He quickly deposited a Samsonite suitcase in the trunk of the diesel-powered VW sedan. Opening the door and getting in, he pitched the black leather soft briefcase onto the passenger seat. As he usually did, he looked back at his home before driving off. He loved his home and the people in it. He hated to leave it behind. He’d done much work on it over the last several years. He had certainly left sweat, tears, and even a little blood in her joints and boards. The green English Cottage style home seemed to agree and peered back at him with an accusatory glare. The dim morning light glinted off the phalanx of windows that faced him, each one looking like an eye with a cocked eyebrow—bent in reproach. “Yeah, yeah, I know lady. I’m a damned bum for leaving you, Elena, and my boy. But, someone’s gotta make that mortgage or we all leave you for good—so cut me some slack will ya?” He laughed at his own joke, as much to brace himself for the coming day of a long drive punctuated by service calls on his customers.
Later that night, he shut the door wearily in a budget motel room. This one looked like every other; a King-sized bed covered in a low-quality beige bedspread and darker brown blankets. The faded smell of stale cigarette smoke belied the fact that this was a “non-smoking” room. I wonder what they did with the $200 cleaning fee. Cooper knew they had not received their money’s worth. Or, maybe the manager just pocketed it. Down the hall, he could hear the harsh racket of the ice machine and the playful banter of children as a family checked in a few doors down.
He kicked his black leather shoes off, put the suitcase onto the stand, and the briefcase onto the particle board desk. The hastily consumed dinner of fried chicken and mashed potatoes sat heavily on his stomach.
He picked up the remote and turned on the TV. Absentmindedly he flipped through the channels. Sporting events. Infomercials. Crime dramas. Nothing caught his eye. It made him think of a line from a Springsteen song, “Fifty-seven channels and nothing on.” But, now he probably had over a hundred. Then, something did catch his eye.
A beautiful woman was alive with passion debating a very well-dressed man on some talk show. The host sat between them. What drew his attention was the intense look on the woman’s face, the electricity in her voice, and the sweeping gesticulations she made with her hands. She looked like a restless animal and the seat was her cage that she wanted to be free of. This all caught his attention before he heard anything she was saying. The host interrupted her.
“So, Ms. Wheeler, tell us what the biggest threat of global warming is?”
She tossed her head in disdain, deep black hair cascading over her shoulders, “What isn’t at threat is the true question. Agriculture, water supplies, increasing spread of disease vectors…”
A loud “harrumph” from the other guest broke her flow, “Come now. Here we go again, more liberal hysteria. Next, Ms. Wheeler will tell us that Santa Claus will be killed off because some warming of the polar ice caps!” The small audience roared with laughter at that.
The woman, Ms. Wheeler, fumed, “I can assure you, Mister Lupacs, that your grandchildren won’t be laughing when they are sent off to fight a war over water or food supplies!” She infused the word “Mister” with an ample helping of mockery.
The alarm on his cell phone went off just then. Time to call home. He turned off the TV and grabbed his cell phone.
He speed-dialed home. When he was on the road, this was his favorite part of the day. The soft voice of his wife on the other end, telling him all the mundane details of her day. The rapid-fire, excited voice of Jake recounting the stories from the latest book he was reading or exhibitions of athletic prowess at school. Cooper soaked it all in. Given his own turbulent childhood, Cooper knew he had it good on the home front. This was something he was thankful for. He would relay a few episodes from his day to keep the conversation going. His real interest lay in keeping them both talking. After thirty minutes and a round of “I love you”, Cooper hung up the phone and turned back to the empty motel room. He grabbed a book on wilderness medicine that he was reading for their summer’s upcoming backpacking trips and settled in for the night.
The next morning, he was out the door and at the local diner by six-thirty. The waitress, Louisa, was a portly woman with long dark hair, deep complexion, and one of those friendly faces that just made you smile every time you saw it. Cooper knew her from previous trips out to Redmond. Her father had been a migrant worker from Mexico and her mother hailed from the nearby Warm Springs Reservation. She brought him coffee without asking how he liked it. She knew; black and hot. She slid a copy of the morning newspaper over to him with her other hand.
“Good morning, hombre,” she smiled.
“Morning, Lou,” he said easing into a barstool at the counter. “How are the chickens doing this morning?”
“Well enough to keep us fat and our veins filled with cholesterol.”
“Excellent,” he smiled back, “I’ll take the Sicilian Omelet with a double helping of wheat toast then,” he said as he completed a variation of a constant theme of banter they had going for the past five years. He laughed to himself at the pretense of the “Sicilian Omelet” which was simply a Denver omelet dressed up in mozzarella instead of cheddar. But, he’d be damned if it didn’t taste just right. Cooper made it out to Redmond about every month or two, so he could make sure the hardware store here and in the four surrounding towns were stocked up and serviced well. By tonight, he would have finished those calls and made his way north, up toward Baker City.
The blaring newspaper headline quickly wiped the smile from his face.
With furrowed eyebrow, Cooper read the article intently. The dozen hospitalized yesterday had swelled to a hundred. Five were dead with a score more reported as seriously ill. The medical authorities were running a suite of tests and had no firm answer as to what it was. “It is clearly a fast-moving, contagious pathogen with a very short incubation period and a very high lethality rate,” Dr. David Zhao was quoted. “That could be helpful as it may help us prevent further infection,” as he tried to inject a note of optimism. The rest of the members of the congregation had been quarantined by Monday evening.
Louisa saw him intently reading, “Probably just another swine flu or bird flu, or maybe a lizard flu scare this time,” she laughed heartily at her own joke.
Cooper could only muster a lame smile, “I hope you’re right. Five out of twelve dead is pretty bad, though,” Cooper said as he shook his head slowly. He took a long pull of the reassuringly hot coffee.
She smirked, “I think it’s all about selling newspapers and TV time. Dios mio! This morning the TV was talking about Seattle and a group of disembarked cruise goers’ in Florida who were coming down sick too,” she turned to put an order on the turnstile for the grill cook. Turning back toward him, “Of course, no one knows if it’s related or just another case of food poisoning on a cruise ship, but I could tell the anchorman was just hoping that they were related somehow. He was nearly salivating. Ratings pigs, that’s all they are.”
Cooper put his coffee cup down, “Florida, huh? Well, it was probably some bad shrimp or some cook who didn’t wash his hands.”
“Hey now, watch that buddy! Us cooks mind our hygiene,” bellowed Buck Floy, the line cook from behind the sizzling grill. “Except when we don’t like the customer’s attitude,” he smirked. Cooper couldn’t help but laugh when he proceeded to mock spitting into Cooper’s cooking omelet. Buck was physically an impressive man, over six feet tall and two hundred pounds of solid muscle. He had been a professional boxer for a short time and unlike most aging athletes, he maintained his conditioning. Blonde wisps of hair dangled down from underneath the mandatory chef’s hat and his dark green eyes shined with alertness.