Eleven Wives at the Ribbon Cutting

Dave’s truck pulled back into our driveway at twenty past seven on a Friday morning, and I knew something was wrong before he even shut the engine off.

He had left the house at a quarter to six.

I was standing at the kitchen sink in my school whites with my hairnet in my pocket, about to leave for my own shift in the elementary kitchen.

Through the window I watched him just sit there in the cab.

He sat long enough that the windshield started to fog. I set my coffee down, pulled my coat on over my whites, and walked out across the frozen gravel in my work shoes.

When I opened his door, he handed me a sheet of printer paper without a word. It had a strip of packing tape still stuck across the top, and it had been folded once down the middle.

It said Lutz Cabinet and Millwork was closed effective immediately due to financial circumstances.

It said the owner regretted the inconvenience, and that final wages would be addressed at a later date. It was signed Gene Lutz, in blue pen.

“It was taped to the door,” Dave said. “The walk door’s locked. The overhead’s locked. He changed the code on the keypad. Mike and Ronnie were already standing out there in the dark when I pulled in.”

Friday was payday. Every other Friday for fourteen years, Gene had handed out the checks at morning break, in white envelopes with each man’s name written on the front in that same blue pen.

“He owes you two weeks,” I said. I was not asking. I keep our checkbook, and I always know to the dollar what is supposed to come in and what is already spoken for.

Dave made twenty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents an hour. Eighty hours. Two thousand three hundred dollars before taxes, and most of it was already promised to the rent, the propane man and the truck payment.

“All eleven of us,” he said. “Two weeks for every one of us. Some of the guys are owed more than me, because they put in overtime finishing the Hendricks kitchen.”

I stood there in the cold with that paper in my hand and thought about the Hendricks kitchen.

Dave had built every drawer box in it. He had come home three nights that week smelling of lacquer and too tired to eat.

“Did anybody call Gene?” I asked.

“Everybody called Gene,” Dave said. “Ronnie called him six times standing right there in the lot. It rings and then it goes to the box. His box is full.”

I had to be at work by seven forty-five. Two hundred and ten kids were going to want breakfast pizza whether or not Gene Lutz answered his phone.

I kissed Dave on the side of his head through the open truck door and told him to go inside and eat something.

He did not go inside. When I came home at two, he was in the garage, sweeping a floor that was already clean.