Full Body Burden

by Kristen Iversen

  Both my parents feel a little panicked.

  I’ve shot up like a weed, Grandma Claire says. I hunch down in my desk at school. I drink coffee on the sly when she scolds that it will stunt my growth.

  Tonka suddenly seems like a pony. At fourteen and a half hands, he’s on the small side as far as horses go. But my father knows a man at the local racetrack—the same place where our neighbor Bini Abbott buys many of her horses—and the man has a horse. A mare, a tall Thoroughbred mix, too old and used-up at four years of age to make it at the racetrack but maybe a good kid’s horse or broodmare. Her bloodlines are good, he says. Her name is Sassy Cowboy. I call her Sassy.

  On a startling fall day we hitch up the trailer to pick her up. The sun burns bright and the aspen leaves glitter like gold coins. Sassy is a tall, elegant sorrel with a white stripe down her nose. She’s jumpy and nervous and we have to coax her into the horse trailer with horse candy.

  “Is she broke to ride?” my dad asks. “Or just broke to race?”

  “Not saddle broke exactly.” The man stands back with a rope of tobacco chew tucked under his lower lip. “Just go slow. She’s a good gal. The track makes ’em a little crazy.”

  That’s all right with me. We don’t mind a little crazy at our house.

  Sassy is old for a racehorse, but in real horse years she’s a youngster. She gallops back and forth across our back pasture at full speed, bucking and farting in bursts of energy and general high jinks that cause the other horses to snort and stamp their feet. She loves it when the chinook winds blow down strong and hard from the mountains. All our animals act a little crazy when the chinooks hit. She stretches her nose out like a greyhound, shaking her mane back and forth like supermodel Christie Brinkley.

  We fall in love slowly. She lips up horse candy from my palm and the back pocket of my jeans and rests her head on my shoulder, but she’s skittish about having a rider. It’s not long, though, before I can swing up on her back and sit while she finishes her dinner mash. We gradually work up to a walk, then a trot, then a slow gallop. I curry her coat into a high sheen and varnish her hooves. She’s the most beautiful horse in the neighborhood. Sometimes, when we go for long rides around Standley Lake, I bring Tonka along on a halter lead. He takes two steps for every one of Sassy’s, but he always enjoys the trip.

  It’s getting harder to find places to ride. When we first moved to Bridledale, Karma and I could gallop down dirt roads and across fields and ride all the way to the Tastee Freeze in Broomfield for chocolate dip cones. Now there are houses in the way.

  RABBITS AREN’T the only animals people are starting to wonder about. Cattle graze on land near Rocky Flats, cattle that are eventually shipped to the stockyards and slaughterhouse on the far side of Denver. In early December 1974, residents wake up to a shocking headline in the Rocky Mountain News: CATTLE NEAR ROCKY FLATS SHOW HIGH PLUTONIUM LEVEL. An Enviromental Protection Agency (EPA) study has found that cattle in a pasture just east of Rocky Flats have more plutonium in their lungs than cattle grazing on land at the Nevada Test Site, where the United States conducted hundreds of aboveground nuclear explosions in the 1950s and 1960s. Plutonium, uranium, americium, tritium, and strontium are found in measurable quantities in the cows’ bodies, and levels of plutonium in the lungs and tracheo-bronchial lymph nodes of the cows are especially high.

  My family’s not too worried. “They’re always finding something out there,” my mother says. “The turkeys from Jackson’s always taste fine.”

  Marcus Church is outraged. “People don’t want to buy my cattle,” he tells Howard Holme, the young attorney who’s just started work on his case. “They think they’re contaminated. I’ve cooperated with the plant in the past, but something needs to be done.”

  ERDA and officials at Rocky Flats challenge the test results, and a month later the EPA changes its mind and says that the conclusions are based on too little data. Nonetheless, Church, along with other landowners, continues to press his suit against the federal government and the operators of Rocky Flats based on the allegation that the plant has contaminated surrounding properties, driving property values down.

  Attorney Howard Holme grew up in Denver, attended Stanford University and then Yale Law School, and was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. He jumps at the chance to work on the Rocky Flats case. He begins reading piles of documents about the 1957 and 1969 fires, the accidents, the leaks, and the ongoing problems with soil and water contamination. He knows plutonium is dangerous. The question for the court is, how much plutonium constitutes actual risk?

  Holme employs a number of scientists and physicists to examine the data, and hires physicist Steven Chinn specifically to evaluate health risks. Multiple regression analysis is considered one of the most effective means of doing epidemiological analysis to determine what might cause an increase in cancer or other health effects. Using computers, Chinn conducts a multiple regression analysis examining the residents of each census block around Rocky Flats in comparison to more than a hundred criteria, including socioeconomic class, education, age, gender, income, and—most important—where they live with respect to previously measured levels of plutonium in the soil, correlated with soil measurements following the two major fires.

  The pretrial statement painstakingly prepared by Howard Holme and Steven Chinn is five hundred pages long. A review of all the studies, consultation with national and international experts, and the regression analysis show that there is, indeed, a rise in cancer that can be attributed to Rocky Flats. Not only is off-site land generally contaminated, but there are also isolated “hot spots.” The Holme Report, as it comes to be called, concludes that the plant has been highly negligent, with results including fires, accidents, and poor storage of waste plutonium. In addition to the thousands of leaking oil drums left out in the open, plutonium, uranium, americium, curium, and neptunium have seeped from waste ponds. The report concludes, however, that most of the contamination resulted from the 1957 fire, which burned through the entire plenum of filters and completely melted the top of the ten-story smokestack, releasing an unknown amount of plutonium and other materials into the air. Church’s attorneys claim that even though facts regarding the plant’s contamination are still forthcoming, negative publicity alone has stripped the remaining Church land of its value. The Denver area is growing rapidly and development in other areas has soared, but homes and properties in the Arvada area are not as valuable. Less cancer was found in Boulder, which is upwind of Rocky Flats, and property values are much higher. Could all of that be chance? Holme asks.

  Church and his attorneys eventually submit a formal claim against the Energy Department, asking for millions of dollars in damages. “It is as if the government had moved a tiger in a papier-mâché cage onto land adjoining the plaintiffs’ lands,” Holme writes. “Maybe the paper cage will hold, but no man in his right mind is going to move next door and find out.”

  But many residents are unaware of the tiger next door, or they refuse to take it very seriously. Houses continue to creep up to the edge of the buffer zone, an area surrounded by three strands of barbed wire and an occasional No Trespassing sign. The three-string barbed wire around the buffer zone is a dare. Karma and I ride along on Sassy and Chappie and take turns kicking the metal signs with the toes of our cowboy boots, daring each other to crawl under the wire.

  One afternoon Randy Sullivan is riding in a car with two friends. They drive along Indiana Street, just north of the east gate of Rocky Flats. Neither he nor his friends know much about Rocky Flats—they’ve heard, like the rest of us, that the plant makes cleaning supplies. Randy lives in Meadowgate, but his family owns open land near Rocky Flats and the boys often hang out there or host late-night keggers with other kids from school.

  There’s an argument in the car and the boys pull over to the side of the road. Randy stands back as his two friends argue. No fists, nothing serious. Suddenly a guard in full uniform appears.

  “What are
you guys doing?”

  The boys stop and stare. The man is armed.

  “Nothing, sir,” Randy says.

  “Do you know this is Rocky Flats?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can’t you read this sign?” The guard points to a sign hanging from the barbed-wire fence.

  “It says ‘No Trespassing,’ ” Randy’s friend says. “We weren’t trespassing.”

  “Can’t you read the sign?”

  The boys know what else the sign says: “Use of Deadly Force Is Authorized by Presidential Order.”

  What they don’t know is that due to “increasing terrorist activity,” guards at fourteen nuclear sites around the country—including Rocky Flats—are now under orders to shoot to kill. M-16 rapid-fire rifles have replaced .38-caliber revolvers and all Energy Department facilities have new armored personnel carriers.

  “Get in that car,” the guard orders. “Don’t come back.”

  Despite the voluminous documentation, the judge assigned to the Church lawsuit refuses to set a trial date. The case drags on and on. Marcus Church doesn’t live to see the results. Just before his death in 1979, he tells his nephew, Charlie Church McKay, to keep fighting the lawsuit. Hang on to the land, he says. Keep fighting.

  OUR NEIGHBORHOOD is transient. The oil business, the airline industry, and the changing workforce at Rocky Flats mean that people move in and out. Tina moves away. I miss her, but not without some small sense of relief. I’ve become a solitary sort. My mother’s reading tastes have changed, and so have mine. She still reads racy thrillers with bosomy heroines on the covers, but once in a while something else sneaks in. The Gulag Archipelago. Love Story. Emerson’s Essays. Jonathan Livingston Seagull. One afternoon I find a copy of John Updike’s Couples under her bed and I’m thrown into a new realm of reading. From Couples I move on to John Barth and Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and John Irving, and then back to Updike again, books I buy with my own money and hide under my own bed. I want to be a writer. It seems impossible.

  Arvada grows so quickly that the high school can’t accommodate all the incoming students. The school board decides to do a split session until a new high school, Pomona, is built near all the new neighborhoods east of Rocky Flats. Half the students will attend school from early morning until noon, and the other half from noon to early evening. I pull the first shift, which means riding to school in the dark and having chemistry class so early in the morning it makes my head ache.

  Our house has changed. The sod never really takes, and the front lawn, which slopes sharply to the driveway, begins to look dry and rough. The split-rail fence we’ve plastered with linseed oil splinters and cracks in the dry heat and the horses get out. Barney still visits the Smiths’ garden. Their daughter, Tamara, rides with a local riding club called the Westernaires. Karma and I ride with the same club.

  Mr. Smith has few kind words for our wayward pony, who can open any gate. Sassy doesn’t wait for a fallen rail; with a good enough start she jumps the fence with no problem. She’s more sociable than naughty. I can always find her touching noses with the horses up the street.

  One Sunday afternoon my father declares he’s going riding. He pays for the horse feed, he declares, so he might as well get some benefit from it. Karma and I exchange glances. As far as we know, he’s never ridden a horse in his life.

  Comanche seems to be the sturdiest bet. We call him to the gate and saddle him up. Comanche’s eyes are wide, ears pricked, and he sidesteps nervously when dad swings up into the saddle. Karma hands him the reins. “You need to pull the reins up shorter,” she says. “You can’t let them hang like that. Do you know how to make him turn?”

  “Yup,” Dad says. His speech is a little slurred and his breath is strong. He settles into the saddle, looks up to the house to see if our mother is watching—she is—and claps both legs hard against Comanche’s sides. Comanche bolts.

  The gate is open and they fly out of our pasture, galloping heavily across the wooden bridge over the irrigation ditch and down the path that leads to Standley Lake. My father leans far back in the saddle, one hand on the saddle horn, the other arm in the air, reins flying out in either direction, a loose, flapping version of a Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider. Comanche is not an elegant animal and he gallops forcefully, running hard and spooked like he’s got the devil on his back. Karma looks stunned. I can’t breathe. They gallop around and around the field, barely missing trees, barbed wire, and fenceposts.

  They are completely out of control.

  I can’t tell for sure, but I think my dad is grinning.

  When they return, they’re both spent. Comanche is covered with sweat, his flanks heaving. My father’s hair is whipped by the wind and he, too, is breathless, his face shiny with perspiration. But he dismounts with the air of a conqueror.

  “Thanks,” he says as he hands the reins to Karma.

  “I think he wants to kill himself,” my mother mutters that evening over hamburger casserole. “What did he think he was doing?”

  I say nothing. I adore my mother, but I fear for her. She seems helpless, caught in the vortex of my father’s dark moods and unpredictable behavior. I try never to displease her. I love the scent of Juicy Fruit gum on her breath and the hint of Joy perfume on her neck, the crisp crinkle of her hair stiff with aerosol spray and the chipped pink polish on her nails. I study her closely, just as closely as I watch my father, vigilant for the slightest hint of a crack, a slip, a breakdown. We are always on the edge of catastrophe.

  “Everything will be all right,” I say. I look around at my siblings at the table, sunburned and hungry. Kurt grins. We’ll be all right.

  MANY THINGS occur in my father’s life that we’re not supposed to know about. Car accidents. Missed appointments. Nights in jail. One afternoon my mother drives us all to the courthouse, where we sit in a row on the front bench and watch as our father comes out in a jumpsuit. “He has to be able to get to work, Your Honor,” the attorney says. “He has to support this wonderful family.” My mother nudges us and we stand. “Hold your heads up straight,” she whispers. The judge takes pity, but for weeks we don’t see our dad. He goes to work during the day and returns to the jailhouse at night. “Is he in jail?” Kurt asks. My mother won’t answer directly. “He loves you,” she says. “He loves you all very much, but he just can’t be here right now.”

  Sometimes I find myself counting the days until I graduate from high school. I have to get away. But then I feel guilty. “You kids are spoiled,” my mother reminds us. “Pets and horses, and this big house!” She complains about the house—it’s too much work, inside and out, and the mortgage sometimes goes unpaid—but she loves it all the same. “Your father and I would do anything for you,” she says.

  The court lets Dad come home for good, though we still rarely see him. Some nights, when he comes home very late, my mother will ask one of us to stay with her in the bedroom and be there to help block the door. She keeps a baseball bat in the front closet. “Just in case,” she says. All bark, no bite, my brother says, but we all stand ready to rescue her. Together we hide under the stairs with the baseball bat.

  “Why don’t you leave him?” Karin demands. “Why don’t you stand up to him?”

  “I can’t say anything to your dad,” she says. “He has a hard enough time as it is.” Besides, she says, she made a commitment. “That’s what marriage is. A commitment.”

  My sisters and I whisper that we will never marry.

  “And your father loves you,” she reminds us. “He just can’t show it.”

  EACH OF us thinks about running away at one time or another. We live in a house where the rules are inconsistent or nonexistent, and the contours of our lives constantly change. Some nights, just to get out of the house, I sleep with a blanket on the trampoline in the backyard, gazing up at the stars, wishing the time would pass more quickly and I could leave for college, for a job, for a boy, for anything.

  One afternoon, after a long night of hearing ou
r parents argue, Karma stands at the top of the stairs, listening to our mother on the phone. Suddenly she is filled with a muted sense of rage. She returns to her room, takes some clothes out of her dresser drawer, and quietly slips down the stairs. She saddles up Tonka—her new hand-me-down, now that I have Sassy—and puts the clothes in her leather saddlebag. She’s accustomed to long rides, usually by herself, and she loves to gallop over the hills and fields. She feels most comfortable when she’s out in the landscape. It’s dusk when she and Tonka reach the box canyon at Leyden, a secluded spot near the train tracks just before the foothills where high school kids sometimes go to drink and make out. The spot is empty now except for broken beer bottles.

  With her jacket bunched under her head for a pillow, she lies on the ground and looks up at the black sky riddled with stars. The night is cool but not cold, and Tonka stands peacefully over her. No one will find them here, she thinks, and she’s right. No one comes looking.

  She wakes when the sun strikes her face. The ground is rocky and her knees are stiff with cold. Suddenly she realizes she’s hungry. How foolish not to bring food, or even a sleeping bag! Tonka is hungry, too, and nuzzles her pockets for horse candy. But what to do? She has no money—she’s eleven and too young for a job. She can’t stay here, but she doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

  Feeling like a whipped puppy with its tail between its legs, she turns Tonka toward home. She’ll have to face the music. It won’t be pleasant.