The Shirts on the Conference Table
“The Hartsell order.”
“The Hartsell order will ship when it ships. A man puts in twenty-two years on this floor, we send him out the right way. Friday, 3:30, at the door. You’ll see to it, and you’ll buy the cake yourself.”
Neil looked at the table a moment longer. “Yes, sir,” he said, and picked up his portfolio, and went out the way he had come, past Curtis and Hector in the doorway without a word to either of them.
That was the consequence, and some will say Neil got off easy. He lost a bonus he had counted on and carried a notice in his file. He had been shown his own work laid out on a conference table by the people it was done to. He was not ruined, and I did not want him ruined. Ross had asked for a door.
Friday I drove Ross to the plant at 3:25 in the truck he had finally gotten back, in the good blue shirt, with an empty cardboard box on the seat between us because he said he’d brought the wrong box the first time.
“You don’t have to go in,” I said in the lot.
“Renee.” He took my hand. “Twenty-two years. I can afford to walk in the front.”
We went through the main doors, past Charlene Hartman, who was grinning and pretending to look for something in her drawer, and through the swinging doors to the shop floor. At 3:30 on the dot, with the shift horn sounding overhead, eleven people stood in a loose line down the center aisle by the press brakes: Curtis, who had come in on his day off, and Hector, Tony and Bill, Jimmy Pace, Rodney McAllister with his sport coat over his arm, and a few of the others from first shift who would not have missed it. Every machine near them was off. It was the quietest I have ever heard that building. They wore new gray shirts with the creases still in them from the package.
At the end of the line, by the big overhead door, stood Neil Dickerson with a cake from the good bakery in Fort Cletus, and I could tell by the way he carried it that it had cost a great deal more than $18.99. White icing, blue gel. Happy Retirement Ross. And under it, in smaller letters, something I had not expected: Thank you for 22 years.
Ross stopped walking. His hand tightened on mine.
“Go on,” I said, very low.
He went down the line. Curtis shook his hand first. Then Hector. Tony Ferris, who only nodded. Bill Oster, who said, “See you at the Legion fish fry tonight.” One by one, and when he got to Jimmy Pace at the end, Jimmy held out his hand with something folded inside it.
“I cut it off my first shirt,” Jimmy said. “You told me my first day, a man’s name on his shirt means somebody’s counting on him. My dad would’ve wanted to shake your hand. He can’t, so I’m doing it for him.”
It was a small gray rectangle of cloth, the name patch, Jimmy in gray thread, the edges frayed brown. Ross turned it over in his fingers. On the back, in tiny, uneven, careful stitches of red thread, Jimmy had sewn two letters: R and W.