Yellowcake (20 page)

"Were you ever going to tell us?" If she understands him right, he's talking about starting the mines up again.

"It's no secret. I've talked openly with Lowry about this. And I've signed up some members of the tribe as consultants. That's why I wanted to talk with you." He holds his hand up as she starts to speak. "Just hear me out. First of all, it's going to happen. If it doesn't happen on Indian land, it's going to happen on the border of Indian land. That's where the ore is. We want to do it right. I'm telling you, we've got a thirty-year record showing we know how to do it safely. But that's just in extraction. We need to make sure that we hear from people like you, people with a historical memory. Especially somebody like you, Becky. An educated woman. A businesswoman. A woman who knows, intimately, the risks. We don't want to deceive anybody. We want real, honest feedback. Come down to our facilities, let us show you what we're doing. Don't judge without having all the facts.

"If you like what we're doing and want to become a consultant, helping design educational strategies for your people, what we can do for you is something that the government cannot. I hope our efforts tonight are successful in prodding the legislature to take responsibility and to get some compensation for men like your father. But do you know how long it will take before you see any money? I wager ten years. And it will be pennies. That's a bad joke. An insult." He leans forward. "I don't mean to be cruel, but the dead are not going to wait for ten years—for pennies. We're in a position to put somebody like you on retainer as a consultant and to do it immediately. Anybody on permanent retainer, meaning more than a one-shot deal, will get a thousand dollars a month. The company's willing to engage in a long-term commitment. Somebody in your position—with your knowledge—would make twelve thousand dollars a year for, I'd say, at least five years, and all you'd have to do would be to come to a meeting now and again. Expenses paid, of course. And you'd be helping your tribe. Believe me, Becky, nuclear energy can be harvested safely. In the end, it will be safer and more reliable than fossil fuels. We will prove that to you. Your tribe stands to make a substantial profit. If the tribe doesn't come on board, McKinley County and the state of New Mexico will make that profit." He leans back. "It's going to happen."

He sips his beer. Her head throbs. She has drained her water but still feels dry. At the bar people shout over the noise of the band, the band amps up to compete. The singer sings, "Love me in the east, love me in the west, love me in the place that you know best."

Twelve thousand a year would go a long way toward paying off her parents' medical bills.

Terry is watching her. He wears that cowboy hat like he was born to it. She wonders where he's really from.

"Let me talk to my dad," she says finally.

"You bet. Take your time." He nods and sips his beer.

F
RIDAY THE THIRTEENTH
of September, 5:32
A.M.
Delmar steps out of his little adobe cottage into the smell of sage, the mesa in front of him, shadowy in the blue predawn. Stars are out but dimming. He carries a hot cup of Folgers instant to the flatbed truck parked next to the electric cart. On Fridays he drives the flatbed around the estates, collecting garbage. He prefers the electric cart, which is as silent as a sailboat on water.

Years ago, during his warrior days, Delmar used to spend weekend nights on Whitaker Mesa, which was just a mesa then, full of tumbleweeds. Now it's a forest in the desert: pinon, sage, prickly pear, yucca, all grown someplace else and brought in special. An orange adobe wall encloses the estates, with a guard in a glass booth at the gate. Little orange roads branch throughout the land. The street signs are metal animals on poles: lizard, quail, snake.

In the warrior days, the only roads on the mesa were the ones made by four-wheelers. Delmar knew several guys who died up here, slain in battle. On party nights white guys from town would come up here looking for rez rats, and the rez rats would come looking for whites. They played tag in their trucks and cars, sitting in the dark, engines idling, headlights off. If you turned your lights on and were spotted, or even if you lit a cigarette or a joint, a horde of vehicles would zoom in like ants going for food, and then you had to gun it, and if you got on the wrong road, too close to the edge, the hordes could force you over it. You were a goner if you didn't bail out in time. You were a goner, too, if you got trapped on the mesa outside your car. Then the ants swarmed and pulverized you with baseball bats.

The night was especially good if a town boy's tricked-out truck went over the edge and became booty during daylight hours. But the good days came to an end when the city started collecting the booty and forced him into banditry. The mesa changed, too. Everything changes, Delmar thinks. Except the ghosts. He sees them often when driving his little electric cart through the grounds, gray haze in the dawn and twilight, skulking along the quiet lanes, looking like coyotes. He wonders how the rich people up here would feel if they knew their houses were built on a graveyard.

Now, he gets into the truck, wedges the coffee cup between his legs, and turns the key. The flatbed is a noisy thing. Last week a guy complained to management about Delmar's early Friday morning drives, but he has to fill the dumpsters outside the estate gates by nine
A.M
., when the city collectors come to empty them. He figures the people up here can have either noise or garbage. Their choice.

He heads south down Quail Lane toward the complainer's house. On his rounds he wears headphones and listens to happy morning music, this morning Nirvana. He could've started in the north and finished in the south, which would've put him at the complainer's place later, around eight, but where would be the fun in that? He thinks of the complainer as Mr. VD, short for vodka drinker. Last week their trash was full of empty Skyy bottles and meat bones. They drive BMWs—she a silver, he a black—and never look at him when they drive past.

Last week he found cherry pie in the VD's trash. A smashed pie. Had just opened the lid and there it was, a dark goopy thing. A shame. He had had a piece of what was probably that same pie the day before. Elsie, the VDs' maid, gave it to him while he was trimming their hedge. The piece he'd had wasn't smashed. Who smashed the pie? he'd wondered. Why? These are the kinds of things he gets to think about these days. It's what makes him happy on the mesa. Such interesting things to think about and a lot of time to think, plus he gets to listen to Cobain:" I feel stupid and contagious, Here we are now, entertain us."

He likes to think about Elsie, too. He wonders if he has a chance with her. She is very cute, though she wears funny clothes—long skirts and peasant blouses with rickrack on the pouched sleeves. She's a mother of three, married to a tow-truck driver. The tow truck shows up at the front gate every evening at five sharp. Elsie walks out to meet it. Delmar once snuck up behind her in his silent electric cart, and she about jumped out of her skin when he asked if she wanted a ride. Now she's always looking over her shoulder when she walks.

On the day's agenda, after the garbage: Raid. It seems crickets have taken over Mr. Dildo's house. That's Delmar's nickname for the Delgados. Mr. Dildo has a young wife who goes jogging up and down Roadrunner Lane in nothing but a jogging bra and little shorts and always waves to Delmar, very friendly. He wonders how that old guy keeps her satisfied. Delmar plans to satisfy her later by getting rid of the wicked crickets, though it goes against his beliefs, wiping out a tribe of crickets just because they're noisy.

First garbage, then breakfast, and then the murder of crickets. He drives up and down the lanes, watching the land become visible, stopping at the inhabited houses to collect garbage, lingering at the Dildos' house because sometimes, early, he'll see that young wife standing in the open door wearing her workout clothes, eating something from a bowl.

Just a short jog past the Dildos' house he stops the flatbed at the center of the mesa, the old battleground, where something has just crept across the road. Blue lights are embedded in the ground along the road so the rich people can always find their way home. They can see the road, but do they see the dead guys looking for the party? He enjoys their company, especially the whites, ghosts of guys who never expected to die. White people don't expect to. Die surprised. Stupids. Now the Indians, the ones who die young, they always expect it, you can see it in their eyes. Fear. Maybe not of dying, but of lingering—of becoming ghosts. That bothers him a little, those guys he knew in the warrior days, who seemed to see their deaths before they happened. He is not like them. He tested death up here once. Got chased to the edge, floored it, and went over—kamikaze! But somehow death passed through him. He flew that night and came out of it without a scratch, he doesn't know how.

Cobain is singing about friends and old enemies. Farther down the lane, the something that slunk across is long gone.

Friday the thirteenth. Coyote on the path. Happy morning music. He takes a drink of coffee. The morning is good. The afternoon will be bad. He's got twenty-one Fridays left of pissing in Officer Happy's cup. Then he's a free man.

R
YLAND FEELS LIKE
an idiot, and what's worse, he looks like one. He stepped outside for the paper yesterday morning, and somehow his feet got tangled in his cart. The next thing he knew, he had blood running down his head and from both elbows. "Your dad took a little tumble," Rosy is saying to Eddy on the phone. Ryland has been sitting in the living room listening to her tell the story over and over to everybody who calls. "Got a pretty good conk on the head and skinned his arms. His poor battle-scarred arms. Fifteen stitches. They should be out by the wedding. I told Maggie not to worry. Scared us, though. Do you know what that pill did? No, not Maggie, your father."

She starts telling him about the contaminated lung tissue samples. When they went in to get him stitched up, Rae Freitag told her about the messages Dr. Callahan had left before he went on vacation. "Made me so mad," Rosy says. "We could've had this all over with before the wedding, but now we can't get another appointment until November. He fights me every step of the way."

He touches the gauze taped over his right temple, a thick bandage. He can feel the lump—can feel it from the inside because it throbs. He has a black eye, too.

"Oh, my Lord," Rosy says. "Oh, my Lord!" in a tone that chills him and makes him start from his chair—a tone that throws him back twenty-five years to when the kids were little and anything could go wrong. He stands, blinking out the front window at what looks like a truck parked just beyond the hedge. He grips the handle on his oxygen cart. Looks like Sam's old Chevy pickup.

Looks like Sam standing on the street looking in.

 

"You told me to come," Sam says, grinning. They sit at the kitchen table, cups of coffee in front of them. He looks exactly the same, a boy with blue-white irises, sheer white hair and eyebrows, but his skin is dry and papery, grayish, and the whites of his eyes are muddy.

"You drove all this way?" Rosy says. "Sam, why didn't you fly? You want sugar for your coffee?" She pushes her chair back.

"No thanks. Don't like planes." He cocks his head, gazing at Ryland.

"I'll be damned," Ryland keeps saying.

"You been brawling, Ry?"

Ryland just shakes his head and says, "Ssss."

"But Sam," Rosy says, her voice high and loud, the wedding's not for two weeks. You're early."

"Well, I needed a vacation."

"My goodness." She stands up. "We have cookies. Would you like a cookie?"

"Sit down, Rosy. I'm fine." She doesn't sit down. She crosses the kitchen, takes a plate from the cupboard, and starts piling on cookies from the cookie jar.

"Can't believe that old truck's still running," Ryland says. "How old is it? I remember when you bought it new."

"Thirty-one years old."

Ryland shakes his head.

"Paint's all rotten from salt in the air, and I had to convert it—you can't get leaded gas anymore."

"How's Florida? You ready to move back?"

"Crowded. It's full of jet setters. My old Kayot's the only tub in the marina. Raggediest rig in the water. Now the place is filling up with souped-up Leisurecrafts and Bayliners, and every year the rent goes up for my slip. Pretty soon I'm going to be priced out of the neighborhood."

Rosy brings the cookies over and the coffee pot, filling Ryland's cup, starting to fill Sam's, but stopping halfway when he signals. When her back is turned, Ryland watches Sam slip his old silver flask from his back pocket. He shows it to Ryland, offering. Ryland shakes his head, and Sam doctors his coffee, putting the flask away before Rosy returns to the table.

"How long is the drive?" Ryland says.

"Took me a week. I been taking my time, seeing the country. Down off I-10, near the Louisiana border? I got swarmed by palmetto bugs. Big as hummingbirds. The truck stops were thick with them. And people. There are so many people living along the freeway these days. Living in shacks like gypsies. You can see their campfires from the road. And the Rio Grande? In ten years it'll be a dry bed. Mark my word. I don't know. The country's changing fast."

"Changing here, too," Ryland says. "They're building gated communities outside of town."

"Sam, you wouldn't recognize Durango," Rosy says. "Lily bought the old Warnock house up on Crestview. You remember that place? It used to be the nicest in town."

"Big house," Sam says.

"They've got bigger ones now. They've got million-dollar homes by the river, right where Shantytown used to be."

"How's Lily doing?"

"Fine."

"Married?"

"No. She never remarried. She sees men. She dates."

"Well, I guess she probably doesn't want to see me."

"Probably not. She'll be at the wedding, you know." She grips the back of her chair and looks at Ryland.