And he hadn’t gotten into this business to hurt anyone. Despite his bravado at the meeting with Munger, he was beginning to wonder if he might somehow be doing so anyway, if only indirectly.
But as far as he knew, nothing had changed in the production for at least two years. The ingredients were the same, the proportions were the same. So Delico Foods was unlikely to be the culprit.
As Preston hooked his phone onto the computer to upload the recorded conversation, the thought gave him little consolation. He’d no idea why. If his company wasn’t at fault, he should just be able to let it go.
But he couldn’t. Something was wrong, and for some reason, he felt like he should do everything in his power to fix it. Perhaps to make up for what he did – or, better said, hadn’t done – when he was eighteen. Perhaps because he couldn’t ignore this problem because it had a face to it. And a beautiful one at that.
Perhaps a little bit of both.
And he just might have enough power to make a difference.
**********
“Mom? What happened?”
Three words that Cynthia would hold near to her heart for years to come. She smiled down at her daughter, her vision blurry. “You got sick at school. But you’re going to be okay.”
“You’re crying.”
Cynthia lifted her free hand, the one that wasn’t stroking Melissa’s hair, and brushed the errant tear away with a laugh. “It’s a happy cry.” She wanted to burst into sobs with relief, but she didn’t need to further alarm her just-awakened daughter, who was surely weak and exhausted.
She backed away for a minute so that the nurse could check her vitals, and Dr. Hill and the other doctor who had been present in the O.R. with Melissa, a younger woman who went by the name of Dr. Liz, conferred with the nurses, examined Melissa, and told Cynthia that if all progressed as they hoped, the patient would be released tomorrow afternoon.
Joy mingled with frustration over the next couple of hours, during which Melissa dozed off and on. Cynthia’s child was going to be all right. She wasn’t going to die. But what exactly had sent her into a coma remained a mystery.
Cynthia knew the easiest thing would be to forget anything ever happened. Just move on with life as usual.
But Cynthia had heard – and believed – that the easy way wasn’t usually the best way. Besides, as a mother she felt it her duty to do whatever it took to find out just what had happened to Melissa. And she wouldn’t rest until she did.
No matter what else she did, she would make sure that Melissa never ate another school lunch again – or partook with any food her friends might want to share.
During one of Melissa’s naps, Cynthia called the school to tell Lucy that she was awake, and to please relay the message to Mr. Wade. She couldn’t be sure, but the Hispanic woman sounded like she was near tears herself when she got the news. “Remember, I’m here if you want to talk about anything,” she reminded Cynthia before she hung up.
Cynthia had already decided she would definitely want to talk to the woman. Eventually. After she had done some of her own legwork. But if there was any merit to what Lucy had insinuated the other day, she just might be the best ally Cynthia could hook up with at this time.
Melissa was released on Saturday, giving her a day and a half to recuperate enough to return to school. On Sunday afternoon, after Cynthia called Mrs. Tenniger to tell her she would be back to work at the daycare on Wednesday – she needed to catch up on her sleep – she snuggled up with her daughter on the couch as they drank hot chocolate and watched the cars crunch by on the snow-covered street outside the window.
“I was wondering,” Cynthia began after they had sat in companionable silence for several minutes, “if you noticed anything about the lunch you ate on Tuesday.”
Melissa scrunched her forehead, biting her lip. After a few seconds, she nodded and looked up. “The refried beans and the pudding tasted…strange. I almost didn’t eat them, but I was hungry.”
Cynthia set her mug on the coffee table and looked the girl straight in the eye. “Strange?”
Melissa shrugged. “I don’t know how, really. Like the flavor was too – oh, I don’t know the word.”
“Intense?”
“Yes!” Melissa beamed up at her. “Like, the beans were super salty, and the pudding was super vanilla-ey.”
Cynthia’s heart began to pound. “Did any of the other kids mention anything about it?”
Melissa shook her head as she took a sip. “But I saw Joseph make a face when he tried the beans, and throw down his fork. And Darla said the pudding tasted weird, and a couple other kids barely touched either the beans or the pudding.” She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I guess I was stupid, huh?”
Cynthia squeezed her arm. “You weren’t stupid. Just hungry. But…I hope you’ll be okay when I tell you I’ve decided that you won’t be eating any more food from the school cafeteria.”
Melissa grimaced. “I was hoping you wouldn’t make me.”
Cynthia laughed and hugged her carefully, so as not to upset her mug of hot chocolate. “Have you always disliked school lunches?”
Melissa shrugged. “Some days yes, some days no. But more and more lately it’s been yes.” She lifted her mug to her lips again. “Guess I’m just getting tired of it all.”
Or your body’s trying to tell you something.
The thought came out of nowhere and made Cynthia freeze with her hand halfway to her own mug.
“Mom? You all right?”
“Yes.” She gave her daughter a reassuring smile, then picked up her mug. Then set it back down. What was in this stuff, anyway? Was the chocolate flavor even real? Was there anything in it that might send Melissa’s body back into crisis mode?
It took all her might not to snatch the mug from Melissa’s hands. No use causing her worry; anyway, if anything she was just borrowing trouble. How many cups of hot chocolate had Melissa drunk every winter with no seeming ill effect?
Even so, Cynthia decided then and there to find a more natural solution to their hot chocolate cravings. And start paying attention to food labels. Perhaps even pay her first visit to the health food market that had been only a couple of miles away from her home for the past five years.
But before anything else, she would get online and do some serious research as soon as she had seen Melissa off to school tomorrow. It wasn’t just about saving her daughter’s health. The next kid to collapse after eating cafeteria food might end up in the morgue, and somebody had to do something to try to prevent it.
If not me, then who? The song lyric floated through her mind almost as loudly as if it were playing on the radio. As she and Melissa walked through the rest of the day in quiet activity, her answer silently rose up: I’ll do it, Lord. I’ll do it.
**********
Delico Foods contained their Midwest regional offices in downtown St. Peter. The actual food processing plant was some miles south of the city, and on Monday morning Preston found himself taking the highway toward it in order to speak with the manager and overseer there, and bring home a few samples that he planned to surreptitiously send out to a lab for analysis. The inspections that SPISD was demanding were supposedly going to be unannounced, but sometimes word got around. If it did, managers, assistant managers, and factory employees alike would all be on their best behavior and be sure to provide the inspectors only the purest product.
No one was expecting Preston to show up today, not even said manager, so if there was any funny business going on, anything being put into the food that wasn’t supposed to be there, he aimed to find out.
At least the roads were clear of ice and snow. Preston stared at the road ahead of him, his peripheral vision taking in the white and gray fields interrupted by clumps of pine trees and groups of various native deciduous trees, their naked branches like crooked fingers scraping at the sky. When he spotted a smokestack in the distance, he sighed. Almost there. The factory sat on two acres, and was soon in full vie
w.
The L-shaped building in front housed several small offices, most of the flat-roofed, rectangular structure consisting of factory machinery. In the back gigantic steel drums and pipes looked like something out of a bad sci-fi movie, and the consummate picture of the acreage was a wart on the surrounding beauty of the Midwestern landscape. It was, in a word, bleak.
But if not for it, Preston wouldn’t be where he was today.
“Preston, my man!” Kelly Jackson, a heavyset, dark-skinned man, arose from the seat behind his desk in the cramped office with an outstretched hand. “Let me guess. The latest news from the city school district has you down here.” The man’s thick-lipped smile remained as broad as ever. It was his cheerfulness, Preston had decided a couple of years ago, that made him the most respected manager that Preston had ever hired. Employee absences had dropped considerably since he’d hired Jackson, and production had gone up.
Preston nodded as he tried to match the grip of the large man’s hand and failed. Despite the tension headache threatening behind his eyes, he smiled. He could never help smiling in the presence of the manager of this Delico Foods plant. Even when under stress, Jackson was known to weave in and out of the line of factory workers, bestowing words of encouragement, telling jokes, and bursting into happy tunes.
He was the first manager of that plant to go two years without having a single complaint filed against him by an employee. The man was either half-crazy or had a mother who was on happy pills during her pregnancy with him.
“Consider me the inspector before the inspector.” Preston now shook his head when Jackson gestured for him to take a seat. “I’d like to tour the facilities before we talk, if you don’t mind.”
An hour later, his hands loaded down with boxes of several freshly-produced cans, bags and boxes of items, Preston returned with Kelly to his office where he bombarded the manager with questions. No, there had been no new hires in the past month. No, he hadn’t heard any grudging talk against the company. No, no, no.
Just as Preston suspected. Not that Kelly could possibly know everything about everything and everybody, but the big man was as astute as he was joyful and he seemed to have a knack for understanding people.
By the time Preston headed back to the plant parking lot, he felt fifty pounds lighter. Let the inspections begin, and let Munger and his cronies think whatever they wanted. Delico Foods was not the reason the children had been hospitalized.
Kelly walked him out, and as they approached the front doors he said, “There is one thing.”
Preston eyed him over the stack of boxes he carried. “Do I really want to know?”
Kelly lifted a shoulder, still smiling. “Prob’ly ain’t all bad. Marge has gone and gotten herself pregnant. Gonna go on maternity leave in two weeks.” Kelly shook his head. “Don’t really want to mess with temporary workers.”
He let the comment settle between them just inside the door. Preston turned and glanced at Marge, the receptionist behind the nearby counter. She’d been a faithful employee for six years, and every manager during that time had told Preston that they’d never worked with anyone more pleasant, competent, or efficient. He’d noticed her bulging belly when he first came in, but his mind had been so full of food and toxins and insinuating accusations from arrogant school district officials that he hadn’t considered any consequences of her condition.
Preston nodded with understanding. “Go ahead and hire a substitute. Just make sure that she understands that the job will become Marge’s again as soon as she wants to come back.”
Kelly chuckled. “A permanent temporary? Got it, boss. And,” he opened the door for Preston, letting in a gust of frigid air, “thanks.”
Chapter Five
Cynthia blinked at the computer screen, then re-read the blog post for the third time. She’d heard about conspiracy theories related to politics – Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassinations, for example – or how a series of well-planned “coincidences” are the real reason a certain person is elected President of the United States. She’d always thought these theories to be the result of an overactive imagination. Or somebody with too much free time.
But the conspiracy theory laid out before her now made her arch her eyebrows, then suck in a swift breath. Very likely it wasn’t any more true than political theories. Most probably if it hadn’t been that Cynthia was hypersensitive over the area of manufactured food right now, she would have glossed over this kind of information and accused the author of being a nutjob.
However, after her first read-through of this article, she had read the blog author’s bio, then did a general search. Why would a former university medical professor and FDA advisor who appeared to have the support of numerous health-conscious bloggers make this stuff up? If he was on the up-and-up, the world was suddenly a much scarier place than Cynthia had made it out to be.
It wouldn’t be a hard leap for her to believe what he’d revealed on this web page. For some years she had had her doubts about the federal government’s purported mission of caring for the nation’s citizens. She knew that money, not love, made the White House go ‘round. But would they go this far to ensure that only the wealthiest elite thrived?
She squeezed her eyes closed, leaned back in the swivel chair, and rubbed her temples. Her brain was already swimming with a plethora of other new information gleaned in the past two hours. The actual impact upon the human body of artificial flavors, colors, and preservatives was not known. White flour was white because it was bleached. And chlorine was a known carcinogen. The pesticides used on commercial produce had been connected to everything from headaches and rashes to Alzheimer’s and cancer. Laboratory-synthesized vitamins and minerals with which breakfast cereals and many other processed foods were “fortified” were mostly unable to be absorbed by the human body.
Cynthia had already begun a list of book titles she had encountered during her research: Fast Food Nation, The Hundred Year Lie, Never Be Sick Again, and Wheat Belly headed the list. She’d watched a “Sixty Minutes” clip online that demonstrated how chemicals could be mixed and manipulated to imitate any aroma, flavor, or texture of any naturally-occurring food.
So Cynthia’s mind had already begun swirling with fascination, fear, wonder and doubt. She had already begun to seriously contemplate going through her pantry and refrigerator and starting over, as one blogger had suggested, and giving her and Melissa’s diet a complete overhaul.
Now, her brain ground to a halt. For an entire five minutes, the sole thought hammering there was, What if he’s right?
When the shock began to wear off and her mind began to function again, she knew that she already knew somebody who might be able to help her sort this guy’s claims out. Lucy Perez certainly was not anti-conspiracy, and might have already done her own research that could potentially save Cynthia a lot of time and effort.
Keeping one eye on her laptop screen, she picked up her cell phone and dialed the school. Because if this old professor was even partly right, Cynthia was going to have to make a whole lot more lifestyle changes than she’d been thinking a few hours ago.
**********
“I’m here.”
Lucy looked up from the typewriter on the opposite side of the front office corner, and beamed at the woman standing at the office door. Then she glanced at the large clock on the wall.
Just in time.
“I would’ve worked straight through lunch if you hadn’t shown up,” Lucy declared cheerfully, then she bent over to retrieve her purse and lunch bag. She had been excited when Cynthia had called her an hour ago, asking if she would have time to talk over lunch. Most people with whom Lucy shared her experiences and knowledge about food and health smiled politely and never made any changes. Probably over half of them thought she was a little crazy.
So Lucy couldn’t help feeling giddy over the idea that here was somebody who might actually be interested in what she had to say. Plus, she’d had a stre
ssful morning, what with a Kindergartener coming into the office first thing in the morning and vomiting all over the carpet, two parents giving veiled threats in Mr. Wade’s direction about the quality of the school food – as if he had anything to do with it – and, just after Cynthia called, one of the fifth grade teachers who was in her mid-forties and in desperate need of balancing out her hormones dragging one of her male students in and screaming at him at the top of her lungs.
Lucy, who usually retreated to the nurse’s office next door to take her lunch break, was ready to get out of the school building for a while.
She had, at first, toyed with the idea of leading Cynthia to the first-floor teacher’s lounge, which, by all reports, was rarely used. But she had a feeling that the impending conversation with Melissa Redman’s mother was going to be confidential, and Lucy wasn’t about to take any chances. After some thought she’d decided to invite Cynthia to the nearby grocery store. There were a few tables next to the deli area, and while they would not be alone, the store would be noisy enough and busy enough that they would not be noticed.
Cynthia was quiet during the six-block drive, answering Lucy’s questions about Melissa’s welfare in nervous and clipped tones. She would have expected a mother whose child recently came out of a short coma to be more relaxed, if not happy. Cynthia obviously had a lot on her mind.
Once seated at a table, Lucy withdrew a leftover corn tortilla and homemade organic guacamole from her lunch bag as Cynthia pulled an apple and a banana out of her purse.
Hungry, Lucy tore off a piece of tortilla and dipped it into the guacamole, but Cynthia made no move to touch her fruit. Instead, she closed her eyes and sighed.
Lucy frowned as she swallowed. “Deary, are you sure everything’s all right with Melissa?”
Cynthia gave her a sheepish smile. “Oh, yes, I’m sorry. I just – well, I’m not sure how to start this conversation.”