Burned (13 page)

You two about ready for supper? Hope so,

'cause supper's about ready for you.

We went inside, washed up, and by the time

we got to the table, dinner had already arrived.

Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans

canned personally by Aunt J, homemade

apple crisp. Oh yes, and a bottle of good Merlot.

Not that I knew good wine from bad, and of course, the guilt train got rolling as soon as the cork popped.

But somehow I managed to hop off that locomotive.

Stan was the wine collector,
said Aunt J.
I don't top
into the cellar often. Just for special Company.

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Delicious food, mellow wine, and Ethan's very

warm leg, real close to mine. From time to time, our thighs touched and neither of us hurried to pull them apart. Did he realize what he was doing to me? Was I doing the same to him?

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Half of Me Said Yes

I hadn't imagined it.

He had kept his leg there.

I hadn't started it.

He had initiated contact.

I hadn't insisted.

He had enjoyed it.

The other half insisted

I was crazy.

He was perfect.

I was plain.

He was worthy of a rock star.

I deserved a zero.

He was all a man should be.

I wasn't yet a woman.

I mean, physically I was, yes. Mother Nature came to call regularly.

But emotionally?

I was about six years old, still Daddy's little girl, even though Daddy

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couldn't care less about me. How could

I expect any man

ever would?

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J
ournal Entry, June 16

What is the matter with me?

Three months ago, I barely

knew boys existed.

First I couldn't get Justin

out of my mind, even though

I had no chance at him, ever.

Then it was Derek I thought I had to be with, even though he was a total jerk. (Should have known.)

Now it's Ethan--too oldfor me, too good-lookingfor me, too

everything, except LDS.

So why this amazing attraction?

Why do I even think he might

be a little bit interested in me?

Even if he is interested, do

I want a summerfling? That was great, see ya later?

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And what if we actually feil in love?

How could it ever work out?

Just think if Dad found out!

Why can't I just forget about guys? Do I want to end up like

Aunt J? Or worse, like Mom?

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I Tend to Overanalyze

So the next day I tried not to think about him at all.

Let things happen as they're meant to, I told myself.

Aunt J was planting the garden, turning long, even rows of dirt so rieh you could breathe in the compost smell.

I helped her rake the soil smooth, enjoying the sun's

gentle pulse on my back and the mindless labor.

For an hour or more we worked quietly. Not a single

question popped into my head. Work is good for that.

But when we stopped for lunch and lemonade,
bam

, bam, bam,
there came the questions in rapid succession.

"How long were you and Uncle Stan married?" "How

did he die?" "Why didn't you ever have children?"

Lord, girl, you do ask personal questions, don't you?

Ah well, a week öfter our thirteenth anniversary,

Stanfound out he had stomach
Cancer.
Hefought
it for almost a year, but itfinally got the best of him.

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I wanted children and we Med to have them, but I couldn't

carry a baby tofull term. After five miscarriages, I said enough.

That made me think of something Ethan said. "Ethan's

Another Ugly Story

I sat, fascinated, as Aunt J remembered:

In the 1950s the U.S. government

detonated nuclear weapons aboveground, down at the test site near Vegas.

They didn't have a clear idea

what radiation might do, so they

tracked where the wind blew it, and what happened to those who came in contact with thefaüout.

I saw anger fiash in her steel gray eyes.

Your father and I were kids then,
living near Ely. These men in suits,
driving official-looking cars, would

come around with these little badges
to wear on the days they set off their bombs.

They asked our family--and others--
to sit outside and watch the blasts,
which were visible hundreds of miles away.

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We learned a little about them in school.

The mushroom clouds were spectacular.

Some people even had "blast parties,"

drinking and carrying on as those venomous

puffs lifted into the air and spread across the sky.

The wind carried them, and those of us in its path

became known as "downwinders." The closer

you were to the test site, the more immediate the results--dead cattle, contaminated milk.

I remembered photos of soldiers at ground zero.

Afterward, the government men collected the badges, which Turned Hack by degrees--
the more radiation, the blacker they became.

We were guinea pigs, Pattyn. Government

guinea pigs. As the years wore on, the effects

showed up in elevated Cancer
levels. And

thousands of women suffered

miscarriage öfter miscarriage.

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That was something they

sure didn't teach in school.

It wasn't just in Nevada, either. That radiation

went high into the atmosphere, moving across the country at will. There are downwinders in neighhoring states, and even farther east.

Today the government pays those of us still

alive $50,000, if we can prove we were affected.

I was one of the lucky ones. I survived breast

Cancer. Ethan's mother was not so fortunate.

Neither was Stan, nor your Grandma Jane.

"What about Dad and Grandpa

Paul? They're healthy."

Maybe their immune Systems are stronger.

Maybe their Cancers are sleeping somewhere.

Some people did stay healthy. Who knows why?

They're probably part of some government study:

"How Not to Die from Radiation Poisoning."

Now the rest of the country wants Nevada to take

its nuclear waste? Nevada is not a wasteland. We

don't even use nuclear power. And Yucca Mountain

sits right on top of an earthquake fault line.

So much for the government's "sound science"!

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I hadn't really thought about all that before.

I wish people could know
my
Nevada, see the beauty here. Mountains, reaching up into that cloudless blue sky. Rivers. Lakes. Forests.

I wish they would consider our children, whose

schools and parks sit beside the roads and tracks

that will carry that irradiated crap.

I wish they would think of someone besides themselves. You don't have a genie
on you somewhere, do you? I'LL climb down
off my soapbox now. Tve got beans to plant.

Aunt J was right. Some of her truths were not very pretty.

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I Didn't Even Know

She'd had cancer.

Didn't know about her miscarriages, or that she'd lost her husband and mother to the creep of malignancies.

Learning all that made me

feel selfish for ever having pity for myself. Compared to Aunt J's, my life was a piece of cake.

I watched her in the garden, tough as a backcountry winter, despite pain no person should

have to bear, and I wondered

if she ever broke down and screamed, ever thought about hurting someone like she'd been hurt (Dad, for instance).

Other questions smoldered

inside, burning their way

out of my brain, aiming for my big mouth.

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I figured I'd wait a day or two to ask them, though. Aunt J

had opened herseif wide.

I didn't want her to bleed out.

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One Question Wouldn't Go Aw

So as we worked together on dinner, I posed it.

"Why did Dad want to go to

Vietnam? I mean, why fight for a country that treated his own

family in such a terrible way?"

Aunt J kept chopping broccoli.

We
didn't know then. For years

we had no idea that those beautiful

mushroom clouds ivere angels of death. It took decadesfor someone to make the connection and start

asking tough questions.

"But why did it take so long?

I mean, dead cattle and poisoned

milk had to be a pretty big clue.

And what about incinerating

Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Couldn't

people put two and two together?"

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Arnerica was innocent. . . and ignorant.

We believed this land was the chosen

land, and it was our duty to defend

it. The Japanese were the aggressors, so they deserved their fate. But again, we didn't know about the peripheral

deaths through radiation poisoning.

"Well then, what about government

agents, running around with radiation badges? Didn't that raise

any alarms at all?" I could picture the dark sedans, with G-men in buzz cuts and perfect gray suits.

It was a different era, Pattyn. We

believed the people we voted into power truly represented our interests.

Some still believe that, despite all

evidence to the contrary. But for many, Vietnam opened the door to questioning the StaItus quo.

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Newsreel segments came to mind--American students

protesting the draft. Policemen

arresting them. Soldiers cutting

them down. "If Dad would have

known, would he have gone?"

I can't speakfor Stephen, Pattyn.

But my heart tells me yes. I don't

think hisjoining the service had

anything to do with ideals or moral

Obligation
or even knowing that if he didn't

join, he'd very likely get drafted.

Soldiering was in his blood. . . .

Her unfinished thought

drifted across the kitchen, a heavy stink, tainting the sweet summer air:

Killing was in his blood.

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Sleep Came Hard

That night.

And it wasn't just the moon, shining füll and bronze through my bedroom window. Ever since I'd been with Aunt J, I'd learned things--some, like driving, were incredible things that I'd thought

I might never learn. Others were things I maybe didn't

want to know--that made me question every little corner of my world, even the nooks I'd always felt safe tucked into.

Things like the truth about the law, so easily warped to fit the circumstances; like government, not necessarily representative of those who had created it--the people it was meant to serve; like patriotism; the necessity of war, the wisdom of weapons of mass destruction. Even things like school, preparing and sacrificing for the future, with zero guarantee of a future and no clue what kind it would be, should we happen to find ourselves there. I stared wearily out at the moon, shimmering, clean, in the pacific night

sky, and wondered if man had, indeed, set

foot on its mottled surface. And, if we had, exactly what we

had left behind.

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The Next Morning Before D

I woke to crunching gravel as Ethan's

pickup pulled into the driveway, horse trailer in tow.

Ethan. I smiled myself awake.