The Perfect Food

By John Crawley

An epidemic is sweeping America and scientists are not sure what is causing it. Thousands are dying. Journalist, Scott Keen, is put on the story and discovers the dark side of American food production and politics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312513907

Book preview

The Perfect Food

The Perfect Food

A novel by

John Crawley

Copyright © 2014 by John Crawley

This is a work of fiction. Except where relevant historical figures and institutions appear, all characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. No product endorsement is implied with the use of a product name or brand within this work.

Published by John Crawley in association with LULU Press

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission of the author, including scanning, uploading, copying and republishing this book via the Internet or any other means without the written consent of the author is punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized additions and do not encourage or participate in piracy of protected materials.

ISBN: 978-1-312-51390-7

Cover Design: Ted Karsh

Type Face American Typewrite

Dedicated to

Larry Corby

Del Threadgill

Jud Griffin

The bonds of Earth are too fragile

to hold you and your spirits to this time and place.

You have left us and gone on.

And we miss you.

We do.

Wherever you have ventured,

please, wait for us.

We will be there soon, my friends.

Soon.

Other novels by John Crawley

Among the Aspen

Baby Change Everything

The House Next Door

Under the Radar

The Uncivil War

Between Sunday’s Columns

The Man on the Grassy Knoll

Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt (a novella)

Stuff

Dream Chaser (a serial novel)

The Myth Makers

Fishing Lessons

Letters from Paris

Special Thanks

The author wishes to give a special thanks to Michele Stephens, Ted Karsh and the staff at Lulu Press for assisting him in the publishing of this novel.

Quote

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.


- J.R.R. Tolkien

List of characters you are about to meet:

Story Teller:          Scott Keen, journalist for Los Angeles News

Tom Sanderson:          First patient to die from Hebron Affliction

Becky and Ray Sanderson:          Tom’s parents

David Gracy:          Rosen Labs chemist

Charles Cushman:          Gracy’s boss at Rosen Labs

Susan Kilgore:          D.C. attorney

Barbara Wiley M.D.:          CDC epidemiologist

Robert Stanley Hart:           Acting CDC director of epidemic medicine

Alice Kembrough, MD, PhD           Director of Center for Disease Control

Romana Hass          Ex-employee who sues Washington Grocers

Loman Parish          President Washington Grocers

Charles Kaan:          Brother to David Kaan. Kaan Industries

David Kaan:          Brother to Charles. Kaan Industries

Andrew Stirsky:          Security for CDC

Reggie Howard          Security for Childs and Lawrence

Fred Childs:          Fmr. Senator from Florida. Lobbyist

Harland Lawrence:          Fmr. Senator from Iowa. Lobbyist

President Little:           President of the United States.

Mike Hardgrave:          Lobbyist at Childs and Lawrence

Toby McMillian:          Nephew of Mike Hardgrave

Judge Grover Gibson:          Presiding judge at trial in Omaha

Lucy White:          Administrative Assistant to Fred Childs.

Otis Watss:          Congressman from Idaho

Naomi Kincaid:          Assist to Representative Watts

Paul Cockland:          Alias of hit man

Carl Shane:          Truck driver

Glenda Shane:          F.B.I. agent

(Judge) Harold Bean:          Special Prosecutor

Sarah Keen:          Storyteller’s deceased wife

Roger McCurtain:          Communications officer/congressional liaison in Little’s White House

Brenda Stone McCurtain:          Roger’s wife

Robert Muse:          Attorney General

Louis Meeter:         Deputy general: information services NSA

Kyle Rappaport:          Assistant publisher L.A. News

Sam Little:          Chief White House legal counsel

Dr. Winthrop Mitchell:          Ornithologist, Univ. Of Wisconsin, Madison

David Ramsey:          L.A. News photographer, D.C. bureau

Rupert Hynes:          Valet to Kaan brothers (NYC Offices.)

Paul Grinnham:          Sam Little’s replacement at White House

Terry Blair:          Chief of Staff, Little’s White House

Dennis Hamn:          White House photographer

This is the story...

This is the story Scott Keen told me while sitting in the Federal Courtroom in Omaha, Nebraska.

I have read Scott’s words for years.  If he said it happened this way, I believe him.

Chapter One

Since you weren’t here for the whole spectacle, I’ll give you the cast of characters. You should meet Becky Sanderson first. That’s her over there — the petite dishwater blonde. She is the wife of Ray Sanderson, a farmer from Hebron, Nebraska. Their son, Tom, was the first, at least that we know about. In fact the disease is called the Hebron Affliction because of him.

Becky’s youngest, Tom, said he felt feverish. He stayed home from school on Monday. He was in the fifth grade. That’s his bother, Max, next to Ray. Older.  Was in junior high when all this began. Smart kid. Going to college next year. Probably Southwest Missouri State on a baseball scholarship. Or so Ray will tell you. The kid never once suffered the dreaded symptoms his brother had. Not even a fever.

On that Tuesday the ten-year old looked more than a tad bit worse. Fever blisters covered his lips and red patches seemed to spot his face and arms. Becky told me she feared he had caught the flu bug. It was going around the elementary school in Hebron faster than the snow blowing out of Canada that blanketed their corn farm. If he didn’t get better by morning, Becky promised herself, she would bundle him up and take him to Dr. Fowler. Tuesday night around nine he began to throw up. His vomiting continued for several hours until dehydration started setting in. Becky and Ray put Tom in the car, placing his brother, the sleeping Max, in the back seat and drove into town to the hospital. The trip took twenty-two minutes. I have driven it and never made it in less than a half hour. Ray did some fast, heavy right-foot driving that night, I’ll tell you.

It was the last time Tom was ever on their farm alive.

According to Ray, Tom was to be buried the following Saturday among the other Sandersons that populated the family gravesite on the farm’s southeast corner. The farm had been in Ray’s family for three, maybe four, generations. This was one of the saddest times it had seen. Back in1919, the family had lost three young girls due to the flu, but the whole country was swept up with it, as well. But, according to Dr. Muller, the county coroner, this was something entirely different. And because of such, he wanted the ten-year old body for some post mortem testing. The autopsy had revealed some strange events inside Tom’s body. Dr. Muller got permission from Becky and Ray and then shipped Tom’s body to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha and there, scientists took all manner of samples from his liver, kidney, brain, pancreas, as well as skin and nerve tissues. They ran scans, conducted blood chemistry tests, and performed hair follicle tests. In fact, an entire team of scientist and medical doctors performed every test they could think of to try and pin point what had happened to the young boy.

That’s Dr. Muller over there on the second row. White hair and silver wire-rimmed glasses. He’s seen a lot in his forty-years of pathology. He retired two years after this all started.  But when it was going on, he told Becky and Ray that while the tests were being run, he wanted Max to be quarantined — keeping him out of school and away from his friends. As I have said, Max never showed any of Tom’s symptoms, but Muller wanted to play it very safe. Upon Muller’s request, Dr. Fowler made several house calls to the Sanderson farm for a few days following Tom’s death to check on Max, but he too, was soon reporting to Muller that the older boy seemed to be fine. It must be a fluke case of a strong viral or bacterial attack, which Tom’s little body wasn’t prepared to defend against.

That would have been fine if not for Wednesday night. You see, on  Wednesday of the following week Christina Wilcox from the far side of the county died with very similar symptoms. Those are her parents sitting right behind Becky and Ray. Jed Wilcox ran a farm supply store and farmed a hundred acres himself; although he will tell you he is a better businessman than he is farmer. Two days later an elderly adult male, named Harry Carr, who lived in Rest Havens Estate, also passed away with seemingly the same set of symptoms.

Now most people in Hebron were unaware of any of this. It wasn’t connected, don’t you see.  It was spread out. You wouldn’t have been any wiser yourself. I can guarantee you that. You’d be feeling safe and secure in your home as winter beat its last fists against your screen door in late March, not at all knowing what was outside, wasn’t just snow and ice. It was more menacing.

But the powers that be couldn’t keep the news quiet long. It was like a bomb suddenly going off. By the end of the third week twenty people had contracted whatever the bug was and were dead. Nothing the doctors at the local hospital or the medical specialists in Lincoln or Omaha could do to stop the spread of the infection once a person had it. It was fast and it was fatal.

Hebron, Nebraska panicked.

I myself was one of them. Ever since I got here, I have been on guard. What I eat, what I drink, what I breathe.  It is scary as hell. Panic, I tell you. It was panic. You would have, too. You see you would have been awakened at night by that bump against the house. The dog barking at three in the morning. The sound of the pump action shot gun forcing a shell into the chamber. It was an alarm that we heard. You would have heard it, too.  First a neighbor down the street. Or someone you went to church with or the lady who wore the netting around her short-cropped hair at the kids’ school cafeteria. They were dead. Just like that. Then a cop and a minister and the head of public works. Gone.

And no answers.

You would have panicked, too. Would you be next?  What about your kids?  Yes, you would have kept them home from school. Just like the entire town did. Just as they had been instructed to do by school Superintendent, Michael Plumber. That’s him next to sheriff David Homes. I can tell you this, this Hebron Affliction shook these two men to their core. It ate a hole in their souls, I can vouch for that. And if you ask me, I think only one has actually returned to anything seemingly sane.

But let’s get back to the chronology that has led us here today. Ray Sanderson drove with his wife up here to Omaha to meet with the doctors at the University Medical Center. Dr. Charles Greer and Dr. Rebecca Pratt met them in a conference room with rather grim-looking faces.

The conversation went something like this: We can’t seem to find anything wrong with your son’s chemical work up. That was the first sentence. It was an eye opener for both parents. Most of his vital signs were normal at the time of death. All but one.  Greer paused. The doctor was a third generation Nebraskan. He was raised in Lincoln, went to school at the university and medical school in Omaha and then did residency and specialist work at Johns Hopkins and The Mayo Clinic. He was one bright guy. Still is. That’s him on the third row. It was up to him to explain what was going on with the victims. He seems to have died from oxygen starvation at the molecular level, but we do not know what caused it. No clue. We wish we could offer you something, but for now, we are at a loss. The other victims who have been sent to us show the same pathology.

Ray wasn’t sure what he was hearing. What does all this mean?

Dr. Pratt, a small Jewish woman with wavy, coal-black hair and olive features from Brooklyn, New York spoke. It is like your son died of asphyxiation from the inside out. Like he was choked at his cell level. No oxygen getting to the cells at all. Dr. Pratt doesn’t live around here any more. After the news broke, she got a divorce and moved to California to be with her last remaining sister, Carol. They both lost a sibling to Hebron Affliction – a younger brother, Mitchell.

Was it painful? asked Becky, no longer able to hold back the tears she had so bravely fought for so many days.

It is hard to say, Mrs. Sanderson, said Dr. Pratt, who at that time was calling Nebraska home after having done eight years in the military and finding true love to a farm boy from the Cornhusker State, who had returned to work on his PhD. in American History.  We have never seen anything like this. We think Tom got quite ill very rapidly and went to sleep from the inside.

His body shut down in stages trying to save itself from the spreading menace. Dr. Greer added.  Sometimes the body’s system will slowly turn certain organs and systems off to conserve energy or blood or even oxygen. We think that is what happened to Tom. We just do not know why.

Now if this was me, and I suppose you, this would be a very hard moment to sit through. Dr. Pratt reached across the table and took Becky’s hands. We want to ask your indulgence in letting us have Tom a few more days to study. To try and find out what happened to him and to the others. She paused and let the parents collect their thoughts. Then she added, I know how difficult this is. I know all about the loss of a child.  My daughter was taken from me in a car wreck at the age of six months. She paused, herself starting to feel tears behind her very polished professional eyes. At least I knew the cause. I would think you would want to know the cause of Tom’s death as well, and maybe his life, in that way, could help others.

The room grew quiet. The couple studied each other and finally Ray answered. Yes. Yes, by all means. Do what you must. We want to know and we want to help others.

The Sandersons had no idea what they just set in motion. No idea what-so-ever.

If you are like me, you probably began reading about all of this some ten days to two weeks after the fact. It made all the newspapers and all the TV broadcasts. I mean, if someone was trying to put a lid on it, no way now. Within two weeks the epidemic had spread across Nebraska into Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and both Dakotas registered deaths‑ a dozen each. A week later Wyoming and Montana along with Minnesota and Iowa were reporting cases. In at least two cases, one in Oklahoma and the other in North Dakota, there were patients that lived — in vegetative states, but were alive and had not expired. Scientists rushed to these two patients to examine their DNA, as well as work up a complete blood chemistry to see if they could tell why and how they had stopped this horrible curse.

My editor called me into the office and asked me if my whole life insurance and medical was paid up. I wanted to know why and he said he was sending me to Hebron, Nebraska. Ground Zero. I want to know everything that’s going on with this disease. Everything. So that’s why I’m here. A Los Angeles boy dropped down right in the middle of farm country. In the heartland, the breadbasket, covering the crime of the century. Of course I didn’t know it was a crime when I got here. I just knew I was scared out of my pants being here, fearing I would contract the bug and die, too.  But I had faced bullets in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia and bombs in Beirut, so a virus in Nebraska was just the enemy I had to face this time. My job was to get the story. Know what I mean?

But things did not move fast. Far from it. With the massive amounts of testing and research being poured into the outbreak, doctors hoped they could soon tell what it was they were fighting the losing battle against. Their goal was to turn the odds back into their favor. But when I got there and interviewed them on about day ten of the outbreak, their eyes told me they had nothing. Zip.  CNN told the world over and over that they knew nothing. There was no story, other than people were dieing.

They had all kinds of weird dichotomies. Astonishingly, both living patients had almost completely opposite blood chemistry. Their DNA showed no clues as to how they had fought off the infection or for that matter, what the infection was to begin with. And while both were alive, they remained in deep comas.

On top of this, the two living patients lifestyles were completely different.  One was a gay waiter and the other was a mother and a member of the church choir in her small town. One had a drinking and drug problem, the other was a tea-totaller and a vegetarian. Nothing on the surface seemed to link these two other than in some small way their bodies had stopped whatever it was that was starting to kill people in record numbers.

The CDC in Atlanta was notified and sent epidemiologist Barbara Wiley and her team of five doctors and lab technicians to Omaha to assist the local pathologists in their studies. Dr. Wiley is not here today, but she has been, up until this final act. Her words have helped shape the case. More about her later.

After five days here in Nebraska, they realized they knew no more than the day they had arrived. This is something brand new, Dr. Hart, said Dr. Wiley in hushed tones from her hotel room the morning of their sixth day on the ground in Nebraska. I’ve never seen anything like it.  It was as if the victims choked from the inside out.  From the cellular level up. Now I must offer some transparency here. I knew this — the words of this conversation — because I was in Barb’s room that morning. You see Barb and I had a history. It dated back several years, to the time my own wife had passed. Dr. Wiley had been studying the strange circumstances of the infection Sarah had caught.  It took her life rather quickly.  Barb and I became friends during this time.  But we never got together until Hurricane Katrina days— back when my same editor sent me to that swamped-in cesspool to file everything I could about the recovery of the Crescent City and her people. That’s when I crossed paths with Barb again. She was young and hot and scared out of her wits. I was not as young, and certainly not as hot, but I had booze and a soft shoulder for her to cry on. And she did. And we did. And now we have, as they say, history. But still, we were well aware of each other and of our own weaknesses of flesh, as it were, so once again we were thrust together by history, by fate or simply by our carnal knowledge of each other. But I was there, sipping room-service coffee and interloping on the conversation between the two physicians.

Robert Stanley Hart, acting director of epidemic medicine at the CDC simply said, Holy Christ. Again, I know, because he was on speaker phone. (My request. Barb agreed. Neither of us told Hart I was listening in.)

Chapter Two

Let me introduce you to a few other players in this drama. Over there, behind the prosecutors’ table; that’s David Gracy’s mother, Debbie. The woman whose hair seems too black to be natural and who seems to want to be a chain smoker if only she could get out of this courtroom. I know for a fact she loves Camel cigarettes and if she had her way she would chose the unfiltered variety. Her constant cough reminds you of the damage the tobacco has already done to her lungs.

Some seven hundred miles to the south, and seven years earlier, in small central Texas town called Hearn, Texas, David Gracy came home to his small frame house, which was in much need of a good sanding and painting— he came home with good news. Mom I’m in.  I did it.  Gracy, fresh off a night of partying at his Texas A&M senior ring dunk, was hung over and tired, but even with his bleary eyes, was excited with the news he shared with his single mother, Debbie.  I’ve got a job. And internship, actually, but still, it is almost the same thing.  Debbie hugged her son and poured him a cup of coffee.

Tell me all about it.

It’s with Rosen Labs. As soon as I graduate. They’re a research group that deals with fertilizers and agricultural chemicals. I’m going to go to Kansas for an orientation at their Topeka offices and then a quick trip out to corporate headquarters in California. They are owned by the Modesto Corporation. Then it is to Lincoln, Nebraska for R&D during the rest of the summer. Dr. Lawrence, my bio-chem prof said if I do well and keep my nose clean, it’ll mean a full-time job for sure. They’ll even help pay the bills for a PhD.

David, I am so proud of you. Modesto is a big company.

Yeah. And they pay really well and have loads of benefits.

Are you sure about the PhD. I mean have they said so?

No. Not just yet. Dr. Lawrence said I should negotiate it into my contract when they sign me. He made it sound like it would be a feather in their cap for one more of their research fellows to be a doctor. I mean I could get post-grad degree right there in Lincoln.

This is how Debbie described the conversation that day seven years before all of this began. Tom Sanderson was three years old at that time.

Have you told Susan, yet? His mother studied him as she smiled slightly.  She knew she was the first to hear the news.

"Not yet. I wanted you to hear it first. Besides, she is in Dallas this weekend taking the LSAT to try and get into SMU law. That’s all she’s been thinking about the last few weeks.

Would she move there with you?

Well, only if we married. I doubt she would just pull up and go north with me for an internship. But if I get a really strong offer in the fall and there’s money on the table for a PhD, yeah, I think she might consider law school at Nebraska. If not then she would finish up at SMU and move up there and take the Nebraska board— he caught himself and shook his head. Good grief, mom.  What am I saying? I don’t know if she’s even the one. I mean–

Take your time, dear. There will be plenty of time for all that as it comes.  First things first. We need to get you some new clothes for your new job. What do they wear in R&D at Rosen Labs?

I imagine white lab coats, Mom.  With cut offs and t-shirts under them just like we do at A&M.

Not my son. He is going to dress for success.  Suit and tie. A proper scientist. They both laughed as she poured him another cup of coffee. He had never felt more excited and more nervous at the same moment. That’s what he told his mother. Sunday evening, when Susan was back in College Station, he would break his grand news to her and watch and see how she reacted. It would tell him a lot. About the future. About them. About the possibilities. Waiting was almost harder to bear than anything.

He had made his mom proud. He just wished his father, who had been killed in Kosovo when David was only eleven weeks old, could have known the excitement this step in his life meant.

Susan was thrilled for David, but inside she told me she was crying. She felt their lives were, at that moment, starting on separate journeys. Moving away from one another at a great speed. And neither of them had the will, the emotional tools nor the strength to reach out and pull the other back in close. They simply drifted apart.

Within a month of delivering the news of his summer job, David and Susan decided to date other people and see where life took them. They were both quite stoic about their separation. Inside, both ached and were quite upset and immediately lonely.

The first week of June found David driving