The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl

by Bart Yates

Genres: LGBT Gay

Synopsis

Both sweeping and exquisitely intimate, award-winning author Bart Yates blends historical fact and fiction in a surprising, thought-provoking saga spanning 12 significant days across nearly 100 years in the life of a single man, beginning in 1920s Utah.

“Each day is a story, whether or not that story makes any damn sense or is worth telling to anyone else.”

At the age of ninety-six, Isaac Dahl sits down to write his memoir. For Isaac, an accomplished journalist and historian, finding the right words to convey events is never a problem. But this book will be different from anything he has written before. Focusing on twelve different days, each encapsulated in a chapter, Isaac hopes to distill the very essence of his life.

There are days that begin like any other, only to morph through twists of fate. An avalanche strikes Bingham, Utah, and eight-year-old Isaac and his twin sister, Agnes, survive when they are trapped in an upside-down bathtub. Other days stand apart in history—including a day in 1942, when Isaac, stationed on the USS Houston in the Java Sea as a rookie correspondent, confronts the full horror of war. And there are days spent simply, with his lifelong friend, Bo, or with Danny, the younger man whose love transforms Isaac’s later years—precious days with significance that grows clear only in hindsight.

From the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to a Mississippi school at the apex of the civil rights movement, Isaac tells his story with insight, wisdom, and emotional depth. The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl is a wonderful, singular narrative that will spark conversation and reflection—a reminder that there is no such thing as an ordinary life, and the greatest accomplishment of all is to live and love fully

Release date: July 23, 2024

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 240

Sample

February 17, 1926. Bingham, Utah.

Each day is a story, whether or not that story makes any damn sense or is worth telling to anyone else. If you live a long time, and your memory doesn’t completely crap out, you end up with enough stories to fill a library; it’s nearly impossible to pick and choose a mere handful to write about—a stupid, arbitrary stricture I’ve been cowed into accepting by a dead bully. Why I lack the testicular fortitude to just say no is a vexing question, but what aggravates me even more is the fact that I have no idea where to start.

Okay, I’m lying.

I actually do know, but it irks me beyond belief to give Aggie the satisfaction of following her advice. That she now only exists in my head is beside the point: I’d like to maintain at least a smidgeon of autonomy in my own skull, for God’s sake. Is that so much to ask?

Sadly, in this case, it is.

You’re very unattractive when you whine, Isaac.

That’s what she’d say, of course, if she were still here. I find it both irritating and oddly comforting that I can hear her voice so clearly, without even trying. She may as well never have died, given that she’s every bit as exasperating in my imagination as she ever was in person.

Just get on with it and tell them about the giant.

Agnes and I were getting ready for bed—and fighting, of course, about whose turn it was to stoke the woodstove—when our mother lifted her head and told us to shush. Agnes was my twin sister, and Mama always claimed we came out of her womb mad as weasels, screaming hell and death at each other, same as every day afterward. (The midwife hauled me out only a few minutes ahead of Aggie, who no doubt thought the whole sordid business was my fault, and something I should have warned her about.)

“Shush, both of you,” Mama repeated. She was nursing Hilda, our baby sister, by the woodstove. “Did you hear that noise?”

“What noise?” Agnes asked.

“The giant,” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Agnes said. “Giants aren’t real.”

“Shush!” Mama insisted.

I was eight and had just read Jack and the Beanstalk. I was a timid kid with a perverse imagination, and long before the story of Jack and his magic beans came into my life, I was jumping at phantom faces in every shadow. I believed the large rock beside our house was a troll turned to stone, waiting for the next dark of the moon to become flesh; I swore I could hear nymphs and demons battling for dominion in the restless water of Bingham Creek; I dreamt almost every night of warty, jaundiced witches, lumbering ogres, and pallid ghosts with milky eyes. Yet the old fairy tale about Jack the giant-killer—a murderous, thieving boy who not only got away with his sins, but was actually rewarded for them—unsettled me in a way few things did. Whatever my mother may have heard that night, I heard a vengeful relative of Jack’s slain giant, rousing to wrath somewhere up the canyon.

Agnes and I had just finished bathing in the claw-foot, cast-iron tub Father bought for Mama at Christmas. There was no privacy in our one-room house. Agnes and I shared a cramped bed on one side of the room, next to Hilda’s crib; Father and Mama’s bed was on the opposite wall, a few feet from the kitchen table. It was the only home Agnes and I knew, and we couldn’t imagine not bumping into each other every time we hunched over to tie a shoe. The two of us used the same towel to dry ourselves before slipping into our matching nightshirts—cut and sewed from the same bolt of blue flannel by Mama—and the smell of rye bread, fried onions, and boiled cabbage was still in the air from supper, three hours before.

“Oh,” Agnes said, cocking her head. “I hear it now, too, Mama.”

The winter cold was slithering like rattlesnakes through every crack in the walls and floors that night, and I tugged on gray wool socks and listened to the strange rumbling in the dark world beyond our walls. The only light in the room aside from the fire in the woodstove was from two candles on the kitchen table, flickering in the frigid draft blowing through the house. We lived in the Carr Fork area of Bingham with all the other Swedes, and nobody in Carr Fork had electricity. (Nor indoor plumbing, for that matter: For baths, Aggie and I had to cart in a few buckets from the outdoor water pump that Mama then heated on the stove.)

“The giant’s getting closer,” I whimpered.

Agnes rolled her eyes. “There’s no such thing as—”

“HUSH!” Mama cried, rising from the rocking chair, and it bronco-bucked on the floor behind her.

The entire population of Bingham, Utah, lived in a deep, narrow canyon in the Oquirrh Mountains, and all of us—fifteen thousand bipedal moles in a massive nest—were stuffed down together, in the earth. Ramshackle wooden houses, tenements, and stores all piled on top of each other, lining both sides of the canyon walls, clear to the rim. The Kennecott Copper mine was at one end of the seven-mile-long canyon, and the only reason for Bingham’s existence. The canyon itself was less than a city block wide, so every time a new house was built, it went to the end of the line like a naughty child, simply because there was no other place for it.

Father had come home for dinner that night, but he’d gone out again to play cards with his younger brother Johan, and their friends. Mama had begged him not to drink any of Johan’s bootleg gin. She feared he’d go blind from the stuff, like Cotter Jones who lived two houses down from us. Father was no stranger to hooch, but he was also no Cotter Jones, who spent every waking moment of his life sucking at the teat of a dented tin flask he carried around in a hip pocket. Father was at least fully sober every Sunday, and rarely came home drunk from his card games, though his breath smelled like fermented pine from the juniper berries in the gin.

“Mama?” Agnes asked, now frightened herself. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything’s fine,” Mama murmured, staring hard-eyed at the door, but even Agnes knew she was lying.

Until then, it had been just a normal day. Father got up for work early in the morning, same as always, at four A.M.—he worked a ten-hour shift in the copper mine, six days a week—and Mama got up, too, to make his breakfast. They spoke softly, trying not to wake my sisters and me, but they needn’t have bothered. We never failed to hear everything.

“That’s the last of the sugar,” Mama said, pouring coffee in his thermos. “If you want more before Friday, we’ll have to ask Fergus for credit.”

Father was paid weekly. He gave his money to Mama and she ran the house. They bickered regularly over how little sugar she allowed him; she considered it a luxury, but Father had a sweet tooth and became irritable when none was left for his morning coffee.

“We’re broke already?” His chair scraped on the wooden floor. “How come?”

Mama sighed. “Isaac needed new shoes. His toes were poking out of the old ones.”

Before she became Mrs. Magnus Dahl, Mama’s name was Hilda Gwozdek. Her folks and five ignorant, brooding siblings also lived in the canyon, but in the Highland Boy area with the rest of the Poles. Father always said Mama only married him to get away from her priggish mother and her short-tempered father, and there was at least a little truth to that: Mama undoubtedly loved Father for himself, but she loved him even more for not being a Gwozdek.

“That boy’s growing too fast,” Father said. I had my head under the covers, but I knew he was looking at me. “He needs new clothes every damn day.”

“You want me to bind his feet like a Japanese girl? Make him stay small forever?”

“You betcha.” Father’s voice was a rumbling growl, but I didn’t need to see his face to know he was smiling. “So long as there’s sugar in my coffee.”

“Agnes is growing out of her clothes, too, by the way.”

“So? Just give her a potato sack and let her run barefoot.”

Agnes could never tell when Father was joking. She huffed indignantly beside me in bed, and I elbowed her to keep her quiet; she huffed louder and elbowed me back.

“How come you get new clothes and I don’t?” she hissed.

“It’s a joke, dummy,” I hissed back, rubbing my rib cage.

“Oh.”

“Go to sleep, the pair of you,” Mama ordered.

Father left for work and Mama returned to bed for a while, then rose again to get Agnes and me ready for school. Agnes got swatted for dawdling when Mama told her to get dressed, and she was still pouting when Mama kissed us and shoved us out the door. As usual, my best friend, Bo, was waiting on the porch, smiling as if somebody had just told him the funniest joke ever, even though his nose was running and his lips were blue from the wind.

“How many times have I told you not to stand outside in the cold, Bo Larsson?” Mama snapped. “Use the brain the good Lord gave you and come in the house next time, hear?”

“Yes, Mrs. Dahl,” Bo stammered, teeth chattering.

She reached out in exasperation and roughly tugged his cap over his ears. “You’re lucky you still have all your fingers and toes, child,” she said. “Run along now, all of you.”

We obeyed, Agnes dragging her feet as a form of protest until we were well out of Mama’s sight, then she brightened and sped by us. She pretended to dislike Bo, but not even Agnes could pull off a ruse like that. Bo was by far the most handsome boy we knew—his dimpled, freckled face and big green eyes made every girl in town dote on him, including my sister—but more than that, he was also the best-natured soul on earth, and there was nobody in the canyon who didn’t adore him.

“You don’t need to be afraid to come in the house, Bo,” I told him. “Mama won’t bite.”

He flushed. I couldn’t blame him for being scared: Everybody was scared of my mother. She wasn’t mean—far from it—but she had a tongue in her head and wasn’t shy of using it. (Agnes was sounding more like her all the time, and I dreaded the day the pair of them teamed up on me, one per ear.) Still, Mama loved Bo, just like the rest of us, and I think it bothered her to know he couldn’t see that.

“You have any of your Valentine’s candy left?” I asked. “Agnes stole all mine.”

“I didn’t either!” Agnes yelled over her shoulder.

Being different genders, my sister and I weren’t identical twins, of course, but we may as well have been: We both had blond hair, blue eyes, thin faces, and square chins. We also liked a lot of the same things—books, music, stories, puzzles, card games—so people were surprised that we squabbled as much as we did. Part of it was simple jealousy: I was annoyed that she was smarter than me, and she resented that most people liked me better than her. I suspect the main reason we butted heads all the time, however, was that we were so much alike, and both of us enjoyed nothing more than yanking each other’s chain.

Bo dug in the pocket of his thin brown coat and gave me a Tootsie Roll. He was shorter than me by a couple of inches, but I was skinny as a fish line and he was stocky and powerful. He already had a hint of his father’s massive shoulders—his daddy, Sven, worked in the mine with Father, and Father said he’d never met a stronger man—as well as the beginning of Sven’s barrel chest and thick calves. Bo could carry me on his back for blocks, and if I was dumb enough to wrestle him, I’d end up facedown in the dirt and hogtied before I even knew how I got there.

Agnes drifted back, staring at the Tootsie Roll I’d just unwrapped. “Can I have half?”

“Sure.” I popped the whole thing in my mouth and stuck out my tongue to show it to her.

“You’re a jackass, Isaac,” she said, running ahead again.

“You should be nicer to your sister,” Bo said mildly.

“She should be nicer to me.” We stepped around a drift of snow in front of Fergus’s General Store and a dried horse turd hit me in the face: Agnes had deadly aim. I stumbled and fell, but Bo caught me before I hit the ground.

“Dang you, Aggie!” I sputtered. She was already twenty feet ahead, laughing her fool head off.

I wiped my face with snow, swearing. A clump of slush had wormed its way inside my coat collar, too, and was wiggling down my chest, beneath my shirt. I could tell Bo was trying not to laugh and I almost said something mean, then realized he wouldn’t think of laughing if I hadn’t deserved it. He helped clean my face, his mittens gentle on my cheeks and forehead.

“I’ll get even with her,” I muttered, glaring after Aggie.

“You sure are a slow learner,” he answered.

Our schoolhouse was small because it was only for the twenty or so kids who lived in the Carr Fork area of Bingham. There were almost a dozen other schools in other parts of the canyon—Highland Boy, Lark, Dinkeyville, Frog Town, Markham, Freeman, Heaston Heights, Copper Heights, Terrace Heights—but none of them, save for the main school in Bingham proper, was much bigger than ours. Since we were mostly Swedes in Carr Fork, there was a disproportionate number of blond heads in the room when our caps and hats came off. Bo was a vivid exception to the general rule: His hair was the color of an orange peel.

We sat side by side at our desks, as always, with Agnes directly in front of us, and the only thing out of the ordinary I remember happening that entire school day was when Erik Kalberg—a hapless boy with a lazy eye and a stutter—dropped his pencil in front of Agnes’s desk and bent down to fetch it, attempting to peek up her skirt. The toe of her shoe caught him squarely on the forehead, sending him sprawling at our teacher’s feet. Mrs. Sundberg made them both stand with their backs to the class, in separate corners of the room; Agnes kept glowering at me over her shoulder, feeling sorely ill-used and expecting me to do something about it.

I held up my hand. “Mrs. Sundberg?”

“Yes, Isaac?”

“I think Agnes would learn her lesson a whole lot faster if you put a bag over her head.”

The class’s laughter and my sister’s outrage were equally gratifying, but the pleasure was short-lived. I saw Bo sadly shaking his head as Mrs. Sundberg dragged me from my chair to another corner of the room.

Other random memories from that day:

Bo walking Agnes and me home after school, then leaving for his own house as soon as our feet touched the boards of our porch; my baby sister Hilda’s greedy blue eyes, coveting a wooden top spinning across the kitchen table between my hands; Mama teaching Agnes and me how to make köttbullar—meatballs with minced beef and pork, butter and black pepper—and letting us help her knead the dough for her crusty rye bread and cut up some cabbage and onions for supper; Agnes and I doing our homework at the table as the bread baked in the oven; Father coming home from work, tired and snappish, but cheering up after eating; Mama telling Agnes to never bother with a man before his stomach was full; Mama and Father arguing about him going out again to play cards; Agnes and I reading by candlelight until Mama made us stop, fearing for our eyes; Mama heating water for our bath; Agnes and I splashing each other in the tub as Mama sang to Hilda; three or four young Poles in the street outside, yelling and clowning in their blurred, baffling language as they passed our house, their voices fading as they made their way home, no doubt to Highland Boy.

Just another day in Bingham, Utah.

The rumble in the canyon grew louder, then all-encompassing, insupportable. Mama, still clasping Hilda in one arm, yelled something I couldn’t hear, then fiercely seized my shoulder with her free hand and shoved me toward the door. In a panic, I ran smack into Aggie, still standing by the tub, and accidentally knocked her into the damn thing. I tried to help her out but just fell in on top of her, bruising my thigh on one rim of the tub and banging my head against the other. We’d already drained the bathwater but the cast-iron surface was still wet. I cried out in pain as Mama leaned over us with Hilda, screaming, “Get out, get out!” But before we could regain our feet, the world ended.

A mountain of snow ripped through the walls and ceiling of our home. Mama and Hilda vanished from sight as the tub was lifted on what felt like the back of a whale; it flipped end over end, Agnes and I tumbling around inside in a mad jumble of limbs, darkness, and snow, unable to hear ourselves scream. I caught a brief glimpse of a crescent moon, far overhead, and knew we were somehow outside; the moon disappeared, reappeared, and disappeared again, all in the space of a few heartbeats. God only knows how long this horrific carnival ride lasted—in retrospect, it couldn’t have been more than fifteen seconds, but it felt like an eternity—yet it ended as abruptly as it had started: one second we were spinning out of control, the next we were completely still, and on solid ground again.

Entombed in an upside-down bathtub.

The avalanche, hungry for destruction, thundered away from wherever it had left us, and only then could I hear Agnes speaking. I couldn’t see her or anything else, yet I could feel her arms wrapped tightly around my ribs, so tightly I was aware of her heart beating next to mine, much as it must have when we shared Mama’s womb.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, shaking me. “Isaac? Are you hurt?”

I was in shock, but her frantic voice brought me to my senses. I had blood in my mouth—I’d bitten my tongue—and from the wetness on the front of my nightshirt it seemed I’d peed myself, too, but other than that I was more or less intact.

“I’m okay,” I gasped. We couldn’t sit upright so we were forced to stay lying down. “What about you?”

“My ankle hurts.”

For her to say anything I knew it was bad. Agnes complained about everything in life except physical pain. When she was smaller she got her hand caught in a door, snapping two fingers, and she barely even winced.

I shoved at the sides and bottom of the tub, knowing we’d never budge it. It outweighed both of us put together. I suddenly realized we were buried alive, under God only knew how many feet of snow, and my panic, on the ebb since Agnes spoke to me, returned with a vengeance.

“Mama?” My scream was deafening in the confines of our metal coffin. “Mama, WE’RE HERE!”

Agnes yelled, too, but after a couple of minutes she fell silent and made me stop as well. We listened intently for any noise aside from our own breathing but heard nothing.

“Nobody’s there,” Agnes said hoarsely.

“Shush. Mama will come.”

She didn’t argue, but I could hear her sniffle and knew what she was thinking. We’d both seen Mama and Hilda swallowed by a white monster. I began crying, too.

“What do you think happened to Father?” Agnes asked, her voice hitching.

Uncle Johan—Father’s clownish, happy-go-lucky, nineteen-year-old brother—lived alone in a small shack a couple of blocks away from us, which was why his home was the usual gathering place for card games and drinking. I couldn’t imagine he and Father had fared any better than us when the slide hit, but then I remembered that one side of Johan’s house butted up against a ridge of rock, right in the snow’s path, which might’ve served as a shield from the worst of the avalanche. It was a faint chance, but still something, and I told Agnes so.

“No,” she said. Her voice was grim in the darkness. “It got them, too.”

Her breath caught in pain. Both of us were terribly cold—our hair, still wet from our bath, had ice crystals in it, and the urine on my nightshirt was freezing as well; I couldn’t keep my teeth from chattering. I pulled her close, and we listened hopelessly for signs of life outside our shell. I don’t know how long we lay there, saying nothing, but my feet and hands were numb and I had drifted into a deep, nearly impenetrable sleep when I felt Agnes pinching my arm, again and again.

“Quit, Aggie,” I mumbled, “that hurts.” I couldn’t seem to wake up.

“Someone’s out there,” s. . .