Not long ago, just last spring, a civil engineer neighbor of ours, Robert Handke, traveled to the central Mexican state of Puebla to deliver aid to some engineers there who were trying to clean up a stream. We were surprised to hear of this, especially when we learned he was doing it pro bono, because our neighbor Handke had always been very private and reserved and in fact rather cranky. He had a reputation for being something of a solipsist and miser. We had even heard a mutual neighbor, at a fundraising event for our local nature center, refer to him as "an environmental nihilist, or worse."

Apparently, our neighbor Handke's wife, Mrs. Handke, had come to share this view, and she'd left her husband for a young activist and former Peace Corps member working locally as a high school science teacher. In an apparent attempt to win his wife back, our neighbor Handke totally transformed himself and set out on a freewheeling, borderless campaign of selfless acts and environmental do-gooding, of which his trip to Puebla was a leg.

Handke asked us to watch his cat, Beatrix, while he was away, and to collect his mail. Naturally, we obliged, and I might as well admit that we didn't mind sampling selections from his wine closet while we were at it. We wished him well at his departure, for we are environmentalists, too, and we went so far as to offer to retrieve him at the airport upon his return. We sincerely hoped this new Handke would succeed in winning back his estranged wife's favor. Why would we hope otherwise?
   
Once in Puebla, our neighbor Handke saw the piles of dead fish on the banks of the stream and the billows of soap suds on the surface of the water. He confirmed what the locals already knew: the problem was runoff from excess laundry detergent, dish detergent, and other soaps that emptied into the stream from peoples' homes. Handke agreed to stay on in Puebla to help draft guidelines for reduction in detergent use to be distributed to private citizens and businesses and to write a grant proposal for a new sewage and water treatment system.
   
In the meantime, he had no scruples about posting pictures and updates to his personal social-media accounts, using his brand-new smartphone device. This man who had abhorred demonstrative social actions of any sort was now posting selfies with locals, dogs, and piles of dead fish washed up on the stream bed. We looked on from our laptop in Handke's kitchen, drinking his old-world reds and petting his cat. "Look at Daddy Handke, Beatrix," we said, lifting her to see our screen. She would only snarl and snap at us. She was very much the former, cranky Handke's cat and was unimpressed. We noted with knowing glances, though, that Handke's wife was liking each of her husband's posts. Were these signals of impending reunion? We thought they likely were.
   
One day, as our neighbor Handke was out with several local engineers, scouting locations for their treatment plant, a mound of soap suds 20 feet high came floating around the bend. This was not an uncommon phenomenon—that's just how bad the problem was—but it was the most extreme example of detergent pollution Handke had seen yet. Amid his colleagues' shouts and protests, he clambered down the bank. Witnesses report that he took his phone out and was photographing himself, when he slipped, fell backward, and disappeared into the quivering mass of suds.
   
Handke's body was found several days later, 30 miles from where he'd fallen in, near the Valsequillo Reservoir. He was pronounced dead at the scene, the cause asphyxiation. At his funeral service, Mrs. Handke displayed an appropriate amount of grief, which relieved us. Her boyfriend sat among the masses in the back of the sanctuary.
   
Since the incident, most of the towns and villages in the state of Puebla have officially adopted Handke's resolution for reducing soap-suds runoff (though they expect very little compliance), and we received word just this Wednesday that the government of Puebla, with assistance from the federal government in Mexico City, has broken ground on a modest water treatment plant, which will be named in Handke's honor. The project is scheduled for completion by next May, which is the same month Mrs. Handke will marry her young activist-school teacher at the Episcopal church downtown. The future Mr. and Mrs. Wilder Williams sent out their registry information printed on refrigerator magnets of all things, which my wife and I find obscene and utterly without class. Still, we plan to attend the wedding and naturally will sit on the bride's side of the aisle. We owe it to her. After all, she allowed us to adopt Beatrix, who, with a strict routine of wet food, has become an affectionate, totally transformed cat and an integral member of our family. She makes biscuits on our bellies every night before bed.

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Charlie Sterchi's work has appeared in Subtropics, The Literary Review and elsewhere. He lives in Nashville.

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