The Man I Let Go Before Christmas

He was not the slowest man on my line. He was the reason my line looked good. And I had fired him for it, off a count sheet, because I had never one time in six years walked over and asked him what he was doing with that nickel.

I put his tools back in the apron just as I had found them, and hung it on its nail.

Friday the twenty-sixth, Kessler’s car was in the lot at seven. I knew it would be. Year-end is the office’s busy week even with the floor dark.

I knocked on his door frame with the binder under my arm.

“Rob. How’s Missy?”

“Coming home Monday, they think.”

“Thank God. Sit down. What are you doing here?”

I did not sit. I put the binder on his desk, open to December, and my sheet of figures on top of it.

“I gave you the wrong name,” I said.

He read it. He was a floor man once; he did not need it explained. I watched him go down the column, and get to the yellow slip from Wausau, and go back up to the top and read it again. He took his glasses off.

“He was shimming them.”

“Every one that needed it. Twenty-nine years. Tools are still in his apron if you want to look.”

“And nobody knew.”

“I should have known. It was my line.” I made myself keep going. “I picked him because he was the low count and because I knew he’d go quiet. I knew he was eight months off his thirty. I signed it anyway. I’m not putting that on you. You asked for a name. I’m the one who gave you his.”

Kessler was quiet a while.

“You should have brought me this three weeks ago,” he said.

“Yes sir. I should have.”

“I can’t just put him back, Rob. I sent that number up the line on the nineteenth. First shift is down one. If I add a man in January I have to say where he came from, and the fellow I answer to does not want to hear about hinge shims.”

“I know it.”

“So what are you asking me for?”

I had worked it out with Missy the night before, because it was her money too.

“Earl comes back to his station on the second,” I said. “Same rate, same hire date, like he never left. Cody goes back to the machining end where he belongs. And you take the foreman off line three. Dale’s run two lines before, when I was out with my shoulder. Let him have mine. Put me on the frame bench at bench rate.”

Kessler looked at me.

“That’s better than eight dollars an hour, Rob.”

“Eight sixty. I figured it.”

“It’s still not a man off. It’s the same heads with one of them paid less.”

“Till August. When Earl has his thirty and goes, you don’t hire behind him. I take his station. Then you’re down your man for good, eight months late. Between my pay and what he saves you in that rework cage, the eight months don’t cost you a dime. It’s all in the book.”

“I’d have to walk that up the line and defend it.”

“Yes sir. I’d take the binder.”

“And I can’t promise you the office back. Not in August. Not ever, likely. If Dale does all right with both lines, that man on the phone is going to like the look of it.”

“I know that too.”