The Pipelayer

One Friday in August: 2024. Gaston "The NDN Pipelayer" Johnson, is a millennial descendant of the Fox Tribe in Te Ma, Iowa. "Not enrolled yet..." He works for Price Plumbing: a full-service contractor for indoor & outdoor plumbing. He is the dirty guy in the trench, risking life & limb to install storm, sewer, & water main pipes all over the state.

He also has a huge drinking problem; such is the usual case for a construction worker of his ilk. But he accepts a job over a drink-or-five with his strange new boss, Mike Pankow, a Pipelayer lifer, that takes him back to the Fox Tribal Settlement, a place where Gaston never belonged.

On that fateful dig, under the oppressive August heat, he discovers "something else...Someone."

His life is changed forever, and that's just the beginning of the story, as that "Someone" has a story of her own to tell that has affected an entire community for 35 years.

Enter: One Friday in May: 1989. "Have you heard about M?"