Chapter Two

Montezuma Creek’s fifty or so homes perched on the sandy northern bank of the San Juan River where it makes its northern most sweep across the barren desert land of extreme southern Utah. “Downtown” consisted of a small café catering almost exclusively to oil field workers transiting back and forth from the sprawling Aneth oil fields further to the east. The only other businesses were a single service station, a dingy garage and an auto machine shop that barely eeked out livings for their owners, and a tiny grocery store whose shelves were half-empty most of the time. Incongruously, the town hosted a small but modern high school where fewer than one hundred students from the surrounding area attended.  Nearly eighty percent of the students came from the reservation across the river. The rest were from small farms and ranches scattered across the empty expanses north of the river that typified the very sparsely populated area.

Few knew the EnviroGuard facility even existed. Contractors from outside the area had built it quietly and without fanfare. No road signs announced its presence and no locals had been hired to work there. The occupied portions of the property were carved out of a shallow canyon covered with thick juniper and pinion forest that completely obscured the facility from the road. It sat on nine thousand acres of otherwise unoccupied private land about two miles northeast of town  The facility consisted of three squat, white metal buildings that had been hastily and quietly erected.

The only hint that something unusual lay hidden somewhere back on the property was a wide, well maintained gravel road leading back into the trees from off the highway and the presence of a strong steel automatic gate blocking access. Delivery truck drivers and workers had magnetic card keys that operated the gate. It was only upon reaching a second fence and an occupied guard shack well hidden from the road that one could tell something significant was going on.

After backing his truck up to the loading dock, Robert was hailed by the dock foreman. “Hey Yazee, what kept you? The Moab dock told us you left nearly four hours ago.

“Had a little problem,” Robert said as he unlatched the van door and rolled it up. “One of the barrels got loose and spilled. I had to go by the house and clean it up.” He turned to hand the clipboard with the manifest papers to the man but to Robert’s surprise, the foreman had stopped dead. He peered into the back of the truck then began to back away. “Close that door.” he commanded. The man appeared to be frightened. Robert turned and rolled the door back down. When he turned back, the foreman had walked over and picked up the outside dock phone. He was talking animatedly to someone inside. He hung up, turned back to Robert and asked, “You’re very dirty. Did you come into contact with any of that material?”

“Yeah, some of it. Somebody had to clean it up. I put everything back into the barrel that spilled and closed it back up.”

“Put the clipboard down and follow me,” the man commanded. “Don’t touch anything.”

It was the first time Robert had been allowed inside the building. But he had no time to look around. The instant he stepped through the door he was confronted by two men in hazmat suits. They took him directly to a booth where they hosed him down with his clothes still on then made him strip and scrub down for nearly a half hour under a shower with four heads that blasted him from all sides. The water was powerful enough he thought it might peel his skin. When finished to their satisfaction they waived some kind of electronic wand all around him like he’d seen done in airports. Then they gave him what appeared to be a new pair of coveralls and some slippers. They told him the company would buy him some new things to replace the clothing they took.

Back outside he was surprised to see men in bubble suits scrubbing down every square inch of his truck just as hard as he’d been scrubbed. “What’s going on here, Bernie?” he asked the supervisor.

“Nothing serious,” the man said. “We’re just being careful.”

“Looks like a lot more than just careful to me. What have you guys got me shipping in those barrels anyway?”

The man acted nervous.  “We’re just being cautious, that’s all,” he answered testily. “You’re a smart guy. You must have figured out we deal in low-level radioactive waste.  We just don’t want you getting lung cancer twenty years from now. That’s all.”

“Hey!” Danny responded with alarm. I’m supposed to declare that kind of stuff on my shipping manifests.  Why haven’t those barrels been marked?”

“Because it’s so low-level it doesn’t have to be. We told you when you took this job that this is a highly-secret facility. What do you think people in Montecello and Blanding would think if they saw you running through the middle of town everyday with a sign on your truck that announced you were transporting radioactive material?  It’d take about ten seconds for one of those so-called environmentalist groups to shut you down? You want that kind of trouble, Yazee?”

Robert thought about it and the implications it could have on his job. “That could be a problem, couldn’t it,” he finally replied.

“Damn right. Look how much trouble the Goshute Tribe up in Northern Utah had trying to get the state to approve transporting this same kind of stuff to their storage facility in Skull Valley. Good jobs are few and far between down here, Yazee. If I were you, I wouldn’t rock the boat. If you do we’ll have another hauler in here in no time, and you know it.”

It was more than a veiled threat. The man knew how hard it was to get this kind of steady hauling job anywhere in the four corners area.  Robert decided not to push his luck. Better to just let the problem drop.

Still, he was worried. Something told him Bernie was telling less than the whole truth. He’d seen the troubled looks on people’s faces as they’d put him and his truck through the decontamination procedures.

When he got home and found Lena sweeping the kitchen floor with the same broom he’d used in his truck, he grabbed it out of her hands and told her he’d get her a new one. He took the broom out back to the incinerator barrel and burned it.

That was six weeks ago. Six long, agonizing weeks during which his world was turned completely upside down.

Chapter Three

The first night after the spill he’d felt nauseas. His hands felt like they’d been badly sunburned. The next day he had a hard time keeping anything down as the nausea came and went. He felt weak and tired, like he had the flu. He tried to go to work but had to turn around and come home before he reached Montecello. The next day his hands started to peel. After three days the bouts of nausea finally gave way to a nearly constant case of diarrhea. His tired weakness never seemed to go away. All he wanted to do was sleep. He noticed that he was bruising very easily.

His hands reddened to almost purple and peeled and peeled until there seemed to be no skin left. They became so extraordinarily sensitive there was no way he could drive. He had to have Lena cover them with Vaseline and wrap them in soft gauze. Otherwise, even the wind seemed to make them hurt. Then as the redness began to subside, they cracked open and started to weep fluid in several places. On the eighth day he decided to go to the hospital emergency room. Lena tried to comb his hair for him before they left. She squealed in alarm as her first stroke brought back a comb full of hair from off his head.

There was no health insurance. As a barely getting started self-employed trucker, health insurance was just too expensive. Lena drove him to the reservation hospital down in Keyenta. It wasn’t the best place for medical care, but they wouldn’t turn him away and he could take some time to pay the bill.

The doctors told him he was either having an allergic reaction to something like poison ivy or maybe having a bad reaction to a spider bite. His vital signs were good and he didn’t appear to have any systemic illness. They said his white count was a little elevated, but that was to be expected with the problem with his hands. They gave him some Benedril, a bottle of antibiotic pills and a tube of antibiotic salve and told him if he wasn’t better in a couple of days to come back.

He wasn’t. Next he again tried the emergency room at the regional hospital in Blanding. They tested him for everything from AIDS to West Nile Virus with no results. All the tests came out normal except the white count. It was even higher than it had been at Keyenta. They referred him to a specialist at the University of Utah. When he called up there he found out that because he didn’t have insurance, they wanted three hundred dollars up front just to look at him. After being out of work for over two weeks and paying the increasingly heavy medical costs, the family’s recently accumulated savings were gone. Robert knew the hospital bills were running up into the thousands as it was. He decided he could live with the pain. He would wait a few more days and see what happened. 

Slowly he began to get better, the diarrhea finally went away, but not before he had lost a lot of weight - and over half his hair. His hands began to improve. The redness disappeared, replaced by a bright pink. They were still sensitive to the point of being excruciating at times, but they seemed to be returning to normal. And his vigor began to come back. He was surprised the day he climbed on the bathroom scale and discovered he’d lost nearly forty pounds.

Finally he felt good enough to fire up the truck and run over to EnviroGuard. He hoped they’d give him clearance to start running loads again. He and Lena were flat broke and the hospital and doctor bills were stacking higher and higher. They were starting to get calls at the house from people looking for money.

When Robert tried his electronic key at the gate to the Montezuma Creek facility it didn’t work. “Not a problem,” he told himself. They must have changed the codes. The company did that about once a month. He’d have to get another card. He picked up the call phone beside the key reader and waited for someone to answer.

“EnviroGuard Security, how may I help you?” a deep male voice asked.

“This is Robert Yazee, with Yazee Transfer Services. I’ve been out for a few weeks and my gate key doesn’t work.”

“One moment sir. Let me check your authorization.” Robert waited patiently for several minutes. Finally the man returned. “I’m sorry, Mr. Yazee. Your company is no longer authorized at this facility.”

“What do you mean, no longer authorized?”

“I mean I can’t allow you access, sir. Only authorized haulers are allowed.”

“But I am an authorized hauler. I’ve been sick for a few weeks, that’s all. I called in every three days and let your dispatchers know what was going on. I’m better now and can come back to work.”

“I’m sorry sir, but you’ll have to take that up with the main office up in Moab. They’re the ones who send the authorization lists down every day.”

“So you don’t have any loads for me?”

“Not without Moab’s authorization, sir. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“I guess not,” Robert said resignedly. He was starting to worry. “I’ll drive on up to Moab and get this straightened out.”

The drive to Moab seemed to take forever as Robert worried about what to say to get his hauling job back. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t work. He hadn’t loaded the truck and it was their stuff that had made him sick. The problem was how to put all that politely? Confrontation was not the way of the Dineh’ (the name the Navajos called themselves). Robert was uncomfortable. The white man’s ways were rude and abrupt. There were no formal greetings and exchanges of family information. There was no polite conversation and gentle easing into the reasons for one’s discomfort. Whitemen seemed to have no concern about offending another person or making careful conversation intended to find a polite way of reaching a middle ground that would satisfy the honor of both parties. For all their civilization, there was nothing very civil about white men in these types of things. Robert parked his truck outside the loading facility and sought out the man he usually dealt with at the dock.

“I’m sorry Mr. Yazee, EnviroGuard’s transportation dispatch manager said, “When you couldn’t haul, we had to replace your company with someone more reliable. It’s nothing personal. We can’t be responsible for the personal problems of our vendors.” Robert knew the man only as Mr. Johnson.  His real name was Kirk Tucker

In addition to being uncomfortable, Robert was getting angry.  “But Mr. Johnson, I’ve always done a good job for you. Up until I got sick I never missed a single load. It wasn’t my fault the stuff in your barrel made me sick.”

The man flinched at Robert’s statement. “Now look, Yazee, don’t you go trying to blame your problem on EnviroGuard. You don’t know what made you sick anymore than I do. You start trying to lay that off on our company and you’ll buy yourself more trouble than you can handle.”

Trying to continue to sound respectful but still make his point, Robert said, “I know what I know, Mr. Johnson. I know I was healthy until I cleaned up that stuff in my truck. It made me sick and I’ve got hospital and doctor bills I can’t pay. I can probably find more work for my truck, but I think it’s only fair that if you’re not going to give me any more loads that EnviroGuard help pay my medical expenses for whatever spilled out of that barrel.”

“Whoa! Hold on there fella. With a threat like that you just stepped way above my pay grade. I’m going to have to send you up to Mr. Hutchison. He’s the one who handles those kind of problems. But with that attitude, you’re never going to haul another load for this company anyway. You’ve got my personal guarantee on that.” Johnson/Tucker scribbled Hutchison’s name and office number on a note and handed it to Robert. Then he barked, “Now get out of my office.”

The sign on Hutchison’s open door said he was the General Manager. Robert had never met him before. He had no idea the man’s real name was Ed Rollins. The man was just hanging up the phone when Robert approached. “Are you Yazee?” the thin but round-jowled, gray-headed fifty-something man growled.

“Yes sir,” Robert replied quietly, politely, not looking directly at the man, as was the Navajo way.

“I just talked to Mr. Johnson down at the dock. Let me give you the facts of life, Yazee. You’re an independent contractor. You’ve never been an employee of EnviroGuard and never will be. You aren’t covered by our health insurance and as an independent contractor you’re supposed to pay for your own worker’s compensation. If you get sick or hurt, it’s your problem, not ours. You got a hell of a nerve coming in here and demanding this company pay the bills you’re responsible for.”

Robert couldn’t believe the man’s rudeness. He was insulting Robert by staring him right in the eye as he spoke, treating Robert as if he were an enemy to whom he owed no deference. Even if everything the man was saying were true, he had no reason to speak and act so rudely. These white men were unfathomable.

Maybe he could persuade them if he acted just right. Politely looking down and away just a little he said, “Mr. Hutchison, I mean no disrespect. I’ve always tried to do a good job for you. I was always on time and never missed a single day of hauling. In fact, a lot of days I was able to get two runs in instead of just one. If you will just let me start hauling again I won’t need any help with my medical bills. But if you don’t let me haul I think it’s only fair that you help me out a little since it was your stuff that made me sick.”

Hutchison/Rawlins leaned back in his chair and looked at Robert disdainfully. “You obviously didn’t hear me, Yazee. I said you’re through here. You claim to be a businessman. Start acting like one. We are no longer doing business with your company, period! I don’t know how to say it any more plainly than that. Your company agreed to payment for services on a load for load basis and has been paid for every load. It was either your incompetence or the failure of your own equipment that caused the problem. Had you properly secured your load we never would have been having this conversation. Our decision has been made and it’s final. So I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises.”

It was all Robert could do to contain his anger. He would not permit this insolent, arrogant Belagaana (white man) to continue to insult him. “I never loaded that truck, Mr. Hutchison. I was never allowed to touch those barrels. It was your people who loaded and tied them down.  If I had loaded that barrel it would never have come lose. I’ll leave, Mr. Hutchison, but I promise you this is not the end. What’s in those barrels is not just some kind of harmless floor sweepings. It’s dangerous stuff! There’s laws about hauling that kind of stuff. I’m going to find out what you had me hauling and when I do, someone’s going to make you pay my medical bills. I’ll tell you what else. I’m going to the Federal Highway Transportation Board and where ever else I can to ask them to investigate this place. There’s something funny going on here and I think people should know about it.”

The man slowly rose from his chair, leaned over his desk and said menacingly, “Are you threatening me, Mr. Yazee? I think you are. Let me give you a little advice. You better walk out of this room right now and forget you ever heard of me or EnviroGuard Recovery Services. You have no idea what’s going on here or what it could cost you. I understand you have a wife and baby. If you want to see that little baby grow up, you better hope I just ignore what you’ve just said. Because if we get wind that you’re trying to do this company harm, well - let’s just say that trucking is a very dangerous business and more than one trucker and his rig have ended up in little pieces at the bottom of one of the many canyons around here. You get my message, Boy?”

“I get your message, Hutchison,” Robert said insolently as he leaned into the man’s face from the other side of the desk. He stared insultingly directly back into the man’s eyes.  “Let me give you a message back. I’m not afraid of you or your company. You mess with me and I’ll shut this operation down.  How many Indians you got working those ore and tailings piles? Quite a few.  I know many of them. We Indians don’t take kindly to threats and insults. I speak their language, Mr. Hutchison, you don’t! By tonight, every Indian who works for you will know you’ve threatened me. If anything happens to me, let’s see how well your little operation here runs without Indian help.”

Robert turned and stalked out of the man’s office. He was angry but equally worried. What was he going to do now? By the time he climbed into the cab of his truck he knew. He needed the best attorney he could find. But who? Up in Salt Lake City, those fancy ass, dark suit-wearing, high-rise office types would want a thousand bucks upfront and three-hundred an hour. It would be the same thing in Albuquerque. Half a day of their time and he’d be bankrupt. Then he remembered the attorney who had been all over the news a year or so ago. The one who beat that big Farmington oil company that was trying to screw reservation families out of their gas royalties. Whitehorse was the guy’s name. He was Dineh’. Someone had told Robert that a lot of the families in that Gannon Oil lawsuit had not had to pay Whitehorse anything up front. Maybe this guy could help he and Lena. 

Leaving the EnviroGuard facility just after noon, Robert turned his truck south toward the bustling Four Corners city of Farmington, New Mexico. If he hurried he had a chance of making it to Whitehorse’s office before closing time.