The Timecards I Laid Down

The morning

I did not pick a dramatic day. I picked a Tuesday.

Mr. Kowalski is the plant manager. He comes in before the day shift, around quarter to six, while my overnight is still finishing. He is not a warm man and he is not a cruel one. He is a numbers man. He likes a thing he can check.

That is exactly the kind of man you want, when what you are carrying is a thing that checks out.

I clocked the end of my shift. I took off my gloves. I kept the hairnet and the quilted coat on because I wanted him to see the line worker, not a woman dressed up to make a case. I went down the hall to his office with the brick of paper under my arm.

His door was open. He was at his gray metal desk with his coffee and his nameplate and the day’s production sheet. Through the window behind him the line was still running, the belts and the cold light.

“Sheila,” he said, surprised. Overnight people do not usually come to his office. “Everything all right on the floor.”

“Floor’s fine,” I said. “We made the load.”

I set the stack down on his desk. Both hands flat on top of it for a second, the way you hold down a thing so it does not get away from you. Then I took my hands off.

“What’s this,” he said.

“That’s eleven years of my overnight shifts,” I said. “Every one I worked. Printed, dated, in order. Some of them are the plant’s own slips with my badge number on them, 2207. Some of them are Ronnie’s state sign-in sheets with my name in my own hand. Ronnie will stand behind every one.”

He looked at the stack. He did not touch it yet.

“The eleven-year perfect attendance went up on the board last week,” I said. “It has Deb Hollis’s name on it. Deb’s badge is 4015. If you pull the system, you’ll find a lot of my nights logged under 4015. The ice storm, two Januarys back, is a good one to start with. The system says 4015 worked it. The sign-in sheet for that night has four names and none of them is Deb’s. The first one is mine.”

Quiet. The belts hummed through the glass.

“I’m not here to call anybody a liar out on the floor,” I said. “I didn’t want to do this with half of it. So I got all of it first. It’s all there. You can check every page against the system yourself. I’ll wait as long as that takes.”

Kowalski is a numbers man. He pulled the stack toward him.