#Middlebury #Veterans
I didn’t know if they’d be there, what with the weather snapping cold like it has, but there they were, the elderly veteran crew, arrayed in a wide half circle on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop.
Or at least most of them were. I did a head count after I placed my coffee order at the pickup window. One appeared to be missing, and it seemed that I’d arrived in the middle of a conversation.
“They kept him overnight, worried about his chest. Coughing, but no fever.”
“Can’t be the virus if there’s no fever.”
“It could be the virus with no symptoms whatsoever.” The retired sergeant, in charge of physical spacing, tapped his 6-foot measuring stick on the pavement. “You need to keep up.”
They batted it back and forth, taking bets about which of them might have had it without knowing, citing questionable statistics and claims. A cellphone rang, and the sergeant’s hand went up, calling for silence.
He listened and hung up, sliding the phone back in his fatigue jacket pocket. “It’s not the virus,” he said. “Common cold. But the grandkid tested positive, so now the whole house is in lockdown. Our good buddy has to go elsewhere.”
“Bet he’s not happy about that.”
“His other daughter is coming from upstate. Plans to take him with her tomorrow.”
“He’ll be even less happy about that. Poor guy. He’s a news junkie. She lives in a cabin on a lake, no cable. Just basic channels.”
By the time I finished my coffee, hovering at the edge of the group, the general consensus was that their pal, to be trapped for a few weeks in a lakeside cabin in the woods with no cable television, was actually the lucky one. As long as he remembered his fishing pole.
© 2020 King Features Synd., Inc.
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