by Layla Wolfe
But after shooting a hefty load into Fremont’s loving mouth, I suddenly came to a decision. It was a calm, mannered choice, as though I’d spent months pondering and praying on it, though I hadn’t. I would be monogamous. Yes, I would. I would delete the Grindr app from my phone, even though it was hidden in a folder marked “Book of Common Prayer.” I would just squeeze my eyes tight and pray that my cherished Fremont, he of the mouth-watering, well-molded ass and long, fat penis, would be enough to sate my burgeoning lust.
It was almost as though, having spent myself in his ravenous mouth, suddenly my mind was clear. Suddenly the lexicon of humanity was made evident to me. I could understand complex relationships and the proper way to manage them so they flowed evenly, without drama or knots. Moreover, I loved children, the elderly, hell, even my adopted country, with a solid, steadfast purity. Had my homosexual activity, because it was enacted with a loving heart laden with sincerity, suddenly injected my spirit with a direction unknown before?
Was I in love?
No, no, no. I knew love because I’d been hopelessly in love with Antonio, the fellow Spanish priest. That had been different—more intense, desperate even, as though if he turned his back on me I’d shrivel into a shrieking primordial mass. True, it was a sort of clingy, needy love that promised only despair. Now I wanted sex with only this man, this juicy, hungry slab of man. He was a clean on buck, and we’d been flying it in the massage room. We came together like yin and yang, two opposing but complementary forces. What a ride he was. I wanted more.
But first, of course, we had to go to the broken dam at Vicinity Lake. That was a bloody sight to behold.
Galileo was already there, having chugged over from the rectory in his Chevy with four inches of water in the bed. Bloodgood senior and council member Ahiga had just arrived before us, parking their own identical Chevy on a rocky point precariously close to the churning, swirling river created by the sudden disintegration of the dam.
The water rushing from the twenty-foot breach was so loud that when we hopped off my bike, Fremont had to yell at me. “This pond is owned by U-238.” Technically, no one could “own” rez land, but through a devious series of leases and subleases, U-238 sure did. Now Galileo and the two Diné men gathered around to listen to Fremont. I was proud that my penis had been sucked by such a knowledgeable man. An exorcist was one thing. An out and proud Dakota man was a whole different animal. They had been the two men I had allowed to become closest to me. But as I heard Fremont talk his techno-speak, I had a feeling he would become a member of that select club.
He went on. “Their mill was outside the rez boundaries, but they trucked their mill waste into this lake. They just added water and poured it into this pond, after building this shitty dam.”
Joe Bloodgood shouted, “I remember that. I was a kid. They said it was a state of the art dam. This arroyo is normally dry. Recent storms filled that lake ‘til it burst the dam.”
Ahiga pointed. “Look. It’s undercutting the bank.”
Sure enough, the raging torrent of water was collapsing the sandy bank inward on itself, taking out huge chunks of rock, prickly pear, and spindly buckhorn cactus. The new river by now was about thirty, forty yards wide and growing. I tried to discern where the wall of water was heading.
I asked, “Does that head toward Kai’s Trading Post?”
Fremont said, “It’s following an old dirt road paved by U-238.”
“No,” intoned Bloodgood. “If it follows the haul road, it goes directly through Leroy Street’s sheep corral and cornfields.”
“Holy shit!” yelled Fremont, pointing downstream. “There’s some fucking kids playing in the river!”
Shading my eyes with my hand, I could just make out about three figures frolicking in the toxic waste. “Isn’t this water going to harm them?”
“It’s fucking radioactive!” cried Fremont. “Look at what it’s already doing to that metal culvert.”
Sure enough, a corrugated steel pipe that was probably meant to discreetly allow for let-off of the toxic overflow was twisted. Melting, really, it looked like. Red sludge poured through it to join the main river like the confluence of the white and blue Niles, and it was literally disintegrating the metal. How could kids frolic in this mess?
“Let’s get down to them,” I told Fremont. I told the two Diné, “Get off this bank. Don’t go within a hundred yards of this river. Go warn Leroy Street.”
We started to part ways, but Bloodgood suddenly twirled to point at Fremont. “You are the important man!” he chanted, almost sing-songy. “You are the one I made the painting of during the eclipse.”
I had known that in the back of my mind, but I’d shrugged it off. Pure superstition, something I never trucked with. Meanwhile, Fremont pointed a finger at his own chest, eyebrows raised in surprise.
“Me?” he squeaked.
Bloodgood nodded firmly, impervious to the rivulets of water pouring down his face, dripping off his nose, his earlobes. “You are the one who will clean up this rez. You will stamp out the pockets of poison!”
“Wow,” I heard Fremont whisper above the roar of the toxic river.
I had to tear him away then, hand him his lid, get our sopping asses back onto my saddle and ride out to those kids.
Fremont alone stamping out all toxicity on the rez seemed a bit of a stretch. I hoped he wouldn’t cave under such a heavy load of responsibility. That was a lot to put on one man. I should know. It was part of my job to shoulder Herculean loads, to soothe people under the most unimaginable, crushing burdens of agony and despair. I was a vessel through which they could alleviate some of this pressure, and I willingly accepted such a heavy millstone.
But Fremont wasn’t a priest. He was a scientist, interested in metallurgy, chemistry, mineralogy, geology. He had a do-gooder’s heart, I know. The scope of this toxic waste dump was far too extensive for one man to bear. And I knew his boss didn’t give a shit about who he harmed. The almighty dollar was his bottom line.
By the time we got there, the kids had already gotten the picture. They were hopping around on the shore, which was being overtaken every second by the rising river. Their bare legs were an angry red, and Fremont and I shared frightened glances. Of course, we told them to stay out of the water and to tell all their friends to stay out, but we couldn’t even give them a ride back home.
“I’m going to have to call Avery,” said Fremont, referring to the asshole boss.
“I’m going to have to address the congregation,” I said. “Let’s get to the rectory.”
The rectory was closer than his trailer, and we desperately needed to wring ourselves out. We beat Galileo by a mile, just enough time for me to lead the despondent Fremont into my bedroom and strip his windbreaker from his torso. I moved urgently, peeling the sodden T-shirt from his frame. I admit I admired his firm pecs, the silken tufts of pit hair, the thoughtful and intelligent form of his fingers.
But we weren’t here for sex. I felt obliged to put a show on in front of Galileo, even though he didn’t seem the sort to object. And Fremont wouldn’t stop talking.
“That breach is major, major. I’ve got to get out there with my meters. Did you see those sheep keeling over when we passed near Hosteen’s spread? And that cornfield! It was just melting.”
I whipped a generic black T-shirt from my dresser drawer and passed it to Fremont. I began removing my collar and clerical shirt. When I draped them over the back of a chair, they actually dripped. “It’s a major disaster, all right. I’d like to go out there with you if you don’t mind.”
Absentmindedly, Fremont yanked the shirt over his head. He didn’t miss a beat in his rambling speech. “I’ve got to call Ozzie Avery. He’s going to fire me if I don’t report this mess. I’ve got to notify Indian Health Services. OSHA’s going to be out here in a hot minute. Wells are going to be contaminated. What are people going to drink?”
“Okay, calm the fuck down,” I urged. I grabbed him by the biceps
and shook him a little. His glazed eyes popped open, and he locked gazes with me. I stroked his cheek with the back of my hand. I had the sudden need to get through to him, to make him pause a moment and consider. “Beloved. Science tells us amazing things about this planet. How DNA forms and combines to create a child, how the bald eagle nests in the sandstone cliffs. But it can’t tell us about the nature of distant atoms, why we are captivated by the pause of a deer on a path, how the child should live or die. It’s a mistake to think that science is the purest handbook for life.”
He was finally still. “What are you saying?” he cried quietly, as though I’d blasphemed. “The laws of mathematical equations have been proven time and time again. Physical laws are facts that reign supreme. For example, those sheep that just croaked. That was caused by my company’s error.”
I shook him again and placed my thumb over his lush upper lip. “I’m saying this is too big of a burden for one man. You need more than Twinkletoes lugging some equipment around. Scientific thought is holding you prisoner. It’s not an absolute dictator over other types of human thought . . . such as love.”
I paused to let that sink in. His eyes scanned my face urgently. Finally, he scoffed weakly. “Oh, yeah, sure. Just you wait. Tomorrow I’ll have two hundred ‘assistants’ running around this place. I’ll have ten guys sleeping in my trailer running tests and telling the Diné what to do, where to go.”
“Fremont, we don’t live our lives logically. If you allow feeling to rule your logic, you’ll see that most of your decisions have been made based upon your most esteemed values. Reason should only be the slave of your passions. It’s there to obey and satisfy them.” I sighed deeply. “I’m saying listen to your heart.”
He was still awhile longer. How I wanted to kiss him then, when he looked his most vulnerable. His entire world was about to crash, and here was a priest whose penis he’d just sucked telling him to obey his lust.
That was probably why he tore himself away from my clutches. “I have to call Avery!” was all he could muster as he took four strides to the other side of the room.
“Of course,” I allowed. “I’m just saying I think you have a lot more at stake here on the rez than you realize.”
“Oh, yeah?” He rebelled, like an unruly youth, those thugs we’d seen at Toby’s high school. “Like what?”
I stepped toward him. I felt his gaze drop to my chest, the pit of my throat, the crucifix that trembled there. “Like the Diné. Joe Bloodgood was right. I had a dream about your arrival too. You’re here to turn things around for them. As well as for me, on a more personal level. Fremont, if you want to pierce the tide of eternity, you need to gather all your resources. You will need your sense of art, morality . . . and love.”
He frowned fiercely, making his lips a thin line. “Noel. I can’t even be a part-time lover, much less a full-time lover . . . to a priest.”
The way he practically spat that last word got to me. I was so stunned all I could utter was a line from last Sunday’s sermon. “Nothing performs such hard work as the heart.”
Jutting out his lower jaw, Fremont ripped his cellphone from its holster. “There’s other more important work to be done right now.”
He nearly banged into Galileo as he tore the bedroom door open and stormed out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FREMONT
The Vicinity Lake spill wound up being bigger than Three Mile Island.
I didn’t see Noel at all for four days while all hell broke loose. Indian Health Services was first on the scene. They got the word out to everyone not to drink river or well water and not to let their animals downstream. U-238 gave out six hundred-gallon bottles of potable water, but the people really needed more like thirty thousand per day. Three community wells were worthless, one of them marked a month ago by me for high levels of radium and alpha particles. In the desert, no water at all was worse than contaminated water, and already I heard the uproar from the people.
At first, Ozzie Avery managed to keep the event off the radar of the EPA and OSHA. We’d be fined heavily for not reporting it in a timely manner, but Ozzie’s private plane was landing near the dam breach within seven hours of my phone call. And he had insiders at those agencies who would keep a lid on it.
I was so gripped with nerves I almost couldn’t breathe. It was like my panic had a tight hold on my lungs and I could only intake shallow, baby breaths. This in turn made my head swim and little bubbles float before my eyes. I was a mess. The sun was going down and Ozzie’s plane hit a couple giant boulders as it braked. I knew he’d be getting flung around in his seat, mussing his perfect dyed brown wave of hair, a Superman combover he hilariously used to hide the fact that he was entirely bald, like Bozo the Clown. People made fun of his hair behind his back, but it was his brand. Everything was “branding” with Ozzie. And this dam breach was bad for our brand.
Ozzie usually wore a suit and tie, but today he was dressed casually in a company windbreaker, his thighs rubbing together between slacks. An aide held an umbrella over his head ineffectively, as though Ozzie were some white colonial overlord inspecting his subjects. I was surprised he didn’t hold a golf club because that’s where he’d just come from. Good thing, too, because he would’ve brained me over the head with it.
“Zuckerman!” he barked. Twinkletoes didn’t even stand at my side. I’d sent him out to help warn and organize the Diné, as I didn’t want Ozzie knowing I had a biker assistant. “What the fuck’s happened? I could see the yellow veins from the air! The rain is displaying exactly where we need to mine!”
That wasn’t the response I’d expected. I’d expected ire and rage for drawing such attention to our project. I ventured to say, “We first need to clean up this mess, Ozzie. That dam was set to breach for many years.”
His eyes set into slits, Ozzie whined nasally. “That’s none of your concern, Zuckerman. Already the Navajos are demanding your ouster. I managed to talk them out of it.”
I was shocked to the core. I’d just seen Ahiga, head of the council, listening as Joe Bloodgood proclaimed me the savior of the rez. “What? Is it just my presence they reject? Why are they—”
“They’re pissed because they have no water.”
“We’ll bring in more. Partner with an outside water company like we did in Utah, get them to sponsor and donate in return for their good name.”
“Yeah,” said Ozzie. “I’ve got an ‘in’ with Brita.”
I thought rapidly. “And I’ve got an ‘in’ with high school kids. I can rally them to help get water to the hogans. There are plenty of wells miles off that aren’t contaminated. I’ve tested all of them.”
Ozzie drew me close in one of his trademark arm wrestling moves. “You don’t need to rally anyone, Zuckerman. You can be our consultant, our man in the high tower. We’ve run the numbers. The uranium you’ve reported so far is worth $665 million on the open market, as of a few days ago. Who knows what it’s at now? It’s rampaging sky high in the best, the most amazing market ever seen!”
I squirmed, like most people did to extricate themselves from his grip. “What would a consultant do?”
“A consultant, my dear boy, is a promotion out of this godforsaken piece of shit land. Thank your lucky stars! This is your lucky day! You’re going back to the home office to do more important work.”
Now I really did push him away. I had to push hard, too, to get him to unlock his steely grip. “What? No! I’ve put too much into this, Ozzie! The people know and trust me! I was just told that by a head medicine man!”
“Well, they can trust you from afar. Have no fear. We’re moving some of the top mining experts and mitigation crews into this rez. We’ll appease the people if you just step aside and let us do what we do best. Relax, Zuckerman. You’ve done your job. From your Aurora office, you can take over that Bone Valley project in Florida.”
“No! No, listen, I need to stay here, to see this through. This means a lot to me on a personal level.”
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That was when Ozzie’s chummy countenance changed. His face moved from that facilely glib, good ol’ boy grimace to the much truer overlord’s scowl. “Zuckerman,” he said darkly, “don’t argue with me. It’s decided. Hand me the keys to your trailer and you’ll be escorted off the rez in my plane.”
I knew from my own past experiences with Ozzie Avery there was no arguing. And dozens of people had related stories to me of their own attempts to push back. Not one person had ever succeeded. Still, I tried. “I know more than any other fucking mining expert about the deposits here—”
Ozzie bawled, “Let me put it to you this way, Zuckerman, in terms that you homos can understand. One of my operatives saw you with another man at a gym, engaged in homosexual activities. All right? How much clearer do I need to be? Do you want this evidence flaunted before all of your colleagues? It was bad enough what your poor wife Kelly had to witness, in her own bedroom of all fucking things. You wouldn’t believe how long and hard I had to defend you, all the Village People jokes I had to listen to. Believe me, what excuse can I possibly come up with for a guy being spanked by a policeman?”
I tried to chuckle. “Listen, Ozzie. It wasn’t a real cop—”
“And what’s this I hear about some flaming activity behind a stockpile with a rez cop? You got a thing for cops? You like to be arrested and handcuffed? Whatever it is, Zuckerman, it’s got no place with U-238.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to gain patience. “Ozzie. Homes need to be replaced. These people have been using contaminated material to build their foundations using tailings from lakes going back to the seventies, eighties. Do we want a repeat of Blythe? And can you call off that Russian thug who’s been following me around? “
