Perhaps the easiest way of making a town's acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die. - ALBERT CAMUS, The Plague

An injury to one is an injury to all. - Industrial Workers of the World slogan

For Jenny

The sun poked out briefly, evidence of a universe above them, of watchful things - planets and stars and vast galaxies of infinite knowledge - and just as suddenly it retreated behind the clouds. The doctor passed only two other autos during the fifteen-minute drive, saw but a lone pedestrian even though it was noon on Sunday, a time when people normally would be returning home from church, visiting with friends and family. The flu had been in Timber Falls for three weeks now, by the doctor's best estimation, and nearly all traffic on the streets had vanished. The sick were condemned to their homes, and the healthy weren't venturing outside.

Better simply to venture to his next destination and any beyond it, to drift on, stripped of so many things that he thought had defined who he was. And what would be left of himself, and who he would be while he gathered the fleeting pieces as they tried to drift away, was something he would somehow have the strength to accept, and build something anew.