1.
THAT FALL, I MOVED to Ames, Iowa, a university town surrounded by fields of corn and soybeans, for another master’s degree. I was returning to graduate school a second time to get a terminal degree, so that I could have some semblance of stability and a future career as a college professor—and to have eight hundred miles between me and the oil boom I wanted to now write about.
In December, during my first semester, while reading the Des Moines Register, a headline caught my attention:
OPPONENTS TO DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE TO MEET
In the article, I learned that the Dakota Access Pipeline would be 1172 miles long, 30 inches in diameter, and, at capacity, would carry nearly 24 million gallons of oil every day from western North Dakota to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Illinois, where it would then be sent through another pipeline to the Gulf of Mexico for refinement and distribution on the world market. The pipeline would begin near Tioga, North Dakota, cross the Missouri River twice, clip the northwest corner of South Dakota, and slice through Iowa diagonally before entering Illinois.
My home was coming home again.
A FEW DAYS LATER, I attended a public meeting at Ames City Hall. In the vestibule, graduate students from Iowa State University had me fill out a name tag and then, on a nearby poster board, write why I was for clean water and soil, rather than oil.
I walked into the cavernous auditorium, where the stage was filled with an economist from Iowa State University, various nonprofit representatives, and lawyers.
When the program began, I listened to each person give their perspective on why we needed to stop this pipeline.
I, too, wanted to stop the pipeline. Over the preceding few months, when I wasn’t traveling through western North Dakota with Jakub, I had monitored the development and progress of what was at the time the country’s major shale play, the Bakken oil boom. I had been reading the six major North Dakota papers every day for the previous three years. I kept a file called Bakken Project on my computer with articles about sex trafficking, oil spills, man-camps, drug trafficking, and infrastructure development. I’d lifted weights with roustabouts and wildcatters in Dickinson and had seen blaze orange hats with Big Cock Country written in black across them, as well as T-shirts that said Going Deep and Pumping Hard or Frack That Hole. I had had Americanos at the Boomtown Babes Espresso, a pink drive-thru coffee shop in Tioga that advertised it had “the Bakken’s breast coffee.”
FOR THE NEXT THREE YEARS, in graduate school, I wrote letters to the editor and traveled around the country to speak at colleges, universities, and libraries—to anyone who was willing to listen to what I knew about the oil boom back home.
I produced an anthology about fracking with contributions from some of the most noted environmental writers in the country, while I was finishing my own poetry collection about the oil in western North Dakota. I called senators and local officials. I attended meetings of the Bakken Pipeline Resistance Coalition in Ames. I taught fifty college students a semester as part of my teaching fellowship, had my own graduate classes to attend, and was looking for teaching jobs around the country.
IN NOVEMBER 2015, during my second year of graduate school, I headed to the Boone County Fairgrounds for the first day of what would become more than a month’s worth of hearings for the Iowa Utilities Board. That day, the public could give two-minute-long testimonies either for or against the construction of the pipeline. The muddy parking area was packed, the cars with license plates from Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Minnesota.
Police officers greeted me as I stepped into the cinder-block building.
“Sir, let’s have a look at your laptop.”
I was carrying my computer.
“Why?” I asked.
“We need to make sure you don’t have any weapons.”
As he turned over my laptop case, opened it, and felt around inside, he asked, “Why do you have this?”
I lied.
“I’m part of the media.”
“Who are you with?”
“The Huffington Post,” I blurted out. I wasn’t—not really—having only published a few op-eds on its news blog.
The officer handed back my laptop, let me pass, and said, “Next.”
I WALKED INTO the large room. News reporters lined the wall. At the front, up on stage, were the three members of the Utilities Board. The room was divided into two sections of hard metal chairs. On the left, most people were dressed in blue and wore Stop the Pipeline T-shirts; on the right sat men in orange union shirts. The hearing already had started. Two large television screens shined in front of the stage, one on each side. In front of each TV was a microphone, where people could give their opinion on the pipeline.
I looked around the room and saw a few of my undergraduate students. They waved to me. I waved back and walked over to the corral where members of the media were gathered along the wall.
A few minutes after I arrived, a man with glasses and silver-brown hair approached one of the microphones with his guitar. He began to sing.
“Bakken pipeline, just say no, dirty oil has got to go,” he crooned.
The left side of the room, the anti-pipeline people, began to clap along.
“They want to build a pipeline right through the vast Midwest,” he strummed. “Through eighteen Iowa counties, but it’s not in our interest. Bakken pipeline, just say no, dirty oil has got to go.”
The man sang louder as he approached his two-minute limit. He looked back at the audience, which joined him for one more round of the chorus.
“Bakken pipeline, just say no, dirty oil has got to go.” The left side of the room clapped and cheered while the union workers folded their arms.
I stayed for hours, listening to each side. For each person who favored the pipeline, another opposed it.
“I need this job,” said one man on the right half of the room, “to help provide for my family.”
In that moment, I thought of my dad, himself a lifelong union worker who built boilers for plants in the Midwest when I was a newborn; until I was two, he was largely away from home, welding shiny sheet metal to build ethanol plants and coal power plants across North Dakota and here in Iowa.
A minute later, an Iowa farmer approached the microphone on the left side.
“Why should I have to give up my land, jeopardize my livelihood, for someone else to have a job? Can’t these union workers get a job somewhere else?”
Union faces burned crimson.
My mother’s father, Grandpa Hatzenbihler, was a lifelong farmer. I wondered what he’d say if he were here and faced with someone building a pipeline on his land.
As I looked around the room, I kept thinking it was like medieval Europe: two groups arguing between each other while the king—or, in this case, the pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners—was not in the room. The peasants bickered among themselves for a few scraps.
Minutes later, I gathered my things, went out and got into my car, and headed back to Ames.
I kept wondering whether the pipeline would be built.
2.
NINE MONTHS LATER, in late August, 100 people gathered in the small 250-person town of Pilot Mound, the midpoint of the Dakota Access Pipeline in Iowa. Bulldozers overturned dark Iowa soil. Pipeline was being laid from North Dakota to Illinois.
In Pilot Mound we stood or sat in a circle on the alabaster-tiled floor of the community center. Hard metal chairs squeaked. The room went graveyard silent as we listened to Delbert Hutchins, a large bald man with soil-stained denim jeans, tell us why we were there: we were there to signal this pipeline was not good for Iowa, that it abused Iowa’s farmland, risked polluting the state’s waterways, and perpetuated a system of extraction that fueled climate change. We were there to send a message to the governor, who had threatened to send state troopers to arrest protesters, that the people of Iowa did not want a pipeline breaking through their communities, across their farms, or under their rivers.
There came a moment where Delbert fell silent—it looked like he was about to pray. He told us the coalition had picked out two sites where we could protest.
“To choose which one, we need to know how many of you are willing to risk being arrested.”
The room went silent again.
“Would those of you willing to risk getting arrested please stand?” asked Delbert.
When I stood up, I saw thirty-five other people standing with me.
“If you’re not risking arrest today but would be willing to risk arrest in the future, would you please stand?” asked Delbert.
Twenty more people stood. Hoots and clapping filled the community center.
I wiped my eyes. For years I had felt alone—alone in my writing, alone in my speaking engagements at colleges and universities around the country. My home in North Dakota, the nation’s sacrifice zone for its dependence on oil, seemed more like spectacle than a place to save. No one had been there—not really. No one would go there, except to the national park beyond the heart of the oil boom.
Now, in Iowa, there were others with me. Now, I could put my pen down and stand my ground with my body to protect my home.
But I also wanted to protect my nephews: eleven-year-old Logan, eight-year-old Noah, and the five-year-old twins, Alexander and Oliver. They were drinking toxic Missouri River water. A Duke University study had confirmed that the Missouri was radioactive. I wanted to test my mettle, to see if I could stand up to the oil industry and help stop a pipeline.
Throughout the morning in Pilot Mound, we simulated what might happen to us while protesting. We were reminded that we were there as peaceful protesters. Delbert reminded us that although we did not want to be arrested, we were willing to go to jail if the governor would not stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
When we broke for lunch, and I stood in line for the bathroom, a white-haired man said he saw that I was willing to risk getting arrested.
“Thank you,” he said.
I lowered my head and looked at the ground.
“Is this your first time?” he asked.
I nodded.
“That one’s always the hardest.”
I asked him if this was his first time; he said no.
“My first time was in Selma.”
LATER, AFTER LUNCH, I sat on a swing outside the community center. I kicked at the gravel and focused on my breathing. A small girl ran over and slid down the metal slide next to me. Her parents came out of the building to pick her up.
“Jane, do you see that nice man there?” her father asked, pointing to me. “He’s going to do a brave thing today and try to stop the pipeline.”
Jane looked me up and down—me, in my Chacos, blue Stop the Pipeline T-shirt, and Minnesota Twins baseball hat. She smiled and waved at me.
“Thank you,” she shouted as she ran off the playground.
Her parents smiled.
“You’re welcome,” I tried to yell back, my voice breaking.
THAT AFTERNOON, after we blocked access at the first of four entrances to the Dakota Access Pipeline construction site, a state trooper told the nine of us that this was our final warning, that if we did not move, we would be arrested. We squeezed our hands tighter and stared straight ahead.
I looked to the far horizon, north and west toward North Dakota, and replayed, in my head, the voicemail my nephews had sent me earlier in the day: Keeping fighting the good fight, Uncle Taylor!
On the gravel in Boone County I silently chanted, You’re not here out of anger.
Behind me boomed a voice.
“Sir, please put your arms behind your back.”
My chest puffed forward as my shoulders shot back. Cold steel stung my wrists as sweat slid down my brow. I lowered my head and smiled.
When the handcuffs clamped around my wrists, when I was arrested, instead of feeling brave, I felt alone. There was no one who could do this for me, no substitute, no one—even if I had wanted—to stand in for me. It was my body I had to put on the line, to slow down the destruction of the buttes and sage and symphony of grasses.
“You’re the first arrest, Taylor!” a friend called from the small crowd that had gathered to witness our arrests.
I tried smiling through gritted teeth.
I NEEDED MY ARREST to be more than protest against my fossil-fuel heritage. I needed it to test me, to see what I was made of. I wanted to see what I was willing to lay my body down to protect. I kept thinking about the plundered prairie pressed for black gold, pumpjacks rocking atop buttes, pipelines bursting under the Yellowstone River, farmland oiled in early fall because of lightning strikes in Williams County, North Dakota, German shepherds with bloodstained mouths nipping Native protesters back in North Dakota. Grinding memories of strip mining, flaring, pumpjacks in the distance, and exploding oil tankers shot through me when the cold steel snapped against my wrist.
My home.
The home I wanted to protect.
3.
TWO WEEKS AFTER being released from spending an evening in the Boone County jail, I went to Iowa City to be a part of an evening presentation entitled “Fracking and the Iowa Divide.” A historian at the University of Iowa had invited me to present alongside a sociologist, a city planner, the state geologist, and two musicians in the university’s music building. The evening was recorded in front of a live audience, moderated by our host, Joan, a woman with sharp auburn hair who wore a long black dress, and was broken into three segments. I would be speaking during the second and third parts.
Backstage, I sat in the greenroom and attempted to meditate. My stomach churned. I stood, stretched, shook my arms, and walked around stacks of folded metal chairs.
I left the greenroom and walked through a high, alabaster hallway inside the music building, and circled to the front, where the event was taking place. I opened the door and peeked in. There were about sixty people in attendance.
I heard the historian who’d invited me.
“I imagine where we’d be without fracking,” he said, “and this is what I imagine: Without fracking, oil and gas prices would be three times higher than they are today. We’d probably still be in the recession. We would be producing more coal and carbon dioxide. The dollar would be weaker. The power of Vladimir Putin’s Russia would be stronger. Our ability to restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions would be weaker. So, there’s a huge impact. Iowans have benefited hugely from fracking. Iowa ranks fifth in energy consumption.”
I SLOWLY CLOSED the door and walked back to the greenroom.
On my way, I stopped and took a sip of water from a fountain, and wiped my mouth. I was up next with the city planner and the sociologist.
A minute later, I was onstage.
“Welcome to the World Canvass series ‘Fracking and the Iowa Divide,’ ” said Joan. The city planner and the sociologist would speak before it was my turn. In my mind I considered what I would say, while pretending to listen to them.
“Next is Taylor Brorby,” Joan finally said. “You are from North Dakota, are a writer, an environmental activist.”
I leaned back on my stool.
“Tell us what you have seen in your own state. I mean, North Dakota now has all these new jobs, all these new houses, it seemed like—wow!—North Dakota has struck it rich,” said Joan.
“Sure,” I began. “Well, you all know where North Dakota now is, for instance.”
The audience laughed.
“I grew up in coal country,” I continued. “My entire upbringing was supported by coal, so I’m not just a crunchy-granola activist for ideological reasons. My parents somehow produced one—I mean, lignite coal paid for our bread and butter, literally.”
I then painted a picture of the prairie I grew up on. I wanted the members of the audience to love my place, to love my home, even if they hadn’t been there. I wanted to paint a picture of what the place was like during my childhood and what it now was. I began listing statistics about Watford City, a town that had doubled in size every two years during the height of the boom.
“You can now see my home state from outer space. It gives off more light pollution than Minneapolis–St. Paul, except North Dakota’s is from the burning off of natural gas. It’s the largest bonfire on the planet.”
I looked out into the audience, but the only familiar face I could see was my friend Joel. He was Kirsten’s dad: Kirsten, the first friend I made at St. Olaf, in the book line more than a decade earlier. The rest of the audience was washed in darkness as the stage lights shined in my eyes.
I told the audience about Steve Jensen, a farmer in western North Dakota who had seven football fields worth of oil ooze across his land from a nine-inch-wide pipeline. At the time, it was the largest inland oil spill in the country’s history.
When I mentioned that the Dakota Access Pipeline was over three times the size of the pipeline on Jensen’s land, and that at full carrying capacity it would push 24 million gallons of oil each day across Iowa, I said that, when the pipeline breaks—and if it leaks for only an hour—it would spill over 1 million gallons of oil.
AFTER THE PRESENTATION ended, I sat in the lobby autographing copies of my fracking anthology. Kathy, whom I had just met two weeks before in the back of the police van while we were getting arrested, came and gave me a hug.
Once I sat back down, I continued with the signing while my friend Joel waited for me.
The historian who’d spoken walked up to me and smiled. I took another break from signing books and stood to speak with him. He continued smiling as he shook my hand. He leaned in to whisper in my ear.
“You don’t really believe all that bullshit you said out there, do you?” he asked.
He pulled back but kept shaking my hand.
“Thanks for a great event. Good to see you again,” he said before letting go of my hand.
Shaken, I returned to my seat and continued signing books and tried to brush off what just happened.
A woman with cropped silver hair, dressed in a black turtleneck, black-and-white checkered pants, and a silver pendant was next in line.
She stepped up and said, “You did so well.”
“Thank you.”
I drew a sketch of the badlands, complete with pumpjacks and flares, in her book.
“Do you live here in town?” I asked her.
“No.”
“Do you live in Iowa?”
“No.”
“Oh,” I said. “Are you here visiting friends?”
“No, I’ve never been to Iowa before.”
I stopped drawing and looked up from the book.
“Pardon me, ma’am, but why are you here?” I asked.
“I’m from Texas, took time off from work. I’ve been following your work. I flew here because I needed to hear you in person.”
I looked over to Joel and leaned back in my chair.
“Ma’am, I don’t know what to say. Thank you. Thank you for coming,” I said.
“Thank you. Keep doing this work.”
She took her signed book, turned, and walked out of the lobby of the music building and into the Iowa City night.
I turned to look at Joel, who raised his caterpillar eyebrows, smiled, and giggled.
4.
THE FOLLOWING JUNE, after receiving my MFA at twenty-nine, nine months after my arrest, I learned Grandpa Hatzenbihler had entered hospice. I loaded my Prius with my suitcase and a lunch of tomato sandwiches, sliced cucumbers, cold brew coffee, and a small kale salad that my landlady, Donna, made me. It was a cool morning in Ames. The leaves softly whirred against the branches.
I pulled out of town, turned onto I-35, and zipped north. Iowa spread from horizon to horizon—farmers were out in their fields; seeds had been sewn into the soil. A few sparrows flicked out from under the overpasses. I turned on the radio, tried to sing along to Madonna and Britney Spears, tried to take my mind off where I was going, what I was about to see.
TEN HOURS LATER, when I pulled off I-94 into Bismarck, I passed by a strip mall with a Perkins, Paradiso, and Kmart before turning down more quiet, residential streets, arriving at my grandpa’s assisted living facility. I sat in my car and focused my breath. There’s Uncle Kevin’s pickup, I thought. That looks like Aunt Jill’s car. Oh, there’s Aunt Gail’s van from Canada. I opened my car door and walked across the sweltering parking lot.
Once inside, I turned right, as I had always done since Grandpa moved there, and made my way to his apartment. I walked by doors decorated with tropical fish, some with knickknacks or with GRANDPA AND GRANDMA’S HOUSE or THE JOHNSONS’ RESIDENCE on little wooden signs featuring two bluebirds. The door for a woman named Miriam had cardboard palm trees, toucans, and tiki torches.
I got to Grandpa’s door, gave a gentle knock, and walked in, shoulders up to my ears.
“Oh, hi, Taylor,” said my aunt Jill, a short woman with tight blond hair. She reached up and wrapped her arms around me. I gently patted her back.
Mom and Dad were there, and I gave them a quick hug.
Dad whispered in my ear.
“Good to see you.”
I nodded and walked into my grandfather’s room, where he was lying in his bed, protected now by shiny metal rails up along its side.
The room was dim, the blinds drawn. Aunt Raylene was in the room with Grandpa.
“Hi, Taylor,” she said softly.
“Hi, Raylene.” I moved to the opposite side of the bed, away from her.
“I’m glad you’ve come.”
“I knew I had to come, I couldn’t miss this,” I said.
“Hi, Grandpa,” I said, and his eyes snapped open. He grumbled and cleared his throat a little bit.
“Taylor’s come to visit you, Dad,” said Raylene, firmness in her voice so that he could hear. She looked over toward me. “They say hearing is the last to go, so we’ve been playing him some gospel and country music.”
“I might play him something else, Raylene,” I said. And I began looking for Lawrence Welk polka music on my phone.
“I’ll let you have some time with him,” she said and walked out, drawing the bedroom door to a crack so I could be alone with him.
“Hi, Grandpa, it’s Taylor,” I said.
His eyes looked at me, and when he pulled back the curtain of his cheeks, a coffee-stained wall of teeth shined at me. He was swaddled beneath thin white sheets. His skin was sallow, his dusting of white hair clipped short atop his head. He closed his eyes and nodded.
He kept nodding, and I heard a gentle whistle escape his mouth.
He had fallen asleep.
THERE’S A MEMORY I have of Grandpa Hatzenbihler at his seventieth birthday party in our backyard in Center. I’m eight and the chokecherry trees have finished blossoming; our garden of onions and carrots and potatoes and peas has just been planted. Dad has just finished building me a tree house, which I proudly show off to a few of my cousins. “Look,” I say, “Dad even put in a rope ladder so we can feel like pirates as we climb up.” My cousins are impressed. Aunts, uncles, and many of my grandpa’s siblings are there. Grandpa is in blue jeans, a checkered blue and merlot shirt, a trucker hat perched on his head. And Grandma is in powder blue slacks and a cutoff blouse striped with rose, teal, and white. Eddie Hilzendigger, a neighbor one street over from Grandpa and Grandma, sits atop a speaker on our back patio playing polka music. When he starts “Roll Out the Barrel,” Grandpa hops up, snags Grandma (who, at sixty-nine, has begun to slow down), and takes her to a patch of cement near Eddie. And then they’re off—twirling and hopping, forty-eight years of marriage dancing the polka better than anyone I know, hopping like deer through the field as the rest of us hoot and holler.
IN HIS ROOM, on his deathbed, I asked my grandpa how he felt.
“I feel . . . I feel . . .”—he looked around the room—“I feel like an eight-pound trout.”
Over my shoulder, just in view from his bedroom into his kitchen, was a mounted eight-pound rainbow trout he had caught in the Missouri River.
“That must feel pretty wonderful,” I said.
My voice broke.
“Wunnerful, wunnerful,” said Grandpa between breaths. “Wunnerful, wunnerful,” and a whistle slipped out of the side of his mouth. “Wunnerful, wunnerful.”
I grabbed my phone, opened YouTube, and told him that I thought I’d have something he’d enjoy. I turned up the volume.
“It’s so wunnerful to have you with us tonight. Here are our little Champagne Ladies to dance to the ‘Beer Barrel Polka’ for us all. Myron, take it away.”
It was Lawrence Welk, the King of the Polka, Grandpa’s favorite, clad in a dark suit with his brown hair slicked back. Originally from Strasburg, North Dakota, Welk, like Grandpa, was of German-from-Russia stock. Welk’s stilted English, which made Grandpa smile whenever we watched reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show, was a holdover from being raised in a German-speaking household.
When the “Beer Barrel Polka” ended, I pulled up what I knew was Grandpa’s favorite polka, “In Heaven There Is No Beer.” As soon as it began, I saw the end of the sheet at the edge of the bed move. Grandpa’s toe tapped. In his faint voice, he began to sing along.
“In Heaven there is no beer, that’s why we drink it here . . .” His breath went in and out during the interlude.
The verse repeated and I joined in the crooning with Grandpa.
Then my voice broke. It was too real, watching Grandpa’s breath go up and down, watching him locked in his bed, his body no longer able to move. He needed gentle sponge baths in bed. He couldn’t roll, couldn’t move his limbs, couldn’t even drink anymore—he could take water only from a little purple sucker of a sponge.
Grandpa finished the song, and I wiped my eyes.
He sighed, turned to the side, and fell asleep. Soft light slipped through the blinds and washed across his face.
I walked over, pulled the blinds closed, and picked up his liver-spotted hand. I rubbed my thumb back and forth on it. His skin was so thin. His mouth was open; his lips were chapped. I walked into the bathroom adjacent to his room, filled a small glass with water, and dipped the purple sponge into it. I returned, lifted the sponge from the glass, gently shook it so no droplets fell on Grandpa, and rolled the sponge across his lips.
A FEW MINUTES LATER I left his room.
“There’s some food over there, Taylor, if you want any,” said Raylene, kindly.
“Thanks.”
Dad moved toward me. He looked heavier than the last time I saw him, a few years earlier. His handlebar mustache was nearly all white, but he had his usual Harley-Davidson cap atop his head.
“How long are you back for?” he rumbled in a low, guttural voice.
“As long as it takes,” I said.
We stood there then in silence.
LATER, I SPENT a few hours at Tanya’s multilevel house, playing with my nephews, jumping in the pool, and recovering from seeing Grandpa and the little conversation I had with relatives.
That night, after dinner, Tanya, Logan, who was now eleven, and I went back to Grandpa’s. Mom, Raylene, Uncle Kevin, and Uncle Dean were playing cribbage. When we arrived, we went into Grandpa’s room to greet him. He was asleep. A soft yellow light from the lamp on his headboard illuminated his face.
“Hi, Great-Grandpa,” said Logan.
“I think he’s sleeping right now, buddy,” I said.
Logan nodded his head and went into the other room to watch his grandma and great-aunts and uncles play cards. Tanya and I sat on the edge of another small mattress at the end of Grandpa’s bed and watched him ever so gently breathe.
A FEW HOURS LATER, while the cribbage players had distributed some bars, some licorice, and some cookies for dessert, Grandpa began to sputter. Tanya and I jolted.
“Something’s going on!” Tanya said, her voice rising.
Raylene and Mom rushed in. Mom grabbed a suction device as Grandpa coughed up a gelatinous dab of blood, so dark purple it jiggled like jelly.
Logan rushed out of the apartment, and I raced after him.
WHEN I FOUND HIM at the end of the hallway, sitting in a stiff chair, he was staring at the multicolored carpeted floor.
“I lost my appetite, Uncle Taylor,” he said, his head hanging down, not looking at me.
“Oh, buddy, don’t worry,” I said, crouching down to look into his eyes. “We can take that dessert home later, if you like.” I rubbed his knee.
“That was so scary in there,” he said, his voice breaking.
“I know, buddy, I know,” I said. I lifted both of my arms up and he hugged me. “Should we go get Mom?”
Logan nodded. As we made our way back to the apartment, I wrapped my arm around Logan, rubbed his shoulder, and gently whispered, “It’s okay, buddy. It’s going to be okay.”
Logan didn’t go back into Grandpa’s apartment. He waited in the hallway.
I poked my head through the door.
“Hey,” I said to Tanya. “Logan wants to go. What do you think?”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” cut in Mom, who was once again sitting at the card table.
Tanya and I looked at each other and nodded. Tanya stood up from the rocking chair, slipped out the door, and the three of us walked out into the dark North Dakota night. In the distance, a chorus of peepers chirred.
THE NEXT DAY, a Sunday, Tanya and Mike had opened their house up to cousins and second cousins who had arrived so they could swim in the pool, a momentary distraction while death lingered at the door.
Tanya, Logan, and I made our way over to Grandpa’s again.
It was a quiet day—Uncle Dean played cards with Raylene. Tanya and I went into Grandpa’s room and sat together.
I began to cry.
“Stop it,” said Tanya, who could not control herself and began to cry, too.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“If you start crying, then I’ll start crying,” she said, half crying, half laughing.
I put my head on her shoulder.
“I’m going to miss him so much,” I said.
“I know, me too.”
We sat for a few minutes in silence, tears on our faces.
Tanya cleared her throat.
“One of my favorite memories is dancing with Grandpa and Uncle Pete,” she said. “We’d do ‘The Butterfly,’ and when the music would speed up, I’d do-si-do and they’d shoot me up off the floor,” said Tanya.
“How about that time when Grandpa and Uncle Frank, acting like little boys again, decided to put firecrackers between two metal pie tins, lit them, and shoved them into the room at Uncle Frank’s cabin where all the kids were sleeping?”
“You know they were drunk off of red-eye.”
And we began to giggle, and then to snort a little bit; eventually our shoulders jiggled.
Grandpa’s eyes snapped open and suddenly looked around.
“Oh!” said Tanya, stifling a laugh. “Is he up?”
We couldn’t stop giggling.
Grandpa’s eyes closed and he went back to sleep.
“Guess not,” she said, and we continued to laugh and hold each other’s hand.
LATER THAT NIGHT we returned with Logan. Tanya stayed out in the kitchen to talk with the aunts and uncles while they played cards. Boxes of opened Chips Ahoy, a veggie platter with cauliflower, carrots, celery, and ranch dressing, and a meat and cheese tray lined Grandpa’s small kitchen counter.
I went into his room, shuffled over the side of his bed, and kissed his forehead. My lips went hot. I hurried back to the kitchen.
“Hey, Grandpa feels like he’s pretty warm in there,” I said.
“There’s a pan that you can fill some cold water and do cold compresses on his forehead and the inside of his elbows,” said Raylene. “That’s what the nurses told us we could do to try to keep his temperature down.”
I went into Grandpa’s bathroom and began to fill the pan. Colgate toothpaste, Brylcreem, Cetaphil, and some pill bottles lined the sink. I turned off the faucet and went to Grandpa.
FOR THE NEXT FEW HOURS, I dipped the washcloth into the pan, lifted it, wrung it out, and dabbed my grandfather’s forehead and arms. There was a type of rhythm, a type of dance, to it. Partway through, I pulled out my phone, turned the volume low, and played some polkas.
My aunt Arliss, who always gave me a good squeeze and told me that I needed to come and visit her and Uncle Joe on the coast of Oregon whenever I walked out into the kitchen, came into the room. We pulled back Grandpa’s bedsheets. The tips of his fingers were now dark blue. We pulled the sheets farther off him and his feet were darker still. I noticed Grandpa’s torso: throughout my entire life he’d had a round, firm belly filled with cream and dough and beer, but it was now deflated, and his thighs were the size of my arms. His once full head of silver hair was thinned like the stubble of a wheat field. Arliss and I pulled the sheets back up.
AROUND ELEVEN O’CLOCK Tanya came into Grandpa’s room and told me she was going to go home.
I stepped out into Grandpa’s kitchen-cum-living-room.
“I want to stay with you, Uncle Taylor,” begged Logan.
“Buddy, I’m going to stay really late tonight.” I said in a firm tone, looking at Tanya.
“That’s okay, I want to stay with you,” Logan pleaded.
I thought back to the previous night, when Grandpa began to cough and the blood started coming. When I first arrived and noticed so many large, red towels in Grandpa’s bedroom. Aunt Gail told me that it was in case he started hemorrhaging.
“Buddy, I’m going to be here real late,” I repeated, looking Logan in the eye. “How about we come over first thing in the morning?” I looked back at Tanya; my eyes begged her to take him. I couldn’t manage both my grandpa, if he died that night, and Logan, if he was there to witness it.
“Logan, let’s go. We’ll come back over in the morning.”
Logan let out a sigh.
“I’ll leave the front door unlocked for you,” Tanya said to me.
“Thanks,” I said. “Good night. Love you.”
I WAS NOW ALONE with my two sets of aunts and uncles—Uncles Dean and Kevin and Aunts Arliss and Raylene.
Eventually, around 12:30 a.m. Arliss came in.
“How’s he doing?” she whispered.
She moseyed over to the opposite side of Grandpa’s bed and looked at me. Her eyes glistened against her cerulean blouse.
“His breathing’s getting shallower,” I told her, feigning a smile.
“Hi, Dad,” said Arliss gently. She rubbed his head.
We stood in silence, Arliss stroking Grandpa, and me rotating the compresses.
GRANDPA’S BREATHING slowed further; now, there were more than twenty seconds between a breath.
“Arliss, I think we’re getting close. Can you keep time on your watch, and I’ll tell you when he takes a breath?”
Arliss’s eyes widened. “Yes—yes, Taylor, I can do that.”
“Okay,” I said, “I think this is it.”
This would be the first time I had ever seen someone die.
I watched Grandpa’s mouth, but sometimes his breathing was so shallow it didn’t move. A vein twitched in his neck. My eyes darted between his neck and his mouth.
“Breath,” I said to Arliss.
And the seconds ticked by.
“Breath.”
“That was forty seconds.”
The timings got further apart; Grandpa’s shallow breaths got shorter, quicker. I could tell his lungs were failing. He was leaving. The body was shutting down. I gripped the sheet near him tighter.
“Breath,” I said more firmly, documenting whenever it seemed his body or mouth moved.
“That was a minute fifteen.”
“Okay.”
I had forgotten to remove the cold compress from his elbow. I whipped the wet washcloth away and dropped it in the bin beside the bed. There was a gentle splash. Some water wet my feet. I picked up Grandpa’s hand.
“Breath,” I whispered as if I was giving some type of military command. As if I was willing my Grandpa to hang on, as if I said it only loud enough that he’d take a breath. I thought that I could make his lungs fill, somehow, and he’d pop up, telling us he had a good nap. That’s all it would take, one good breath, one deep breath to bring him back from where it was he was going. I wanted him to tell us that he was ready to go fishing, to snag the poles out of the closet, that we’d have to stop and get some minnows.
“Breath.”
“A minute forty-five, Taylor,” Arliss said, her voice cracking.
“All right. We’re close,” I said.
“Come on, Dad,” said Arliss as softly as she could.
I wanted him to snap out of it. To stay put, to not leave me. I wanted another big hug. I wanted to hold him tight, smell his coffee-scented breath as we rubbed each other’s backs. I wanted more pumpkin pancakes, more memories of picking juneberries. I wanted more—more of him.
“Breath.”
“Two minutes thirty.”
And we watched and watched. The vein stopped twitching. The seconds turned to minutes. A lump burned up my throat.
We passed three minutes. It was like a leaf slowly falling from the tree in autumn, lingering here and there on the wind on the way down.
“Taylor?” asked Arliss, her voice just shy of breaking.
I took in a breath, lowered my head, and closed my eyes.
“How long has it been?” I asked her.
“Four minutes and thirty seconds.”
I looked up at her. Tears fell from my face onto Grandpa’s sheets.
“He’s gone, Arliss.”
A sob erupted from Arliss as she crossed herself. I wiped my eyes and moved to the doorway. Raylene and Dean looked up at me from their cards.
“What is it?” asked Raylene, the devoted daughter who didn’t yet know she had lost her father.
“Grandpa,” I said. And before I could say anything else their cards fell like petals from a flower. They rushed into Grandpa’s room. I walked over to the loveseat.
“Kevin,” I said, gently rubbing my uncle’s shoulder. “Kevin, you have to get up. Kevin, get up,” I commanded, a bit firmer.
Kevin’s eyes shot open. He grabbed his glasses from the coffee table and cleared his throat. He reached over for his hat, rubbed his salt-and-pepper beard, and sat up.
“What? What’s up?” he asked.
“Grandpa’s dead,” I choked.
LATER, SOMEWHERE AROUND three in the morning, after we’d called family members, I drove the dead streets of Bismarck back to Tanya’s house. The parking lots of Red Lobster and Space Alien’s Grill and Bar were empty, the Fairview cemetery was unlit, and the KOA campground was quiet.
When I got to Tanya’s, I stumbled into Alexander’s bed. He was asleep, on the floor, a herd of stuffed animals around him; a red blanket was pulled up to his neck. His twin brother, Oliver, waddled into the hallway light, dazed, and asked where I had been.
“Checking on Great-Grandpa,” I said. “But I’ll tell you about it in the morning. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Uncle Tay-Tay,” said Oliver. He rubbed his eyes, walked up the stairs, and snuck back to his bedroom.
THE NEXT MORNING, before the boys were up, Tanya and I zipped over to Grandpa’s apartment. His body had been removed. After some hugs, someone asked who wanted to go over and tell Aunt Frances, Grandpa’s sister-in-law.
I volunteered.
On the way over to her assisted living facility, I thought about how I was going to break the news to her.
I arrived, signed in at the front desk, and made my way to Aunt Frances’s apartment. I heard music flow out from the chapel.
I got to her door, plastered with pictures of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and knocked. No one answered. I stepped closer and knocked a little harder.
When a care attendant walked by, I informed her that I was Frances Kary’s great-nephew and wondered if she was home.
“Oh, she’s probably at morning chapel,” said the attendant. “She’s our favorite, you know,” she smiled.
“She’s everyone’s favorite,” I said. “I’m sorry to ask this, but might I be able to get her? I want to tell her that her brother-in-law, my grandfather, died earlier this morning.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” The care attendant frowned.
“Thank you,” I said with a forced smile.
“Let me go in there and snag her—what’s your name again?”
“Taylor.”
“Okay, just a minute, Taylor.”
A minute or two later the door creaked open. The attendant held it, and my ninety-one-year-old great-aunt emerged, her hair dyed brown and curled on her head. She gripped her walker tightly.
“Oh, good morning, Taylor.”
“Good morning, Aunt Frances,” I said as I leaned down to hug and give her a kiss on the cheek.
We moved into Aunt Frances’s one-bedroom apartment before I told her.
“Sorry to take you out of chapel this morning,” I said as we sat down at her mahogany table.
“It’s no trouble. It’s good to see you.” She smiled.
“It’s good to see you, too,” I said. There was then a wide gap of silence. I looked out her window as she stared at me. I then looked down at the floor before my eyes came up to meet hers.
“Aunt Frances, Grandpa died this morning,” I said with tears in my eyes.
“Oh, oh god.” She held her hand against her mouth, closed her eyes, and sharply shook her head. She let out a cry. She slid her hand up to her forehead and pressed. She cleared her throat and quickly composed herself.
“Who knows?”
“All of his children, and they’re spreading the word to their children.”
“When will the funeral be?” she asked as she rolled her fingers across the table.
“We’re not sure yet. I don’t know who’s taking care of the arrangements.”
“I’ll call my girls this morning and tell them. How about Tanya’s boys?” she asked.
I looked her in the eyes.
“Oh,” she said.
I cleared my throat.
“They don’t know yet. I’m on my way to get Logan after seeing you.”
“Don’t let me keep you,” she shot her hands into the air. “You have things to do and those nephews to look after. That’s going to be hard. Good luck, Taylor.”
I stood up and sidled over to give her another hug. She reached her arms up, gripped me around the neck, and stretched to kiss me.
“I love you,” I said in her ear.
“I love you, too. Make sure someone calls me to keep me updated. It takes an army to get a funeral in order.”
I laughed, nodded, and walked out of her apartment. As I slowly closed her door, I heard sniffles before the door latched shut.
WHEN I GOT TO TANYA’S, I parked the car and took a breath.
“Hey, Logie, are you ready, buddy?” I yelled as I stepped into the house. My brother-in-law, who worked from home, was one floor below Logan’s room.
“Logan?”
I walked downstairs into Logan’s room and found him, for once, folding his own clothes. I sat on his bed and watched him shuffle back and forth between pile and dresser, an eleven-year-old going on twelve trying to be stoic, breaking out every word with an axe.
“Daddy told me Great-Grandpa died,” Logan said in a quiet voice.
“He did, buddy,” I said softly.
Logan tried to put another shirt in his drawer.
“Were you there?”
“Yes, I was. I got to hold his hand and tell him I loved him and that I was going to miss him so much.”
Logan stopped at his dresser. He looked over toward his closet, away from me.
“Come here, buddy,” I said and patted the place next to me on his bed.
Logan came over, sat down on his Star Wars bedsheets, and rested his head on my shoulder. I wrapped my arm around his shoulder and pulled him tight against me. I rubbed his back.
“I’m going to miss him so much, Uncle Taylor.”
“I know, buddy, me too. Me too. We’re all going to miss him—Grammy, Grampy, Great-Aunt Arliss, Great-Uncle Dean. But we all have each other.”
Logan began to cry. Pools of tears welled in my eyes. I kissed the top of his head.
“You know,” I whispered, “it’s a really good thing to cry when you’re sad.” I rubbed Logan’s back. “We can take all the time we need. There’s no rush to go over there.”
Logan nodded.
I kept rubbing his back.