I hate the small things, too. I’m too thin. I’m not thin enough. My hair is too fine and straight. I’m awkward and clunky and can’t speak in class. I’m painfully shy, scared of boys, and blush crimson at a moment’s notice. Tall as a giraffe, I wear moccasins to school to make myself seem shorter. I can’t bear to look at myself in a mirror.
I hate the way my father smolders with anger and how I can tell he’s been drinking by his eyes, hard and dark. The way he drives, erratic, distracted, his cold eyes blurry, barely watching the road. I hate the way he disapproves of me. I’m a straight-A student, but it seems nothing I do is good enough. He criticizes my clothes, my hair, my weight, my friends.
I hate the way my mother simmers with fear. The way she keeps up appearances and covers things up. The way she slips off to her room at any sign of trouble and lies on the bed with her eyes closed, saying prayers to herself. The way she says, “I gave up everything for you kids. Everything.”
ROCKY FLATS is also interested in keeping up appearances, but Dow Chemical is finding it increasingly hard to do. At the 1970 congressional hearing on the Mother’s Day fire, behind closed doors, Major General Edward Giller described Rocky Flats as “old, outmoded and increasingly hazardous … old, crowded, the equipment corroded, and it has reached the state of [words censored as top secret].” He talked about tanks that were open and vented to the environment, ongoing leakages from cracks in the concrete holding ponds, and other problems. The AEC report following the 1969 fire called for substantial improvements. But in the three years since the fire, safety and fire protection work on some of the key facilities has slowed or stopped, particularly in the plutonium recovery building and liquid plutonium waste treatment facility.
In January 1972, James Hanes becomes the fourth general manager of Dow’s Rocky Flats Division. In a statement to the press, Hanes says that plans are in the works for a new plutonium recovery facility, and ongoing improvements are designed to make Rocky Flats “as safe as is technically feasible.” He emphasizes, however, that “the improvements being made shouldn’t imply that Rocky Flats is unsafe.”
Supported by tax dollars, Rocky Flats has cost the federal government and American taxpayers more than $620 million over the plant’s twenty years of operation.
MY SISTER Karma loves to ride as much as I do. I’m on Tonka, who’s still not quite trained, and Karma’s on the witless but fun-loving Chappie. We ride as far as we can go and still get back by dark. We gallop bareback across the fields, flying until the horses are slick with sweat: down Alkire and Indiana streets, past the scattered houses and barns and the barbed-wire Rocky Flats fences with the Keep Out signs. We slow down, finally, to a trot back along the creek and stop to cool off at Standley Lake. We twist our hands in their manes, and Tonka and Chappie splash down eagerly into the water until it reaches their shoulders. Suddenly the underwater shelf ends and we all plunge into the cold, deep water, Tonka striking out with his front legs, galloping and then swimming hard and fast, his head just above water, nose high, nostrils extended, eyes ringed white with excitement. The lake water is frigid. I look over at my sister and she’s laughing, gulping air. The water reaches my neck, and my lungs feel frozen. “Let’s turn back!” I yell, and we turn the horses around, paddling, swimming steadily now, beginning to tire. We emerge, dripping, and wait to let the horses have a good shake. “Race you back!” Karma calls, and it’s a dead heat, hooves pounding, until we get to our pasture gate. We’re dry from the wind and aching with exhaustion when we slide off and take the horses into the barn for their supper.
There was no sign of the dead cow.
In Colorado the air turns cold at night, even in the summer. One evening, just as the sun is setting, I head down to call Tonka to his dinner. There is a large pasture shared by all the neighbors, where we can let our horses graze and enjoy a little more room to gallop around. Several horses stand idly in the field, but Tonka’s not there. I walk out into the pasture and find him in the swamp, a wide swath of mud and reeds fed by the irrigation ditch.
Stupid horse. He likes to nibble on the fine, thin grass that grows at the edge of the swamp, and the cool mud keeps the flies off.
But this time he doesn’t come when I call. He stands as stiff as a statue, almost completely submerged. His head and neck strain high above the black muck and he’s shivering. His eyes are glazed and he doesn’t recognize me.
The sun dips below the mountains and the temperature drops a little more.
I’m not sure what to do. There’s no one to help. I think of Walt, the neighbor up the street. Walt has a big white pickup with a winch on the front. He’s the first to go out and rescue cars stuck in driveways from mud or snow. The black swamp mud that oozes across the pasture toward Standley Lake is as treacherous as quicksand and as sticky as glue.
It takes me ten minutes to run as fast as I can to Walt’s house—will Tonka sink by then?—and pound on his door. He’s home, having supper with his wife and boys. “How long has Tonka been in there?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “He’s numb.”
Walt throws a rope in the back of the truck and we bounce down the dirt road to the pasture in a flurry of dust and rock. He backs up to the swamp and anchors one end of the rope to the truck. He leaves the headlights on. Without hesitation he wades into the mud, clothes and everything. It’s as thick as wet cement. Tonka doesn’t move. Walt throws a lasso and loops the end around Tonka’s neck and shoulders. Black mud spatters up on Walt’s neck and he wipes it from his eyes with his thumb. He pulls himself out, slams into the cab, and puts the truck in gear.
The rope strains. Nothing happens. Walt blares the horn and I nearly jump out of my skin. He pulls again. Nothing. He hops out. “He’s pretty far gone,” he says. “He’s lost the will.” He wades heavily back into the mud and starts slapping Tonka around the head and neck. He’s a muscular man and the blows are hard.
“What are you doing?” I yell.
“Waking him up,” he shouts. He slaps a hand across Tonka’s haunches. “Come on, you old thing!” He reaches over to Tonka’s head and pulls down an ear, bellowing into the soft cavity. “Wake up!” he yells. “Move it!”
Tonka startles. His head jerks up.
“That’s it,” Walt shouts. “Wake up! Wake up, old buddy!” He slaps him again. Tonka shudders, hard, and tries to shake himself.
Walt shoulders his way out of the mud. “Yell at him, Kris. Yell!”
I feel frozen, too, but I make myself react. “Tonka!” I shout.
The truck roars to life. Walt blares the horn again and Tonka’s eyes startle and clear. He puts the truck in gear again and pulls the rope tight, tighter, and finally Tonka scrambles out like a spider tugging from a web, the mud sucking his legs and clinging like filmy glue to his skin.
“Take him up to the house,” Walt says as he unties the rope. “Wash him down with warm water, give him a hot mash. Watch him. Sometimes they get pneumonia after that.”
“Pneumonia?” Hard shivers move up and down Tonka’s body.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “It looks like he’ll be fine.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I mean, thanks a lot.”
“No problem,” Walt says. “You could probably use some supper yourself. Go tell your mom the horse is okay.” He puts his hand on my shoulder.
Tonka spends the night in our warm garage and is fine the next morning. I think of Walt from time to time, although I rarely see him and never get to know him very well. Some years later, when I learn he has died of cancer, I feel a sharp sense of loss. What kind of cancer? No one seems to know. It’s not polite to ask questions.
There seem to be many cancer illnesses and deaths in our neighborhood. Karma, Karin, and I whisper about it from time to time. It scares us. “There are all these big houses with sick people inside of them!” Karma says. “Scary cancers, too. Like tumors and things.” But no one mentions Rocky Flats. After all, you can get cancer from just about anything. Teflo
n, for example. Or overcooked hamburgers. Everyone knows that.
HARVEY NICHOLS has been following the news at Rocky Flats closely. A new assistant biology professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Dr. Nichols has just completed his postdoc work in the biology department at Yale. His wife is a nuclear physicist. In 1974 Nichols is working on a National Science Foundation grant to study long-distance pollen transport in the Arctic when he’s asked by a biologist from the government if he’d like to work on a project tracking pollen at Rocky Flats. Nichols is interested. Is it possible, he wonders, that particles of radioactive material might attach to pollen? The question turns out to be almost moot. In the summer of 1975 he reports that the research team has found that “there [is] so much radioactive particulate matter out there, it [doesn’t] matter whether pollen [is] transporting it or not.” Years ago Dow Chemical had set up twenty-five air samplers, ten on-site and fifteen off-site, to detect radiation releases from the plant. Nichols’s team tests the filters from the samplers and discovers that they do not effectively detect smaller, lightweight airborne particles of plutonium, the size that can be easily inhaled.
Nichols takes it a step further. Given the heavy snowfall in the area, he’s curious about whether radioactive particles might attach to snow. He receives a grant from the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA, known today as the DOE) to test snow for radioactive particulate during the winter of 1975–76. The research team collects snow samples from the plant boundary all the way to Indiana Street to the east, a distance of nearly three miles. They collect freshly fallen snow, taking samples close to the soil and other samples from the top level of snow after a heavy snowfall of six to nine inches. The team then melts the snow and passes it through a series of very fine “millipore” filters for testing.
Researchers find radioactive particles at all levels.
Nichols finds it odd that the snow, which presumably is picking up plutonium contamination from the soil, also tests positive for radioactivity on the top layer after a heavy snowfall. He wonders if this could be new plutonium coming from ongoing radioactive emissions at Rocky Flats, and he asks an official directly. He is surprised when the answer is yes.
“Do you admit,” he repeats, “that you emit tiny amounts of plutonium out through your stacks as part of your routine operation?”
The official admits that this is the case.
“And do you regard that as dangerous?” Nichols asks.
In a surprisingly unguarded moment, the answer, again, is yes. But the official explains that there is no cause for alarm regarding public health.
But there should be concern, Nichols exclaims. Not only is there a great deal of radioactive particulate out there, but it’s moving constantly, like pieces of cork floating in water. It doesn’t “settle out,” he emphasizes, and the material will continue to be suspended in wind or snow, moving around and far beyond the plant site.
But no action is taken, and the government decides not to pursue further testing.
ONE AFTERNOON after school I reach the bus stop to find Adam waiting for me. Adam lives up the street and we’re in the same grade, but he hangs mostly with older kids. With longish brown hair and brown eyes, he’s as cute as David Cassidy. A pale mustache shadows his upper lip, and he has a dirt bike. “Hey,” he says. I look the other way. Some kids call me stuck-up behind my back, but the truth is I’m petrified. Adam occupies the unsteady territory between cool and geek, tending a little more toward cool. I tend a little more toward geek.
“Let’s race,” he says.
“What?”
“I challenge you. Me on my bike, you on your horse. Race you to the lake and back.”
“Today?” I need time to prepare and raise a little support. Boy versus girl, cool versus geek, dirt bike versus pinto pony.
“No,” he says. “Tomorrow. Three o’clock, right after school.”
“Fine.” A race is one thing, but a challenge is neighborhood jargon for a full-on formal battle, with spectators. You can’t turn it down. “Where?”
“At the barn gate.” This was the standard starting point for lake races.
“From the barn gate to Standley Lake?”
“Yeah. Past the pond, over the hill, first one to touch water.”
“You’re on.”
That night I give Tonka an extra helping of Omolene, an oat mix with extra molasses and vitamins.
At two forty-five the next afternoon, Tonka and I clop down the driveway and over the wooden bridge arching over the old Church irrigation ditch. Adam appears at the top of the hill on his bike and immediately slows, cutting the noise of his engine so as not to spook the other horses. The cottonwood trees are just starting to leaf out, and the air smells sweet. Tonka raises his nose in the air appreciatively and his front hooves dance. By the time we reach the barn gate, a small group of kids has gathered. We line up nose to fender.
“I’m the one who gets to say go,” I say.
Adam looks dubious. “Someone else should be the starter. A neutral party.” He glances toward our audience. The dirt bike purrs.
“You made the challenge, I make the rules.”
He laughs. “All right.” He wears no helmet, no gloves, just a T-shirt, jeans, and boots. He looks over at the kids on the fence and revs his engine for their approval.
I clap my heels into Tonka’s sides. “Go!” I shout. We’ve got a split-second advantage. He half-rears in surprise and leaps out front. Behind us the bike roars. Tonka hates dirt bikes. We catapult down the beaten path. From the corner of my eye I see Adam’s back tire spin briefly in the mud before it catches the track. I crouch low over Tonka’s neck, my face in his mane, eyes filled with tears from the wind. Tonka stretches his body as long as a greyhound. It sounds like the bike is right on our heels. We sweep across the field, around the edge of the pond, and up the hill. I see the lake. “Go, go, go!” I scream. Tonka’s ears press back flat against his head, catching my words, and he thunders to the top.
At the crest of the hill, Adam passes us in a blur of dust and oily smoke. The tall weeds slow him as he comes to the edge of the lake, but by then it’s beyond hope. I pull Tonka up in a long slide as Adam reaches down and splashes his hand in the water.
“Hey!” he says, smiling. He revs his engine.
“You won,” I say.
“You cheated.”
“You’re spooking my horse.”
“Sorry.” He cuts his engine and dips his head in mock apology. “No hard feelings, eh?”
The next afternoon Adam appears in my driveway, his bike purring, chrome and red enamel with an intoxicating scent of heat and grease and all that is forbidden.
“Want to go for a ride?” he asks.
“Where?”
“Out by Rocky Flats.”
I glance up at my parents’ window. No one’s home anyway.
“Okay.”
Adam unbuckles the helmet hanging from the back of the bike and fits it over my head. “Keep your legs away from the exhaust pipe or you’ll get burned,” he instructs. “And hang on tight. Lean into the curves.” He doesn’t wear a helmet. He steps on the bike and strips off his T-shirt. “I like to feel the wind,” he says.
I climb on the back and grip the sides of the seat as we motor down the driveway. We rumble slowly through the neighborhood and just as we reach 82nd Avenue, Adam reaches back, grabs my hands, and links them around his waist. “You’re gonna fall off unless you hang on the right way!” he yells, the wind taking his words.
We roar down the road. Suddenly I feel certain it is my last day on earth. The turn onto Alkire is sharp, but Adam doesn’t slow until we reach the east gate of the Rocky Flats plant.
“Was that fun?” he yells.
“Too fast!”
He can’t hear me. The wind is fierce.
“You’re going too fast!”
The next afternoon is a repeat, except we stop by the side of Walnut Creek at Indiana Street to kiss for a while
under a cottonwood tree. Adam’s mouth tastes like sunshine and wheat and sweat. This time I kiss back, and my heart races. The wind grows cool as the sun sets, and he shakes out his T-shirt and puts it around my shoulders.
OUR FAMILY Sunday drives continue, although somewhat more sporadically than before. My mother is a master of logistics. We gave up going to church as a family long ago, and now Sunday mornings are meant for sleeping. She has to work to get everyone out of bed and committed to the project. “Let’s go, kids!” she calls, standing at the bottom of the stairs in her pedal pushers and Keds, hair and makeup perfect. One by one we shuffle into the bathroom and tug combs through our tangled locks. My mother tries to fix our long, straight hair with frizzy perms that we endure once a month at the Arvada Beauty School, but they never take very well. Once we’re dressed she packs us girls into the backseat of the station wagon, side by side, and then puts down blankets and pillows in the back of the wagon for Kurt so he can lie flat, his leg in a long plaster cast from being bucked off by Comanche. In our household, someone is always falling off a horse. The cast is covered with autographs and illustrations from his horde of friends; he won’t let his sisters touch it.
“I guess you’ll have to look at the ceiling, honey,” Mom jokes.
“I can see fine,” he says. He props his pillow against the backseat and braces his foot against the rear window.
Mom slides behind the wheel and starts the engine. “Where’s your father?” she mutters. She taps the horn. A minute or two passes and she honks three short bursts. She rolls down the window and lights a cigarette. “I get so sick of this,” she says. She blows a thin stream of smoke and honks again.
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