As I lay there, scenes from our life together kept flashing through my mind. Suddenly, I recalled the time Ginny had come home all upset because her best friend had caught her husband cheating. “I told her to kick that bum out and then find a hired-gun lawyer to take him to the cleaners,” she said vengefully. “If he didn’t want to stay married he could at least have filed for divorce. He didn’t have to cheat.”
Although I had agreed with Ginny’s assessment, I’d been somewhat surprised at her vehement reaction. But at least I was reassured about my own marriage because it was obvious that Ginny would never cheat on me. “What a fool you were!” I cursed myself. “What a hypocrite she is!”
December 28
After breakfast I was scheduled to take a tour of the Y-12 Complex. That, of course, is where they made “the bomb,” and it’s in a different area of the reservation. I never realized how big the Oak Ridge Reservation is. Henry drove me through rolling hills and woodlands that were uninhabited, and suddenly we came upon an industrial complex the size of a small town.
At Building 5300, I was among people from my own agency, and we could “talk shop.” At Y-12 I was just another visiting fireman, and it didn’t take long for me to see that my guide thought I was a waste of his time. For that matter, I felt the same way. I understood that my boss wanted me out of the way so I wouldn’t tip off Ginny and Ameer that we were onto them. But surely I could be doing something more interesting than wandering around a highly classified nuclear weapons manufacturing facility. Besides, I hated nukes and didn’t want to be any nearer to them than was absolutely necessary.
So when noon rolled around, I sidled over to Henry and asked him if there wasn’t something else we could do rather than traipse after my bored tour guide. Henry’s face actually reconfigured itself into an expression I thought might be a smile. We made our excuses to my guide and Henry led me out to the car and off to another local eatery outside the reservation.
Over lunch I asked him if there was anything to see in the area. “For sure,” he said. “There’s some might pretty country about a half-hour drive from here, if you’re willing to get off the main roads.”
That sounded good to me – at that point almost anything would have – so I eagerly agreed. Accordingly, after lunch I found myself going west northwest from Oak Ridge to Frozen Head State Park. When I asked Henry about the odd name, he told me it came from the main peak, which was often snow-covered in the colder months of the year.
We were already traveling on an old state highway when we turned north toward the little town of Petros, where the park entrance is located. Once we got to the park our car started climbing as the highway turned into a series of curves and switchbacks snaking their way up the side of Fork Mountain. The posted speed limit was 10 mph, and given the icy conditions and the sharp curves, I thought even that was excessive.
The park was mostly filled with deciduous trees, and with no foliage to block the view, the vistas were impressive. Henry kept pointing them out to me every time we came to an overlook, so perhaps that was why he didn’t spot the SUV that overtook us and started to pass.
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