Chapter 27

Pepper rolled out of bed and looked over at the alarm clock. It was five o’clock in the morning. The alarm was set for six o’clock. He turned off the alarm before heading out of the bedroom. He entered his small kitchen, and looked at the drip coffee maker. He went through the process of brewing a pot of coffee.

While the machine gurgled and spat out a weak trickle of coffee, he went back in his room to get dressed for the day. His clothes felt a little loose on him. He wondered if he had really lost that much weight.

Returning to the kitchen, Pepper poured a cup of coffee. He missed how the smell of percolated coffee had filled the entire house back at the ranch. He took a cautious sip from the cup finding that it wasn’t nearly as hot as the coffee served back at Donny’s ranch. He drank his coffee while searching through his pantry to see what he had on hand for breakfast. Outside of a package of breakfast bars, there wasn’t much to eat.

He grumbled, “I’ll have to go out for breakfast, today.”

Pepper finished his cup of coffee. He took a minute to look around the apartment. It was the first chance he really had of doing that. He had returned home late the previous night, and had basically crawled into bed after taking a long hot shower to ease muscles cramped by hours spent driving. There was a little dust on things, but all in all, it was pretty clean. He’d have to straighten the place up after he returned home from work.

After rinsing out the coffee pot, Pepper left the apartment. The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon. Rather than the glorious colors of sunrise out in the country, the sky looked a little brown and dingy. Looking at it reminded him of how bad the air smelled.

He stopped at the local chain diner for a breakfast. He looked over the menu and ordered their ‘country’ breakfast. The food didn’t taste at all like he remembered. The eggs were greasy, the slices of bacon were flat hard slabs without flavor, the toast was dry, and the pancakes seemed tasteless.

The lack of conversation while eating reminded him of how alone he was. It never dawned on him that he would miss the discussion of the day’s work to be done. He finished as much of his food as he could while thinking about everything he had to do that day.

After breakfast, he swung by the coffee shop to get his morning coffee. The parking lot was packed with cars. He found a spot and pulled into it. On entering the noisy shop, he looked around at his surroundings. He had never noticed how messy it was in the middle of the morning. There were dirty napkins on some of the tables and spilled sugar on one of the counters.

The people standing in line didn’t look happy. There were irritated frowns at having to wait in line to get their morning coffees. The line wasn’t straight, but almost serpentine. It was as if people felt that pushing forward would speed things up a little. The service was brusque, almost rude, while the coffees were being prepared in a production line manner.

The coffee tasted like he remembered, but the experience of buying it had left a lot to be desired. He returned to his car and headed towards the store. While driving down the busy streets, he looked at the buildings thinking that a lot of them needed painting.

Pepper arrived at his store and took a minute to look at it before parking in the rear. There were all kinds of posters plastered to the windows advertising cigarettes, the lottery, and cups of soda with movie themes on them. A few of the posters were hung crookedly, and one had a tear. The windows needed washing. There were dark spots on the concrete where people had tossed gum. A small breeze blew some trash around the parking lot.

“I’m going to have to take care of this parking lot,” Pepper said.

After parking, Pepper entered the store. He came in through the backdoor. The woman behind the counter asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m Pepper. I own this place.”

“Oh. I’m Julie. Sonny hired me.”

“Nice to meet you Julie,” Pepper said glancing over at her. She was more than a little overweight, but looked honest enough.

He looked around the store. Three of the overhead lights were out and one was flickering. He looked over at the coffee pots and saw that all, but one of them, were empty. The light inside the donut case was out. He put his hands on his hips and said, “What a pit.”

“That’s not my fault,” the woman behind the counter said.

She was afraid that he was going to blame everyone working in the store for the way it looked. With only a month on the job, it wasn’t her place to change the store. She was just the hired help.

“It’s my fault,” Pepper said.

He went into the storage room and rummaged around there for a minute before finding a box of lights. He wrestled the ladder out of the room and carried it into the main store. He set it up, then went back for the light bulbs. Climbing the ladder, he thought about all of the jokes about how many people it took to change a light bulb. Those jokes weren’t so funny now. He had no idea how to change the fluorescent light bulbs.

It took him ten minutes to figure out how to change the first light bulb. After that, it didn’t take him long at all to change the others. He didn’t rush the job, but took his time to position the ladder, remove the cover, and exchange the bad bulb for a new bulb. Julie watched him work without saying a word.

After putting away the ladder, Pepper returned to the counter. He looked it over. It looked unorganized and messy.

He said, “Why don’t you straighten up these displays?”

“Sure,” Julie said.

She went to work without complaint. For the most part this was a pretty boring job. She appreciated the chance to move around a little bit.

Pepper walked around the store taking an inventory of what needed to be done. After his inspection, he picked up a duster, and went to work dusting off the merchandise sitting on the counter. Some of the items had been there for a long time and were covered with dust. He wondered how he had let the store get into that shape.

He and Julie traded off cleaning and watching the counter. They would spend fifteen minutes doing one job, and then switch to doing the other. It broke up the work into reasonable increments.

While he was working to put the store into shape, customers came into the store. Most of them were pleased to see that Pepper was back. A few of them spent a little time talking to Pepper. Most of them were curious about where he had been and commented on his weight loss, tan, and increased musculature.

A frequent topic of conversation was the destruction of the neighborhood gang. Pepper heard all kinds of stories about how it happened. He listened without making a comment or correcting wild speculations. The fact was, he knew more about what had happened than anyone who had been in the area. He wasn’t about to open his mouth.

Police patrols of the neighborhood had tightened up. Their presence had put a crimp in the prostitution business. A lot of the prostitutes had moved on to areas where the patrols weren’t as heavy. They weren’t the only ones to leave the area. Drug addicts had moved away in order to be closer to a drug dealer.

Four times that day, police had stopped in the store for coffee. Pepper took the time to talk to the policemen. He offered them free coffee and learned their names.

By mid-afternoon, the shelves had been straightened, the floor cleaned, the cold drinks restocked, and the display windows washed. The store looked brighter and cleaner than it had in years. Feeling pleased with his work, Pepper stood back and looked at the interior of the store.

He smiled over at Julie and said, “That looks a little better.”

“It does,” Julie said.

Her feet were hurting. Normally she sat in the chair behind the counter, but there hadn’t been much sitting around that day. She hadn’t done so much work since starting there. She hoped that this wasn’t going to be an everyday event.

“There’s still a lot to do,” Pepper said.

He was going to let the management company deal with the paperwork for the rest of the month. They could deal with the paperwork, but they weren’t going to come in and clean things up. That wasn’t their job.