My new digs are essentially the same, although the carpet is less worn. I am in a cubicle in a sea of cubicles. Only the managers—all male—have offices with windows on the perimeter. The two top managers from EG&G and the DOE walk around in crisp shirts with buttons pinned to their lapels: IT’S THE PLUTONIUM, STUPID, a play on President Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign slogan, “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” The DOE, with Hazel O’Leary serving as secretary of energy, claims a new honesty and openness. Even so, the truth about Rocky Flats—what’s stored there as well as the leaks, fires, accidents, and contamination problems—is classified and most people know little about it.
My immediate chain of command involves a team of two women who have been around for years and worked their way up the ranks. Debra and Diane are both senior administrative assistants who work directly under the managers, and they wield their power together, ruthlessly and with rigor. Everyone from project engineers to file clerks is more than a little terrified of Debra and Diane.
On my second day in the administration building, Debra, slightly younger and a little less authoritative than Diane, takes in my appearance and offers me some advice. “I know where you can get your nails done right,” she says. “If you’re going to work here, you should get your nails done. You don’t wear much makeup, do you?” Both Diane and Debra retouch their nails and page through fashion magazines when the managers are out of the office. They flirt with the project engineers. They’re famous for getting new secretaries transferred out immediately if they don’t like them.
Diane is downright dictatorial. “You can’t leave your desk without telling one of us,” she says. “Not even to go to the bathroom. We need to know where you are all the time.”
“I need permission to go to the bathroom?” I ask, incredulous. I’m not sure if this is Cold War security or just gratuitous hazing.
“Permission is needed for everything here,” she barks.
I slink back to my cubicle and privately make a note on a yellow stickie: Permission is needed for everything here. And Diane wears enough perfume to gag a goat. I put the stickie in my purse.
Even though production of plutonium triggers has ceased, stockpiled triggers are still being shipped to laboratories in California and New Mexico for analysis to determine their lifespan. They’re transported in specially designed high-security trucks that travel on roads and highways escorted but unannounced. And as in the past, Rocky Flats is involved in other work related to plutonium recovery and defense and weapons production.
No one talks about it, and managers keep their doors closed.
Some of the secretaries have husbands or boyfriends who are guards, or who work in the hot areas. Debra dates a guard. Guards have a reputation among the secretaries for being buff. Working out at the company gym for several hours every day is part of their job. There are strict divisions between employees at Rocky Flats. Blue collar versus white collar, DOE versus EG&G, managers versus hourly workers, guards versus firefighters, men versus women. But we’re all Cold War warriors, or at least that’s what people like to say.
I feel like an outsider, a rebel in hiding in more ways than one. But the mundane schedule, one day the same as the next, has a kind of mind-numbing comfort to it. Four hours each morning, half an hour for lunch, four hours in the afternoon, with two evenings and one day a week for my classes at the university. I type memos and letters and meeting minutes, and with my promotion-of-sorts I’m now tasked to type the weekly “Hot List,” a list of “incidents” or problems, milestones, and events that is sent to the higher-ups at the DOE in Washington at the end of each week. Everything is expressed in acronyms and euphemisms. An ROD is a “record of decision.” An OU is an “operable unit,” an “environmental restoration unit.” (On a Superfund site, areas to be cleaned up are divided up into OUs.) An IHSS is an “individual hazardous substance site.”
I learn that MUF is “material unaccounted for,” that is, missing plutonium. I write about solvent spills and steam leaks and problem solar ponds, the 881 Hillside and its secret long-buried waste, and the West Spray Fields, where contaminated waste is sprayed out onto open fields: contaminated groundwater and carbon tetrachloride, radionuclides, and bacterial waste; sewage sludge and plutonium- and uranium-contaminated waste and plutonium-bearing nitric acid solution.
I hate being a secretary. Word processors are standard, but I miss the old Selectric at my dad’s office, where I could bang the keys and get a satisfying whir of the type ball and a firm clunk of the letter on the page. Some memos and letters I type have my initials, lowercase, at the bottom, a tiny emblem of a young would-be writer whose initials fly off into the world under the signature of someone more important.
I don’t know what all the acronyms mean, and no one is eager to explain them to me. Frankly, I’m not sure I want to know. The Kafkaesque language has an anesthetizing sameness to it that’s both frightening and comforting. And I’m a little ashamed to admit to myself that perhaps I don’t particularly care. It’s a good paycheck, with decent hours, and I need the money.
There is a sense of bravado among the employees and I feel that, too. I don’t talk about Rocky Flats with anyone outside of the plant—not my family or friends, especially not my friends at the university. I say nothing to Sean and Nathan. I just know that I’m spending my days working next to some crazy amount of plutonium. It hasn’t killed me yet, I joke with the other secretaries and administrative assistants. We’re tough.
Yet part of me is petrified of the place, and always has been. Still, I want to see. I want to understand. I want to get on the inside and figure it all out. So I do what I always do: I take notes. At first it’s on envelopes and napkins and note pads and Post-its that I cram in my purse at the end of the day. Gradually I get a little bolder. Rarely is my purse searched; I can flirt with the security guys just as well as anyone else. I’ve been getting daily lessons from my immediate supervisors. I buy a small notebook and start keeping a daily journal. I am the post–Cold War Harriet the Spy, reporting from the front lines. Except that the Cold War isn’t really over. Here, just three miles from my childhood home, it’s alive and well.
Debra is full of advice on everything from fashion to dating. “If you ever have to go into one of the hot areas,” she advises, “take off your bra before you go. Those guys set the checkpoint so high that a bra with an underwire will set it off, and they like to make you take it off. They’re real bored down there. Watch out for the guards.” I intend to ask her if she follows her own advice, but she doesn’t give me the chance. “And watch out for the activists at the east gate when you come in. They’re always there. Boulder crazies. They’ll wave a sign at anything. Have you seen those kids with petitions? They don’t understand the issues. They’re just making a buck. They get fifty cents per name. It’s nothing but kids, hippies, and housewives.”
I hear the echo of my father in her words.
“Is it true what they’re saying about contamination?” I ask. “Is it really polluted out here?”
A look of anger crosses her face. “You’d have to ask a scientist. I don’t know. Who am I? Some of these guys really know what’s going on, but they don’t talk.”
I nod. One thing I do understand is silence.
“I’ve worked here for a long time,” she says. “Sure, there’s pollution all over the place. But I know someone who’s worked down in the Zone for thirty years. And there’s nothing wrong with him. Not a thing.”
THREE WEEKS later, on October 8, there is a serious “incident.” It takes place in Building 771 and involves the unauthorized draining of a process line containing plutonium-bearing nitric acid. Six days pass before the accident is reported to senior management. All plutonium operations immediately come to a halt. Three employees are terminated for failing to adhere to prescribed procedures, violating safety procedures, and other violations of the plant standards of conduct.
I wouldn’t have paid much attention if one
of the managers hadn’t offered to take me to lunch. And the lunch, it turns out, has an impact on my social status.
Hourly employees are required to stay on the plant site during their entire shift. Managers are excepted from this policy. One day Mr. K, a manager who seems very nice and profoundly unsuited for his job, asks me to lunch. He likes to stand around and chat, philosophizing about everything from politics to books to trying to guess how many people the DOE will lay off from one week to the next. “They always hire them back,” he says. “It’s never very long. Weeks. Days. Hours. Budget up, budget down.” He smiles. “I’ll drive you to Boulder,” he says. “I know a nice French place.”
No one looks up as I follow Mr. K past the row of desks and partitions. On the way out he shows me stacks and stacks of empty wooden containers, piled in rows behind the parking lot. “Those are from the pondcrete containers. Do you know about pondcrete?”
I shake my head.
We drive without comment to the restaurant and order before Mr. K begins to talk. I’m a little suspicious of his motives—the office is always buzzing with rumors of who might be having an affair. I guess it’s a distraction from wondering who might be next on the layoff list or who might be bringing in a little plutonium on the soles of their shoes. One manager, a short, self-assured man with a solid paunch, spends a good deal of time in the elevator with one of my cohorts, a prim secretary with mincing steps, tinted orange hair, and a ruffled blouse that’s a little too revealing. It’s a two-story building and the elevator occasionally seems to get stuck between the two floors when they’re inside. People talk.
But Mr. K has no such motive. He wants to talk about his job.
“I don’t belong there,” he says. “I never did. But what can I do? It’s a waiting game. Everyone’s waiting to get laid off. The salary and the benefits are too good to just quit.”
I nod.
“You can’t trust anyone, you know,” he says. “No one’s really accountable for anything. Everything is done by committee.”
I’ve heard this said before. We have sparkling water with lemon and rosemary chicken and chocolate napoleons for dessert. I’ve definitely used up my thirty minutes.
Over napoleons, Mr. K explains the pondcrete. The solar ponds. The 903 Pad. The spray irrigation. The leaking plutonium processing line. “The plant is a mess,” he says. “When the raid happened, everything just stopped and plutonium was stuck on the production line. Plutonium is stored in various stages all over the plant. It’s nothing but a big shell game.”
I recall how some of the employees have talked about the big sprinklers used for the spray irrigation. “That water is green!” someone joked. “Maybe it’s the guacamole from the cafeteria!” I’ve heard talk of all the stranded plutonium as well, but Mr. K is starting to sound a little paranoid to me.
“I never go down to the hot areas,” I say. “I can’t, anyway. I don’t have a Q clearance.”
He puts down his fork. “You don’t plan to make a career of this, do you?”
“No,” I say. “I’m just a graduate student who needs a job.”
“Good,” he says. “With luck we’ll both be out of here.”
We get back to the office just as the overhead lights start flickering. A voice comes over the PA system. “If the lights go out, do not be nervous,” it says. “I repeat. Do not be nervous. Technicians are working.”
“It’s the commies,” Mr. K says, winking.
The PA comes on again. “Thank you for your attention. Have a nice day.”
IT’S BEEN a year since I’ve seen my father. Halloween nears, and Sean and Nathan decide they want to dress up like puppies, with big ears and brown splotches like Heathcliff. One day after school we drive to the craft store so I can buy patches of felt. I’m no seamstress, but I think I can glue brown and black patches of felt onto white sweatpants and T-shirts. With makeshift tails and ears, it might work.
As we pull into the entrance of the shopping center, a yellow cab suddenly appears and veers sharply in front of me. I hit the brakes. For a moment I’m sure we’re about to be hit—and then the cab is gone. But not before I catch a glimpse of the driver.
I coast into a parking spot and turn off the engine. My hands are shaking.
“Are you okay, Mom?” Sean asks.
“I’m fine.” I rest my head for a moment on the wheel. “I know that person.”
“Who? The person who almost hit us?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it?”
“That was your grandpa, honey.” I regret the words as soon as I say them. “He didn’t see us,” I say. “He didn’t know who we were.” I start the engine and we drive home, our errand temporarily forgotten.
DEBRA AND Diane decide that I am a friend.
Debra wears high heels at work—three-inch minimum—but she keeps a pair of tennis shoes under her desk. On her lunch break, if the weather is nice enough, she walks briskly around the plant for exercise, all the way down the hill, past the 300 and 700 buildings with their chain-link fences and razor wire, and up the other side, where the buildings are more open. “Join me,” she says.
It feels like an invitation to a secret club.
On sunny autumn days, it’s a breathtaking view. On one side lie the mountains; on the other, a landscape dotted with houses that stretch all the way to Denver. “The air is so clean here,” Debra says. “It comes down right off the mountains.” We catch glimpses of rabbits and groundhogs in the grass. A pair of bald eagles has been sighted near Standley Lake.
We walk past a large, flat graveled area cordoned off with what looks like yellow police tape. A few oil barrels stand upright, and parts of the area are under a tent. It looks like they’re preparing for a wedding or a rock concert.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Oh, that,” Debra says. “That’s the 903 Pad.” She walks quickly, arms moving up and down to keep her heart rate up. The thousands of barrels are gone and parts of the area are covered with gravel and asphalt.
“Why is it roped off?”
“There’s some plutonium that leaked out there.”
I reach out and touch the yellow ribbon. I’m struck by the memory of my sister Karma and me, riding our horses around the perimeter of the plant, kicking the No Trespassing signs with the toes of our cowboy boots.
“What’s the difference between one side of the ribbon and the other?”
“Oh, we don’t have to worry about that,” Debra assured me. “They say this side is safe.”
“How does the plutonium know to stay on that side of the line?”
“It knows. Plutonium doesn’t travel.”
When I return to my desk, Anne—the secretary who greeted me on the first day, with a photo of her daughter on her desk—is ruefully watching the phone lines. “I’m holding down the fort,” she chirps. “Everyone’s still at lunch.” Anne has warmed up to me, too. I’ve also discovered she’s a little more subversive than the others. She asks whether I’ve been out walking and I say yes. It still feels odd to be wearing a skirt with white socks and tennis shoes, but there’s no place to change clothes. A little bit of sunshine at lunch makes it easier to sit in my cubicle all afternoon. It helps keep up my energy, which has been lagging lately.
A week earlier after class, I stopped in the student health center to meet with a doctor. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I said. “I don’t feel right. I’m always tired, and it’s been going on for a while.”
They take some blood tests. I’m waiting for the results.
“Did you see any of those Preble mice?” Anne asks. This is a running joke in the company. Recently the EPA started a petition to protect the tiny Preble’s meadow jumping mouse, possibly the rarest small mammal in North America, which apparently likes to live in the Rocky Flats buffer zone.
“I guess they’re too small to see,” I joke.
Anne’s not joking. She leans forward. “Here’s the thing,” she whispers. “They’re
more concerned about protecting some damned rodent than they are about protecting people.”
I DISCOVER a kindred spirit at Rocky Flats. Patricia is also a graduate student at the University of Denver, working as an administrative assistant. She plans to quit at Christmas. “I’m out of here,” she says. “This place is looney tunes. But it’s good money.” She’s smart and funny and, in her dark-rimmed glasses, already looks like an English professor. We meet for lunch on the patio outside the administration building and gossip about our departments.
One day she brings a friend along, a technical writer who’s here for only a few months. He’s tall and skinny and his dark-rimmed glasses match Patricia’s. We break into our brown-bag lunches and start talking about what really goes on at Rocky Flats.
“It’s not actually a bomb,” Patricia says.
“Right,” I say.
“Well, what is it then?” he asks.
“A pit,” I say.
“That’s a bomb,” he says.
“No, it’s not,” I say. I should know. I’ve been typing pages and pages about pits.
“A pit is only a critical component of a nuclear bomb,” says Patricia with authority. She’s been typing pages and pages, too. “It’s not the bomb itself.”
He laughs. “Are you girls kidding me?” He cracks open a soda.
“No,” we reply in unison.
“That’s like saying that water is only a critical component of the ocean. Or that the planets are merely critical components of the solar system.” He pauses. “There’s no bomb without the pit,” he says somberly. “The pit is it.”
Patricia shoots me a look: he takes things a little too seriously, doesn’t he?
We finish our sandwiches, toss our crumpled bags in the trash, and go back to work.
ONE MORNING, one of the managers stops by to say hello. “Here’s a heads-up, Kristen,” he says. “Be prepared. You might come in some morning and be told to go home because there’s no money. It’s budget time, and there might not be enough funding through procurement.”
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