Hoosier Daddy

by Ann McMan

  Ruthie was dead.

  I didn’t know her well, but I knew who she was. Ruthie was about forty-five years old. She’d worked at Krylon for ten years or so. She was short and always wore pink. She had a pronounced dimple in one cheek that always made her look like she was smiling. She played the piano at the Moravian church, just like Wynona. She had three kids.

  I could imagine how this news was spreading through the company rank and file like wild fire.

  “It’s probably better if you don’t,” El said, when I asked her if I could call.

  I tried a thousand different ways to take the sting out of that simple phrase, but none of them worked. Even though I knew in my gut what she really meant and, against my will, I understood all the reasons why her declaration made sense.

  Everything had changed. Everything.

  Ruthie was dead.

  And El was no longer an agitator. She was an organizer. Now, there was something to organize around.

  A game changer.

  Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and curse. Isn’t that what the Bible said?

  It was perverse to think that I wasn’t feeling morose and preoccupied because El would be leaving. I was feeling morose and preoccupied because El would be staying, but she’d be staying in a way that meant there no longer was an “us.”

  That’s what she said to me. There is no us.

  My cell phone vibrated again. Then the house phone rang. I ignored them both. I knew it was T-Bomb. She’d been trying to reach me off and on all night—probably ever since she found out about Ruthie.

  I’d left Albion right after El told me about what had happened at the plant. I didn’t really have the emotional stamina to stay around and face the fallout from the news. I knew it was probably pretty shabby for me just to disappear like I did. But since everyone was off celebrating with the Keortges, I thought I could make my exit quietly, without the fuss I knew would ensue once the others heard about Ruthie.

  It was impossible to imagine what it would be like at the plant tomorrow. Frankly, I didn’t care if I ever set foot in that place again.

  I thought for the thousandth time about the letter from Don K. I knew now what my answer was going to be. Don K. could blow his thirty pieces of silver right out his tastefully clad ass. I had no idea what I’d do next. I didn’t really care. I knew my parents would let me work at the Fast Mart until I figured something else out. And I had enough savings to be okay for a while.

  Maybe I’d move to St. Louis and try to get back on at Boeing, or head to Louisville to finish my MBA? I could rent my house for a year . . . it wouldn’t be hard. Grammy would keep Fritz.

  He had reappeared shortly after sunrise, wanting a pee break and breakfast. Now he sat at my feet, with his chin resting on my leg. I scratched the top of his head.

  Maybe I wouldn’t leave him behind? He was my best friend . . . the only real constant in my life, besides Grammy.

  My cell phone vibrated again. I stared at it.

  And T-Bomb. I still had T-Bomb.

  Fitz jerked his head up and looked toward the kitchen. Then he took off barking. I heard the porch door open and close. Then the barking stopped.

  “Hey? Friday?” an angry voice called out. “Where the hell are you?”

  I sighed. It was inevitable that she would show up. And it was my own fault that I never locked the back door.

  “I’m up here in the living room.”

  T-Bomb barreled into the room like the thunderstorms that still raged outside.

  “What the hell is the matter with you? I been callin’ you all night.”

  “I know. I’m sorry . . . I needed some space.”

  She took off her rain jacket and hung it on a hook by the front door. “Space? What the hell does that mean? Everybody’s in a swivet about Ruthie Miles.”

  “I know.”

  “You know? How’d you find out?”

  “El told me before she left.”

  “Left?” She glared at me. “Where’d she go?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. Off with Tony.”

  “She left with that other agitator?”

  I nodded.

  She sat down on a chair that faced where I lay sprawled across the sofa. “Is that why you took off without telling anybody?”

  I nodded again.

  “You two have a fight?”

  I was tempted to tell her to mind her own damn business, but I knew that would be a lost cause.

  “Why would you ask me that?” I said, instead.

  “Because you look like death warmed over, that’s why.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “You been up all night?”

  I sighed and nodded again.

  She sat there for a few moments without saying anything. Then she got to her feet.

  “Where are you going?” I asked. I realized that I didn’t really want to be alone any more.

  “I’m gonna go make us some coffee.” She headed for the kitchen. “It won’t do us any good to both sit here like zombies.”

  I decided to get up and follow her.

  She was right, after all. Wallowing in my own self-pity could wait. I had all the time in the world to indulge myself with that. Today, we needed to talk about Ruthie and what the fallout at work was likely to mean for all us all.

  T-Bomb filled the coffee pot with water. I got a bag of beans out of the pantry and pulled out the grinder.

  “Why don’t you just buy Folger’s like everybody else?”

  “I hate that kind of coffee. It tastes like hot water.” I dumped a hefty mound of beans into the grinder.

  “Well, I’d rather drink hot water than that sludge you make.”

  I sighed and scooped some of the beans back out and returned them to the bag.

  “You’re a wuss,” I said.

  “I’m a wuss?” She huffed. “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw beer cans.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She poured the water into the coffeemaker. “It means that every time you get your heart broke, you crawl off into a hole and hide from everybody.”

  I chose to let the earsplitting noise of the burr grinding be my response. Besides, I couldn’t argue with her about the broken heart. The truth was, I’d never felt this hurt or despondent. And I knew it was going to linger for a good long time. Probably forever.

  I dumped the ground coffee into the filter and handed it to T-Bomb.

  “How did people find out about Ruthie?” I asked.

  “Joe Sykes got a call during Jailissa’s victory lap. That pretty much brought everything to a halt. It was starting to rain by then, anyway, so we all packed up and left.”

  “Has anybody been to see the family yet?”

  She nodded. “It’s pretty terrible. Them kids is all to pieces. You know, their daddy lives up in Terre Haute with his new wife?” She shook her head. “I sure hope she’s ready to take on an instant family.”

  “God. I just can’t believe this happened.”

  “I know.” T-Bomb leaned against the counter while we waited on the coffee. “But as hot as it was yesterday, it’s amazing that they didn’t cart more than just one person outta that sweat shop.”

  I stared at her. “You know what this probably means, right?”

  “Hell, I can think of all kinds of things it probably means. Which one did you have in mind?”

  “The union.”

  “Yeah. The parking lot at Hoosier Daddy was overflowin’ with cars last night when we rode past it on the way home. I never seen it like that. People were parking along the road and over in the NAPA lot.”

  “You think El and Tony were there?”

  “You don’t?”

  I shrugged.

  “Of course they were there. It’s where they do business. I bet they filled up the rest of them union cards last night. People are hoppin’ mad at them Krylons. I even heard some mumbling about a sickout tomorrow, but you know nobody’ll do that. P
eople care too much about their paychecks to let being pissed off get in the way.”

  That was true. “What about a slowdown?”

  T-Bomb raised an eyebrow.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Are you sure you know which side of this nightmare you’re on?”

  I was offended by that inference. “I’m on our side.”

  “Our side?” She scoffed. “Do you even know what that means?”

  “Hey, look.” I was losing my patience. “I’m not the enemy here.”

  “That’s my point, Friday. There ain’t no enemies here, except maybe them Krylons and the dern knuckle-draggers they put in charge.”

  “Well I’m not on their side.”

  “So are you gonna sign one of them authorization cards?”

  I shook my head.

  “Why not?”

  “Because if I do, everyone will think it’s because of El.”

  She gave a bitter-sounding laugh. “Hell, that don’t make you unique. Half the men in that plant would sign up if it meant they could get close enough to her to cop a feel. Most of ’em ain’t smart enough to figure out that she don’t play for their team.”

  The coffeepot beeped. We filled our mugs and headed back to the living room. Fritz trotted along behind us.

  T-Bomb reclaimed her seat on the chair. I walked to the desk and retrieved the offer from Don K.

  “I want to show you something.”

  She took the envelope from me. “What is it?”

  “Don K. called me in for a little chat last Thursday.” I nodded toward the letter. “I think that’s what you call a bribe.”

  T-Bomb looked confused. She pulled letter and check and looked them over. Her eyes grow wide as she read. When she finished, she dropped the pages to her lap and glared at me.

  “Are you gonna do this?”

  I shook my head.

  “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Are you crazy?”

  “Oh, come on, Bomber. How could I work for them after what happened to Ruthie?”

  “Don’t be stupid.” She held up the sheets of paper and shook them at me like a rattle. “A job like this one would allow you to fix some of the things that killed Ruthie.”

  “I’m not going to be a puppet for the Krylons.”

  “The Krylons ain’t gonna be runnin’ things there in another month. They’ll all be off on a beach some place, countin’ their money.”

  I was stunned by her reaction to the offer from Don K. “You seriously think I should do this?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’d be letting them buy me off. And because I’d have to promise not to have anything more to do with El.”

  She huffed. “I think that part already took care of itself, don’t you?”

  I shrugged.

  “Besides,” she continued, “once this dern vote thing is over with, it won’t matter who you’re carryin’ on with. The UAW will move on to the next place, and you and El DeBarge can pretty much do whatever you want.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Look, Friday.” She leaned forward on her chair. “When this buyout first got announced, we all celebrated, and not just because it meant we’d all keep our jobs. Weren’t you the one that told us that them Japanese companies had better benefits and better workplace conditions than a lot of the plants that had unions?”

  I nodded.

  “So why wouldn’t you want to be a part of that?” She glanced down at the papers again. “And get a damn big raise in the process?”

  I was amazed that her reaction to Don K.’s offer was nearly identical to El’s.

  “I just can’t do it. Not anymore. Not after Ruthie. It’d be like taking blood money.”

  “So you’re gonna just run away and let assholes like Buzz Sheets keep raisin’ up a whole new crop of Ruthies? Is that it?”

  “No, that’s not it.” I was getting angry, and I was tired of trying to disguise it. “I have no fucking life here.” I waved a hand in frustration. “It’s like living in a goddamn fishbowl, and I’ve had enough of it. I finally meet the right person, and she ends up being the wrong person . . . all over again. I’m sick of this twisted pattern of hope and disappointment, where I’m only as good as my last fucking failure. I want out. Enough is enough.”

  My tirade hung in the air between us like a passing storm cloud. T-Bomb didn’t say anything. She folded the letter and slid it back into its envelope. Then she took a sip of her coffee.

  I sat watching her while I waited for my heart rate to settle down.

  I took a deep breath. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “You need to suck it up, cupcake.”

  “I need to suck it up?” I pointed a finger at my chest.

  “Yeah. You.” She slammed her mug down on the table beside her chair. “You think you have it so rough? You got no clue how hard life really is for me and the other five-thousand rednecks that are chained to those damn assembly lines. We ain’t got no options, and we ain’t sittin’ on any offers for a better tomorrow. That truck plant in that damn rusted-out town is all there is for us. We can’t give Don K. the finger and walk off to some greener pasture just because we’re offended by his . . . methods. There ain’t any greener pastures for us. The only choice we ever have is to just keep takin’ whatever him and his candy ass flunkies keep shovelin’ at us until the Japanese take over, and hope we’re lucky enough not to end up like Ruthie before they get a chance to make things right.” She huffed and dropped back against her chair. “So you just keep right on sittin’ here, weepin’ and wailin’ all you want about how none of your precious relationships ever work out, and blame whoever you want. Cause you and I both know that the only thing they all have in common is you.”

  There was a reason T-Bomb was my best friend. As painful as her words were, the truth they conveyed was impossible to deny. She knew it, and she knew that I knew it, too.

  I didn’t want to cry, but I was having a hard time avoiding it. I wiped at my eyes. “I’m a mess.”

  “You ain’t a mess,” she said. Her voice had come down out of the rafters. “You’re just scared. Hell. Everybody who pays attention is scared. But it’s time for you to stop being a prisoner of your fears. If you don’t, you’ll just end up in the same dang place, no matter where you go to hide.”

  I nodded. “I know.”

  “So. Are you gonna talk with El DeBarge?”

  I shook my head. “Not anytime soon.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s got a job to do, and she said that meant there was no more us.”

  “Did she mean right now, or never?”

  I shrugged.

  “You didn’t ask her?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Don’t be stupid. She’s the best thing to happen to you in . . . hell . . . probably forever.”

  “Do you really think that?” I felt like I was five years old, wondering if it was really safe for me to try to cross the street by myself.

  “Would I tell you that if I didn’t? Would Grammy . . . or Luanne? Or Ermaline? Hell. Even Joe Sykes seemed to like her.”

  I actually smiled at that. “He did, didn’t he?”

  T-Bomb nodded. “Though I don’t know if I’d take that as a good reason to keep seeing her. He ain’t exactly got the best instincts, if you know what I mean.”

  “Except for Jailissa.”

  T-Bomb rolled her eyes. “That’s just creepy, is what that is.”

  “Luanne said she believed it was a pure love.”

  “Yeah? Well, Luanne also believes them green olives that have the little red pimentos inside ’em grow that way.” She slowly shook her head. “The human mind can be a terrifying thing.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me on that one.”

  “You know what I think?” she asked.

  “No. But I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “Smart
ass. I should just let you die wonderin’.”

  “But you won’t.”

  “You’re right.” She sighed. “I think you need to just cool your jets and see how this all plays out. You don’t know enough now to make any big decisions—about the job or about where this thing with El DeBarge goes or doesn’t go once this union mess is over with.”

  “I’m tired of waiting around for things just to happen.”

  “Then do something about it.”

  I was confused. “Didn’t you just tell me to wait and see how things play out?”

  “I meant that you shouldn’t run away. There ain’t a thing wrong with fighting for what you want.”

  “But I’m not sure I know what that is.”

  “I think you know exactly what that is. It’s just easier to pretend you don’t. Then it ain’t your fault if it don’t work out.”

  I stared at her. “You should be a shrink, you know that?”

  She smirked. “Hell. Maybe I was wrong about them greener pastures.” She extended her hand, palm up. “That’ll be eighty-five dollars.”

  Nothing was settled or changed for me. I still had no idea what I would do tomorrow when I walked into work. I still thought that any shot I’d had at a future with El had flown right out the window on a stack of union authorization cards. And Ruthie Miles was still dead.

  But somehow, for just a moment, I felt better.

  I guess the Bible was right. Knowing the truth really does make you free.

  When I got to work at a quarter to seven on Monday morning, I noticed a ragtag group of people milling around just outside the gates that led to the Krylon parking lot. They were leaning into car windows and chatting up anyone who stopped on their way into the lot. I had a sneaking suspicion that I knew what they were up to, but I was wrong. Instead of being handed a union card when I pulled forward and stopped, a man I didn’t know gave me a small, postcard-sized photo of Ruthie Miles. Pinned to the back of it was a pink heart cut out of felt. The message on the card read, “Wear this today to honor Ruthie—one of our own.”

  I swallowed hard, thanked him, and drove on.

  I had my answer ready for Don K. I’d stayed up half the night crafting it and re-crafting it. After working through a dozen drafts that were as varied in tone and complexity as The Gettysburg Address and Hirohito’s surrender to the allies, I decided upon a single sentence.