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Saturday, August 13, 1977

WHEN HE DROVE AROUND THE CURVE, into the small valley, Paul Annendale felt a change come over him. After five hours behind the wheel yesterday and five more today, he was weary and tense—but suddenly his neck stopped aching and his shoulders unknotted. He felt at peace, as if nothing could go wrong in this place, as if he were Hugh Conway in Lost Horizon and had just entered Shangri-La.

Of course, Black River was not Shangri-La, not by any stretch of the imagination. It existed and maintained its population of four hundred solely as an adjunct of the mill. For a company town it was quite clean and attractive.

The main street was lined with tall oak and birch trees. The houses were New England colonials, white frame and brick saltboxes. Paul supposed he responded to it so positively because he had no bad memories to associate with it, only good ones; and that could not be said of many places in a man’s life.

“There’s Edison’s store! There’s Edison’s!” Mark Annendale leaned over from the back seat, pointing through the windshield.

Smiling, Paul said, “Thank you, Coonskin Pete, scout of the north.”

Rya was as excited as her brother, for Sam Edison was like a grandfather to them. But she was more dignified than Mark.

At eleven she yearned for the womanhood that was still years ahead of her. She sat up straight in her safety harness beside Paul on the front seat. She said, “Mark, sometimes I think you’re five years old instead of nine.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, sometimes I think you’re sixty instead of eleven!”

“Touché,” Paul said.

Mark grinned. Usually, he was no match for his sister. This sort of quick response was not his style.

Paul glanced sideways at Rya and saw that she was blushing. He winked to let her know that he wasn’t laughing at her.

Smiling, sure of herself again, she settled back in her seat. She could have topped Mark’s line with a better one and left him mumbling. But she was capable of generosity, not a particularly common quality in children her age.

The instant the station wagon stopped at the curb, Mark was out on the pavement He bounded up the three concrete steps, raced across the wide roofed veranda, and disappeared into the store. The screen door slammed shut behind him just as Paul switched off the, engine.

Rya was determined not to make a spectacle of herself, as Mark had done. She took her time getting out of the car, stretched and yawned, smoothed the knees of her jeans, straightened the collar of her dark blue blouse, patted her long brown hair, closed the car door, and went up the steps. By the time she reached the porch, however, she too had begun to run.

Edison’s General Store was an entire shopping center in three thousand square feet. There was one room, a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, with an ancient pegged pine floor. The east end of the store was a grocery. The west end held dry goods and sundries as well as a gleaming, modem drug counter.

As his father had been before him, Sam Edison was the town’s only licensed pharmacist.

In the center of the room, three tables and twelve oak chairs were grouped in front of a wood-burning country stove. Ordinarily, you could find elderly men playing cards at one of

those tables, but at the moment the chairs were empty. Edison’s store was not just a grocery and pharmacy; it was also Black River’s community center.

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.”

“Has Doe Troutman gotten a second opinion on any of these cases?”

“Nearest other doctor is sixty miles away,” Sam said. “He did call the State Health Authority yesterday afternoon, asked for one of their field men to come up and have a look. But they can’t send anyone until Monday. I guess they can’t get very excited about an epidemic of night chills.”

“The chills could be the tip of an iceberg.”

“Could be. But you know bureaucrats.” When he saw Paul glance at Rya and Mark again, Sam said, “Look, don’t worry about it. We’ll keep the kids away from everyone who’s sick.”

“I was supposed to take Jenny up the street to Ultman’s Cafe. We were going to have a nice quiet dinner together.”

“If you catch the flu from a waitress or another customer, you’ll pass it on to the kids. Skip the cafe. Have dinner here. You know I’m the best cook in Black River.”

Paul hesitated.

Laughing softly, stroking his beard with one hand, Sam said, “We’ll have an early dinner. Six o’clock. That’ll give you and Jenny plenty of time together.

You can go for a ride later. Or

I’ll keep myself and the kids out of the den if you’d rather just stay home.”

Paul smiled. “What’s on the menu?”

“Manicotti.”

“Who needs Ultman’s Cafe?”

Sam nodded agreement. “Only the Ultmans.”

Rya and Mark hurried over to get Sam’s approval of the gifts they had chosen for themselves. Mark had two dollars’ worth of comic books, and Rya had two paperbacks. Each of them had small bags of candy.

Rya’s blue eyes seemed especially bright to Paul, as if there were lights behind them. She grinned and said, “Daddy, this is going to be the best vacation we’ve ever had!”