The Shirts on the Conference Table
Ross did not open the envelope until we were past the Dollar General on State Road 3.
His truck was in the shop with a bad transmission, so I had driven out to Hoosier Hitch & Axle to get him. I sat in the lot at 3:20 on a Friday afternoon with the engine running and a half-sheet cake from the Kroger bakery in the back seat. Happy Retirement Ross, in blue gel. It had cost $18.99. I had bought it that morning because I had a feeling.
I was right to have the feeling.
Ross came out the side door at 3:31 with his lunch cooler in one hand and a cardboard box in the other. The box held a coffee mug, a pair of safety glasses, a tape measure with his initials burned into the case, and a framed photo of the first-shift crew from 2011. That was twenty-two years of a man’s working life, and it did not fill the box.
Neil Dickerson, the plant manager, had walked him as far as the time clock, shaken his hand, pressed the envelope into it, and said, “Appreciate the 22, Ross.” That was the whole send-off. Nobody came out behind him. Nobody called “Hey, Ross” across the lot.
He got in the car and set the box on his knees. “Well. That’s that.”
“Where’s everybody?”
“Line’s behind. Neil says the Hartsell order can’t wait.”
“On your last day?”
“On my last day.” He looked out the windshield. “It’s fine, Renee.”
It was not fine, and we both knew it. Ross has opened his pay the minute he got it every Friday since 1981, and the envelope sat in his shirt pocket untouched. That was how I knew something had been said in that building that he was not going to repeat.
Past the Dollar General he tore the end off with his thumb, read the stub, and watched his own face do nothing at all. Then he handed it to me.
I drove with one hand and read with the other, which I do not recommend. Gross pay, $5,280.00. That was two weeks at $26.40 an hour plus the 120 hours of vacation he had never found time to take. Taxes, insurance, the 401(k). And on the last line of the deductions, in the same flat type as everything else:
Uniform unreturned. $300.00.
I pulled into the lot at Mount Pleasant Methodist and put the car in park.
“Three sets,” Ross said. “A hundred a set. Neil says I only turned in two of the five I was issued.”
“Ross, some of those shirts are twenty years old.”
“The company replaced a few along the way.” He rubbed his eyes. “It’s in the handbook. Unreturned garments are charged at replacement cost. I signed the sheet in 2004. He had it right there in a folder.”
“He had a folder.”
“He had a folder.”
I want you to understand how quiet that car was.
The sets were not lost. I knew exactly where they were, because I had put them there.