Saturday, July 28, 2007
Radiation and you
I've always been fascinated by radiation, and I just read this article in an old Smithsonian, which inspired the "only job" story. The particularly inspiring bit can be found at the bottom of the linked-to page.
It was the only job, part 2
The boy's arms were swinging like young trees in a hurricane as he busted through the swamp. Peter felt slow running after him in his two-pound work boots, but at least it hadn't rained lately and the mud beneath him only gave a little as he ran. Peter hadn't even begun to breathe hard and the hungry boy had inexplicable stamina as they were soon out the other side of the swamp and onto a dirt road. So now it would be a true sprint.
Peter felt he was gaining on the boy, who ran wildly, his head back and his bare feet slapping the dust full-on. The blue-gloved hands flailed through the air on limp wrists. The boy hadn't looked back once. Peter began to sweat with exertion as well as heat as they pounded down the road, one minute then two then three and he still felt like he was gaining, but he obviously wasn't going to catch the boy before they came to the village.
It was in the village that the boy's stamina began to give out on him. Peter's boots left skids in the dust as he darted around the corner of a corrugated metal shack to follow the boy, who was only slowing down in his attempts to shake Peter. An alarmed brown chicken, fleeing Peter's feet, ran into the side of the shack with a scrape of beak on metal, and fluttered off in the other direction. Finally at the yard of another rusting shack, its guano-spattered satellite dish jutting almost at eye level, the boy stumbled and Peter reached out a hand to grab him, tumbling on top of him instead.
The boy was weak as Peter's little sister and Peter wrenched the canister right out of his hands. "Get off, get off," coughed the boy, his human voice surprising after his animal bearing and behavior. His hands flapped painfully at Peter's face, and Peter grabbed one by the wrist and realized the boy didn't have gloves at all. His hands were coated with glittery dust, the same that now sifted from the canister as Peter tried to set it down outside of reach.
The boy was clearly frightened but his behavior was so irritating that Peter felt only anger. "I'll hit you!" said Peter, wrestling down the thrashing bony knees and trying to grab for the boy's other wrist. "You're going to jail, you thief."
"I didn't steal... it was just junk, let me have my medicine," he mumbled, the dust clear and glittering around his dry lips. Then, "I'm dying."
Peter didn't have to think of a reply to this assertion because now there were people in the yard. Peter held tight on the boy's wrists and shifted his glance to the canister with only his eyes. A pregnant woman in a red dress with high padded shoulders bent down to pick up the canister and he couldn't do anything. She was like his mother.
"You boys are too old to be fighting over silly things. And in my yard." The woman had clenched teeth clothed in a terrible frown. She tipped the canister to shake out some dust onto her palm. Clearly possessing no idea of what the substance was, and just as clearly not caring, she passed it to the deferent man who had come up behind her. The man took one look inside and made an "O" with his mouth, and pulled his shirtless friend close so they could both peer inside.
"Now stand up, both of you," said the mother.
Peter didn't want to let go but he had to. When he was standing, the other boy dealt him an absurd and painless kick on his calf, rolled a bit on the dirt to demonstrate how abused he was, and eventually crawled to his feet. The sun was right in Peter's eyes and he rubbed his glittering, dusty hands on his uniform pants before speaking.
"Ma'am, I'm from the--" He stopped, squinting. Things were giddily out of his control, he sensed. He tried to stand up taller. "I work for the United Nations. The boss will be here soon."
The hard woman gave him an angry stare, but his uniform was still new enough to be recognizable as such and vaguely convincing. "What d'you do for the United Nations, boy?"
Peter glanced dismayed at the crowd that was making a circle around him, at the other boy, who was sullenly sucking his fingers again. He took a deep breath. "I reconnoiter and retrieve abandoned radiation threats, ma'am."
"Well, that don't give you a right to go fighting in my back yard," she huffed, unmoved as a great cow. She was just as stern as his mother but not as smart. Nowhere near.
"Ma'am..." he began in a pained tone. He was beginning to feel very uneasy and slightly shaky. Something, an insect or a bead of sweat or just nerves, was tickling across his stomach. He glanced at the clump of shirtless men who had possession of the canister and saw a scene from a dream. They had all smeared the glittering powder across their chests and faces and were admiring each other and drawing patterns and now a naked fat-legged little girl was waddling up to them and her uncle was scooping out more powder from the glowing blue hole to dab on her smooth black eyelids...
Peter was ashamed, so ashamed the month he was in the hospital. Every day he thought about the pain in his hands and his thighs and his lungs for hours, but he thought about his shame more. He had seen the little girl once; she was blind and half her face was eaten away, but she was alive still. Five of the men had died and the skinny boy had died, just as he'd said. The mother he didn't know about, and the rest of the townspeople he didn't know about, for the fabulous canister of otherworldly glitter had been passed around town from curious hand to curious hand while he trotted whining like a dog after it, possessed by the greatest distress he had ever known and utterly unable to find the thing to say to get the canister back. His body that had seemed so strong when he raced down the other boy had seemed like a dream body, impotent and unable even to reach out a hand for the thing he wanted, let alone swing a fist. And so he had wasted through the miserable dream that afternoon until everyone began to burn hideously and were driven by wide-eyed neighbors to the hospital.
Over the month, at least eighty people were found who'd been contaminated by the cesium chloride, and there were probably more who just weren't smart enough to come to the hospital.
Peter's own mother had come to visit him, missing two days of work, and he was glad but he could hardly look in her eyes for the shame. She came and went and he went back to staring at the television and thinking he deserved the pain. His sixteenth birthday came and his mother couldn't get away but she sent him a present, a watch from China, and he wore it and liked to look at it but it didn't matter.
The only thing that mattered was when Charlie came and asked when he'd be ready to go back to work. "We all discussed it," said Charlie, "and I told Grandpa you deserved a little retirement with your payments, and take it easy the rest of your life, but he said no." Charlie took his cap off and rubbed his old stubbly head. "Grandpa said this is the work for you, especially since... begging your pardon... there won't be no little ones in your future now, you know what I mean. He said we need a young strong boy like you we can actually use to bring the lead sheets up and get'm set. And I suppose we do. All I know is I'm not getting any younger and my back hurts terrible sometimes, and you know Grandpa and Lovejoy aren't getting any younger too."
The pain was forgotten. Peter sat up straight in his bed. "Thank you Charlie," he said. "I will start next week."
"I know," said Charlie, and next week Peter was there in a lead vest helping drag the big lead sheets up to be fitted around another radiation therapy machine they'd found in an abandoned hospital on the west side of town. When the machine was secure they'd put it on the cart and have it brought to the truck to be taken away by the other boys. One of the boys who helped load the trucks was about 16 and had been hired since Peter's hospital stay, and he looked up to Peter with a shy awe that Peter loved.
The scars on Peter's hands and thighs were thick and rippled, and Peter still hated the day he got them but he liked having them. He had taken the job two months ago because it was the only job he could get that paid enough for him to help his mother too, and now it was the only job Peter had ever worked at where he did the work of a young man but got the respect of an old man, and he loved it.
Peter felt he was gaining on the boy, who ran wildly, his head back and his bare feet slapping the dust full-on. The blue-gloved hands flailed through the air on limp wrists. The boy hadn't looked back once. Peter began to sweat with exertion as well as heat as they pounded down the road, one minute then two then three and he still felt like he was gaining, but he obviously wasn't going to catch the boy before they came to the village.
It was in the village that the boy's stamina began to give out on him. Peter's boots left skids in the dust as he darted around the corner of a corrugated metal shack to follow the boy, who was only slowing down in his attempts to shake Peter. An alarmed brown chicken, fleeing Peter's feet, ran into the side of the shack with a scrape of beak on metal, and fluttered off in the other direction. Finally at the yard of another rusting shack, its guano-spattered satellite dish jutting almost at eye level, the boy stumbled and Peter reached out a hand to grab him, tumbling on top of him instead.
The boy was weak as Peter's little sister and Peter wrenched the canister right out of his hands. "Get off, get off," coughed the boy, his human voice surprising after his animal bearing and behavior. His hands flapped painfully at Peter's face, and Peter grabbed one by the wrist and realized the boy didn't have gloves at all. His hands were coated with glittery dust, the same that now sifted from the canister as Peter tried to set it down outside of reach.
The boy was clearly frightened but his behavior was so irritating that Peter felt only anger. "I'll hit you!" said Peter, wrestling down the thrashing bony knees and trying to grab for the boy's other wrist. "You're going to jail, you thief."
"I didn't steal... it was just junk, let me have my medicine," he mumbled, the dust clear and glittering around his dry lips. Then, "I'm dying."
Peter didn't have to think of a reply to this assertion because now there were people in the yard. Peter held tight on the boy's wrists and shifted his glance to the canister with only his eyes. A pregnant woman in a red dress with high padded shoulders bent down to pick up the canister and he couldn't do anything. She was like his mother.
"You boys are too old to be fighting over silly things. And in my yard." The woman had clenched teeth clothed in a terrible frown. She tipped the canister to shake out some dust onto her palm. Clearly possessing no idea of what the substance was, and just as clearly not caring, she passed it to the deferent man who had come up behind her. The man took one look inside and made an "O" with his mouth, and pulled his shirtless friend close so they could both peer inside.
"Now stand up, both of you," said the mother.
Peter didn't want to let go but he had to. When he was standing, the other boy dealt him an absurd and painless kick on his calf, rolled a bit on the dirt to demonstrate how abused he was, and eventually crawled to his feet. The sun was right in Peter's eyes and he rubbed his glittering, dusty hands on his uniform pants before speaking.
"Ma'am, I'm from the--" He stopped, squinting. Things were giddily out of his control, he sensed. He tried to stand up taller. "I work for the United Nations. The boss will be here soon."
The hard woman gave him an angry stare, but his uniform was still new enough to be recognizable as such and vaguely convincing. "What d'you do for the United Nations, boy?"
Peter glanced dismayed at the crowd that was making a circle around him, at the other boy, who was sullenly sucking his fingers again. He took a deep breath. "I reconnoiter and retrieve abandoned radiation threats, ma'am."
"Well, that don't give you a right to go fighting in my back yard," she huffed, unmoved as a great cow. She was just as stern as his mother but not as smart. Nowhere near.
"Ma'am..." he began in a pained tone. He was beginning to feel very uneasy and slightly shaky. Something, an insect or a bead of sweat or just nerves, was tickling across his stomach. He glanced at the clump of shirtless men who had possession of the canister and saw a scene from a dream. They had all smeared the glittering powder across their chests and faces and were admiring each other and drawing patterns and now a naked fat-legged little girl was waddling up to them and her uncle was scooping out more powder from the glowing blue hole to dab on her smooth black eyelids...
Peter was ashamed, so ashamed the month he was in the hospital. Every day he thought about the pain in his hands and his thighs and his lungs for hours, but he thought about his shame more. He had seen the little girl once; she was blind and half her face was eaten away, but she was alive still. Five of the men had died and the skinny boy had died, just as he'd said. The mother he didn't know about, and the rest of the townspeople he didn't know about, for the fabulous canister of otherworldly glitter had been passed around town from curious hand to curious hand while he trotted whining like a dog after it, possessed by the greatest distress he had ever known and utterly unable to find the thing to say to get the canister back. His body that had seemed so strong when he raced down the other boy had seemed like a dream body, impotent and unable even to reach out a hand for the thing he wanted, let alone swing a fist. And so he had wasted through the miserable dream that afternoon until everyone began to burn hideously and were driven by wide-eyed neighbors to the hospital.
Over the month, at least eighty people were found who'd been contaminated by the cesium chloride, and there were probably more who just weren't smart enough to come to the hospital.
Peter's own mother had come to visit him, missing two days of work, and he was glad but he could hardly look in her eyes for the shame. She came and went and he went back to staring at the television and thinking he deserved the pain. His sixteenth birthday came and his mother couldn't get away but she sent him a present, a watch from China, and he wore it and liked to look at it but it didn't matter.
The only thing that mattered was when Charlie came and asked when he'd be ready to go back to work. "We all discussed it," said Charlie, "and I told Grandpa you deserved a little retirement with your payments, and take it easy the rest of your life, but he said no." Charlie took his cap off and rubbed his old stubbly head. "Grandpa said this is the work for you, especially since... begging your pardon... there won't be no little ones in your future now, you know what I mean. He said we need a young strong boy like you we can actually use to bring the lead sheets up and get'm set. And I suppose we do. All I know is I'm not getting any younger and my back hurts terrible sometimes, and you know Grandpa and Lovejoy aren't getting any younger too."
The pain was forgotten. Peter sat up straight in his bed. "Thank you Charlie," he said. "I will start next week."
"I know," said Charlie, and next week Peter was there in a lead vest helping drag the big lead sheets up to be fitted around another radiation therapy machine they'd found in an abandoned hospital on the west side of town. When the machine was secure they'd put it on the cart and have it brought to the truck to be taken away by the other boys. One of the boys who helped load the trucks was about 16 and had been hired since Peter's hospital stay, and he looked up to Peter with a shy awe that Peter loved.
The scars on Peter's hands and thighs were thick and rippled, and Peter still hated the day he got them but he liked having them. He had taken the job two months ago because it was the only job he could get that paid enough for him to help his mother too, and now it was the only job Peter had ever worked at where he did the work of a young man but got the respect of an old man, and he loved it.
Friday, July 27, 2007
It was the only job, part 1
It was the only job Peter had ever worked at where the old men did the dangerous work, and the young men got to sit around and watch. Now it was a hot three o'clock in the Nigerian sun and he was exhausted with boredom. He rested his chin on top of the stone wall to relieve his aching neck, his eyes fixed on the action fifty feet away in the garbage-strewn swamp. The old men crept up to the largest pile of junk, their geiger counters held out in front of them like pistols, like the best defense was a good offense, except in this job there was only defense, and only for the young.
Peter was 15 and he wasn't married, and hadn't a thought of children, but he'd stopped trying to argue with the old men two weeks into the job. "You're young," said Charlie. "You'll want sons when you start getting older. Trust me." So he shut his mouth. Charlie was up there now, shuffling in a careful gait with his inadequate apron making his body shapeless. The old men looked like very evil hunters. They were very black in their age and dressed in dark uniforms and soundless and entirely intent on the rusting white assemblage in the middle of the junk heap, and it was spooky to see them converge on it.
It was most likely an old radiation therapy machine. Somebody had dumped it here outside Lagos in the 70s, probably, and nobody but the crew had any idea what it was--or so they hoped. At least, nobody but the boy they paid to find dumping grounds knew it had any significance at all, and certainly no one knew there was probably enough cesium inside to make fifty dirty bombs.
The old men had frozen. Charlie leaned back suddenly as if something had hit him in the chest. He glanced at Lovejoy, who glanced at Grandpa, who paused only a moment before spitting on the ground and calling, "What you doing in there? You come on out, now." His voice was high and confident like a flute. "Come on out, now."
And Peter waited but he couldn't see anything. He licked the sweat off his upper lip. Charlie and Lovejoy shared another glance, a long one. When Grandpa took a step forward, they did too. Peter felt a high, excited feeling under his ribs. He couldn't move. He saw the figure rise, and it was very thin. Grandpa opened his mouth again. "Now just come away from that. We trying to do some work here."
The figure looked at the old men. It was a bent, beaten youth who might have been about Peter's age, but who obviously hadn't had the luck to land a job and a home and steady bread. The youth's ribs showed and he had nothing on but some dirty shorts and a pair of bright blue gloves. He had a rusting canister clenched in one fist and the corners of his mouth also shone blue.
As Grandpa strode forward quickly on his old stick legs, the youth thrust a hand into his mouth. He pulled it out glistening, then ran.
"Stop!" shouted Grandpa, and Charlie and Lovejoy after him. Charlie broke into a careening run, his mouth hanging open to suck at the mosquitoed air. Lovejoy dipped his dark head down to peer into the junk pile then ripped out a curse. Grandpa half-turned and looked back at Peter so sharply that Peter's shins were bleeding from his crash over the stone wall before he even thought. He bounded downhill into the swamp and through the brush, overtaking Charlie in an instant, the creepers clutching at his wrinkled uniform. His eyes didn't adjust as he plunged in, but he still saw the flash of a bare smooth arm ahead of him as the other boy sprinted away. He heard Charlie yell after him but Charlie's words weren't anything to the look he'd seen in Grandpa's eyes. Peter was young and crazy with sitting around and he knew he could catch this boy.
Peter was 15 and he wasn't married, and hadn't a thought of children, but he'd stopped trying to argue with the old men two weeks into the job. "You're young," said Charlie. "You'll want sons when you start getting older. Trust me." So he shut his mouth. Charlie was up there now, shuffling in a careful gait with his inadequate apron making his body shapeless. The old men looked like very evil hunters. They were very black in their age and dressed in dark uniforms and soundless and entirely intent on the rusting white assemblage in the middle of the junk heap, and it was spooky to see them converge on it.
It was most likely an old radiation therapy machine. Somebody had dumped it here outside Lagos in the 70s, probably, and nobody but the crew had any idea what it was--or so they hoped. At least, nobody but the boy they paid to find dumping grounds knew it had any significance at all, and certainly no one knew there was probably enough cesium inside to make fifty dirty bombs.
The old men had frozen. Charlie leaned back suddenly as if something had hit him in the chest. He glanced at Lovejoy, who glanced at Grandpa, who paused only a moment before spitting on the ground and calling, "What you doing in there? You come on out, now." His voice was high and confident like a flute. "Come on out, now."
And Peter waited but he couldn't see anything. He licked the sweat off his upper lip. Charlie and Lovejoy shared another glance, a long one. When Grandpa took a step forward, they did too. Peter felt a high, excited feeling under his ribs. He couldn't move. He saw the figure rise, and it was very thin. Grandpa opened his mouth again. "Now just come away from that. We trying to do some work here."
The figure looked at the old men. It was a bent, beaten youth who might have been about Peter's age, but who obviously hadn't had the luck to land a job and a home and steady bread. The youth's ribs showed and he had nothing on but some dirty shorts and a pair of bright blue gloves. He had a rusting canister clenched in one fist and the corners of his mouth also shone blue.
As Grandpa strode forward quickly on his old stick legs, the youth thrust a hand into his mouth. He pulled it out glistening, then ran.
"Stop!" shouted Grandpa, and Charlie and Lovejoy after him. Charlie broke into a careening run, his mouth hanging open to suck at the mosquitoed air. Lovejoy dipped his dark head down to peer into the junk pile then ripped out a curse. Grandpa half-turned and looked back at Peter so sharply that Peter's shins were bleeding from his crash over the stone wall before he even thought. He bounded downhill into the swamp and through the brush, overtaking Charlie in an instant, the creepers clutching at his wrinkled uniform. His eyes didn't adjust as he plunged in, but he still saw the flash of a bare smooth arm ahead of him as the other boy sprinted away. He heard Charlie yell after him but Charlie's words weren't anything to the look he'd seen in Grandpa's eyes. Peter was young and crazy with sitting around and he knew he could catch this boy.
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