Goodbye Oak Ridge

I loved Milo Jackson. Not because we were of the same age and of opposite anatomies, but because she was different. Milo and I were young when we met. She is long gone and I am now a tired old man. Milo lived as both victim and villain. It is doubtful this story will bring you closer to any understanding, but it was important that I put pencil to paper anyway.

Milo was born in Springfield, Illinois to a homemaker and an Army Corps of Engineers Major. The Major wanted a boy, but other than by her name he never showed it. The year they arrived in Oak Ridge, most of the world was ensnarled in World War Two. It was a brutal war and remained in the public mind for years, then decades. Today it is largely forgotten due to its world ending successor and in no small part, to Milo Jackson.

As for myself, I was born in Albany, New York. My father was a carpenter’s son, so naturally, I became a butcher. Women working in those days was about as common as tits on a bull, which ironically today is fairly common due to the radiation. My mother stayed at home with my younger sister Doris and I. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, my father laid down his butcher knife and picked up a rifle. He was wounded during the Battle of Gela and it was months before we heard from him again. He would not return to the frontlines, however a wartime project stateside needed workers and a lot of them. In November 1943, we arrived in Oak Ridge, the result of Nazi shrapnel and an unfulfilled contract with Uncle Sam.

Today, Oak Ridge is a radioactive crater, as are most places. The town was built up near what was the Clinch River and it was once surrounded by beautiful mountains and trees. In 1943, it was a heavily fortified top secret location. A location so secret it would be years before it was labeled on a map. America was pushing hard to be the first between the Germans and Japanese in developing the ultimate doomsday weapon, the atomic bomb.

Those living today seemingly have little interest in history, or of learning from it. They pine for old, familiar ways and for their lost fortunes. They weep for dead sons and daughters and mourn missing husbands and wives. Yet they shed no tears for the millions lost to genocide, avarice, and ignorance. Had they cared, could they have been bothered to pay any attention at all, the end very well could have been different.

On record to this day, November 9th 1993, the official stance is that Adolf Hitler committed suicide in April 1945. There has not been any form of government since the bombs rose and fell in 1962, but if there was, I am sure in their infinite wisdom they would maintain their original stance. I can say unequivocally that it is a lie, because had he truly died then, there would have been no bombs rise to fall. At least not then. There would have been meaningful life for scores of people and rocky yesterdays, mere bedrock for solid futures. Hitler did not die in that bunker in April 1945. He escaped to the South American jungle to develop plans for a much more deadly Fourth Reich.

By September 1947, the Manhattan Project, deemed a success, was being disbanded. Soldiers, officers, and their respective family units were preparing for new assignments, new battles, and new places to call home. It had been two years since the war had reached its dramatic conclusion. Army intelligence had sources claiming former high ranking Nazi officials were planning something major in South America. Pulling some strings, the Major secured employment for his wife at a laboratory in Oak Ridge. This allowed the family to remain in the town and the Major was to board a Lockheed bound for Bolivia.

On the eve of his departure, the Major visited a small local shop. His next mission was also to be top secret. If captured, the U.S. Government would disavow all knowledge of him. He would be on his own. As the Major browsed, he happened across a small heart shaped locket. He purchased the locket, along with a few other items. He left the shop and made his way to the machine shop.

There were security checkpoints set up at each main entrance and at set intervals through town. These checkpoints were manned by a single soldier and every few hours there would be a literal changing of the guard. At the North entrance gate, around 1 am, the checkpoint guard was nowhere to be found. The guard shack was empty and there were signs of a struggle. The Major followed drag marks for a short distance and over a small berm he found the bloodied body of a young guard. As he began to check on the guard, he heard rustling in the bushes. The guard hit him over the head with his own pistol. He cried out in pain and grasped frantically at a figure in the shadows. It was then his world went black. It was an ominous sign of things to come.

The Major woke up secured to a table. Not in Bolivia as planned, but Paraguay. His captors left the sack over his head and this was in fact all that he was wearing. The Germans made no attempt to hide their identities and did not bother with whispers. The sack was removed from his head and the young guard from Oak Ridge, now in his native Schutzstaffel uniform, stared at him coldly. The Major reciprocated his icy gaze. The questions with no answers began. The butcher knife came out.

Back in Oak Ridge, Milo was happy to not be moving and her mother was settling into her role at the laboratory. My father was not offered a position in the evolution of Oak Ridge from secret military base to idyllic civilian haven, so we prepared for the move back to Albany. Milo had become my best friend. My younger sister Doris had contracted Polio shortly after our arrival and did not survive. For the second time in my life I was forced to say goodbye. This time not to Doris, but to Milo. On our last day together, she presented me with a small cigar box. The box was filled with trinkets collected from our many adventures. There were envelopes, stationery and a book of stamps. She made me promise to write and she kissed me. To this day it remains my first and only kiss. With tears in our eyes, we said goodbye. Mother and I boarded the number 713 Greyhound bound for Albany.

A few days earlier, father had given mother some money and assured her that he would be along shortly. He said there was work here to be finished before he could make the journey home. Goodbye Oak Ridge. Goodbye to you all.

In an underground bunker in Paraguay, the Major refused to talk. A newspaper article I happened across years later left me angry, but not surprised. According to the article, the Major’s last words were “Et tu, Brute?”My father was a traitor. He tortured and killed the father of the girl I loved. My father was a dirty fucking Nazi. I hated him and what he did and I always will.

Before his body was even cold, the Major and his belongings were searched. It was mostly junk, save for a locket. The locket had been soldered shut. At the sight of the locket, Hitler began to sob. It reminded him of his mother and his brother Edmund and for the briefest of moments, he seemed almost human. Almost. Hitler took the locket from my father and after a last expressionless glance at the Major, he left the room.

Years later Milo received a strange letter with no return address. The letter was postmarked Washington D.C., and contained a heart shaped locket. There was also a brief note. Hastily scribbled on what was probably the first scrap of paper the writer could muster. Most of it was written in German, but the words open and bank were legible in English. She turned the locket over in her hand. It was beautiful. Its owner had cherished it and it showed. She wondered if that same person had soldered it shut. Once more she read the note and she slowly drifted off to sleep. When she woke up early the next morning, she resolved to open the locket.

Living outside of town was a man Milo knew of. He was a farrier by trade and by his own admission, a rube. He looked at the locket and set it down on his bench. A few swings of his hammer and the locket was two halves separate for the first time in years. The locket was empty, save for a number: 713. The man looked on quizzically, but Milo thought she recognized what it meant. She was sure it was the number of a safe deposit box at the Oak Ridge National Bank.

The safe deposit box belonged to the Major. It consisted of a file labeled Top Secret, a pistol, two brass keys, and a note written by the Major, In Case of My Death. The file expounded on Nazi plans to annex and bomb the United States. It also contained launch codes and several maps. One such map was directions to a facility located under Melton Hill Dam, site X-41. This secondary location was created as a fail safe sister site to Oak Ridge. It also served as the launch site of the experimental nuclear missiles developed in secret alongside the atom bomb.

Site X-41 had been mothballed since the early 1950’s. It was not active per se, but neither was it decommissioned. It fell into a grey area of sorts considering technically it did not even exist. Its official name for purposes of funding was Melton Hill Dam Civil Water Authority. It was but one of hundreds of sites across the United States armed with nuclear missiles. For now, site X-41 was quiet. It was unmanned, unguarded, and about to serve as a front row seat to the apocalypse.

Our female harbinger of death was as surprised as anyone that the site remained armed and that human presence was deemed not necessary. Granted, you did need to know the site existed in the first place and you did need codes and a key to enter. This is not to mention the lone entrance was very well hidden, but it still surprised her at the ease of which the Major’s plan seemed to be working.

The site might still have been stocked and armed, but it was as dark as the ace of spades when she pulled shut the heavy blast door behind her. Feeling around in the dark, her hands found and flipped up a large switch. The smell of ether hung in the air and the air was static. Sterile light slowly began to envelope her as she found her way down the stairs and into the silo control room.

Following the instructions provided by the Major, she pressed a series of buttons on one of the consoles. The large dome situated over the three large missiles began to fold back into itself. Crisp morning air flooded in, followed by spires of sunrise in all shapes and sizes. Another console requested credentials for input. She entered permission as the Major had written and typed in three separate launch codes. The three codes corresponded with geographical coordinates. Berlin was input first. Paraguay second. Oak Ridge third. She took the pistol from its holster and chambered one single round.

As she prepared to turn the key, she wondered. Where does the bird fly that has no direction?