Four Men Who Refused to Stay Silent
Trudy looked at me. She had married a man who did not like to ask for things. She knew what it was costing me.
“Then call them,” she said. “I’ll make coffee. And in the morning I’m calling Dale about this too, whether you like it or not.”
Dale is her sister’s husband. He does workers’ comp out of an office over a florist in Decatur. I had not wanted to start there. I had wanted to start with the men.
I called Arlo first, because he is the oldest and the other three would follow him. I’d known him 43 years, since the week I was hired. He and I ate lunch at the same bench by the dock door every day, and in all that time we had talked about the weather, the Illini and our knees.
He picked up on the sixth ring. I could hear a television.
“Galen. I was about to call you. Is it bad?”
“It’s a torn rotator cuff, I think. Arlo, they fired me.”
There was no sound. Not even the television. I think he turned it off.
“They fired you for what?”
I told him.
“The chain,” he said slowly.
“The chain.”
“I was standing next to Bart when he took that chain down. I could’ve touched his sleeve.”
“I know you were.”
“I heard what he said to Calvin. Word for word. ‘Go through here, saves you the loop.'” He breathed in, and it rattled. “I’ve been there thirty-six years. I have never told a foreman no. Not one time. I’m eight months from my pension.”
“I know that too.”
He was quiet so long I thought I’d lost him.
“What do you need me to do?” he said.
I had not planned to ask him anything. But he asked it so plainly that I just told him.
“Write down what you saw. That’s all. In your own words, and don’t make it fancy. And then when Bill Faber gets back, we hand it to him.”
“Faber’s in Peoria till Thursday morning.”
“Then Thursday.”
“Thursday,” Arlo said. I could hear him looking for a pen. “Where do I write it?”
“My kitchen. Tomorrow night, seven o’clock. Come after you’ve done it once at home, and bring it with you.”
“I’ll bring it.”
Eddie Sorrell said yes on the first ring. He is 47 and built like a refrigerator, and he said, “I handed you a gauze pad. I stood there and handed you a gauze pad.” I told him he’d run for the kit, and that I was not asking him for anything but the truth. He said he’d see me at seven.
Calvin Spangler took longer. The chain had been taken down for him, and the load that fell was his. “I told him the forks would be up,” he said at last. “I said it plain. They’ll fire me too, Galen. I got two kids at home.” I told him they might, and I would not lie to him about that. He said he’d think about it. Then he said, “What time?”
The last call was to Jared Wills, and I put it off until after supper because I didn’t know how to say what I wanted. He lived with his mother on the south edge of town. He had been on the job nine weeks, and his mother’s car was the one he drove to work. He was the one man I would have understood completely if he said no.