Eleven Wives at the Ribbon Cutting

He looked at Dave. “I gave you that pin five weeks before I locked you out,” he said. “I’ve thought about that every night.”

Dave reached into his shirt pocket, the same tan shirt, and took out the pin and set it on the oilcloth between them.

It sat there under the kitchen light, a little brass square with a dovetail stamped on it.

“I still have it,” Dave said. “I’m keeping it. Fourteen years was good, Gene. Most of it was good. It’s the last two weeks I can’t get past.”

Gene nodded. His eyes were wet. He did not try to talk his way out of it, and I will give him that.

“I sold my truck this morning,” he said. “To the Ford dealer in Maquoketa. It’s not enough for all of it, but it’s going to Kyle for the checks. It’s the least of what I owe.”

That was the red pickup. Gene had driven it to every job site and every Christmas party for nine years.

He used to park it right by the shop door, and everybody in town knew it was his.

When he got up to leave, he held out his hand to Dave the way Kyle had. Dave shook it. Then Gene turned to me, and I did not know what he was going to say.

“You did right, Lisa,” he said. “I’d have done the same, if somebody did that to Joanne.”

I did not say anything. I just walked him to the door and held it open while Joanne helped him into the car.

I did not feel like I had won anything. I felt sad for him, and sad for all of us, and I was still glad we went.

Wednesday

On Wednesday the checks went out. On Thursday ours came in the mail, in a plain white envelope with Dave’s name written on the front in blue pen. Kyle’s handwriting this time, not Gene’s.

Two thousand three hundred dollars. The full amount, gross, with the taxes taken out properly and a pay stub folded in with it.

Kyle had even put the overtime on Larry’s and the others’ who were owed it, down to the quarter hour.

Dave stood at the mailbox at the end of the driveway and opened it right there in the cold.

I watched him from the kitchen window. He read the stub twice. Then he looked up at the sky for a minute before he came in.

That night I put the money back into Megan’s car fund. I wrote it into the checkbook in pen and drew a line under it, the way my mother used to.

The phone rang all evening. Deb called. Tammy called, crying, and said Ronnie had laughed out loud at the mailbox for the first time in three weeks.

Angie called. Every one of the wives called, and every one of the checks had come.

On Friday morning Kyle called Dave and asked him to come down to the new shop.

When Dave came home at noon, he sat down at the kitchen table across from me and put both hands flat on the oilcloth.

“He’s hiring four of us back,” Dave said. “Me, Larry, Ronnie and Mike. Same pay. He says he can’t afford more than four yet, but he’ll call the others first when he can.”

“Are you going to do it?” I asked.

“I told him yes,” Dave said. “He’s a careful kid. He always was. I think he’ll be a careful boss.” He smiled a little. “And somebody’s got to teach him how to run the finish line.”

The other seven found work. Tom stayed at the plant in Cedar Rapids. Two of the younger men got on with a builder in Dubuque.

It took a while for some of them, but by summer every one of them was working again.