Paul opened the heavy lid on the soda cooler and plucked a bottle of Pepsi from the icy water. He sat down at one of the tables.
Rya and Mark were standing at an old-fashioned glass-fronted candy counter, giggling at one of Sam’s jokes. He gave them sweets and sent them to the paperback and comic book racks to choose presents for themselves; then he came over and sat with his back to the cold stove.
They shook hands across the table.
At a glance, Paul thought, Sam looked hard and mean. He was very solidly built, five eight, one hundred sixty pounds, broad in the chest and shoulders. His short-sleeved shirt revealed powerful forearms and biceps. His face was tanned and creased, and his eyes were like chips of gray slate. Even with his thick white hair and beard, he looked more dangerous than grandfatherly, and he could have passed as a decade younger than his fifty-five years.
But that forbidding exterior was misleading. He was a warm and gentle man, a push-over for children. Most likely, he gave away more candy than he sold. Paul had never seen him angry, had never heard him raise his voice.
“When did you get in town?”
“This is our first stop.”
“You didn’t say in your letter how long you’d be staying this year. Four weeks?”
“Six, I think.”
“Wonderful!” His gray eyes glittered merrily; but in that very craggy face, the expression might have appeared to be malice to anyone who didn’t know him well. “You’re staying the night with us, as planned? You aren’t going up into the mountains today?”
Paul shook his head: no. “Tomorrow will be soon enough. We’ve been on the road since nine this morning. I don’t have strength to pitch camp this afternoon.”
“You’re looking good, though.”
“I’m feeling good now that I’m in Black River.”
“Needed this vacation, did you?”
“God, yes.” Paul drank some of the Pepsi. “I’m sick to death of hypertense poodles and Siamese cats with ringworms.”
Sam smiled. “I’ve told you a hundred times. Haven’t I? You can’t expect to be an honest veterinarian when you set up shop in the suburbs of Boston. Down there you’re a nursemaid for neurotic house pets-and their neurotic owners. Get out into the country, Paul.”
“You mean I ought to involve myself with cows calving and mares foaling?”
“Exactly.”
Paul sighed. “Maybe I will one day.”
“You should get those kids out of the suburbs, out where the air is clean and the water drinkable.”
“Maybe I will.” He looked toward the rear of the store, toward a curtained doorway. “Is Jenny here?”
“I spent all morning filling prescriptions, and now she’s out delivering them. I think I’ve sold more drugs in the past four days than I usually sell in four weeks.”
“Epidemic?”
“Yeah. Flu, grippe, whatever you want to call it.”
“What does Doe Troutman call it?”
Sam shrugged. “He’s not really sure. Some new breed of flu, he thinks.”
“W/hat’s he prescribing?”
“A general purpose antibiotic. Tetracycline.”
“That’s not particularly strong.”
“Yes, but this flu isn’t all that devastating.”
“Is the tetracycline helping?”
“It’s too soon to tell.”
Paul glanced at Rya and Mark.
“They’re safer here than anywhere else in town,” Sam said. “Jenny and I are about the only people in Black River who haven’t come down with it.”
“If I get up there in the mountains and find I’ve got two sick kids on my hands, what should I expect? Nausea? Fever?”
“None of that. Just night chills.”
Paul tilted his head quizzically.
“Damned scary, as I understand it.” Sam’s eyebrows drew together in one bushy white bar. “You wake up in the middle of the night, as if you’ve just had a terrible dream. You shake so hard you can’t hold on to anything. You can barely walk. Your heart is racing. You’re pouring sweat-and I mean sweating pints-like you’ve got awfully high blood pressure. It lasts as much as an hour, then it goes away as if it never was. Leaves you weak most of the next day.”
Frowning, Paul said, “Doesn’t sound like flu.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of anything. But it scares hell out of people. Some of them got sick Tuesday night, and most of the others joined in on Wednesday. Every night they wake up shaking, and every day they’re weak, a bit tired. Damned few people around here have had a good night’s sleep this week.”