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 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 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 peak 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 crooked 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 and then went 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, but after that t 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 that 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 stored 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.
"Where have you been?" Julie asked.
There had been rumors that Pepper had disappeared because he had angered the gang. She hadn't had much of a chance to talk to her boss and figured that now was a good time to do it. He seemed to be all business and worked non-stop through the day.
"I've been out in the country," Pepper answered.
Julie asked, "Doing what?"
Cryptically, Pepper answered, "Getting educated."
"What does that mean?" Julie asked.
"It's a long story. One of these days, I'll tell it to you," Pepper answered.
It was a story that he doubted he would be telling too many people. Even then, he wouldn't tell the whole story about how he had ended up going out there, and how he had been treated initially. He would tell stories about building a bridge, taking care of horses, and splitting firewood. He would describe sunrises and sunsets, watching horses running through pastures, watching elk graze in the morning, and catching fish in a babbling brook. When he was comfortable, he might even tell the story about digging a practice hole.
"Okay," Julie said. She glanced over at the clock and added, "It is about time for me to get off."
"Who is coming in next?" Pepper asked. He hadn't bothered to look at the schedule.
"Jose," Julie said.
"Sonny must have hired him," Pepper said.
"He's a good kid," Julie said.
Pepper said, "I'm sure he is."
He went over to the drink dispense and started wiping it down. While scrubbing at some of the dried on syrup, he said, "We're going to increase the frequency with which we clean up things around here."
"It is kind of hard to do when you're alone in the store," Julie said.
"I put most of the burden of cleaning up the store on the people working the night shift. That's going to change," Pepper said.
He had spent too many hours sitting behind the cash register doing nothing. That had to change. Today's little cleaning session was nothing compared to the work he had done on the ranch.
Julie went over to the coffee station and straightened up the things there. Customers tended to mess things up a little while fixing their coffees. Spilled sugar and milk, along with little bits of trash gave the coffee station an untidy appearance.
A young Hispanic man entered the store. He looked around and said, "Whoa! What happened here?"
Pointing at Pepper, Julie said, "Our boss returned."
"Oh," Jose said. He looked over at Pepper and said, "I'm Jose."
"I'm Pepper."
"Nice to meet you," Jose said.
Pepper said, "Before you go, Julie, I'd like to have a quick meeting."
"Sure," Julie said resigned that a quick exit wasn't going to be possible.
She hoped that it wouldn't take too long. She wanted to get home to the kids. One of the advantages of this job was that it was possible for her to spend time with the kids after school rather than leaving them alone.
"There's going to be some changes around here," Pepper said. "At ten minutes to the hour, I'd like you to straighten up the coffee station and wipe down the soda fountain. It shouldn't take you more than five minutes."
"No problem," Jose said.
"Whenever business slows down, I'd like you to clean up the store a bit. You might spend a few minutes dusting the stock off with the feather duster, mopping the floor where someone has spilled something, or cleaning the display windows where people have smudged them," Pepper said.
"Okay," Jose said.
"I want to keep the store looking nice. If anything breaks, write it down on a notebook and let me know so that I can fix it," Pepper said.
"Sure thing," Julie said.
Pepper said, "Now, if someone comes in here to rob the place, I want you to hand over the money. Don't confront them. We've got cameras in place to record the robbery so you don't have to worry about me blaming you. I've got insurance to cover any losses. The insurance won't bring you back to life if you get killed, so don't do anything to make a robber nervous."
"There's no way I'd try to stop a robber," Julie said.
"I'd be too scared to try anything," Jose said.
"Good. Do your best to remain calm. In fact, treat a robber better than you would a customer. Ask them if they want the money in a plastic bag. Ask them what brand of cigarettes they smoke and throw in a pack," Pepper said.
"I guess I can do that," Jose said.
"Sonny hired you both. I don't know if you know the story about him, but he was shot trying to prevent a robbery. I don't want that to happen to either of you," Pepper said.
He wasn't going to let what happened to Sonny happen to any of his other employees. He had learned his lesson about assuming that people knew what he wanted them to do.
"I got the message," Julie said.
Jose said, "I've got two kids. I don't want to leave them orphans."
"Good," Pepper said. "That's all that I wanted to say for now."
"I'll be going," Julie said.
"Have a nice evening," Pepper said.
He watched Julie leave through the front door. Jose went to stand behind the cash register.
"I'm going in the back of the store and start straightening things up there," Pepper said.
The storage room in the back was a minor disaster area. He figured that it would take a day or two to get it straightened out.
"I'll watch things out here," Jose said.
Pepper worked for the rest of the afternoon in the storage room. There were boxes stacked haphazardly. The bathroom was disgusting. There was nothing that a little hard work and cleanser couldn't fix.
It was late by the time Pepper left the store. He stopped at a restaurant to eat a meal. After eating hearty meals prepared by Mrs. Daniels, the menus seemed a little sparse. The food wasn't as good as he had remembered. It wasn't much fun eating alone.
After dinner, he stopped at a grocery store to pick up some essential supplies. He stood in front of the frozen foods section staring at the meals that had once been his staples. Nothing really appealed to him. He grabbed a dozen frozen dinners and went through the process of paying for them.
Arriving at the apartment complex, he took a moment to look around. There was a line of bushes planted next to the building. The lawn, partially brown from the summer, was flat and featureless. There were no trees to break up the landscape.
At home, Pepper spent some time straightening up the apartment. Sonny had done a pretty nice job of leaving it in good condition. There had been a small layer of dust over everything, but that was to be expected in a room that had sat there empty for a month. He dusted and vacuumed the apartment.
After finishing his efforts to clean up the apartment, Pepper sat down in front of his computer. He uploaded the photographs that he had taken during his last few days at the ranch. He looked over them with a smile, thinking about the moment in time they captured. There were pictures of the views from various parts of the ranch. There was a picture of him seated astride a horse. He even had a picture of the outhouse.
He had been going through the pictures for ten minutes before he came across a beautiful picture of his bridge. He stared at that picture for five minutes, recalling the work he had put into building it. He went to a website to make a full sized poster of it. It would look good hanging in his living room.
It was getting late, and Pepper went to the living room to rest. He turned on the television and watched the news. The news was filled of stories of crimes, corruption, money problems, and unchanging LA weather. He turned off the television disgusted by what he had heard. He muttered, "All of those crooks should be taken out and shot."
He sat there thinking about what Carl had told him about having his home stolen from him. As much as he hated to admit it, Carl had been correct. He had been changed by his time in the country. The glamour of the city had been stripped away. He was now a man without a home. Maybe he should take Dan's advice, and move to a smaller town.