Full Body Burden (40 page)

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. I like to know what I’m getting.” He laughs. “Besides, there’s plutonium in that cafeteria.”

I blanch. “Seriously?”

“No,” George says. “It’s a joke.” He smiles. “I’m just joking.”

“Pretty funny.” I take another bite.

He finishes his sandwich and stands. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I often see him after that, with his sandwich and brown paper bag, and sometimes we eat lunch together in a comfortable silence.

After a while I start bringing a lunch, too.

Later—much later—I hear through the grapevine that there actually had been a problem with plutonium in the cafeteria. I also hear that it wasn’t uncommon for plutonium to be carried in on people’s clothes, even though we weren’t near the hot areas of the plant.

I
QUICKLY
learn where I can and can’t go on the plant site. Each morning I wait in a long line of cars at the east gate and watch the old shift drive out as the new shift drives in. I flash my badge at the guard who never returns my smile, drive over a gentle rise, and then into the low basin where Rocky Flats spreads out like a little metropolis. More than
six thousand people work here. Buildings are numbered according to the type of work done there. Plutonium and other radioactive and dangerous materials are handled in the 300 and 700 buildings, machining in the 400 series, and administration is in the 100 area. Only those with a government Q clearance are allowed in the 300 and 700 buildings. There are several cafeterias, a medical center, and a firehouse.

Once again Randy Sullivan and I pass within a stone’s throw of each other.

Randy’s dad had been a captain for Continental Airlines, and like his dad, Randy enjoyed being around planes. After high school he moved around a bit and then returned to Denver to work as a mechanic for a small airline. He married and had kids, and began to think about a more ambitious, permanent career. Someone mentioned to him that Rocky Flats had a fire department, and they were hiring. The pay was good.

He’d always dreamed of being a firefighter. And Randy was familiar with Rocky Flats. One of his best friends growing up had a father who worked at the plant. No one knew what he did, and no one knew what Rocky Flats did, but it was a good way to support a family.

Randy filled out an application. A few weeks later they asked him to come out to the plant for a physical agility test and an interview in which he was asked about why he wanted to work at Rocky Flats.

Driving into the plant for the first time was a little intimidating.
Finally
, he thought to himself,
I get to look into Pandora’s box
. He stopped at the guard gate for his temporary clearance, and he was given a map of the facility. The plant was larger than he expected, and he got a little lost trying to find the fire station. He was acutely aware of the guards with guns.
I hope I find it quick
, he thought.
If they see me just driving around, I might get into trouble
.

But he eventually found the fire station. He passed all the tests. He was tall, physically strong, and although he had been relieved to escape the Vietnam draft, he was pleased to serve his country at Rocky Flats. On July 1, 1991—the same year that Russia and the United States agreed to dismantle approximately thirty thousand nuclear warheads between them—Randy Sullivan officially became an EG&G employee. He was
thirty-three years old. It would be his last job, he thought.
It was a real career, and it would make his family proud.

Randy wasn’t completely unaware that Rocky Flats was involved in nuclear activities. They’d told him he would be a nuclear firefighter rather than a regular firefighter. He thought that was kind of cool. Maybe, he thought, he would actually get to see some plutonium.

By the time I go to work at Rocky Flats, Randy’s an old hand. He’s been there for years.

S
EPTEMBER AND
October can be cold, windy months, and on bitter days we wear sweaters and knit gloves with the fingertips cut off in Trailer 130F. I endure a couple of weeks in the trailer before I’m promoted, thanks to my quick typing speed, to a more permanent position in the administrative building. The main building has heat and a little more status. I earn a few icy stares when I graduate from Trailer 130F.

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.”

T
HREE 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.