Free Yellowcake by Ann Cummins Page A

ruins, see Chichén Itzá. He showed her pictures in his
National Geographic.
It looks so exotic, and now Lily can't stop thinking about it. He's thinking November. He asked her if she's free then.
    The fourth drawer has notebooks in it, several of them tied together in twine, daily logbooks. These, she supposes, might be useful. She drops them on top of the reports. There's also a photograph of the old tailings pile in Durango. Sam poses on a wooden walk at the top of the pile. He had seeded the pile with grass, and for a few years the pile looked like a grassy knoll. He looks so young, a sleepy-eyed, hollow-cheeked miner, serious and sad. His gaze so cool. A mask for his lust. Her stomach flutters. In those days he was always at her. She couldn't wash his smell off, he was in her so much—before his shift began, then again the minute he got home, and in the middle of sleep she'd wake to him in her. There were no other women then. There could not have been.
    Now the grass is gone, the pile is gone—everything that used to be is gone. Where the mill once was there are office buildings and shops. The old rope bridge across the Animas that she and Rosy used to play on, that's gone. They'd grown up in a house across the river from the smelter. As children they'd go to the middle of the rope bridge, jump, and set it bucking. It was great fun, and often they'd cross to the other side of the river to pick blackberries. But one day—she was a teenager then—Lily crossed the bridge and was stopped by an armed soldier. Overnight the army had come in, and that side of the river was suddenly off-limits. They turned the smelter into a mill for uranium. And so Durango did its part for the war effort, and when the soldiers came home from the war, the army sold the mill to private industry, and the soldiers all had work in uranium, which was, they thought at the time, so much more profitable and cleaner than fossil fuels.
    When they married, Rosy and Ryland moved uptown, five miles from the mill, but Sam and Lily converted the upstairs of her parents' house into an apartment, where they lived for ten years, and every time the wind blew, they were directly in the path of the windborne tailings. Had she only known.
    There should have been two babies. There almost were two. In 1957 she carried one for six months, a little girl, buried at the foot of her grandmother's grave. She lost the other at three months. Sam was so sweet about that. "There will be more, Lil, don't worry."
    But there were no more babies. They tried and tried. That's when she should have paid attention to her instincts, because everything changed. After a while there was no more lust, no appetites, just a quiet, almost pitying politeness, as if something was wrong with her. He had done his part. He had gotten her pregnant. She couldn't do her part.
    She tosses the photo of Sam back in the drawer, then picks it up again. She'll burn it. She blinks, loosening tears, swallowing. No. She won't cry for Sam Behan. Never again.
    Suddenly she wants to be quit of him. For good. She closes the drawer, scoops up the logbooks, and struggles to her feet, her legs achy and stiff from kneeling. She's cold, chilled to the bone in this artificially cooled building.
    She will make an appointment with her lawyer. But how can she ask him openly? She can't bear for anybody to find out about the divorce papers. God, she
is
an idiot. Why didn't she file them?
    Well, she'll just pose a hypothetical situation to the lawyer. A vague question. She has to see him this week about some investments. Just inquire about the legalities. That's what she'll do.
    What would Fred say if he knew she wasn't actually divorced?
    He'll never know. She'll make sure. Blinking, she slides the door open and walks into the gray light of the windowless hall.

12
    B ECKY SPENDS FRIDAY morning at the bank processing loan applications. She's just getting ready to stop for lunch when she looks up and sees