YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED to walk along the dirt path that leads to what used to be Well G, but I do anyway, making my way through a wooded area until I come to a small clearing. Here are the remains of the well house. In 1986, then-mayor John Rabbitt ordered it knocked down, during the trial, as a way of dramatizing the fact that the contaminated well water was no longer being used. All that's left is a concrete base, some twisted shards of metal, a few wires. Ahead is the swamp that lies on either side of the Aberjona River, choked with eight-foot-tall reeds.
It's a beautiful afternoon, and the surroundings are so serene you might think you were in a nature preserve. But looks can be deceptive. Here and there are pipes -- wells drilled into the groundwater to test for contamination. Across the way, on the 15 acres Schlichtmann alleged was contaminated by the Riley tannery, an immense expanse of rocks has been spread out, dotted with manholes and bright-orange cones, part of a cleanup project that will, in all likelihood, take decades to complete.
Jimmy Anderson would be 30 if he were alive. It is a simple, unavoidable truth that haunts Anne Anderson every day. She gives her big old golden retriever, Charlie, a pat. "There are a lot of positive things that came out of this," she says. "I think the two things I'm most conscious of are Superfund and the Mass Cancer Registry. I'm real proud that I had an opportunity to be a part of that. I also think there's a greater awareness of the effects of toxic waste. I think companies are more careful now -- they're not going to be as arrogantly careless as they were in the past, because they know they might be the next one on the docket."
But Anderson's is an unwanted celebrity, suffused with sadness. She's always shocked that when she tells people about participating in some publicity event for the movie, all they're interested in is the glitz and the glimmer. "Some people think it's a big lark -- 'Oh, you met John Travolta,' " she says, shaking her head. "I haven't felt stability in so long that I wouldn't know it if it hit me. My family and friends from back then who went through this with me, we never talk about it. It's hurtful to talk about it. We really don't."
