a few seconds later, came the reaction.

Ben leaned closer and peered at the stream of water, and at the faint vapor now rising from the spigot. “What? Is that st--” Despite the warning, he did put out a finger, unable to resist, but drew it back promptly. “Steam -- hot water!” he exclaimed. “Where does it come from?”

“The water pumps in from our well. It passes through a heater in the crawlspace under the house and continues pumping till it gets here,” said Warren. “If we lived in a city and didn’t have a well, it would come first from a river or an aquifer, and then through a treatment facility, and a series of pipes and pumps would deliver it to us.”

The reaction was what we had hoped for. Ben spent a moment absorbing this, then a smile broke out on his face. A grin, to be more accurate. “Yes!” he murmured. “Oh yes!” We felt his joy and laughed with him. Warren and Trevor both reached out to pat him on the back.

“You can wash your hands anytime you like,” I said, shutting off the faucet. “Later, I’ll show you some of the other inventions that can improve on just plain water.”

“But,” said Trevor, “Generally we wash our hands after we use this.” He lifted the lid of the toilet and we all gazed down into the water-filled bowl with the large-bore hole at the bottom of the clean white porcelain. “Okay, Ben, c’mon, give it your best guess.”

Another thoughtful pause. “Not a...privy?”

“No, not a privy, actually, but you are certainly on the right track,” said Trevor. “Yes, this is the toilet. It saves us cold, unpleasant trips to the outhouse. Once you finish, you can, well, you can wipe with this paper” -- he unrolled a few squares from the dispenser -- “drop it in the water, then push this handle down.” He pointed to the chrome protrusion on the side. “Go ahead, Ben, push it.”

Ben (who appeared not to notice that we had suddenly begun addressing him informally) again reached out tentatively and applied some pressure to the handle. Nothing happened. He pressed again, harder this time, and we all jumped just a bit when the water began to swirl and hiss, flowing from the porcelain tank into the bowl, and then down the hole with a growl. The paper went down too. Then the bowl gradually refilled and silence resumed. Trevor closed the lid.

“Any questions?”

“The water goes down to a stream, is that right?”

“It flows into a septic tank, and that’s located directly under the outhouse,” said Warren. “Sooner or later, the outhouse will be removed and the opening to the tank will be sealed again. We opened it so that you would have a familiar facility, but truthfully, none of us like using it. Indoor plumbing has been the norm since the beginning of the 20th century in this country.”

"I heard tell of an inventor in England who had developed a mechanical privy; perhaps one like this."  He sighed. "Things became busy around that time -- ten years or so ago. That is --" he stopped, flustered. "Seventeen and seventy-five," he finished quietly. We indicated that we understood. He was silently thoughtful for a few more moments. He looked again at the sink, then the toilet, and finally his gaze moved to the left, taking in the large tub, faucets in the walls, and the shower head.

“That is for washing ... one’s clothes?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “It’s for washing one’s body. It’s a bathtub.”

The light of discovery dawned brightly in his eyes then. “The water comes out hot, and you can immerse yourself in...” He could barely contain his excitement and wonder. “A hot bath can feel wonderful after a long day of exertion,” he concluded.

“Absolutely,” I said. “And if you don’t want to wait for the tub to fill, you can do what most of us do -- we take a shower.” I started the water and pulled the knob that transferred the flow upward. Ben staggered backward as the spray came down from the shower head. The curtain was open and some of the water got onto his face and chest before I cut it off. The room was silent except for the residual drip of water back to the main spigot, and then down the drain with more gurgling.

“Marvelous,” said Ben. “No need to bring water, or heat it, or haul it back out, or...” He trailed off. But a moment later he thought of something.

“Now, you said that the water was pumped from the well, and that the heater was under the house. But what powers the pump and the heater?”

We were, of course, anticipating this question.

“Sir,” said Trevor, reverting to the more respectful form of address, “We promise you that we’ll tell and show you all of that. But once we embark upon that subject, it will consume your interest above all other things. We’d rather wait till tomorrow to even begin discussing it, if you will indulge us.”

Ben looked at Warren and me. We were both nodding and smiling. Ben regarded the astonishing sight of the bathroom fixtures again. “I can use these...any time of the day or night, then?”

“Any time at all!” I said. "And by the way, if you're looking for the terminology, we generally call it the bathroom, but you can also call it the restroom, the powder room, the lavatory, the w.c. -- that's water closet -- or the necessary, as we all know. That's up to you."

He made a short bow of smiling thanks. Then he looked down again, overwhelmed and humbled for a moment. Then he straightened. “I give true thanks. But I agree. This has been enough revelation for one day.”

Trevor picked up the lamp and we made our way back through the house. The bathroom door remained open.

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