Yellowcake (24 page)

"What's that?"

"You paid in to Social Security for a good many years." Last night Sam sat at the kitchen table picking through supplies he'd scavenged on the banks of the San Juan. He'd found robin and duck feathers, rabbit fur. But he didn't make much progress tying. Rosy hovered, asking questions, wanting to know how many flies he made a month, how much they brought in, and also about his Social Security. He regrets telling her that he hasn't filed. She went on and on about how foolish that was, as if it was her business. After she and Ryland went to bed, he couldn't get the rhythm of work.

They sleep separately. He wonders whose idea that was. The only advantage to marriage: you don't have to sleep alone. Rosy seems more a nurse than a wife now. A fussy nurse. It took them an hour to get started today. She had to pack Ryland a kit with medicine, and she blew up a rubber pillow for his back, and there's an extra sweater, a blanket for his legs. And she had to call Woody's wife, Delia, to make sure it was okay for them to go there. She wrote directions and the phone number, probably a good thing. Place has changed so much, he probably couldn't find the house. He's only been there once.

"It's not like the government's giving you anything," Ryland says.

"Don't worry about me."

"I'm just saying, you paid in."

"You saw to it."

"Yes, I did."

He turns right onto Power Plant Road, crossing the San Juan River into Fruitland, where he finds a property hedged by juniper. According to Rosy's directions, this is Woody's place. He slows and turns in at a gateless opening. They drive onto a large dirt lot with one shade tree, a tall willow. He and Alice drove over when Woody bought the place. It was an old rock hovel, a missionary's hut. Now the house is good-sized, half stone, half wood, a porch running its length. An old bluish dog stands on the porch barking. The young woman who comes out looks so much like Alice, Sam freezes. She puts her hand on the dog's head. But of course it's not Alice. Different hair. Too young.

Ryland opens his door and begins untangling himself from the seat. Sam takes a sip.

 

The girl, Woody's daughter, Becky, sits with her mother at the dining table on the other side of the room. Her mother is beading on a small loom. Sam and Ryland sit on chairs facing Woody on the couch. Woody is almost unrecognizable as the man Sam used to know. His arms and legs, once ropy with muscle, have shrunk down to the bone, and he looks like a white man—a gray man, his face the color of ash. His hair, which he has always worn short, is almost completely gray. It was black when Sam last saw him. Woody's on oxygen, too. He keeps opening his mouth to suck the air, making small, regular burping sounds.

"Can't believe what you've done to this place, Wood," Sam says. "How much this cost you?"

In a wobbly voice, Woody has been telling them how he has been building onto the house year by year. Now there are eight rooms and the two porches, front and back. He tells Sam it didn't cost much, just materials.

The girl walks over to sit next to her father on the couch. The dog follows, creeping to Sam, tail wagging lethargically, eyes rheumy; the dog licks his hand. It's a strong-smelling dog, a black patch over one eye, fur somewhere between Yankee blue and Confederate gray.

"That's Delmar's dog," the girl says.

"It is?" He barely remembers her, Woody's daughter. She would've been eight years old when he left. Same as his son.

"He's a good dog." Woody clicks his tongue and the dog crosses to him, lying down on his feet. He says, "What happened to you?" motioning to the bandage on Ryland's head.

"Cat got me," Ryland says. Woody smiles.

"Mr. Mahoney, what do they use vanadium for?" the girl says. She gazes directly at Ryland. In that way she's different from Alice. Alice wouldn't meet your eye unless you made her.

"Why?"

"Just curious. I've been reading about it—that you guys made uranium and vanadium at the mill."

"It's used to harden steel."

"Back during the war," Woody says, "they used it to harden weapons."

"That's right," Ryland says.

"So why did they continue to make it after the war?"

"We just processed the stuff. We didn't market it," Ryland says. Sam watches him push the tube into his nose again and again. Ry's nails are yellow and buckled. They look brittle, ragged. Woody's wheezing is getting louder.

"They used it for making cooking pots, anything that needed hard steel," Sam says.

"Yeah, but I read where the Atomic Energy Commission was your biggest customer. They weren't making pots."

"So, Woody," Ryland says, "where's your sister?"

Sam clicks his tongue, snapping his fingers, calling his son's dog over to him. The dog just looks at him. Sam watches Woody and the girl exchange glances. What does that mean? And what does Ryland think he's doing, jumping in?

"She's on the road. Running rodeo camps in Texas, I think," the girl says.

"When's she coming back?" Sam says.

"We don't know," the girl says. "Another thing I read?"

"Here we go," Ryland says quietly, looking at Sam.

"...is that you don't have to breathe the dust in to be contaminated. It can be absorbed through the skin."

"Everybody had gloves," Ryland says.

Woody glances at his daughter, seeming to signal something with his eyes.

"That nobody wore," she says. "Right? But maybe somebody should've insisted they wear them."

Woody touches her on the shoulder and motions with his chin toward the door.

"That pillow?" Woody says, nodding at a large beaded pillow on the floor between Ryland's chair and Sam's. The pillow is checkered with little gray, black, and ivory boxes.

"Maybe somebody should at least say he's sorry," the girl says.

Woody says something sharply under his breath and slaps the back of his right hand against his left palm.

She looks at her father in surprise, her face coloring. She gets up and walks to the screen door, looking out.

"That pillow?" Woody says. "Do you know where Delia got the pattern for that? From Taylor Newman. You remember how he used to organize the nuts and bolts in the warehouse?"

"Taylor?" Sam says. "Oh, yeah. The warehouseman. Right, Ry? He was a fanatic. He counted every damn nut."

Woody laughs, wheezing. "He used to..." He stops speaking, his lips sucking in air, fishlike.

"He used to arrange the nuts and bolts and nails according to color," Delia calls. "Woody took a picture."

"What a weirdo," Sam says. "That's right. I remember. He didn't organize according to size or anything that made sense. He organized by different shades of gray. Remember, Ry? Old Taylor didn't want anybody messing with things out there. He took that job so damn seriously. If you wanted a bolt, you had to ask him and he'd get it for you. We didn't lose money on Taylor. I guess the mill may have had its problems, but thanks to crazy old Taylor, it was solvent."

"That's right," Woody says, laughing, wheezing.

Ryland says nothing. He holds the plastic tube against his nose.

Sam gets up and starts circling the room, looking at the beaded artwork on the walls. The room is full of beaded pillows and wall hangings. Some of the pictures are Bible quotes. The one over the sofa where Woody sits has a sky blue background with black lettering:
AND THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE.
CORINTHIANS
13.

"Boy, these are pretty," Sam says. He stops in front of an intricate weaving of what looks like intertwined yellow stalks against a paler yellow background, orange streaks defining shadows, and again his hands itch to work. "Is this yucca? Looks like yucca. I didn't know Navajos did beadwork like this."

"We do. It's a Plains art, though," Delia says. "You know, Delmar might know when Alice is coming back."

"Delmar? I thought he was in jail."

"He's out."

"He is? Where is he?"

"Working. Where's he working, Becky?"

"Up on Whitaker Mesa," the girl says quietly.

"You ready, Sam?" Ryland stands and walks over to Woody, stretching out his hand. "You take good care, Woodrow. We'll be seeing you, okay?"

"How long's he been out?" Sam says.

"Since February."

"Since February."

The wheels of Ryland's cart squeak as he pulls it over the wood floor.

"Nobody told me," Sam says.

The girl shrugs and seems almost to smile. He decides not to ask her how to get to Whitaker Mesa.

 

Driving home, Ryland slumps against the passenger's-side door, his face granite, hands shaking.

"You cold?" Sam says.

"Nope."

"I could turn the heater on. Except it doesn't work."

"No problem."

He decides to take the highway home, which is faster. Ryland's breath sounds sort of like a death rattle.

"How do you like that?" Sam says. "My son's been out of jail for six months and nobody told me."

Ryland says nothing. His eyes are half closed.

"I see what you mean, Ry."

"What?"

"The hostility back there."

"Damned if you do, damned if you don't."

"Eh, kids. Don't worry about it. Woody was a smoker, wasn't he?"

"Was he?"

"I think he was."

"I don't remember it."

"I'm pretty sure. Nights we'd go out, have a smoke. Yeah. Everybody makes their own choices, Ry. I don't see how people can blame you or the industry for the choices they made."

"That's what I'm saying." He pushes the tube into his nose, looks bleary-eyed at Sam.

"Don't worry about it."

Ryland leans his head back against the window and closes his eyes.

Alice could've at least written to say his son was out of jail.

"Where is Whitaker Mesa?"

Ryland says it's north of town

He hasn't seen his kid in seventeen years. He's seen pictures, that's all. Well, he'll go see him. They're in the same state now. Same town.

Sam smoothes his hand over his trousers, which are so threadbare he can see skin above the knee.

"You know, Ry," he says.

"Yeah?"

He wonders if she even gave the kid the money he sent. "Nothing. Just thinking." He sent regularly, every month, whatever he could. Hell, he sent more to the kid than he kept for himself. He just wonders if she gave it to him.

"Ry. How much you figure you have to make a year before you owe taxes?"

"No idea. Why?"

"Just wondering."

Highway 550 between Fruitland and Farmington is a solid string of businesses, convenience stores, gas stations, diners. They pass a cop, lights on his car pulsing, with two young Indian men, legs spread, hands behind their heads. The cop frisking one.

"Would be something, getting a Social Security check every month that you don't have to do anything for."

"Like Rosy says, you earned it."

"The thing is, I don't know if it's a good idea for the government to look too close at me."

Ryland frowns at him. "Why not?"

Sam doesn't answer.

"Sam? When's the last time you filed a tax return?"

Sam takes a sip from his flask, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "I guess that would be when Lily and I got divorced."

"Sam, Sam." Ryland shakes his head. "Same old same old, huh?"

"I guess."

"Remember how you tried to talk me into firing you, rigging a way to pay you under the table? You were always scheming how to stay under the table. Well, you probably don't owe much. You might have to pay a penalty for not filing, but I doubt you owe any taxes. What do you make? Ten grand a year?"

"Not even."

"I bet you're under the minimum. Like Rosy said, it's not the government's money. You paid in all those years at the mill."

"That I did. You saw to it."

"That I did."

"How do you suppose somebody goes about applying for Social Security?"

"It's simple. You just need your birth certificate or your army discharge papers. Something to show you're legit."

"Something to show I'm legit." Sam takes a sip from his flask. "I must have one of those somewhere, huh," he says. "A birth certificate. I wonder where."

Ryland smiles tiredly. "Sam, you're just the same."

O
N MONDAY MORNING,
twelve days before Maggie's wedding, Lily drives down to the Strater Hotel on Main in Durango to meet Fred for an early breakfast. They've been having a little disagreement about their vacation this November, not over where or when but specifically over how long they should go for and how much they should see. Fred has already begun to wrap up his business, and they've decided on a date. They'll have their first excursion outside the USA on November 15. Two weeks, no more. Touring can be taxing on a relationship, especially a new one—on this they both agree. So they want to go slow.

If Fred had his way, they'd be carted around on a dais, never touching ground, whisked in and out of Belize, Guatemala, Mexico, sampling but not, to Lily's mind, really experiencing these exotic places. Lily thinks they ought to choose a specific locale and really explore. Initially she thought she'd like a walking tour of some sort, but recently she has stumbled on kayaking tours, and they've captured her imagination. She wants to "paddle in hushed delight into one of the secret coves or spellbinding volcanic outcroppings of Baja's Sea of Cortez," just like the brochure says.

In truth, though, she has a secret agenda. If she can get Fred to agree to an active vacation, one that requires physical exertion, she plans to put them both on a fitness regime for the next two months to get in shape for the trip. She needs it, too. This is not just about Fred's weight. She has no upper body strength. Her arms are like noodles. She'd like to develop some muscle where she's never had any.

And so she goes to breakfast armed with brochures. From the sidewalk outside, she sees Fred in the window, reading a newspaper, and her heart skips ahead a little. Every time she sees him these days, she is surprised at how very glad she is to see him. Her gladness doesn't abate a bit when he tells her she's loony.