Full Body Burden (12 page)

But plutonium is dangerous if ingested
or
inhaled: plutonium particles can lodge in lung tissue and remain active for years or even decades, emitting alpha radiation. In an interview with the
New York Times
, Martell estimates that 200,000 to 300,000 people live immediately downwind from Rocky Flats. He is most concerned about the suburbs of Arvada, Westminster, and Broomfield, but this off-site contamination—which has been found as far away as forty miles from the plant—is not the only problem. A potential nuclear disaster could devastate Denver and possibly all of Colorado.
The CCEI report states that “in the not-too-unlikely event of a major plutonium release, the resulting large-scale plutonium contamination could require large-scale evacuation of the affected areas, the leveling of buildings and homes, the deep plowing or removal of topsoil and an unpredictable number of radiation casualties among the people exposed to the initial cloud or the more seriously contaminated areas.” There is no emergency response plan to protect the public in the event of a major disaster at Rocky Flats. Rocky Flats is still the biggest secret in town.

M
OST PEOPLE
in my neighborhood are too busy making mortgage payments and worrying about rising gas prices to pay much attention to Rocky Flats. And they don’t want to think about how the situation might affect their property values.

Sister Pam Solo, though, is paying attention. A third-generation
Colorado native, she has deep roots in the state’s complicated history. Her father grew up in a coal mining camp in southern Colorado, site of the famous Ludlow Massacre that occurred when coal miners went on strike in 1913. Pam attended St. Mary’s Academy in Denver, and after high school, like Pat McCormick, she joined the Sisters of Loretto.

Another young woman, Judy Danielson, a Quaker, has just returned from Vietnam, where she’s been doing humanitarian work as a physical therapist. Pam is a serious-minded woman with short dark hair and glasses; Judy, slender with light hair, shares her intensity. They learn of Martell’s findings and decide to help organize a group to go door-to-door in neighborhoods east of Rocky Flats. They knock on doors and ask residents if they can scoop up samples of dirt from their backyards to be tested for radiation. The volunteers label the samples with names and addresses and take them to the open public meetings of candidates who are running for Congress, asking to have the soil tested and residents notified of the results. “What,” they demand of each candidate, “are you going to do about Rocky Flats?”

W
INTER COMES
early. In late October the pipes in our laundry room freeze and burst and water spills out into the room in arctic pools. Tonka shivers in the field, his head low and back hunched to the wind. My mother backs the station wagon out of the garage and Karma and I spread straw on the cement floor and bring him in. His chin whiskers are long tentacles of frost and the balls of ice in his hooves make him walk gingerly, as if he’s wearing stiletto heels. We cook him a hot oatmeal mash on the stove and serve it on a breakfast tray.

We aren’t the only ones concerned about the cold weather. We share our land with a large population of field mice who take up residence in the walls, cupboards, and heat ducts. I don’t mind the glimpse of a nimble creature dashing across the kitchen floor in search of a cornflake or two, but my mother is determined to rout them out. She puts small boxes of poison in front of the heat vents. Rather than expire in the open air, the mice climb back up into the warm ducts to take their last breath. We grow accustomed to the smell.

We celebrate Christmas in our new house with a seven-foot tree in the family room. As part of our continuing education in all things Scandinavian, my mother plays Hans Christian Andersen stories on the record player. She directs that each strand of tinsel be hung individually, one by one, on the branches. “You can’t let them touch each other!” she orders, and sure enough the tree glitters with flowing streams of silver, at least until the cats start climbing the trunk.

My mother spends weeks deciding on presents for each of us, wrapping them in gold and red foil, tying them with fancy ribbon, and hiding them on the shelf in her closet where we track their location closely. My father mutters about taxes and bills and clients who don’t pay, but he never disapproves.

Christmas Eve means church first. My parents reject the staunch brand of Lutheranism my mother grew up with—even cardplaying is a sin—and we sing hymns in a church that looks more like a library than a sanctuary. My mother wears a mink coat and stole my dad accepted from an indebted client: two paws and a stunted nose and tail hang down around her shoulders. On the way home we sing carols and count all the houses with Christmas lights and then have to wait for dinner to be served, lefse and sandbakkels and the threat of lutefisk—dried codfish reconstituted in lye and boiled in saltwater, which tastes like bland fish Jell-O. Fortunately she relents and instead serves a turkey from Jackson’s, the local turkey farm out by Rocky Flats, and then we can open the presents we’ve been eyeing for weeks as the Christmas tree sparkles late into the night. On Christmas morning there are stockings stuffed with rolls of Life Savers, fat chocolate Santas, bookmarks, coins, and color-changing mood rings. We spend the day in pajamas, sitting amid piles of wrapping and tinsel and tape, the record player blaring, dogs bounding around the room in chaotic ecstasy. There is something almost nightmarish in the boxes and paper and ribbon, the plethora of presents we know my father can’t afford, and yet we feel loved and spoiled and giddy in our parents’ insistence on this heady life of abundance.

Nonetheless, by noon my father reaches his limit of family interaction and heads off in a stony silence to check on things at the office.

T
HE FIRST
time I ride Tonka out to Standley Lake, the wind whips my hair across my face so hard it stings. Tonka is eager to run. I ride bareback with a single leather strap looped around his ears and a rawhide hackamore dropped across his nose, the reins taut, his head tucked and neck arched like a Roman Percheron. He prances and dances—let’s run! Let’s run! He can gather himself into a ball of muscled energy and shoot across the field like a low-rolling cannonball. I’ve learned to grip his bare sides with my thighs, crouch low over his neck, and hang on. Maximum contact, minimum control.

I’m alone. That’s the best part, to be alone with the horse and the gently rolling hills and the wind bending the tall prairie grass into long ripples of gold. I try to make Tonka walk calmly; my mother has repeated tales she’s heard from neighbors about what happens to young riders whose galloping mounts step full speed into groundhog holes. A horse’s leg can snap as easily as a slender tree branch, and there’s no remedy but a bullet to the head. Like a minefield, the long grass hides hundreds and maybe thousands of potentially lethal mounds and bumps—how many death traps are beneath those dancing hooves? But Tonka dislikes caution. He knows there will come a time on each ride when we will be past the houses, the fences, the roads, and I’ll drop the reins, bury my face in his mane, and let him rip.

We sidestep through the metal gate and prance across the wooden bridge arching over the ditch. I try to maintain the illusion of control as long as I’m within range of the neighbors’ kitchen windows. We pass the community barn, skitter through another gate, trot past the long swamp—Tonka breaking into a light anticipatory sweat—and canter up a gentle rise to the barbed-wire fence surrounding the lake.

There is a gate, loosely constructed of metal posts and wire. A heavy padlock hangs from the latch. A thoughtful child has neatly clipped the wires below the lock. I slide off, lead Tonka through, and swing back up. He can hardly contain himself.

My vantage point is extraordinary. The lake stretches below us,
nearly a mile in diameter. Blue water extends in rows of gentle ripples to a thin line of barely visible cottonwoods on the far side. The wind dies to a whisper and it’s quiet, almost perfectly still except for the snap of grasshoppers leaping from the weeds. To the west the mountains rise suddenly, almost violently from the sandy brown of the plains, layered silhouettes of blue and green and gray rising to a turquoise sky. My heart is filled with the beauty of it all.

Tonka will wait no longer. I pull in his head, tuck his nose to his chest, and twist my hands in his mane. “Go!” I shout, and when the reins drop he shoots over the peak of the hill and down the other side, racing to the edge of the lake. His back is slick with sweat, and I barely keep my hold. There is mud, I can see it—should I pull him up? Will he race right into the water? The ground blurs beneath his hooves.

I see the body first. In the split second before Tonka spots it, I ready myself for his response: the sliding stop, the snort of astonishment, and the surge of fear. He knew I had seen it first. He spins around on his back haunches and I pull him up short.

The lower half of the cow’s body lies in the water, soggy and swollen. The upper half extends long and rigid across the ground. Her head stretches up achingly, as if she had tried to pull herself out. The eyes bulge.

Has the cow been shot? Drowned? Was she sick? There are no other cows in sight. I look again across the lake, cool, blue, and utterly empty. The mountains feel like
a dark, heavy presence, a watching shadow. It’s too far to yell for one of my sisters.

I chastise myself fiercely for not having the courage to investigate. We gallop all the way home, Tonka’s hooves ringing on the bumpy ground.

I
N THE
fall I start sixth grade at Juchem Elementary, a small brick school thirty minutes away that stands in the middle of an open, grassy field. My siblings and I ride a yellow school bus down windblown dirt roads that will later become four-lane highways. Randy Sullivan, the boy I’ve been observing from our kitchen window, rides the same bus. He has a ready smile and more friends than I’ll ever dream of. He makes me blush.

My first romance with a boy—not Randy—lasts three entire class periods. He gives me a chunky chain bracelet for my wrist, but by afternoon recess we’ve broken each other’s hearts. I can’t wait to go to junior high. I think about all the friends I’ll have once I ditch my sisters and brother and the entire sixth grade, which takes the boy’s side, not mine. He plays football. I play the clarinet. The chasm between our social circles seems vast.

In junior high I’ll be brave enough to talk to boys like Randy.

The wind blows fiercely across the treeless fields. One drowsy afternoon we see a bald eagle settle on the steel post of our playground swing set. The teachers show us films like
Our Friend the Atom
. Once or twice a week we have duck-and-cover drills in case we’re bombed by the Russians. We’ll be sitting at our desks working out long, dull columns of math and without warning the bell goes off. “Duck and cover!” the teacher yells. “Stay calm!” I crawl under the flat wooden top of my little metal desk and curl up in a ball, forehead to knees, and lock my fingers over the back of my neck as instructed. We’ve all seen the classroom films of people and buildings instantly disappearing—poof!—in a nuclear blast. I wonder how locking my fingers behind my neck will save me. We huddle until the bell rings the all-clear signal.

“They left out the fourth step,” my ex-boyfriend whispers. “Kiss your ass goodbye.”

Unbeknownst to us, Rocky Flats is, in fact, a likely Soviet target. Rocky Flats has a sister plant, Mayak, near Chelyabinsk in the Soviet Union. Secretly built in the late 1940s, Mayak manufactures, refines, and machines plutonium for weapons, just like Rocky Flats. Our government knows a little something about them, and their government knows a little something about us. Deeply contaminated, Mayak becomes the site of one of the worst nuclear accidents in history—an explosion in 1957 released fifty to one hundred tons of high-level radioactive waste, contaminating a huge territory including populated areas in the eastern Urals.

But there are no drills on what to do if something goes wrong right down the road at Rocky Flats.