The Trinity Paradox (16 page)

But the gigantic Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was right in their own backyard, less than an hour’s drive from Berkeley. There, within the mile-square fence, scientists developed generation after generation of nuclear weapons, high yield or low yield, multiple warheads, surveillance systems, death-beam lasers, and who knew what else. Elizabeth couldn’t ignore it. She had fled the defense contractors and the nuclear support industry in Los Angeles, but it seemed she couldn’t escape. As soon as she began to pay attention, the pervasiveness of defense work shocked her.

The Livermore Lab was the heart of the problem. Why couldn’t the scientists see that if they stopped creating new weapons, then the Soviets could stop finding ways to counter them, and this whole madness would grind to a halt?

The Livermore Challenge Group was based in Berkeley to disseminate information about the secret work going on at the Lab, and they also conducted regular protests. Easter—typically Good Friday—was the most appropriate time of year for major demonstrations. By their reckoning, this year’s would be the biggest demonstration ever. About time, Elizabeth thought. She had seen—and been guilty of—too much apathy.

Elizabeth, Jeff, and eight other demonstrators had piled in an old Volkswagen bus, riding out over the Oakland hills in the predawn darkness. She stared out the bug-spattered windshield, watching the river of headlights coming in the opposite direction as people streamed toward the San Francisco Bay for work.

The Volkswagen bus was a dull primer-coat gray, but the driver told her it had once carried elaborate paintings and peace signs. “All that stuff is passé now,” he said. “Nobody takes you seriously.”

Unable to sleep well the night before, she and Jeff had held each other, talking, running finger touches along each others’ backs, until finally they made love; exhausted, they managed to get a few hours of sleep before getting up for the demonstration. Elizabeth had gulped several cups of coffee at the headquarters, and she sipped another from the thermos beside the driver.

The other demonstrators had arrived outside the Livermore Lab, parking their vehicles up and down East Avenue or Vasco Road, in open areas by the vineyards. She saw people milling about in the darkness. Someone had a Coleman lantern set on the hood of his pickup truck. Others carried candles, but the breeze kept gusting them out. One woman filled small helium balloons and handed them to anyone who walked by.

Many people had painted their own signs and banners, but some had made extras, looking for volunteers to carry them,
stop livermore Auschwitz
or
work for life, not death
or
teach peace.
A woman in a lavish fur coat looked out of place, but it didn’t seem to bother her. One man in a wheelchair wore a cowboy hat and held a handful of little stick crosses in his lap. Around him milled a dozen or so other protesters with T-shirts that proclaimed them as
bay area baptist peacemakers.

The Livermore Challenge Group acted as a rallying point for numerous clubs and organizations—many with wildly different political views, but all of whom had found the Livermore Lab a suitable target.
United we stand. We shall overcome.

The businesslike and gentlemanly procedures of the Livermore Challenge Group surprised Elizabeth. She had her preconceptions of what a demonstration would be like, concerned citizens battling the establishment, like a spillover from sixties news clips. But the Livermore Challenge Group had composed a formal, considerate letter to the Director of the Livermore Laboratory, informing him of the date of the demonstration and giving details about how many people were expected to attend, how many had volunteered to commit civil disobedience. This allowed the Laboratory to have adequate security forces on hand and adequate facilities to hold the detainees.

Elizabeth had even seen a bootlegged videotape shown to Lab security guards on
How to Arrest a Nuclear Protester,
demonstrating proper handholds, procedures, and what not to do. To counter that, the Livermore Challenge Group had also given each volunteer special training in how to get arrested, what to do, what their rights entitled them to. She looked at the yellow armbands worn by some people, designating them as volunteers to be arrested. The armband gave them a certain status among the other protesters.

Elizabeth envied them. She had discussed with Jeff the possibility of volunteering, but he had talked her out of it. Since leaving her nuclear work behind, Elizabeth had jumped into the protest movement headfirst; Jeff told her she was going overboard, that she should wait and maybe get arrested next time, when she could make a rational, cool-headed decision, rather than charging ahead without thinking of the consequences. She had grudgingly agreed.

Full daylight had seeped into the sky as Elizabeth wandered about. The excitement kept building in her. Jeff held her hand, and she could feel the tension in his muscles. The collective emotions here charged the air, tingeing everything with unreality.

Already, roving cameramen for the Lab’s closed-circuit televisions walked among the protesters, chatting. It all seemed very cordial. Reporters from two local TV stations had also showed up with minicams, carrying boom microphones and looking for something interesting to videotape. Dan Fogelberg’s song “Kill the Fire” permeated the camp.

Several people obliged with appropriate theatrics. A bearded man appeared in hiking boots and a white anti-contamination suit made from an old bed sheet. Three people—Elizabeth couldn’t tell if they were men or women—came out, dressed completely in black, their faces painted like skulls. Two held flags high showing the three-bladed radiation symbol obscured by the circle-and-slash universal No sign. The middle figure carried a sign that said
you can’t run from radioactive wastes.

Elizabeth got another lukewarm cup of coffee from a community thermos and sipped it as she walked along the chain-link fence. Traffic picked up on East Avenue as people came to work at the Lab, each passing through the main gate as a security guard—no, she corrected herself, they called themselves “protective servicemen”—checked the employees’ badges and waved them ahead to the entrance station.

A few of the banners—
we oppose your work, not you!—
served to maintain relative goodwill between the employees and the protesters. They didn’t really expect Lab employees to read the banner slogans, turn their cars around, and refuse to come to work. When she had worked at United Atomics, Elizabeth would never have done that herself. She had always ignored the few protesters, thinking that none of it concerned her, that the demonstrators just didn’t understand she wasn’t doing anything wrong. Or so she had thought at the time. She wondered now how she could have been so misled.

“Won’t be long now,” Jeff said. “Are you doing okay?”

Elizabeth saw by her watch that it was seven-thirty. She felt the butterflies in her stomach take flight. “Sure,” she said.

The full complement of Lab security guards lined up, marching out like Nazi storm troopers. Most wore tan uniforms, others dark blue; she didn’t know what the difference meant. Reinforcements from the California Highway Patrol joined them. All had white helmets and transparent race shields. She counted four German shepherd dogs. The female guards all looked extremely tough, as if it were a matter of pride. Elizabeth wondered how much this one demonstration would cost the government, but it didn’t bother her—it was money that couldn’t be spent on nuclear weapons.

Along the fence line people started singing an endless chorus of “Give Peace a Chance.” Looking at the security forces in their crisp uniforms and weapons, and the protesters in a kaleidoscope of jeans and T-shirts, headbands and bright skirts, Elizabeth thought this was a culture clash as much as anything else. Like the sixties all over again? She had missed most of the demonstrations then; she’d been too young.

She felt overwhelmed by the power of all the people gathered together. From the outside it might have looked like chaos, but here, a part of everything, she felt herself to be a vital piece of a very strong machine. They
would
overcome. It didn’t seem possible they could fail, not when it felt like this. Couldn’t the guards sense it too?

Four demonstrators had used a garden chain to attach themselves to the outer fence, forcing the security guards to find a pair of bolt cutters to remove it and arrest them. But that was merely a diversion.

The first group of people wearing yellow armbands lined up on the corner of East Avenue and Vasco Road, the main intersection near the Lab’s front gate. Others cheered them on. Elizabeth raised her fist. Tears sparkled in her eyes. It seemed such a magnificent sacrifice. Jeff put his arm around her. The first group of seven marched into the street as soon as the light changed. Together they sat down on the pavement.

Elizabeth watched, wondering what it would be like to sit out there, her face level with an approaching car, willing it to stop, willing everything to stop. With the emotional support of the gathered demonstrators, they could do anything.

Security forces moved in on the seven protesters sitting in the road. Working from the left, the group of guards surrounded the first protester, a man in patched jean jacket and a red headband. Six guards blocked him off on all sides, isolating him from the others. The media cameras pushed closer. Cars stopped and began to block the intersection. Elizabeth grabbed Jeff’s hand and pulled him closer so she could see, and hear, and experience what was happening.

One of the security men warned the demonstrator. Another guard timed everything with a watch. After an appropriate period had passed, the officer issued another warning, quoting some California statute. The demonstrator, barely visible between the blockade of security men, sat in silence, refusing to move. Elizabeth clenched her hand, feeling fingernails bite into her palm. Waves of anger and emotion poured from the man on the pavement. It seemed an outrage.

After the third warning, the officer placed the man under arrest. Guards picked him up and removed him from the road, then encircled the second person, repeating the entire procedure. People cheered. The cameras recorded. The first arrestee managed to raise his fist high as the guards carried him off.

Elizabeth watched, but she didn’t really see. Her anger was culminating in this one action. She wondered what had driven these other people to extremes. She had never been arrested before. She had always chosen the safe way, Jeff’s way.

But hadn’t she gotten tired of passing out leaflets, consoling herself by arguing with other activists who already agreed with her anyway? “Once you get arrested, your record is never clear,” Jeff kept saying. “That information will appear every time you apply for a job for the rest of your life.”

She hummed the chorus of “Give Peace a Chance” with the others. The security guards arrested another demonstrator.

The last time she had visited Ted Walblaken in the hospital, he had patted her arm with his clammy hand. “Have a good life,” he said. Somehow it didn’t sound corny to her. He had known he was saying good-bye, that the cancer would take him before long.

United Atomics had denied everything. They had somehow misplaced Ted’s exposure records over his career of working in the processing shop with its lax radiation safety standards. The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration had fined United Atomics, citing them with more than a dozen safety violations. United Atomics had paid the fines, weathered the negative publicity, and considered the slate cleared.

Ted Walblaken had died at the age of forty-six, in a hospital room with his wife and three children at his side.

“If you get arrested, that record will haunt you for the rest of your life,” Jeff had said. But how many lives did it take? It was worth it. She could not sit in silence anymore.

Elizabeth turned to meet Jeff’s eyes. “I’m going,” she said. “Are you coming with me?”

Behind his glasses Jeff turned into a stranger in front of her.’ ‘You can’t! Think about what you’re doing, Elizabeth.’’

“I’ve had too much thinking. That’s not enough anymore. ‘‘ She pulled her arm, and suddenly Jeff was not holding her hand but was holding her back. She jerked away.

“Fine,” he said. His voice carried scorn, and in that instant everything changed between them.

Elizabeth pushed into the second group to march across the street. Some of them looked surprised at her intrusion, but others smiled and nodded. One old man patted her shoulder. Trying not to stumble, she walked onto the pavement, saw oil stains, an old crushed cigarette butt, a broken bottle at the side of the road. She sat down and faced the traffic. The cars stopped as frustrated employees tried to get past the blockade. Someone a few rows back honked his horn, startling everyone.

The gathered protesters along the fence cheered for
her
now. She thought of old Ted being among them. She did not look to see if Jeff had remained to watch.

The front car edged closer, pushing the grill close to Elizabeth’s chest. She leaned back, forcing herself not to close her eyes. She could hear the rumble of the engine. Staring at the fish-eyed headlights, she could not see the driver’s face, only the license plate,
skier
4. What on earth did that mean?

She could stop everything. She had to do her best.

Elizabeth felt the rough pavement under her skirt. The road remained cold from the morning. She stared straight ahead, focusing on remaining where she was. Only that mattered.