The Morning the Whole Plant Stood Outside
Keasey shut his eyes. “Because I’d been told zero exceptions. Because I have 140 families on this payroll and I thought one man’s job was a price I could pay to keep the other 139.” He opened his eyes. “I knew it was wrong the minute I read the word kidney in that file. I did it anyway. I told myself it was policy, because that was easier than telling myself what I was doing.”
Nobody said anything.
“I called Susan Dolan at six. She’s our plant manager, and the sheet never crossed her desk. She’s on her way.” He turned to me then, finally, and looked me in the face. “Dwayne, I was wrong. I’m sorry. I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
It was what I had wanted to hear on Monday, and now I only felt tired.
“Gordon,” I said. “Are there others?”
He blinked. “Others?”
“You said seven people were over the limit in April.”
He didn’t answer. Lou did.
“Janice Moore,” Lou said, from my elbow. “Shipping. She took 6 weeks for her mother’s stroke last year. Terminated in June. She’s pumping gas in Kenton.”
“And Earl Wiggins,” somebody called. “His bypass.”
“And Kay Dillard, with her hip.”
“Then it isn’t done,” I said to Keasey quietly. “I’m not going in there while Janice is pumping gas. None of us are. You don’t owe me anything this morning that you don’t owe all of them.”
“I’ll tell Susan,” he said. “Will you come inside while we wait? It’s cold.”
“No. We’ll wait out here. With our people.”
Deputy Prather got out of his cruiser then and opened the passenger door, and the heater was running. “Then wait warm,” he said. “I’m making up the doctor’s orders as I go.” I looked at Renata, and Renata looked at me, and that was the end of that argument.
Susan Dolan pulled into the lot at 6:55 in a mud-spattered Jeep, a woman of about 50 in a work jacket and sensible shoes. She got out into a street that had grown to about 70 people, counting the town, and I watched her take it in. She walked straight to Lou, shook his hand, and asked for the files.
She read the file on the hood of Wade Prather’s cruiser, with Keasey beside her and Lou and Benny on the other side, and me in the passenger seat with the door open and my wife’s blanket on my knees. It took her 12 minutes. When she was done she took off her glasses and pressed her fingers against her eyes.
“The notice went to an inbox he couldn’t open, and to an address 6 years out of date,” she said, to nobody in particular. “It should have been caught, and it wasn’t, because we built a system that does not want to catch it.”
She turned to me.
“Mr. Hollis. You are reinstated as of yesterday morning, with no break in service. Your leave is recoded as protected. Your insurance never lapsed. The pay, the 14 vacation days and the paperwork go through Lou and the union committee, and I will sign what they bring me.” She looked at the crowd. “I apologize to you, and I’ll put it in writing, and I wanted to say it in front of your friends.”
I couldn’t say anything. Renata had her hand on my shoulder.