I drove south to Carson City, stopped at a Lowe’s and found the plumbing section. They had a selection of galvanized steel pipe. I looked around for an employee and found a man in his seventies who had the employee badge and apron.
“Can you please help me?” I said. “I’m looking for a section of steel plumbing pipe, threaded on both ends so I can screw pipe caps onto it. Maybe twelve inches long.”
“Now that’s an unusual plumbing project. Pipe caps on both ends. We usually think of pipe as something that carries water.” He gave me a little grin. “Usually a strange request like that suggests you broke something and you’re looking for a temporary fix before your wife discovers what you did. But the cap on both ends means you’re not screwing the pipe into anything else, like, I don’t know, temporarily replacing the broken leg on a couch or something.”
“No wife,” I said. “Nothing broken, either. Just a quirky idea I had to fix an unusual problem. I won’t know if it works until I try it.”
“Alrighty, then. Check this out.” He took me over to some bins with pre-cut pipe sections. “These pre-cuts come threaded on both ends. Our shortest is three foot long and three-quarter inch on the inside dimension. So I’m thinking, we trim off a one-foot chunk, get out the die, and cut threads on the fresh end. Then we screw a galvanized malleable iron pipe cap on each end. I’d have to charge you for our shop fee, which is a time-based cost. So when we’re done, you’re gonna think this is the most expensive pipe you ever bought that didn’t come from a plumber. How does that sound?”
“Perfect. Is that something you can do today?”
The man looked up and down the aisle, gauging traffic. “Tell you what. I’ll let Sandy know I’ve got a custom pipe order. Right now, I’m pret’ near sure she’ll be okay with me going back in the shop. But if we get a rush and she calls me out, you’ll have to wait while I do the retail thing. Will that work for you?”
“Yes, please. I’ll wait as long as it takes.”
The man pushed a button on his belt radio, bent his head and talked into a mic clipped to his lapel, got a response, then nodded and let go of the button.
The man pulled a pipe from the bin, pulled a tape measure off his belt and measured off 12 inches. He used the tape measure to make a tiny etched mark on the pipe and handed it to me. “You want twelve inches exactly including the end caps?”
I took the pipe, held it near the little mark. “The measurement isn’t precise. Let’s make it an inch longer and then the pipe caps will add another half inch or so when they’re screwed on.”
“Okay. Thirteen inches it is. A good lucky number.”
He took the pipe down the aisle, found iron pipe caps, then headed back toward a door at the back of the store. He stopped and turned back to me and said, “For custom jobs, we’re supposed to get a fifty-dollar pre-auth on your credit card so we know you won’t disappear while we’re in the back room. But just between you and me, that’s like getting a pre-auth on your Budweiser bump on the way home after work. I don’t need to do that, right?”
“Right,” I said. “I’ll be here when you’re done.”
He nodded and went through the door.
I spent my time going up the plumbing aisle learning about faucets. I acquired a basic familiarity with kitchen faucets, shower faucets, bathroom sink faucets, bar faucets, and tub faucets. I grappled with the differences between double-handle faucets and single-handle faucets. There was even a section on touchless faucets. That stopped me for a bit as I didn’t understand how they worked. But I didn’t finish my education because the man came back. He handed me my custom pipe section, thirteen inches of heavy black metal with silvery end caps. It fit the hand well, and had a significant heft. The end caps served not just as additional weight but as a stop to keep the pipe from sliding out of a sweaty hand.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Will this get you out of your bind?”
“It’s perfect,” I said.
I thanked the man again, and I paid a very reasonable price for it at the cashier. When I was done, I walked out of the store with the plainest, smallest, simplest, and most basic but totally deadly weapon a guy could carry without having to wonder how to load bullets into a magazine. The pipe club fit nicely in the narrow tool pocket on the hip side of my jeans, projecting out just enough to make it easy to grab. It fit my hand. It was light enough to swing easily. It was heavy and dense enough to crush bones.
Hopefully, I’d never need it and soon I would forget which drawer I’d stuffed it into.