At the VFW fish fry Gary stood up with his plate and said, better not eat the fish, Harold might think it came from my yard, and the whole room roared. So I laughed too, and then I told him the county health department had all eight weeks of test results, and an inspector was going to be at his tank Monday morning with a dye test.
Because I had stopped arguing. I bought a thirty-dollar water test kit at Tractor Supply, then another, and tested the creek every Saturday for eight weeks, with pictures. And I had a septic professional look from my side, and he wrote down exactly where it was coming from. Uphill.
For most of a year the only thing I had lacked was proof of the source, and the moment I had eight weeks of water tests and a septic pros written finding pointing uphill, the man accusing me of chasing his money became a documented contamination case with a dye test on the calendar.
He had told the VFW I was accusing him of worse, and I heard that joke eleven times. But a water test does not laugh, and a dye test does not care who tells the better story over a fish plate.
I did not argue. I said, the health department has eight weeks of test results and a septic pros letter putting the source uphill, at your tank. They run a dye test Monday. If your tank is fine, the dye stays put; if it is failing, it comes down the hill into my creek. You can joke all you like, but the county is going to trace it now.
The tests were the tests. There is no accusing-me-of-chasing-money-ing your way out of eight weeks of contamination readings and a dye test that shows exactly where the water goes.
The county did what my one polite question never could. The dye came down the hill, the tank was found to be failing, and Gary was ordered to repair his septic system and stop the discharge into the creek.
He got the system fixed. The smell went away, the creek ran clear again, and my wife sits on the deck I built her for our fortieth without gagging, which is the whole reason I ever bought that first test kit.
He can live uphill of me like anyone; he just has to keep his septic on his own land. A year of that smell ended not with a feud at the VFW, but with eight weeks of quiet water tests and a dye test, and it turned out the man I was supposedly shaking down was just uphill of a couple who wanted to breathe on their own deck.