Off the Grid

warning

March 2001
Many of the roads in Thurston County Fire Protection District #17 remain unpaved. Many of the houses along these roads remain off the grid. Many of the people in these self-powered homes remain estranged from their families.

When I was a firefighter, I dreaded the dirt-road calls. You know how in the cities, you can turn around an alleyway and suddenly come face-to-face with an underworld of poverty, neatly hidden away from the shops and boulevards? That’s how it is here along these unpaved roads. The ambulance turns onto gravel, passes through an abandoned orchard of old apple and pear trees, and there is our poverty. The kid you went to elementary school who didn’t have a jacket and quietly disappeared after the 5th grade lives in one of these houses. We’ve hidden him miles away from civilization. He’s 60 now. And last night, he passed away quietly, on the couch, an unfinished cigarette has burned a small hole in his flannel shirt.

His neighbor discovers him because his dog’s been barking all morning. He calls 911. It always moves you when the pager text reads ‘death.’ Emotionally, it moves you. Physically, it’s the opposite. You always drive the ambulance slowly to meet the deceased. It’s mostly waiting.

I think his name was Paul, but it’s been a few years, so I can’t remember exactly. I know how he looked, though. It was peaceful. One eye was open, the other shut. The corner of his mouth cracked just enough to have allowed a little foam to escape. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and his hair looked as though he had died in sweat, but not a panic. And the cigarette burn.

The neighbor who discovered him said that his daughter was driving over. I remove the cigarette butt from his hands and dust off the ashes. I find a blanket and cover him to his chest. I wipe his mouth. Rigor mortis still lingers, so I cannot get his eye to close. It doesn’t look so bad, this old man, laying on his couch.

I step outside, and the daughter is there with a man. He’s rubbing her arm, and encouraging her to go inside. She hesitates, flicks her own cigarette. Wipes her eyes.

"He hated himself, all right. Had it down to a goddamn science," she says.

"Well, he can’t hurt you now, anyway. Might as well have your peace," he answers.

I hate dirt-road goodbyes. She comes back outside almost as soon as she enters. Just long enough for her to curse that old man for whatever he did, that probably led to his dying alone. We all feel the need to come to his defense, but we don’t. We like to assume that he suffered from remorse, that he was once a little kid without a jacket who got picked on and forgotten in grade school. But we don’t know what he put her through, so we keep our mouths shut, other than to ask her for his date of birth and if she knows where he kept his prescriptions. She doesn’t know the answer to either.