Yellowcake (5 page)

Ryland thinks about the other half Xanax in the bottle over the stove. His throat and chest are aching now. It's only noon. They'll be cooking for another hour, then eating, and then there will be coffee and dessert and digesting, and they won't go away until late afternoon. It's always the same.

"I blame the Navajo tribe," Rosy says. "They could've kept those houses up. They were perfectly good, solid houses."

"They say the houses are witched," Maggie says.

"Who says that?" Rosy says.

"The Indians."

Ryland leans his head back. They're talking about the company houses. He's seen pictures. The roofs, caving in now, look like they were made of straw rather than asphalt shingles and tile. The grounds have all gone to weed, and the paved road leading into the development has crumbled.

Sue says that for her money the tribe should just let private developers come in and do something about those properties. "People love the landscape, and Shiprock's a prime location because of its proximity to the San Juan." She says she doesn't understand the concept of reservations anyway. "The Indians would be better off if they opened the borders and let some money come in."

Sue's voice is an irritating chirp. Ryland can hear happiness in it. She used to be sour, and he liked her better then. In the last few years, her real estate business has taken off. He believes her new money makes her happy. She now makes more than Eddy, who works in the oil fields. Ryland wonders how his son feels about that. If it bothers Eddy, he doesn't show it.

"Who do you like for the season, Mr. Mahoney?" George says. It's halftime. The majorettes are twirling their batons. Maggie comes in holding a glass of green liquid and sits on the arm of George's chair.

"For the season?" Ryland says. "Dallas'll take the season."

"I don't know," Eddy says. "You might be surprised."

George says he'll pick a dark horse and go with Tampa.

"Tampa!" Eddy and Ryland say together.

Maggie kisses him on the head. "You big lug," she says.

Sue is telling Rosy about a sale she has pending up on Whitaker Mesa, a new gated community that everybody says is a desert paradise. "Why don't you come up with me tomorrow?" Sue says. "We can go to Edna Friedan's house."

"Can't tomorrow," Rosy says. She tells Sue about the uranium coalition and their organizing meeting tomorrow. "Don't like to leave Ryland too long." He smiles. Rosy gives herself an outing a day, never longer than two hours. She thinks he needs looking after.

"So that's tomorrow, then Tuesday we'll be in the doctor's office for most of the morning." Ryland hears the word "bronchoscopy."

He leans forward, gripping his chair. First appointment of the morning, she says, just a precaution, no reason for worry, and she begins telling them about the procedure, the tube that will go down his throat, the lung scraping. Ryland's stomach gurgles. The smell of roast beef has started doing bad things to it.

Ryland watches Maggie lean into George and whisper something. Maggie's whispering makes him tired. Teri looks tired, too. Her left eyelid sags a little. She was born with the look of a droopy-eyed skeptic. She scoots forward and puts her cheek on Ryland's knee. He rests his hand on her head and leans his own head back. He's beginning to think the regurgitated bird food will win out over the beef today. A shame.

Teri gets up and wanders away, leaving the book with him. It's a cardboard book, gnawed on the corners. He runs his finger over the ragged edges. The Cowboy cheerleaders are climbing on top of one another, making a pyramid, and Sue is telling Rosy about a Mercedes she's got her eye on, which she's planning to pay cash for when her deal closes. Maggie, whispering to George, is not in the kitchen helping her mother, which irritates Ryland no end. He stares at her, willing her to look at him, but she doesn't, so he says, "Somebody ought to be helping her mother in the kitchen," then he eyeballs her, registering the surprise on her face.

S
AM IS
NOT SICK.
Ryland keeps coming back to that. If the stuff is so deadly, who should be sick if not Sam? Rosy ought to ask the uranium coalition that. Sam was in direct contact with the stuff the whole time he worked in uranium. While Ryland worked his way up, out of shift work and into the office, Sam never got out of the mill. Never wanted to.

The first time they ever saw it, the raw ore, Sam got gold fever. They were teenagers, fishing on the Dolores, and they saw yellow streaks in the cliff face. Sam and he climbed up there with their pocketknives and dug out chunks, which they took to the assayer in Durango. He told them it wasn't gold, just uranium, and they weren't rich.

Who knew? Later, after the war, when the mines started springing up everywhere and the government started talking nuclear power, Sam bought himself a Geiger counter. He wanted to stake claims, get a drill of his own. While Ryland went to school, Sam was out running around the country digging for ore. Ryland had told him he ought to use his GI bill, let the government buy him an education, but you couldn't tell Sam anything. He was always broke in those years. He'd scrape together enough to stake a claim, which would turn out to be barren, or the ore would be too deep, and he'd break drills trying to get to it, and he'd get drunk and stay drunk.

It was 1957 before Sam surfaced from his get-rich-quick schemes. Ryland had been at the mill for three years by then and was already on his way out of shift work. He put in a word for Sam with his boss, and Sam took the job, though he resented Ryland's meddling. He never wanted anybody doing anything for him, and he passed up every opportunity to advance. Ryland tried, did his best for him. Sam seemed happiest tinkering with the ore roasters and climbing on the tailings pile, which grew steadily. When the wind blew, fine silt covered everything. You could see it on Sam. His hair, eyelashes, and eyebrows, normally white-blond, turned pink on a windy day. Ryland's hair was black then. On him the stuff disappeared, he seemed to absorb it, but underneath his hair, his scalp would be like sandpaper. He can remember his jaws aching because he clamped his teeth together, trying to keep the silt out of his mouth. Rosy complained and complained because his work clothes would turn her wash a muddy brown, and she had to wash his stuff separately.

For years the tailings pile wasn't news, and then all of a sudden it was. It wasn't uranium anymore. It was chemistry. Polonium, bismuth, lead; it was all about the chemical breakdown, what happened when the ore was blasted, and there were all kinds of speculations about toxicity in the tailings after they processed the stuff. They said the radiation in Durango's air was ten percent above safety levels. There were editorials, weeks and then months of them in the
Durango Herald,
the
Rocky Mountain News,
the
Denver Post:
"You can't see it, you can't smell it, you can't taste it—this deadly gas."

Just before they moved the operation south to the reservation, some honcho in New Jersey got the bright idea of planting grass on the pile to keep it from blowing. Didn't work. Radiation levels stayed the same. But they planted. Sam spent a few weeks climbing the pile, seeding the tailings, rigging sprinklers. Someplace there's a photo of Sam on the catwalk they erected at the top of the pile, standing up there smoking a cigarette, on the clock, his face a study in indifference, Superman, to look at him.

Who, if not Sam, should be sick?

M
ONDAY MORNING
. Several people crowd around the table in Bill Lowry's law office. Becky sits closest to the door. Lowry asks them all to introduce themselves. Lowry's assistant sits next to him, and next to her are two women from Shiprock Chapter House, then a man from Shiprock's Public Health Service. Angela Bistai is here from the Nenahnezad Chapter House. Becky knows her slightly. Becky's father goes to Nenahnezad chapter meetings—or did when he was well enough—just across the river from their house in Fruitland, off the reservation. Her mother didn't want Becky in reservation schools. She worried that they were too lax and, in the eighties, too dangerous. LA gangs had started moving into the reservation by then. Delia fretted every time Becky or Woody went to Shiprock to visit Becky's grandmother.

The pastor from Farmington's Unitarian church is here and the one from the Navajo Methodist mission. Rose Mahoney is here. Her husband is not. A very tall white man is sitting across the table from Becky—at least the half she can see is tall. He introduces himself as Terry Conrad, representing a Dallas company, American Geological Exploration and Resources—AGER. There are also people from Navajo Mines and from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

"Let me begin," Bill Lowry says, "by going over key events that have brought us here, though I know this is familiar territory for most of you."

The door opens behind Becky, a voice says, "Sorry I'm late," and Lowry says, "We're just getting started." She turns to see Harrison Zahnee. She sits a little straighter. He opens one of the folding chairs leaning against the wall, and she scoots over to make room for him. He smiles at her.

"As you know, the bill that passed last year, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, RECA, is an insult to those injured by the uranium industry in our area," Lowry says.

Harrison is wearing a blue shirt and jeans. His hair, in a tight braid, falls to the middle of his back. When Becky looks at him out of the corner of her eye, she can see a hint of crow's-feet behind his shades. From his bank file, she knows he's twenty-nine, four years older than she.

"Only miners who actually worked in the mines before the EPA safety initiatives were adopted are eligible for compensation," Lowry is saying. "Only those who have a specific kind of lung cancer are eligible, and only if they can document precise exposure to radiation, supplying medical records of specific treatments—"

"Which, of course, the majority of Navajo miners can't do, since most of them didn't have access to medical care and most don't—didn't, in many cases, since many have died—speak English," his assistant says. Her lips gleam, cotton-candy pink.

Lowry begins reviewing events that led up to RECA, the dam break in the southern part of the reservation, which flooded the Rio Puerco with waste from the underground mines and produced what he says was the biggest single release of radioactive poisons on American soil since the bomb tests at White Sands. "That single devastating event finally got some attention in Washington. We're seeing the effects of the industry everywhere. One study has found that organ cancer rates among Navajo teenagers living near mine tailings are seventeen times the national average. But, of course, organ cancers like kidney and liver are not even covered under the act." He tells them that the mill workers are not covered. People in the path of wind-borne tailings, people who have drunk from contaminated water sources, children who have drunk milk from cows that grazed on contaminated plants—none are eligible.

"There's some evidence," the assistant says, "that houses and hogans in mining and milling areas have high levels of radiation, and it's thought that people used radioactive materials scavenged in the area to build their houses."

"So," Lowry says, "let's start talking strategy."

Harrison interweaves his fingers on the table in front of him, long, straight fingers, the nails beautifully curved and glowing like mother-of-pearl. He wears a wedding ring, but on the little finger of his right hand. A simple Navajo band with inlaid turquoise, dark lines separating each stone. Looks old.

"We should begin, I would think," Lowry says, "by using the tribal infrastructure and enlisting the chapter presidents throughout the reservation. Another thing I'd like to do is to contact the downwinders in Nevada who are fighting the same battle and see if we can join forces. And we need money."

"The tribe may have funds for this, don't you think?" Anita Bistai says.

"Why should the tribe pay for a situation created by the mining companies?" a Shiprock chapter representative says. "The Dine entered into business in good faith. The mines ought to pay."

"Well, that's not going to happen," the assistant says.

"If I may," the man from Texas says, "my company has an interest in grass-roots organization around this issue. We have a nonprofit component dedicated to education, and if the community shows support, AGER is willing to match it."

"What does that mean, Terry?" the assistant says.

"It means we will provide matching funds for any monies generated in the community. The funds are targeted for education only, not lobbying."

"Really?" Rose Mahoney says.

"Yes."

The assistant asks if AGER administers and distributes.

"No. We're not set up for that." He gazes around the room. He looks like he's about Becky's age, maybe a little older. Five o'clock shadow. Hazel eyes. Long, handsome face, in good proportion to his body. "I'd recommend choosing a not-for-profit host organization. The library, for example. Or the college. Mr. Zahnee might be in a prime position to administer," he says, smiling and nodding at Harrison, who sits back, crossing his arms and ankles, saying nothing. "What we've done in other areas is help get efforts off the ground by organizing town meetings and inviting key community leaders. People with resources. We could start there. Take Farmington's temperature. See if there's interest. Then move into smaller towns and into the reservation. Build momentum."

"Good idea," Lowry says. He suggests they form a subcommittee and asks anybody who's interested in organizing a town hall to join him and Mr. Conrad for coffee at the café across the street directly after the meeting. Then he begins mapping out a plan of action for the next six months.

When the meeting ends, Harrison turns toward Becky. In his mirrored sunglasses, she sees two miniatures of her face. He says, "Coffee?"

 

He sits next to her in a large round booth packed with other committee members. He says something to her in Navajo, but her family did not speak Navajo at home when she was growing up. She has only a few words. She smiles.