Four Men Who Refused to Stay Silent

“Galen. What are you doing here? I was told you’d walked.”

“I was fired, Bill. Tuesday. By Bart.”

“I know there was a termination. Jodi sent me an email saying a policy violation. I haven’t read the file.”

“I’d like you to read something before you do.”

Arlo stepped forward and held out the pages.

Bill Faber looked at him and then at the other three. Then he took them. He read the first one standing in the lobby, and then he turned and walked into his office reading, and we followed, and nobody told us not to. Trudy stayed out in the hall with her purse in both hands.

It took about six minutes. He did not skim.

When he finished he set the pages on his desk and put his hand flat on them.

“Is this what you each saw?”

“Yes sir,” Arlo said, and the others said yes, each in his own way. Calvin said it last, and quietly, and it cost him.

“The chain. Bart took it down himself.”

“Yes.”

Bill turned to me. “Did you go through that aisle on your own?”

“I was wrapping pallets on the dock, Bill. I caught a falling load because a kid was under it.”

He nodded slowly. Then he looked at Eddie.

“Arlo’s page says something about the system.”

“Yes sir. That the lane doesn’t open without the foreman.” Eddie cleared his throat. “Cross-aisle staging between nine and ten is locked. It’s locked so nobody can route a truck through it by mistake. To open it, a foreman scans his badge on the handheld and picks a reason. The system writes down who and when. I can pull it from my desk right now.”

“Pull it.”

Eddie went out. Bill Faber stood at his window with his coffee going cold, looking at the parking lot, where the first-shift cars were coming in. He did not say anything for four minutes. I looked at his wall. There was a framed photograph of the plant from 1983, the year I was hired, with a hundred and ten people lined up in front of it.

Eddie came back with a sheet of paper still warm from the printer.

Bill read it standing. Then he sat down and read it again.

I have not seen that sheet since, but Eddie told me what it said. At 9:36 on Tuesday morning, the cross-aisle lane between nine and ten had been unlocked by badge number 2271 with the reason “supervisor release, time critical.” Badge 2271 is Bart Brubaker’s. At 9:36 I had been twenty feet away with a pallet jack, and my badge, on the same system, was showing me scanning a pallet at the dock door.

“He thought nobody would look,” Eddie said.

“Nobody does look,” Bill said. He put the sheet on top of the four pages. “Go home, Galen. I mean that kindly. Go home and put your arm up. Don’t talk to anybody else about this today, and tell these four to go to work. Nobody touches them. I’ll call you by noon.”

“Bill, what about Calvin? He’s the one who drove the truck.”

Bill looked at Calvin for a good while.