Full Body Burden (38 page)

I
KNOW
nothing of what’s happening at Rocky Flats. My sisters are in California, and my brother in Arizona, all of us building lives of our own. My mother and father, both still in Arvada, pay no attention to the drama at the bomb factory. It’s old news to them. I haven’t been watching the news in Colorado; my life is filled with more immediate concerns. In the fall of 1989, Andrew and I return to Denver and soon I’m pregnant with our second son. Nathan arrives in the world like a happy seal, smiling and kicking up his toes. The boys are so close in age that as they grow they often pass as twins, although Sean has dark hair and Nathan’s is lighter, like mine.

But even the addition of another blithe spirit can’t save us. Our marriage dissolves in clouds of sad and bitter emotion, and I leave with the children and as much furniture as I can fit into the back of a pickup truck. I move into a small duplex in Arvada, not far from where I grew up. I’m not sure what lies ahead.

Before we left West Germany, I had waited anxiously for the Berlin Wall to come down. Surely, I thought, this dark, ominous symbol of war and violence would soon fall, and when it did, it would be a joyous occasion. I wanted to be there. But the months dragged on, and we returned to the States. When I finally see the Germans celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, it is on television in my living room in Colorado. I feel overcome with emotion, and I know my friends in Germany feel the same.

On November 21, 1990, President George H. W. Bush declares the end of the Cold War.

In Arvada, Colorado, the Cold War is far from over. My life feels war-torn as well. Everything is turned upside down. I decide to go back to school. But this time I’m a single parent with a baby and a toddler, a silky black cat named Jasmine, and a pile of bills.

I need a job.

The Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant is about to get a new face: a change in management and, four years down the road, a new name altogether.

On January 1, 1990, EG&G, a company originally founded by Manhattan Project scientists who helped develop the first atomic bomb, replaces Rockwell International as the new contractor at Rocky Flats.
EG&G manufactures everything from valves and meters to airport security systems, but the fastest-growing aspect of its business is managing government nuclear facilities, including the Idaho National Engineering Lab and the Nevada Test Site.
EG&G’s four-year contract is estimated to be worth approximately $500,000 a year in operating and management costs, with an additional $10 million in profit that will be paid as performance bonuses.

EG&G is not crazy about the public reputation of Rocky Flats.

If the plant’s reputation has been tarnished, its production record remains unsurpassed. For almost forty years, the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal has been dependent on Rocky Flats. It is a key part of the federal government’s
nationwide nuclear weapons complex, which depends on private industry and corporations. There are seven plants around the country, each with its own function. Like Rocky Flats, each of the other six is run by a major U.S. industrial corporation: Union Carbide, DuPont, Bendix, Monsanto, General Electric, and Mason & Hanger. Much of the work is done in secret. At the height of its production period, the site at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which produces and purifies uranium, employs tens of thousands of employees, many of whom don’t fully know or understand what they’re working on.

Rocky Flats is the primary facility to have produced plutonium triggers. From the day the first plutonium trigger rolled off the assembly line to the day Jon Lipsky entered the plant with a warrant in his pocket, Rocky Flats has produced approximately seventy thousand plutonium cores, each about the size of a slightly flattened softball, each costing about $4 million. If all the triggers produced at Rocky Flats were stacked end on end, the height would be greater than eighteen Empire State Buildings.

When EG&G assumes management of Rocky Flats, the company plans to resume weapons production. It’s a lucrative business. This begins to change in January 1992 when President George H. W. Bush declares in his State of the Union address that the United States has won the Cold War and he is canceling the W88 Trident warhead program. Now EG&G has to start thinking about possible cleanup, closure, and transferring or terminating workers.

But the public image of Rocky Flats is what requires the most immediate attention. The plant needs a new name that reflects the plant’s new focus. Officials hold a name competition, open to plant employees and the general public.
Response is swift, and more than six hundred names are submitted, including a few from representatives of groups such as Citizens Against Nuclear Disinformation in Denver (CANDID). Suggestions include “Radiation Acres,” “Rad Rocks,” “Doom with a View,” “Never Dark Park,” “Hazy Heights,” “Glowing Waters,” and “Toxic Town.” One person notes that “Death Valley” is already taken.

It is not until 1994 that
Rocky Flats officials settle on a name they feel “best represents the changed mission of the site”: the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site (RFETS).

To his credit, DOE manager Mark Silverman calmly continues to face the press.
He knows he’s sitting on a time bomb. There’s enough radioactive waste on the plant premises to cover a football field to a depth of twenty feet. Plutonium lies in various stages of disarray and there is no safe, permanent storage site for radioactive waste, although some material is being shipped on a mostly temporary basis to the Nevada Test Site and the Envirocare Company in Utah.

The DOE projects that it will take at least until 2065 and cost American taxpayers more than $40 billion to marginally clean up the nuclear waste at Rocky Flats.
A DOE official comments to the Senate Armed Services Committee that some weapons plants, like Rocky Flats, may never be cleaned up because the technology to do so at a reasonable cost doesn’t exist.

I
DECIDE
to go see my father.

My life in the duplex with the boys is cramped but good. My brother has moved back to Colorado, and he and his wife live next door—they have two small daughters, and I have my two boys, so we decide to join forces. Kurt is always ready to show up on the doorstep with a beer in hand. My mother stops in when she gets off her shift at work. The boys and I have a cat, Jasmine, and a pair of honey-white doves who sing us awake each morning. I divide my time among taking classes, driving the boys to school, and trying to pick up enough freelance writing to keep the bills paid. But they won’t stay paid. I lie awake at night, worrying about the utilities and the groceries and the rent.

I adopt the time-tested family strategy for getting through tough times: add another pet to the household. A friend’s dog has puppies, and suddenly the boys and I are owners of a goofy, floppy-eared, pink-bellied basset hound with big paws and wrinkly bags under deep-set eyes. We name him Heathcliff because of his general good looks.

Some nights when I can’t sleep I pull Heathcliff—who seems to double in size every week—up on the bed with me. The slow rhythm of his puppy breath is a comfort.

One evening my mother informs me that my father is in the hospital. It’s the same thing as always—health problems related to his drinking—but this time, she says, it’s worse. Critical, in fact.

Sean and Nathan have never met their grandfather.

The next day I drive to the hospital, bundle the boys into their double stroller, push it into the main lobby, and ask for my dad’s room number. At the nurses’ station, the broad-shouldered nurse is solicitous but circumspect and I have the feeling, as I have often had in the past, that others manage to connect with my father, to find him funny and smart and endearing, in ways that I can’t.

I peer into the room, where he is lying under a white blanket. He looks up and I see his face is gaunt.

“Hi, Kris,” he says in a guttural voice. His speech is thick and clotted.

“Hi,” I say. “How are you?” The question seems formal and ridiculous.

“I’m all right,” he says. “They haven’t killed me off yet.” He has an IV taped to his hand and his skin looks yellow. He waves his other hand in the air. “So who have you got there?”

“This is Sean.” I start to lift Sean out of the stroller and then change my mind when I see the nurse standing in the doorway, hands on her hips, as if my time were already up. “And this is Nathan.” I brush the top of Nathan’s head. Both boys gaze at him.

“Well, hello, guys,” Dad says. He sits up slightly.

“This is your grandpa,” I say solemnly. Nathan is too young to fully understand. Sean just smiles. Dad looks at them briefly and then settles back into his pillow, as if he’s too tired to do anything more. He closes his eyes. The nurse steps forward with a stern look.

“I hope you feel better soon,” I say. Inept. Absurd.

“Thanks, Kris.” He opens his eyes. “Can you find your way out of here?”

“No problem, Dad.” I feel like touching his hand, his fingertips, and then decide against it. I adjust the boys in their stroller and turn to go.
Outside, I whirl around to face the nurse, who’s a half-step behind me. “What’s his condition? What’s wrong with him?”

She stands silent.

“I’m his daughter.”

She purses her lips. “Only certain people who are on a list are supposed to know about his condition.”

I feel chagrined.

“It’s his heart,” she concedes. There is no compassion for me in her voice, just a statement of fact. She wants me to leave.

“And his blood alcohol level?”

“Is high.” She takes my elbow and walks us down the corridor toward the elevator.

“Will you let me know if he gets worse?”

She avoids my eyes. “We’ll take good care of him,” she says.

E
ACH MORNING
over coffee I scour the want ads. I need a job with flexible hours that pays well, and I’ve had enough of waitressing. And then, there it is, a large ad: administrative skills, flexible hours, $12.92 an hour. The Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site is hiring.
Start Immediately
, it says.

The Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site? They must have fixed things up out there, I think. And it’s just down the road. I debate whether or not it’s safe to work there. The money is sorely tempting, and I reason to myself that if there is contamination out there, I’ve already been exposed to it. After all, I grew up with it. A little more won’t hurt, will it? Most of all, though, I want to see what it’s like inside. My childhood has been shadowed by two enormous fears: my father’s alcoholism and Rocky Flats. Maybe I can demystify one of them.

I call the number and make an appointment with what turns out to be the Sunnyside Temp Agency. “I’m calling about the Rocky Flats job,” I say.

“Yes, we’ve been getting a lot of response to that,” the receptionist replies. “We’re not associated directly with the Department of Energy or EG&G,” she adds. “We just provide contract workers. Secretaries, file
clerks, that sort of thing. You’ll need to come to our office for testing and an interview.”

At nine the next morning I show up at their office near downtown Denver, in a skirt and pantyhose. The pantyhose are a big concession; since middle school I’ve hated that tight Spandex feel. They’re hot and uncomfortable. Men don’t have to stuff themselves into sausage casings.

The temp agency’s office is in a high-tech building, all glass and steel, and it’s nice: plush carpet, piped-in Muzak, dark wood furniture. Several women of various ages, all looking somewhat resigned, sit in the waiting room. I fill out pages of paperwork: employment history, education, what software programs I’m familiar with. I don’t need to go through a background check, as I won’t have a Q, or high-security, clearance. “Government grunt work,” the woman next to me murmurs as she fills out the same paperwork. “We’re going to be peons.”

“Why is Rocky Flats hiring?” I whisper.

“Big layoffs. They need temp workers to take their place.”

I hand my clipboard to the receptionist and mention casually that I’m a Ph.D. candidate at the university.

“Oh, we don’t care about that,” she chirps. “We just need to know how fast you can type.”

It’s been years since I’ve taken a typing test, and I’m suddenly as nervous as a cat. “You can have a few minutes to warm up,” the receptionist says. “And then I’ll turn on the timer.” She leaves me in front of a keyboard and a blank computer screen. For lack of a better idea, I type my name over and over again.
Kristen Kristen Kristen Kristen Kristen
.

“Ready?” She smiles. Her makeup is flawless, eyes and lips outlined against a porcelain mask. “Here you go.” She sets a paper next to the screen. “You have ten minutes. Type as fast as you can. Each mistake counts.”

I begin typing, a row of numbers and then the same sentence over and over.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
.

The timer rings and she tallies up the result. “Oh, my dear,” she whispers, leaning close to my ear. “Would you like to try that again?”