Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
In the Field
October 19, 2001
Stafford,Virginia
By the time Leroy Richmond awoke, the lethal spores had
settled into his lungs, but of course he did not know it. He felt hot and achy,
and wondered if he might be coming down with the flu. It was before dawn on
Friday, a regular workday at the U.S. Postal Service, and Richmond did not
indulge thoughts of staying home. His wife, Susan, often complained that he was
married to the job -- a "worka-holic" -- but he looked forward to each day of
handling express mail at the cavernous Brentwood Mail Processing and
Distribution Center in Washington, D.C.
Richmond slowly rolled out of bed and washed and dressed as
usual, trying to ignore the erratic fever he had been battling for several days.
He would feel bad and then suddenly better, a phenomenon known in the medical
literature as an "eclipse." He had been treating his symptoms with common
aspirin, a laughable remedy given the virulent nature of the bacteria infecting
him, like confronting an attacking tiger with a pellet gun. The aspirin made him
feel better, but the relief was perilously deceptive. Microscopic rod-shaped
germs arrayed in long, narrow chains incubated in the warm recesses of his
chest, mustering for a stealthy assault. Within hours, they would send two
toxins surging through Richmond's bloodstream, poisons that could render
powerless the most potent treatments. His lungs would bleed and swell with
germ-clouded liquid. The pressure would threaten his heart, and he would drift
in and out of consciousness, breathing weakly through a respirator.
Statistically, he had a slim chance of beating the pathogen unleashed inside his
body.
The clock read 2:50 A.M. as Richmond tiptoed through the
dark, past polished tables filled with photographs of family, some of whom were
still sleeping in the rooms behind him. His wife kept their two-story house
immaculate, the white overstuffed furniture in the living room spotless, the
dining-room table set as if for company, with cloth napkins tucked into crystal
glasses. They had lived in the spacious home for seven years, a testament to
their upward striving. Richmond, a tall, slender man born in Newport News,
Virginia, had worked for USPS for thirty-two years, mostly at Brentwood and its
predecessor on North Capitol Street. Brentwood was so full of old-timers that it
felt like a second home. Everyone there called him Rich, never Leroy. He had met
the feisty Susan there, working the line.
It was not an instant attraction. One day, a supervisor sent
her over to help him manually sort mail. To the industrious Rich, all she seemed
to do was complain. She was tired. She didn't feel well. Before long, he caught
her catnapping.
He asked his boss not to send her over again. The next day,
there she was, grumbling, napping, disappearing for long breaks. Rich asked her
to speed up, and she shot him a cutting look and barked," You're not my
supervisor!" Rich went back to the boss and suggested that he fire her.
Rich ran into Susan sometime later at a club, dancing,
turning on the charm. He was mesmerized. He couldn't get her off his mind, her
broad hips and beautiful braids. A fiery courtship began, and they were married
in less than a year.
Now that their youngest child, Quentin, was seven, they found
working alternate Brentwood shifts the best way of managing their hectic
lives.The routine was taxing. Susan had come home from that night's shift and
crawled into bed after 1 A.M., just before Rich's day began. She noticed him
feebly dressing for work, coughing, looking gaunt and worn after several days of
inexplicable tiredness. Not mincing words, she called out:
"You look like a crack addict! Where are you going?"
"Going to work." He sighed.
She scowled as he downed more aspirin and finished preparing
to leave.
"Me?" she would say later, standing defiantly with hands on
hips. "I take some medication and roll over. He'll have a hundred-and-two-degree
fever and go to work!"
True, it had been years since Rich had called in sick. He was
more likely to volunteer for overtime -- anything to keep the money rolling
in.
Anyway, there seemed to be little use asking for time off
from Brentwood's hard-line management. Unspoken tension divided the center
between the almost exclusively African-American workforce, stationed behind
chugging machines and conveyor belts, and the many white supervisors patrolling
the production lines. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) touted its minority hiring
as a sign of progressive management, but among some of the workers, the
atmosphere so harkened back to the plantation days of the Old South that they
derisively referred to Brentwood's floor as "the field."
Rich tried not to think in such stark racial terms. He only
knew that the last time he had asked for time off, to attend his now-grown
daughter's school play, his supervisor had scoffed at him. He had never asked
for a favor again.
Besides, he took pride in postal work and knew he was good at
it. Name a street address, a federal building or embassy anywhere in Washington,
and he could rattle off the zip code from memory, the result of untold hours of
training. Years ago, he had walked the streets of suburban Washington to stuff
letters into mailboxes, so he knew first-hand that Americans took seriously the
credo that "neither snow, nor rain" would stop the U.S. mail. There was
something exhilarating about leaving a mailbox full of letters and colorful
postcards, third-class catalogs and cumbersome junk mail, then watching
expectant old ladies and children rush out the door to retrieve their surprises
as he walked away. Sometimes, they peeked from behind curtains mysteriously,
trying to speed the process. He was Santa Claus in a blue uniform
...
