Weldon Springs Radiation story
Chapter 3.5 The Director
The Director of the Weldon Springs Interpretive Center.
(Had to call this 3.5 because of changes to story & trying to balance word counts.) HOWEVER THIS IS DRAFT #1. Expect errors.
Chapter 3.5: The Director
My phone buzzed. I put down the mop and bucket and looked at the screen. Another text from Danny. Sometime after we were kids, he changed his name to Buck.
“Dude, come see me. It’s important. I guess you’re avoiding me, right? Come see me. If you don’t want to see me just because I stink, come see me because I have something for you. Remember Ambrose's cave? Found it! Come see me. Buck.”
I put the phone away and mopped the museum floor, marveling how much dirt the school kids tracked into the building, leaving fine yellow clay dust everywhere. Butch called the dust “Job security.”
What had Danny been yammering about in his text message? A cave? I did not recall any cave association with Buck. Ambrose? My mother’s former business partner, who, before the war, had farmed the land, which was now flooded by Lake 33.
I stopped at the pictures of farmers having to auction off everything they had with only a thirty-day notice to vacate their farms. I shook my head at the injustice. The grandfathers of these very same German immigrants had fought to keep Missouri in the union during the War of Northern Aggression. Who could imagine that only a short seventy-five years later, the grandchildren would lose the family farms to the same government they supported?
Ambrose had talked about the auction. The museum photographs did not convey the bitterness Ambrose felt about the auction. Still gripped in the great depression, the farmers had to sell everything they could not move by wagon.
“Pennies on the dollar,” Ambrose explained. Some of the neighbors threw their belongings into Dardenne Creek rather than allowing the speculators from St. Louis to “Steal them blind with a wolf smile and a half-dollar offer.”
Rob and I had rummaged through the rusted remnants of those same items tossed in the creek and gullies while we were…. searching for the cave. The cave! How had I forgotten that failed quest?
Ambrose told us about the cave when he took us to the ruins of his family’s farmhouse and the hunt for a pear tree full of arrowheads—the pear tree, that had been the real quest.
What happened to the pear tree arrowheads? When I got in trouble and was taken to the Conservation Department headquarters to see Agent Dougy, there were arrowheads on Dougy’s desk. Were those Ambrose’s pear tree arrowheads? That question had bugged me for years.
Damn, Buck had managed to dredge up some lost memories. And the cave? We had hunted for years for the cave, said to be near the spring, but we never found it. Even Ambrose had been puzzled when he took us in person to find the cave. In the end, we determined an earthquake had sealed the cave entrance.
The next day, I answered Buck’s phone call.
“Fuck man, you took the phone call, even when the ID said it was your old fuck up buddy Buck.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “I need you to come by, man because I think I’m going to the hospital and I saved something for you.”
Should I visit my old school mate Buck? He sounded sick enough so no whiskey would be offered.
I wiped the display cases in the museum pondering my options. The children visiting the museum were endless bundles of energy and sticky hands, leaving a trail of smudges and fingerprints.
Four tourists walked into the museum; there was nothing unusual about them besides being loud young men. Rude even. College students? Clean cut, fit, and loud.
I noticed they all had rolled the lucky dice toss called life and ended up in the good gene pool-handsome confident, and talked a good game in opposition to all nuclear power.
Nuclear engineering students? Or at least the apparent leader, for he tossed around big words.
One of the four showed too much interest in the young girls from the school tours, trying to impress them with science. The other three, the more they walked around the museum, the more they worked themselves into a fit of anger and never once seeing my looks of disapproval as I swabbed at the muddy tracks.
“We should’ve held our own Nuremberg trials for dropping the nuclear bombs on Japan," said the leader to a school teacher.
Their problem, and they noticed it, was that no one was listening to their complaints. That people ignored their complaints only made them angrier, except for the one flirting with the girls. His smile never wavered, even when the teachers interceded, recognizing a threat to their charges.
One fact was unmistakable, as the janitor, I was invisible in their world.
“Look at this place! How many people died making this poison?” said one of the men wearing a shirt with the letters, “College of beer” under a drawing of the St. Louis arch. “Poison the planet for future generations. What is the half-life of this radioactive waste? A half a million years?”
"Wait until West Lake blows,” snarled the leader. “It will be a Midwest Fukushima event that will make St. Louis uninhabitable.”
“Gateway to the West,” said his buddy. "It will be a disaster to break all disaster records. Rate it a level 12 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event scale.”
The three young men laughed at the concept, and the fourth man returned to the fold.
“Everyone complains the Japanese power plant is located in an earthquake zone. What do they think Missouri is?” asked the fourth man, smiling brightly at one of the female students.
“Mix that underground quarry fire and Mallinckrodt waste, and we’ll have a Midwest Chernobyl. You know, radiation poison is not a particularly easy way to die,” said the third person. We need to ban all nuclear energy and weapons.” His shirt with a picture of Mao holding an AR-15 did not do much to impress me.
“Another fucking spoiled idiot,” I said while mopping their tracks.
All four looked at me for the first time.
“What did you say, mop boy?” said the leader.
Ah, the Dear Leader. I turned to face away from them. Battering them to a pulp with the mop handle would only land me back in prison.
“I say we should chain ourselves across this museum entrance like the Stop Oil people do,” said number two of the group. “Make a statement.”
They had already lost interest in a simple janitor.
“I have better plans than to make a statement. What good have those Stop Oil people done other than pissing off the proletariat? What the fuck are they doing? Right-block roads piss off ordinary people from getting their coffee?.
I’m thinking of something much grander. We need more direct approaches,”
The fourth man smiled at a student who had stopped to watch.
I wasn’t thinking about the spoken words; I was observing his body language and smiles directed toward the children—no translation required.
Watch out, buddy, I thought. If you go to jail for what you are thinking about, you will discover the worst experience you could imagine—that is, if you don’t get shanked on the first day.
The museum Director walked out of her office; attractive, even exotic looking. “Can I help you,” asked Director Liu. There was a hint of an East Texas accent in her voice.
“We were just discussing the evil of nuclear energy and the crime of destroying our world for future generations."
“Nuclear also the cleanest and most reliable energy," said the Director. "True, there are pros and cons. But Americans need electricity from somewhere and nuclear is the cleanest.”
“The peasant doesn’t need electricity,” sneered one of the four. “Solar is all they need—every home solar. “Wind farms will cover the other needs. It has been proven.” His shirt had crossed sticks with the words Varsity Field Hockey Team.
“How many bats and birds do you sacrifice for your wind power?” asked the Director. “Have you ever walked under one of those windmill blades in the morning? I have; you would be appalled at the death.”
The Director beat the students to the comeback line. “Their sacrifice is for the greater good?”
Wow, Liu threw the words of Stalin and Mao back in their face.
The four young men tensed for a fight.
“Can I clean your office? Director, vacuum your office?” I asked, interjecting myself.
The four young men’s body language screamed attack. They did not like her common-sense answers. I had heard in prison that college students were no longer taught the art of debate—only one-sided arguments followed by violence. Being a winner always proves your version to be correct. It was the same in prison: Power and might made any answer the correct answer.
The Director focused on the four guests, seemed shocked by my interruption. Not only was it bad manners for me to interrupt, but as part of the cleaning staff, I had been invisible to her.
"Fine," she said with hint of irritation.
The sign outside her door read Amber Liu. Director, Weldon Springs Interpretive Center, Department of Energy.
I had to laugh. What was the meme? Stay away from strippers, redheads, and women named Amber and Tiffany? Dang, I had failed on two of those two out of four of those with my ex-wife.
I pushed the industrial-strength floor vacuum into her office. She had tasteful fake teak wood government furniture, a map of East Texas on her wall, and photographs of a young Director on a paint horse barrel racing. A Master’s Degree from the University of Austin.
When I vacuumed behind her desk, the five in the hallway were angry with rising voices and I quickly glanced at her monitor screen.
“Fallout plan for St. Louis in the event of a West Lake fire”
“Oh damn, shit happens Amber,” I said.
I finished the office and stepped into the aisle where the Director was still trying to use reason with the four—a lost cause. The four young men surrounded Director Liu, shouting anti-nuclear slogans, making a scene.
“Excuse me,” I said, placing myself between the Director and two of the four men as they began to advance upon her. “Anything else, Director?” I asked.
The vacuum cleaner would be a poor weapon against the angry college students. So be it, the DOE could purchase a new vacuum.
For the first time, I think the Director actually recognized how I had positioned myself for a fight. I stared at the four young me, the muscle guy and the field hockey guy advanced towards me. A fight you want, a fight you will get.
“No,” said the leader of the four, putting his hands out to stop his friends as they advanced, fist balled. “It’s bad press if we beat up a simpleton janitor.”
He looked at the Director and retreated, saying, “That tomb out there is just a celebration of poison.” And they stomped out the door.
The Director returned to her office without saying anything to me, and I had to chuckle. Stay away from strippers, redheads, Amber, and Tiffany’s, goddammit.
She reappeared almost immediately. “I could have kicked those four in the testicles before they realized my foot had left the ground,” said the Director.
“Hey, I’m just a janitor,” I said as she returned to her office and I admired her figure.
Damn, she is a water moccasin.
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