Thirty Years of Time Cards

Why I did not just call

People ask me this, so I will say it plainly. I did call. I called Stan four times between Thursday and Saturday, and I left a message each time that said I would like to understand what he meant by unexcused.

He let every one of them ring out.

I also called the one lawyer in the county seat, a pleasant man who has done wills for half the church. He listened to everything and then told me it would take a $5,000 retainer and about eighteen months, and he was kind enough to say the county’s insurance would hire somebody better than him.

Randall would be fifty-nine by then. He would have no job and no check, and we would be drawing down the savings we had set aside for a roof. A fight that long was a fight we would be losing the whole time we were in it.

The county board, though, met in twelve days, and it was free. Anyone can stand up at the microphone for three minutes if they sign the sheet by 8:45.

I am not a woman who speaks at meetings. But I had thirty boxes in my hall closet, and I thought three minutes was plenty if I knew exactly what I was going to say.

What Randall would not do

I want to say something about my husband, because the people who read this might wonder where he was.

Randall did not go to Stan’s house. He did not drive to the shop and shout, though a lot of men would have. He did not go to the board himself, and I have thought for a year about why.

It was shame, I think. Not the kind where you did something wrong. The kind where somebody you shared a bunk bed with at nine years old decided you were not worth the trouble, and you cannot make your own feet walk into a room and ask him to say it again.

So Randall spent that first weekend in the shed, sharpening blades that did not need sharpening. When I told him I was going to speak at the board, he nodded without looking up from the whetstone.

“You’ll just make it worse,” he said.

“It’s thirty years of your life,” I said. “It can’t get much worse than a text.”

He did not argue that. He just kept working the stone in small circles, and I took that as a yes.