Pipe Dreams

Charles Thompson has just been named his school's representative for Campbell County Government Day, and nobody is more surprised than Charles. His classmates chant his nickname, "Chunky," Denver Thor bets he will wind up in the dog catcher's office, and Charles himself cannot understand why anyone chose a boy with ordinary grades and no talent for sports. His teacher, Mrs. Hodges, assures him that some teachers believe he has a great future, and she sends him to Whit's End to ask Connie Kendall what to expect. Connie explains that the students are scattered among the county offices for the day, and Charles admits he wrote the sheriff's department in every blank on his form; it is the only place he wants to go. That night his mother answers his worrying with simple advice: "Just make the best of whatever you're given."

At the courthouse the next morning the sheriff's cruiser goes to two other boys, and Charles is sent down to the basement to find the Division of Fluid Management. The grand title turns out to be a dressed-up name for the Odyssey Water and Sewage Department, run by the gruff Mrs. Bavaqua, who snorts that calling her work fluid management "is like calling a pothole on the street a pavement deficiency." Her helper Jerry never shows up, so instead of sending Charles back upstairs she puts him to work. Her tour of the reservoir and the treatment plant slowly wins him over: this is where the town's drinking water is cleaned, and if sewage ever flowed untreated into the river, the people downstream could face anything up to an epidemic. Days of heavy rain have the reservoir rising, and when her beeper calls her downtown to loose manhole covers and backed-up storm drains, she leaves Charles alone to answer the phone and mind the two-way radio.

The office promptly erupts. Flood reports stack up on hold, one flustered caller gets hung up on twice, Captain O'Ryan of the sheriff's department radios that the treatment plant is about to spill over, and the computer's warning voice drones "System overflow. Please correct." Mrs. Bavaqua, stranded downtown after abandoning her car at Third and Main, talks Charles through the emergency by phone: find the control panel, locate the emergency bypass valve above the blinking red light, and turn it until the alarm stops so the floodwater runs off to the excess flow lagoon. The wheel is stuck, and Charles, certain he cannot do it, leans on it with everything he has until it gives. The alarm dies, the water pours safely away, and Mrs. Bavaqua tells him he has done good work.

Back at school Denver is ready with sewer jokes, a Future Flushers of America club, and a complaint from his own mother, the caller who was hung up on twice. Charles has barely begun his report when Principal McFadden interrupts with a visitor: Captain O'Ryan, who has heard the whole story from Mrs. Bavaqua. On behalf of the county he presents Charles with a certificate of honor and a genuine sheriff's badge, telling the class, "No matter how big or small, every job is important in its own way." The classmates who jeered "Chunky" two days ago now chant it in celebration.