Writing projects not yet completed or published yet

Small note: The Story is complete Aug 2024! I will work on putting all the chapters on a doc file, work on typos and such.

Anyone want to read the entire story and offer suggestions?

Lake 33 Killing Relic

A Weldon Springs tale of woe and mystery?

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NOTEs:

This manuscript is in the formation stage and could change 100% as the story evolves.

This is fiction; all characters are 100% made up.

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Test title name: LAKE 33 KILLING RELIC

Test cover (not by a professional artist)

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The spillway at Lake 33

Chapter 1:  In the Grip of the Gods

Eastern Missouri, August A. Busch Memorial Conservation Area, Lake 33

Enjoying my freedom, luxuriating in the breeze off the lake and the spillway noise, I closed my eyes at the glory of being out of prison but was too nervous to go to the family home on Highway DD. 

My parents, how would they receive me after three years in prison?

The familiar lightheadedness washed across my brain—not dizziness, but that disorientation felt when getting off a carnival ride. The feeling, the ever-so-brief warning, and the precursor of approaching short circuitry, the premonition that the gods were about to whisper to me again while gripped helplessly in their power.

I opened my eyes later, confused, my back aching and tongue hurting. I could smell fish, decayed fish? Near my face lay a dead crappie on the rocks. Yellow jacket hornets buzzed around the fish and crawled across the glass eyes.

Had I bitten my tongue? Another seizure? I could feel my face sunburned. How long had I lain shaking on the grass and rocks? I spat blood, mesmerized by the lake's blue expanse, as if seeing it for the first time again.

I had discovered the lake when I was seven or eight years old, wandering down the dirt road and coming up on the levy to this same scene. The redbud trees had just bloomed crimson. When I arrived home carrying the bullfrog trophy I had captured, there had been a belt whipping. My parents terrified I was lost in the wildlife area. The belt did not stop my explorations.

"Don't sting me," I mumbled to the hornets buzzing in alarm as I struggled to sit upright. My muscles ached from the seizure as from another whipping. There would be no standing upright for a while, and I watched a conservation agent work his way down the levy, asking questions and inspecting fishing licenses. 

Even here in the wind and the sun, it was just like in prison: random inspections by uniformed guards. I closed my eyes briefly, imagining the uniformed man was one of Roosevelt's soldiers who had chased the farmers off this land.

"How's it going, Boss man?" the fisherman asked the conservation agent.

"That feather in your hat?" asked the agent, "Hawk?"

"Cool, ain't it? It's hawk or owl, one of those. It was on the ground down by Dardenne Creek."

"It is against the law to possess raptor feathers," said the Agent. "I have to confiscate the feather and issue you a ticket."

"Your kidding me, right?"

"Let me see your fishing license and day permit, sir. It's your responsibility to know the law." 

The agent looked at the license. "Mr. Travis, possession of a raptor feather has a fine of two hundred fifty dollars. You have the right to protest this fine in federal court."

"I didn't eat the damn hawk! The feather was just laying on the ground by the old bridge ruins."

The Conservation agent handed the license and a yellow ticket to the fisherman.

"The feather, please, Mr. Travis." 

"I'm never coming back to Busch Wildlife," said the hawk feather guy.

The agent looked at me but stopped at the next fisherman, an old man fishing with three poles in the water.

"Fishing license and day permit, sir. Any luck today?"

The agent was still looking at me while talking to the old man.

The man held up a stringer of crappie and bluegills with one bass.

"I have to measure the bass, sir," said the agent who used his phone to take a photo of the bass lying next to a tape measure. "The bass is a quarter inch too short, sir. You should have released this fish. Have to issue you a ticket, sir, and you must release the fish."

I noticed the old man did not object, aware the bass was too short. A gamble not to get caught.

"I don't have that kind of money," said the elder fisherman, looking at his ticket.

"It is your responsibility to know the take limits sir."

The conservation agent walked to where I sat in the grass. His shirt patches read "Missouri Department of Conservation" and Douglas. 

"Are you fishing, sir?"

"No."

"Been drinking, sir?"

"No sir, I grew up around here and was recalling how one summer, my brother and I shimmied down a giant log and rescued a coot trapped in that spillway. You do stupid stuff when you are young."

It was difficult to talk with my tongue bleeding.

"Grew up here, on this lake? Maybe you knew my father, Conservation Agent Douglas?"

I tried to focus, but my brain circuits were still fried.

"Been drinking, sir?" asked the agent.

I shook my head. "Not drinking. That name, your father? I haven't heard that name in ages. Yes, I knew Agent Dougy. Ah, that's what everyone called him back then."

The Conservation agent was studying me like an insect and I had to drop my eyes.

"My father was a good steward of this area. He kept a detailed journal of all the kids he met at the lake and on Dardenne Creek. Think you are in his notes?"

I thought about the conservation agent from a time before joining the USAF, playing at the game of outsmarting Agent Dougy, raccoon hunting in the conservation area, fishing off-season and playing in the old ammunition bunkers. Dougy was on our asses all the time.

"Yep, I suppose I'm in that book."

"What's your name?" asked the son of Agent Douglas.

Another time, I would've said none of your fucking business, but just out of prison, my conditioning was to answer anyone in a uniform.

"Bruce Ryba. You'll also find my father's name in that book. Agent Dougy and my old man sort of hated each other."

"Ryba? The horse farm over on Highway DD? You are the son of Kim Ryba?"

I turned my head and spat blood. 

"Grew up there. Yes, Kim is my mother, but I was disowned by the family when I went to prison."

The agent involuntarily stiffened his body, the same reaction everyone had when I explained that I had been in prison.

"Why were you in prison?" asked the agent.

"Meth."

"Possession or dealing?"

"Possession, I was only released on Monday."

My father wanted to kill Agent Douglas. That was an old memory. 

"How is your father, is he retired?" 

He was such a dick.

"My father passed away five years past from cancer," said the agent, but he turned to watch a vehicle drive down the levy with three teens in a red Honda. A bag from a fast food restaurant had magically appeared on the gravel road.

"Keep clean; get help if you need it. If you plan to fish, please purchase a license and a day permit."

Agent Douglas reached for his radio, "Morales, come in." 

"What you got Dougy?" came the voice over the handheld.

"Three teens, red Honda, please stop them on the way out of Busch. They just littered, and they have no manners."

The agent looked at me, a final search for alcohol.

"Only one way out of Busch Wildlife Area since the flood of 93 took out the Dardenne Bridge," said Agent Douglas.

My brain was still fried from the seizure. They had let me out of prison without any seizure medication. 

"I heard about that flood," I mumbled. "Sorry about my speech, an Air Force injury. I was JTac."

Agent Douglas whistled softly.

"Army myself, Rangers, JTac pulled our ass out of the fire many times directing close air support and airstrikes," said Agent Douglas as he turned and made for his truck.

"Rangers have to slow down some," I mumbled.

The comment caused the conservation agent to turn his head bringing a smile from the otherwise dour agent.

"And you JTacs weren't living too close to the fire?" said Douglas. When he turned for the comment, he caught the old man holding two middle fingers at him, the ticket crumpled on the ground.

"Like being back in Iraq," said Douglas and we both laughed.

My tongue hurt, and the world was unsteady when I finally stood up. Seizures were such weird electrical storms.

A journal or diary? The conservation agent said there was a journal from when I was younger. What had Dougy Senior written in his journal? There were old secrets, secrets that should remain secrets.

My phone vibrated as I shuffled to the car borrowed from Calvin. The same message again, "Dude, come see me-your old pal, Buck."

No, Buck, I am staying on the straight and narrow. No returning to jail or prison. Buck would only want to party—Jack or something stronger.

A chuckle escaped me. Buck would be in that old journal. Jesus, we all would be in that diary. We're all in it, we have to be.

Goddammit, that journal would be priceless entertainment sitting around a winter fire drinking frozen beer, laughing about the old days.

I turned the phone off.

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The Weldon Springs version of Cahokia Mound

EPA Superfund Weldon Springs

Weldon Springs story:

The DOE propaganda version

Chapter 2:  The Weldon Springs Dome

Three young men were handcuffed outside of their Honda when I drove past the flashing blue lights where Agent Douglas and a thin agent filled out paperwork. A bolt action rifle lay across the roof.

"You guys shouldn't have littered around Dougy's son." The Camaro shuddered again, "Please don't backfire now," I pleaded with Calvin's car and pulled onto Highway D.

In front of one of the wildlife area fishing lakes, two ladies held a banner with yellow and black radiation symbols. 

"Do not eat these fish," I read out loud and waved to the women.

Things had changed somewhat since my prison term. People were complaining? Everyone knew the radiation contamination was elevated around the old Weldon Springs Ordnance Works, but no one complained before, or had they? 

In the background of the lake was Francis Howell High School. How dangerous could it be if there was a school there?

There had always been jokes about the radiation in the springs, but the government, DOE, or the EPA regularly explained that the radiation levels were lower than those received from an average sunburn. 

"Damn ladies, if anything, the signs to avoid the fish should be on the Missouri River. The catfish are feasting on all the gang-bangers tossed in the river at Kansas City," I said, making myself laugh.

Driving around the bend on Highway 94, I was again in awe of the white radiation containment dome.

"Better than Newgrange or Stone Mountain, bigger than Cahokia mounds, we have outdone the elder races."

The car shuddered again, and I pulled into the parking lot of the giant dome and museum, weaving around yellow school buses to find a parking spot.

I studied the containment dome again, recalling the last time I had been here. Jodi Defisher and I had stood on top of that dome during a bitter winter storm, peering at the brass sign pointing to where the towns had stood before Roosevelt's soldiers had run all the farmers away at gunpoint to make the ordnance factory.

"The United States wasn't even at war when the government used eminent domain to confiscate 17,000 acres in the middle of winter," I had explained to her. It had been freezing on the dome, and Jodi's warmth a welcome shelter.

I shuddered like Calvin's car and banished her kisses from my memory. On my first day out of prison, Calvin explained, "She's married, with twin girls no less."

"I hadn't expected her to wait for me to get out," I told Calvin. That was not quite a lie but an acceptance of life moving on when you are locked up.

Surrounded by yellow school buses, I had the urge to walk up the dome stairs for a quick look and a brief memory of that cold day with Jodi. 

We had barely noticed that we stood atop an 54-acre collection of radioactive material capped by a rocky dome. When we could no longer endure the biting Missouri wind, we giggled and navigated the icy stairs to find the museum open!

"Hey, isn't there a government shutdown going on? No mail, parks closed," I asked the lady while Jodi gripped me like a remora.

"We're not part of the government shutdown," said the lady who greeted us at the welcome desk. "We are DOE, Department of Energy."

I had wanted to debate with the lady: Aren't you part of the government? However, Jodi pulled me into the empty museum, where we could kiss out of sight of the spinster-looking lady and out of the winter wind.

"No!" I said when she tried to light a joint in an out-of-the-way corner under a giant picture that said "Yellow Cake."

 "What the fuck! Do you want to go to jail? Put that away, I hissed," and pulled her in tight. We were still freezing.

Jodi pointed at a photo of the old Yellow Cake factory, "Look, that building! That was our party spot!"

Now free from prison, I wondered, Had I really said those prescience words to her. "Do you want to go to jail?"

Only twelve days later.....busted.

I stepped out of Calvin's car, still sore from my seizure, and spat more blood into an endless field of winter-killed sunflowers.

The giant dome had not been here when I was a kid or the first time I met Jodi at a beer party in the old factory, a favorite party spot where the firewood burned blue and green with a chemical odor.

Nor when I had hunted on the Army land near the high school because my military identification card allowed me in the gate. That had been the peppermint schnapps hunting trip. 

"Oh, god-damn it, Tommy, that was the night I wrecked my truck. No more schnapps."

It had been on a return trip from Florida that I had asked, "What is that big white thing?" and I had learned of the massive cleanup of the factory and the radioactive waste dumped there from the Manhattan Project and covered by a new EPA Missouri mountain.

A group of ladies was trying to hand out flyers on the trail to the dome stairs; the kids ran around them, and the bus drivers ignored the ladies while smoking cigarettes. 

"Thank you," I said while accepting one of the flyers out of politeness; the paper with another radiation symbol read, "Town Hall meeting about the Cancer epidemic in St. Charles County."

Suddenly, a back door to the museum opened and slammed shut.

A woman yelled, "Don't touch me again you pervert; I quit!" The woman swung a mop and connected on a middle-aged man who followed after her.

"Bitch you're fired!"

The adults, teachers, and bus drivers scowled at the man for his language. A woman with long black hair, dressed in immaculate business attire, stepped from around the corner.

"Sorry, Director Liu," said the man, "Accident."
The lady did not say a word but looked me over, finally gauging my attire. I knew the look well and recognized by whatever criteria she was using, I had failed her inspection. She turned and walked away without saying a word.

"The Ice Queen," said the man.

"Any chance you are looking to hire?" I asked. "The woman with the mop had a good swing. She's a Cardinal fan, maybe?"

"That swing? The Blues perhaps," said the man as he watched the woman who had just quit squeal her tires on the way out of the parking lot.

"I need someone to work today,"

He handed me the mop.

"It'll be a test, no pay, a test to get her job. I have a contract with the DOE to clean the toilets, mop the floors, and pick up trash on top of that rock mountain that the kids drop—little slobs. There is no money today, but I'll hire you full-time if you do well. Have you ever been a janitor?"

"I spent three years in prison sweeping and mopping. Was only just released," I said.

"Oh, I don't know, the kids and all," said the man awkwardly taking the mop back.

"I was in the Air Force before jail," I said. "I need a job, or my parole agent will send me back to prison."

"Oh, you're a vet? I'll take a chance. I was in the Marines, the Mediterranean boat tour. Call me Butch. Like Butch Cassidy, not the other Butch?"

Later, I picked up trash on the stairs to the top of the dome—fifty-four acres of rock and clay covering radioactive material from the yellow cake factory and the quarries.

The kids were slobs.

On top of the dome, a brochure lay folded and abandoned near the brass plaque pointing to the location of the confiscated towns—ghost Towns now of Poison Ivy and Virginia Creeper.

The brochure had a drawing of a sunflower on the left side and another radioactive symbol on the other side.

"Has anyone in your family had cancer? Come to the town hall meeting Saturday. Our political representatives will address the cancer spike in St. Charles County."

A photograph of the Dardenne Cemetery lined the bottom of the flyer.

A woman walked up the long stairs and tried to hand me another of the brochures.

"I have one," I said awkwardly.

Talking with women was not one of the skills you practiced in prison.

"When I was a kid, I remember the springs around here were radioactive," I said.

"Yes! Believe it or not, the radiation levels are going up in the springs. Did you attend Francis Howell High?" the lady asked.

"No, I grew up on the other side of the Dardenne Creek," and pointed north to a blur of green. "Over on DD."

"We cannot let the government get away with killing us, even slowly. This Dome? They made it into a tourist attraction. Can you believe that? said the woman who shuffled her brochures. 

I saw the wedding ring.

"Like they are celebrating this giant tomb," she said.

From the dome top, I looked north again to the green spot where the family home was. Housing developments had encroached on our green spot since my last visit to this dome. Jodi married with two children? Can you ever go home?

"It was sad what they did to the farmers in 38. Straight up Hitler or Stalin tactics," I said.

"Come to the meeting next week; we need full community support." She had pretty, pleading eyes that were somehow haunted. A loss?

When I made it back to the museum with a bag of trash, Butch found me; he was holding a handful of crumpled fliers. "I'm not docking you man, because you are not on the payroll yet. But I'm not paying for you to jib-jab with the tourists. I need the toilets cleaned; those little bastards can never hit the target. If you want the job I need you to clean today, I'll fill out the paperwork to hire you, but I'm not paying you to talk." 

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Chapter 3: The New Melle Meeting (Draft #1) Plus a link to the real meeting

Chapter 3.5: The Director of the Weldon Springs Interpretive Center

Chapter 4: Buck  What did he find In Busch Wildlife Area?

Chapter 5: Hide Hole: Where to hide hot artifacts?

Chapter 6: Parole Agent

Chapter 7: The Meeting and public facades

Chapter 8: Horse Thief

Chapter 9: Bucks Funeral

Chapter 9.5 Wasted

Chapter 10:  Mike and the Licence Plate

Chapter 10.25: Stay out of Sight

Chapter 10.5  Return to Dardenne Creek

Chapter 10.75 Mullins

Chapter 10.85 Trucking Company

Chapter 11 God of Fire

Chapter 12  (reserve space)

Chapter 13  Request for a tour guide

Chapter 14  Parole Agent Murphy

Chapter 15 West Lake Landfill explosion

Chapter 16   Saturday kiss

Chapter 17  West Lake Investigation Day One

Chapter 18 Trout Fisherman

Chapter 19  West Lake Investigation Day Two

Chapter 20  Cemetery walk 

Chapter 21  Mike’s horse story

Chapter 22   Kim

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Cha.......

And.......Then.........(in review)

Although my story is fiction, there are Citizens groups fighting the terrible radiation contamination in St. Louis Missouri from the Manhattan Project.

Meanwhile down on Kennedy Space Center:

Some of my YouTube shorts:

Daily alligator lunch walk

SpaceX sonic booms of the boosters landing

The last Delta Heavy rocket launch---sound only because of the clouds.

Recent flint knives I made

Gray arrowhead, Gray turkey

Grand Turk Boating accident

Antigua Diving Accident

Ascension Island volcano cable ride

Ascension Island USAF flight and the failed art of Zen

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