The Forsaken
by Mike Moscoe
Chapter One
“Boss, we got a situation at the plant,” was not the thing I wanted to hear from my secretary.
Bea’s “You better beat feet,” was unnecessary. I was already up and hurrying around my desk. A hand on the door jam of my office made it easier to swing myself for the main door as I picked up speed. It had been a while since I double timed for miles in the Army, but I like to think chasing my teenagers keeps me in shape.
“Where?”I asked as I went by my secretary.
“Milling,” Bea said. “Jim Turner’s got a knife at Danny Greg’s throat,” she added in answer to my next, unasked, question. Bea was good. Mind reading was just one of the many reasons I’d hired her to be the first face folks saw when they came into Human Resources. She knew when to smile ... and when to answer the next question.
I swung myself out of the office and headed down the hall for the back door, revving the legs up to a full dog trot.
But I was praying faster. “Dear Lord, Jim was having enough of a problem. Don’t tell me Danny shot off his mouth with poor Jim in hearing distance?”
As usual, the Good Lord didn’t voice an answer to my prayer. I don’t know what I’d do if He ever did. Today, my Savior was content to toss the balls my way ... and quietly enjoy watching me juggle.
I’d known Jim Turner for all of the fifteen years I’d worked at Carter Cutlery. He was nice to a fault, but quick to turn his back when those of us at the picnic lunch tables said grace. “You want to find Jesus, I’ll tell you where I dumped him off my slick in the central highlands of Viet Nam. If he ain’t walked out, he’s likely still there.”
Yeah, Jim had been very definite about standing on his own two feet, bending to no one. Until the Marine officer, with a Chaplain in tow, made their visit a month ago.
Jim’s youngest boy would be coming home early from the war.
The boy’s young wife, seven months pregnant, had insisted on a church funeral. We at the plant had chipped in more than flowers and meals. I’d been a Casualty Assistance Officer back during my four years; I helped the widow find a church with a pastor who didn’t mind ministering to some people he’d never seen before.
I’d heard that Jim and his wife were talking to a counselor about their loss.
I guess they hadn’t talked enough.
Like so much of America, our employees at the plant were of several minds about the war overseas. We make the knives that a lot of the men over there counted on, and every blade left here with a lot of prayers attached. Of that, I’m absolutely sure. But above and beyond that, there’s a lot of different opinions about how we best support the troops that carry our knives.
What had Danny said to tip Jim off the deep end?
“Oh Lord, don’t let me waste time on the wrong questions. What I need just now are the words to haul them both back out of that deep pit. Haul them back with no blood spilt,” I prayed.
Usually, I love the wide expanse of lawn that separates my office from the main plant. Today, I just picked them up and put them down, breathing deep of a spring afternoon so I wouldn’t show up too winded to do anything.
I raced into the lovely brick plant that dated from the 1920's, past the still cutting and grinding machines where workmen and women were standing around, no longer converting steel into knifes, but watching, eyes fixed, on the drama in the milling section.
Workers had backed away, leaving a clear space around Jim, tall, dark haired going gray, face red in rage. He held a roughed out example of one of our fine Bowie Knives at Danny’s throat.
Danny was pale as if he’d seen a ghost. His own.
Near those two stood Jeb Shepherd, the day shift general foreman. Several section foremen had gathered around him. None were making a move against Jim. I guessed they were all talked out.
I joined the group at Jeb’s elbow. “Bea said you called.”
“Kind of,” Jeb said. “As you can see, we got a situation here.”
“I’m gonna kill him,” Jim shouted, following it with a stream of language I hadn’t heard since my own Army days.
“You think Danny’s worth the killing?” I asked.
“He said my boy’s dying was a waste.”
“I didn’t, I didn’t,” Danny pleaded.
“Shush,” I said in soft command. “You’ve said enough.”
Danny shut up.
“Police?” I whispered aside to Jeb.
He shook his head. Carter Cutlery took care of its own. It wasn’t in any of the personnel policies I’d written. No, this one had over a hundred and seventy-five years behind it and didn’t need print to put it in full force.
But in this case, everyone else at Carter had taken their best shot and come up empty. I was the last hope. Dear Lord, please show me the path for my feet.
I motioned Jeb and the others to step back. As they did, I sat down cross legged on the concrete floor.
It still had winter cold to it, but I ignored it even as it sent a chill up my spine. Finally, a reason to shiver that has nothing to do with the situation I’m in.
I looked up at Jim, locked eyes with him. “This making you feel better?”
The Bowie knife blank, its edge dull, was deep in the flesh of Danny’s throat. It wasn’t cutting anything ... yet. Enough pressure and even a dull knife will cut human flesh. And there was always the point, already wickedly deadly.
It took a while for my question to make it’s way past Jim’s pain and rage. When it did, he shook his head. “Nothing feels good. I’m never gonna take my boy fishing. Never play football with him again. It’s all gone.
“But it ain’t wasted,” he growled, working the knife a bit against Danny’s throat. “It ain’t a waste.”
Danny whimpered, but had the good sense to say nothing.
“No, Jim, it’s not a waste. Good like your boy is never wasted. I remember him when he was just a kid, coming to the Christmas parties. What was he, eight when he tried to walk off with Santa’s whole bag?”
“Seven,” Jim said. “And I whopped him for that.” But the edges of his mouth turned up at the memory. The boy had gotten the huge sack halfway across the room before anyone noticed. We’d all been laughing so much that the “whopping” hadn’t been more than a gentle admonition.
“And he was always in the front at the games come the annual picnic,” I said, seeing him paired with my son in the two legged race. The two of them were only three years apart and they’d been such friends. The thought of my son a soldier was a colder chill than the floor.
But Jim was nodding, and I gave him my full attention. “He was always fast. And he always wanted to be a soldier. Nothing I said about Nam could change that. Nothing,” Jim said slowly.
“And nothing I do is going to change my boy being gone,” he said in a shattered whisper.
“No,” I said as soft as I could.
“Why? Why did it have to happen?” I let Jim’s question rise to the rafters.
“You’re a super Christian. You tell me. Why did my boy had to die?”
That was the question that I’d never heard an answer to that a grieving man like Jim could hear.
“I don’t know, Jim. But I do know your boy wouldn’t want you doing this. Didn’t you say that he joined the Army to help people. To save the weak from tyrants. He’d stand up to the bullies for those who couldn’t.”
Jim was nodding along with his words of eulogy at the funeral.
“Your boy wouldn’t do something like this. You taught him better.”
“But I’m never going to be with him again.” Sobs broke through as the words broke Jim down. The knife was loose at Danny’s throat. He looked like he was ready to bolt. I froze him with a glare.
I stood slowly as Jim sobbed. I believed that Jim would be with his boy again before God. Maybe a better man would have found a way to witness to Jim at that moment. Me, I just edged slowly up to the man, put one arm around him while using the other one to lower the knife from Dan’s throat.
Jim let me. He let me enfold him in a hug like I prayed God would some day do. Holy Spirit of God, You alone give the grace of salvation to all. I know You got Your work cut out for You with Jim, but I sure wish You could hurry things up here. This big guy is hurting.
I held Jim while he sobbed. I kept holding him, feeling the cold steel painfully close to my own vulnerable belly until Jim finally dropped the rough knife. I held him as Jeb sent the crew back to work, though I noticed Dan bolt for the break room. I wondered if he had a spare set of underwear.
I was still holding Jim as his sobs wore down to tears. I loaned him my clean handkerchief when he started sniffling. “I guess I’d better get back to work,” Jim finally said, looking around at the others already back at their tools.
“No,” I said, shaking my head slowly.
“You’re gonna fire me,” Jim said with absolute confidence, and more self loathing than I’d seen in one man since I’d accompanied a sobered out drunk soldier to visit his buddy at the hospital after the car wreck. I’d almost lost that boy to suicide.
“No,” I told Jim, noting how Jeb and the other foremen were looking on. “I’m not going to fire you. But we have a counseling program, Jim. And you really need to spend some time talking this out. We’ll save your job for you, but you’re going to be on sick leave for a while.”
“Who’s gonna want to work with me,” Jim said, dejection heavy in his voice.
“There’s a place for you in my section,” Momma Boyd said. A big, round African-American, she ran the finishing section. She’d lost her first husband in Nam. Somehow she’d survived that agony, and gone on to make a life for herself with a new husband and several kids from both marriages. If there was anyone to show Jim that there was life after grief, Mamma Boyd would be the one.
Of course, several of her crew were wives with husbands over there. Working with a man grieving the lose of his son would be an ever-present reminder of what could be their future.
Momma Boyd must have read my mind. She just smiled at me the way only one of faith can. “The courage that it takes to love the man facing the gunman is no less than the courage it takes to face the gun. Right, gals.”
Several of the women behind her nodded. There would be a job waiting for Jim when he got back. Carter Cutlery takes care of their own.
I walked Jim out of the plant and across the field to where my office was in the old building. This walk was a lot slower than my run over. There was time for the sun to heal some of the raw nerves the day had exposed. Time for my own shaking legs, quaking stomach, to calm down.
Lord, I know You promised that all things work for the good to those who love You. I just wish You could make my weak flesh believe it a bit more.
I think my Savior enjoyed a laugh at my expense.
But the soft breeze across the field brought the loving scent of the earth coming alive. There’s hope in every spring and even in the depths of Jim’s dark winter, I think the sunshine and grassy smells reached for him. There seemed to be less despair and self loath in the man who finished the walk with me.
In my office, Al, the gal who handles employee benefits already had called to make an emergency appointment for Jim. “If you can get him there in fifteen minutes, there’s an opening.”
“We can make it,” I said.
Jim’s eyes looked like a whipped pup. “I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t .... I, ah, I can’t drive,” he said, thoroughly beaten by the day.
“I’ll drive your car,” I said, then cut off his protest, by reaching into my pocket and tossing my keys at my assistant, Max.
She caught them. “And I’ll follow you and bring you back,” she said, taking her cue. I run a personnel team, I do, and we are quite a team when the fur is flying.
We got Jim to the counseling service. After making sure that things were going well there, I checked with Bea. She’d called Jim’s wife and arranged for her to get off work. I drove Max back to the office and then picked up the wife and brought her over to the counselors. I told her how her husband’s day had gone, and assured her that Carter would stand behind them through this. She was holding back tears as they admitted her to a couple session.
It had been quite a day, I reflected, as I noticed that it was well past quitting time. And I’d gotten practically nothing done on today’s TO DO list. Well, there were still quite a few items left on that list that had nothing to do with the office.
I needed to pick the kids up at school. A call to Annie showed that she’d had a long day, too. She’d meet us at our favorite Mexican food place. They had our usual table free for us, a corner where we could debrief the day. It looked like Andy would make the track team, but he needed new shoes.
Joy was having a ball in the band, but the gal next to her had to be dyslexic. The band master orders a right turn and she goes left every time. “If she played a piccolo like me it wouldn’t be so bad, but she’s got a trombone and that can really get in your face,” my daughter said, rubbing her nose.
“Well, the dock handlers dropped a whole container of furniture from Romania. I don’t know how much of it we can still sell ... and how much of it won’t be good for anything but kindling.”
Somehow that seemed funny to us, me and the kids. Annie’s scowl at our humor only made it funnier.
“How’d your day go, Dad,” my son said. Sometime back he’d decided that his best revenge for being asked how school went every day was to ask me how things went at the office.
So I told them.
We ended up with Andy leading us in pray. First, a prayer of thanksgiving to God that it had turned out so well and then a prayer of petition for God’s help for Jim and his wife in their grief. My silent prayer as one father to Another that my son would continue in his education through college before putting on a uniform was followed by a prayer that this war might be over before that time.
And so the day ended, like so many others, with us going home together to do homework. The children’s homework ... and the parents.
“Honey, could you get the kids off to school today,” Annie called as I cut off the water for my morning shower. Drying myself, I glanced at the dressing table where my wife of twenty years seem to be applying her makeup a bit more meticulously than normal.
“Early meeting to straighten up that dropped container yesterday?” I asked.
She nodded ever so slightly so as not to mess the eye shadow she was applying around her blue eyes.
“I still say you should hire some of those out-of-work wood workers from North Carolina to fix that Romanian furniture shipment you broke.”
“I didn’t break it, the dock crane operator dropped it, and I have your suggestion under advisement,” she said, giving me the quick glance in the mirror my suggestion deserved. It hadn’t taken me twenty years to learn where her hot buttons were, or her mine, and now we knew just how to dance around them without tripping.
On my way to my dresser I ran my hand over her bare shoulder. Her creamy skin begged to be caressed. Maybe my fingers did dip a bit down inside her slip.
“Mister, you trying to make this poor working girl late for work,” she said with a slight shiver.
I wrapped a golden wisp of hair back around the professional bun it had escaped from. “Seems to me you’ve been on time every day this week.”
“Right,” she said giving me the eye in the mirror. “It’s Tuesday.”
“If we get it over with early in the week ...” I said, dangling my underwear invitingly.
She shook her head. “I have to get this furniture problem fixed before lunch. Roberts wants to have lunch with me.”
I started getting dressed, trying to keep my face neutral. I did not like her CEO. I didn’t like the way he looked at my wife. I didn’t like the way he talked to her. Come to think of it, there wasn’t anything I liked about Bob Roberts. Well, with his track record, I wouldn’t have to worry about him for too long. He never stayed anywhere much past his second annual report.
“Heard anything from the riot down the hall?” I asked, accepting the job of seeing that our offspring made it to the school bus with at least three seconds to spare.
“Not a peep,” Annie said, finishing her makeup and reaching for a blouse. Yep, she was going power suit today. Her sense of taste was impeccable. After all, she said yes to me.
Pants on, and buttoning my shirt, I slung a tie over my shoulder and headed down the hall.
There was no sound from Joy’s room. A fourteen-year-old daughter deserved some privacy; I rapped on the door and got a mumbled, “I’m up,” that sounded very not. I didn’t challenge Joy by opening the door. Dear God there is a lot worse in this sinful world than a girl saying she’s up when she’s still under the covers. So far, Annie and I were pretty sure Joy was navigating the rocks and shoals of this vale of tears with no more than the usual upsets. Please God, keep her safe in Your arms, I prayed, as I rapped on my son’s door.
“Go away. Isn’t it Saturday yet,” came back at me.
“Nope, not even close to Friday, me bucko. So roll out of bed, slap some clean clothes on and get down stairs in time to eat the nutritious breakfast I’m going to cook for you.”
“Microwave,” he shot back.
“Whatever,” I answered to the sound of his feet, big and still growing, hitting the deck.
There was a rapping on the wall. “Wake up, sleeping beauty. If I’m up, you’d better be up.”
“Go soak your head,” was muffled by the growing distance as I headed downstairs.
Reasonably sure that sibling bickering would keep them both on the road to presentable for the day, I checked what was in the refrigerator. Oops.
Neither Annie nor I had found time to hit the store this weekend. Where had it gone, I blinked, trying to remember how two “free” days had vanished: school stuff, work stuff, yard stuff, church? Oh right.
Promising myself to shop tonight on the way home, or maybe call Annie before quitting time and see if she could, I fished out four individual boxes of Orange Juice and went looking for something that might pass for protein.
I recovered a half empty box of breakfast bars from the bottom shelf in the pantry. They’d only expired last month, granola bars would still be safe to eat and not too stale.
Annie’s progress downstairs could be followed by her rapping on doors and “I’m up,” or “I’m almost dressed,” answering her.
I greeted her at the foot of the stairs, swapped a kiss for orange juice and a breakfast bar, got an embarrassed little grin and an “Oh, are we that bad off?”
“It’s either this or I go steal the neighbor’s chickens,” I said ... a joke she’d started.
“Call me late and we’ll see who shops. Could Andy ...”
“Track practice today.”
“Joy?”
“Band practice after school.”
“You’ll pick them up.”
“Most likely. Maybe I can take them by Giant and we can get groceries and pizza at the same time.”
“Pizza again?”
“Ever know a teenager to turn it down?”
“No, but the tummy of a teenager’s mommy” she said, patting her own flat stomach.
I snuck another quick kiss and she raced for the Camray in the driveway.
So it was back to the kitchen, to fix lunches for the three of us. The sandwich fixings were there, but looked as old as my ancient combat boots. I fished lunch money out of my pocket. Then taking their breakfasts in hand, I headed back for the stairs.
“Everyone got their homework?” I hollered up stairs.
Two yeses answered me, but someone’s printer was suddenly on, coughing out papers that would validate that answer. I meandered over to the window.
“I see a big yellow barge thing at the end of the street,” I shouted.
“You mean tumbrel,” my daughter corrected me. She’d studied the French Revolution last year and decreed that the school bus must, forevermore, be known by that near vanished name for the wagon that carried so many innocents to their execution.
Being a wise man, I chose my battles carefully and had agreed. Being a busy man, I’d forgotten of late. Clearly, she’d remembered this morning.
“What test do you have, honey?” I called up.
“Math and English,” Andy informed me.
“Tumbrel it is,” I said.
“And I have a paper due in history,” Joy said, appearing at the top of the stairs a visage far from her namesake. Parents can hope when they name their children, but dear God, what the world does to them once they’re out of our safe haven. Her blue jeans and shirt met in the middle this morning. I thanked the Lord for sparing me that battle again.
Joy added the OJ and granola bar to her backpack and swung it over her shoulder. If it was lighter than the seventy pound pack I’d lugged in the army, the difference couldn’t be much more than grams.
I shoved her out the door toward the bus stop and was saved from having to threaten bodily harm against my first born by Andy presenting his lanky frame at the top of the stairs and doing a disjointed but semi-controlled fall down them.
“You know Dad, if you’d just let me drive Sis to school, we wouldn’t have to be out for another whole thirty minutes.”
“But we only have two cars,” I said slowly, as if just discovering that fact. “I’d have to buy a third one for you to drive.”
His eyes lit up at the novel concept. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“Aren’t you the same fellow that, only two years ago, at the wise ... and dependable ... age of fifteen promised me that if I’d just buy you your very own brand new, not hand-me-down computer that you’d never trouble me about getting you a car when you turned sixteen.”
Andy paused, frowned, as if deep in thought, then nodded. “Why yes, yes, I do believe I am.” But before I could pounce, he pounced himself. “But that old computer is really obsolete. I really need a new one. But I’ll keep using it a bit longer if it’ll save you enough money to get a car that I could use to chauffeur Joy and me around after school. Think of all the time you’d have free if you didn’t have to be there to pick us up.”
“And miss out on all that quality time with you and your smelly socks, Sis cleaning her clarinet. Never!” I assured him as I tucked his morning rations and lunch money in the side compartment of his backpack and shoved him out the front door.
The yellow peril was noisily breaking to a stop. Andy cut across two lawns to make it, but he did. He waved at me as he piled on board, but he was already talking to someone on the bus.
I watched the bus pull away, suddenly overwhelmed by how much of what I loved and treasured in this world was held hostage to fate, at risk to their own blunders and the sin in the world.
Dear God, bless them. And Annie. And me, I added.
I did a quick check through the kitchen, downed my own juice and granola in obedience to my own decree to my family and went upstairs to finish getting dressed. I pulled the covers up to make the bed, still bearing the soft scent of last night’s togetherness. Shoes, and coat finished up my preparations for the day.
What did my old friend, the chopper pilot say. “Any landing you could walk away from.” Well, any morning that you got everyone out of the house on time and prepared to meet the day had to be a good start. God willing, the day would be so blessed.
“Mister Jay wants to see all the division heads in his office at eight,” didn’t sound like a blessing for the good day to come. And it had been so nice.
Traffic was light for the drive in, and I’d wheeled through the guard house, a lovely leftover from World War 1, a good fifteen minutes early. My parking spot was empty. We didn’t actually have assigned spots, but everyone knew where I parked, just like we all knew where everyone else parked. Except for the occasional early job applicant, our particular places were respected.
I locked my car, not against my fellow workers, but because of that occasional job applicant. The morning air was fresh and made the walk to the office a pleasure. Rabbits were still munching on the lawn that stretched a good hundred yards between us and the factory and the woods around us. The plant’s red and yellow brick with large windows was another hold over from an earlier year. The profits from the bayonets we turned out between 1914 and 1918 had gone into its construction. A blockish add-on shouting 1950's modern was the result of World War II. Its denizens now were the plant management group and corporate reps.
I turned towards my place of employment with a soft smile. Freshly painted white, its front turret gleamed in the morning sun, pointing the way to heaven. Built in 1846, it was now on the historical register. It had been the original home of the Carters. When Calvin Carter first decided to try his hand at knife making, they’d turned the front parlor into a small factory of laths and saws. When the country’s expansion west showed a hunger for knives, Calvin had knocked out a wall to include the front porch, then added more.
I had no right to feel the pride, but my Personnel Office was located in the original shop, and sometimes I could almost feel the soul of old Calvin, looking over my shoulder, nodding happy agreement as I added yet another person to the long list of people who’d made his dream of gleaming knives a reality.
Annie tells me I’m a hopeless romantic. She’s wrong on that one. I’m just a hard headed manager with a taste for history. Really.
I was fifteen minutes early, but all three of my crew were at their desks. “Morning, Al, Max,” I called to the girls. They were all older than me, but they’d taken me aside when my concession to modern sensibilities left me stumbling over how to address them. “We’re girls, boss, and will be ‘til the day we die.” I knew when to surrender.
With a sigh this morning, I thanked Beatrice, my secretary, for telling me that Mr. Jason Franklin wanted to see all of us first thing that morning. I settled into my office with a strong hunch that the best part of today was over.
A quick check of my desk showed nothing new in my in-basket. My Workforce Analysis sat forlornly beside it. I estimated that ten percent of our workforce would retire in the next five years. We needed to start hiring trainees, getting their skill level up to the level of the men and woman who’d made Carter Cutlery a proud name around the world for over a hundred and fifty years.
I’d turned it in a month ago. And heard nothing from Jay.
The phone rang; I had ten minutes to make it across the yard. Time enough for one quick phone call. “Carter Cutlery, Taylor here.”
“Ben, Hanson here from Haslet Trucks. I’m putting together the agenda for tomorrow’s Human Resource Director’s luncheon, and I was wondering if you were willing to put on that program you did five years ago for the wage survey people?”
Every five years the HR offices in the area did a combined wage survey to make sure that our white collar and non-union pay scales were not off kilter. Others used it to talk to their union’s come negotiation times. Five years ago I’d led the two day course we gave the supervisors chosen to actually do the survey. It was a short thing, just a bit of advice on what questions to ask so you got the most information in the shortest amount of time. I’d also done it ten years ago, and fifteen years ago I’d learned how it was done from an old geezer now long since retired.
“I’ll ask my plant manager if I can do it,” I told Hanson. It was a mere formality. This kind of thing was good community involvement. We’d always done it before. With luck, Jay Franklin would understand that.
“Well, can you get back to me before lunch?”
“I’ll try. I have a meeting with the man just now, so I have to run.” And with that, I hung up and got ready to run.
I had one hiring request from marketing that I needed Jay’s approval. I slipped it into a folder, put it on top of my copy of the Workforce Analysis and headed out the door.
Bea was typing something as I left, possibly an e-mail to her husband who was overseas with his Guard unit. Al was preparing a retirement estimate for one of those ten percent I expected to lose, combining our small company retirement with social security to show him what he could expect to live on once he left us. Al had worked on the production floor before she developed an allergy to the finishing washes she was using on our steel. We tried to find a job for her, and she’d fit well in my shop, discovering a strong suit in computations.
Max, my assistant, and another refugee from the shop floor was studying a new Maryland law and its impact on our unemployment insurance costs. Once Max finished her review, Bea would type up the report for me to take to Jay. Another rising expense.
I turned to head down the central hall of our landmark and ran into Rod Montgomery headed in the same direction.
“How’s our man of steel,” I said with a grin. Rod handled procurement. He bought everything we needed, from computers to etching tools, but steel was what we needed the most. And Rod knew steel.
“Not so good,” Rod growled. “How would you like to take two tons of aircraft carrier armor off my hands.”
“Aircraft carrier armor?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah, two and a half inch thick steel belt armor off the Wasp or Hornet or Bumble bee or whatever the last carrier was that they scrapped and didn’t turn into a rusting national monument. I finagled a four feet by ten foot slab of it. Now wouldn’t that make for a great commemorative Bowie knife for next December 7. A cut from the carriers that avenged the Day of Infamy.”
“Old man Tom Carter would have loved it,” I said, suspecting I knew what came next. “But won’t that armor be a bit hard to work?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what Jay Jay the Jet Plane told me after I waltzed into this office to tell him my latest coup. Stuff was up on E-bay and the bidding was going like mad for all ten lots. I barely got the one thin enough for us to work.”
“You got it ... and then asked Jason if it was a good idea?” Jason was our boss, and I didn’t envy him the job. If he wanted me to, I’d call him Mr. Franklin ... even if he was ten years my junior.
“I keep forgetting I don’t work for Carter Cutlery anymore. Who are we working for this week?”
That was an inside joke among us dinosaurs. Carter Cutlery had been family owned for over a hundred years. Then Old Man Tom Carter died five years back come November. His heirs decided to take the money and run; Heritage Specialties was very happy to buy them out. Our knifes matched in well with their stock-in-trade, and we sold to some markets that they hadn’t gotten into yet. Great match until they merged with PK&E, Unlimited to do an IPO. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. But then Prestige Corp grabbed all of us in a hostile takeover. I forget exactly what they were after, but I’m pretty sure no one on Prestige’s board of directors had ever heard of Carter Cutlery or even Heritage Specialties. We were the black sheep of the family, second cousin twice removed stepson, and that would be fine by me if they’d just ignore us.
Is there a CEO on God’s green Earth who has the wisdom and grace to leave well enough alone. If there is one, I haven’t worked for him. And I was none too sure the Lord had either.
When old Barny Wells retired after fifteen years as the plant manager, there was Billy Fortier, his deputy, and three good foremen with thirty years or more with the company in the running for the top job. Any one of them could have run the factory, with us supporting him.
Fat chance of that in today’s market.
Prestige Corp selected Jason Franklin to manage Carter Cutlery and run the plant. He had made quite a name for himself ... running several pharmaceutical plants that needed turning around. How different could a knife factory be from drug manufacturing?
It came as a shock to all of us that we needed the leadership of a turn-around expert. It also seemed a no brainer that a plant that made sharp objects out of steel was a far throw from something that made what-ever-it-was that you made drugs out of.
Jay had struck me as a fast study, but it seemed pretty clear to me that he didn’t follow some of the special twists that we’d been doing for the last fifty years to make us unique in the marketplace.
“Martin,” Rod called as the head of marketing joined us. “What do you think of my idea for a Pearl Harbor Day Bowie Knife? There a market for it?”
Martin pursed his lips as he fell in step with us. “The ‘Greatest Generation’ would lap your knife up, but they are kind of getting fewer and farther between. Lately we’re selling more specialty knifes to Japan. Rod, I kind of doubt that market would go for that particular knife.”
Rod had the good sense to wince at that.
“Battleship armor. How hard will that be to work?” Martin asked.
“Carrier armor,” Rod corrected, “and that’s the problem. It’s tough to start with. Tough all the way through production. It would bust a lot of saw blades, need a lot of sanding and polishing.” Rod’s shoulders were slowly drooping.
“Battleships may be obsolete, but they’re still sexier from a marketing perspective,” Martin pointed out. “Production costs would eat into our profit margin, and I’m not sure the market could bear a premium price structure.”
Rod sighed. “Care to buy half a ton of carrier armor. I can sell it too you cheap,” he said.
We covered the distance to the corporate offices in silence. The spring sun was warming the day. I spotted a mother bunny nudging her offspring towards the woods as we went buy.
Years ago, Andy and Joy had been delighted when Annie brought them down to my office on late afternoons when I worked late. At six and three, they’d taken it as their personal duty to see that the rabbits got plenty of exercise dodging their idea of tag. Teenagers had other ideas.
Which might be for the best. I wasn’t sure how Jay would react to children bouncing around and shouting happily on his plant’s front yard.
The plant manager’s conference room had been expanded only recently so we all could sit down together. Old Tom Carter or Barney rarely got us all together, and when they did, they kept us standing to make sure the meeting went quickly. Now a wall had been knocked out and the former deputy plant manager’s office provided plenty of room for a long wooden table and comfortable chairs, bought the first time Jay hosted higher ups from Prestige Corp headquarters.
I knew old Billy hadn’t been planning on retiring for several more years; I’d personally helped him review his retirement plans after Jay got the top job. But he hadn’t exactly been edged out. Again, I knew more than most because I’d counseled Billy about his feelings as work and assignments dried up under Jay. I’d also been deputized by Billy to see if there was any way for him to improve his situation.
Billy knew he was asking a lot of me. An old hunter, he knew the risk people ran who came between the hunter and the target. I’d taken on the job of emissary because, well, the kine that binds the grain is worth his hire, so to speak ... and my reading of Jason wasn’t all that bad.
“I was hoping someone would come talk to me,” Jason said after I explained my mission. “I’m glad it’s you, Ben. You’re the youngest manager I’ve got, and look to be the only one that’s not at that hardening of the arteries stage.” He gave me a smile that I suspect was suppose to make me feel he viewed me as his ally in this battle. I smiled back, wanting to be a peacemaker, while knowing full well that Our Lord might call such as me a Child of God, but in this world it usually meant we were dodging bricks from both sides.
“You’re also the only one here with an MBA,” Jay went on. I knew we shared that credential, but mine was from the University of Maryland, gotten at night school. His was far more prestigious.
“So maybe you can explain some things to me,” Jason said, leaning back in his chair. “It looks to me like Barney and Mr. Carter left the running of the plant to Billy. What did they do with their time? I mean, I’m running the plant pretty much by myself and it’s not taking anywhere near my full time.”
I nodded, trying to look helpful, and decided to lay a lot of cards on the table ... face up. “Mr. Carter spent most of his time with the customer, Mr. Franklin.”
“Call me Jay,”
“Yes, sir.”
“And don’t sir me. Having a foreman old enough to be my grandfather “sir” me makes me wonder what they’re really thinking.”
I forced a friendly chuckle and said “You bet,” and made a note to pass the word that this northerner didn’t understand the southern way of showing respect. “Well, as I was saying, Old Man Tom was really three quarters of our marketing effort. He considered each of our customers his personal friend. And Barney, well, he did run the plant, but he was a hands on type of guy, wanted to know everyone by name, or nickname, their kids and what the misses was doing. He did a lot of work with the community. Tom Carter liked that, considered it good for us to give back to the place that bread us. Anyway, they needed Billy to see that all the details got done.”
I paused, then added slowly. “And you’re not leaving him a lot of details to pick up.”
“It’s not my style to leave lose ends hanging,” Jason said, coming forward in his seat. “Sloppy work costs money,” he said, glancing at the profit and loss chart he’d had installed on the wall next to his desk. We’d worried about end of year reports. He worried about end of month balances.
“What can I tell Billy?”
Jason shook his head. “Mr. Fortier had better start scrambling to make himself useful. His salary is a mighty big chunk of overhead, and I can’t keep letting it go for nothing. He’s been here forty years. He must have some idea of what he can do that will contribute to improving the bottom line.”
Two weeks later, we threw a nice retirement party for Billy. A month later his old office was part of the conference room that Jason used to seat the bigwigs and give them his expectations for the coming year.
Now we waited for Jason to come through the door from the front office to the conference room, having all entered from the hall to avoid tromping through his front office. The conference room was modern, gray carpets, gray walls, windows on one side overlooking the woods beyond. Charts on one wall. Pictures of the head high muckity monks at Prestige on another. The last wall, at the foot of the table had one of those new arrangements that could be a screen or opened for a white board to write on. For years I’d suggested to old man Tom that he get one of those.
Now we had one. I also noticed that we had a new small computer in front of Jason’s leather chair, and a projector rigged to it, aimed at that screen on the far wall. I’d been known to bring my personal portable to meetings once in a while to take notes ... and had been ribbed unmercifully for the innovation.
Oh, the times they were a changing.
Beside the three of us from the old house, there was Jeb, day shift foreman at the plant, and “Doc,” Greg Coxon, the head of our tiny Product Development lab. Most everyone thinks a knife is a knife, but new materials were coming on the market everyday. We hadn’t made any carbon fiber knifes yet; they’d require a whole new set of tools. But you could fill a book with all the different kinds of steel there were these days. I know. Rod had shown me his copy.
Mary Oppie handled accounting, both accounts receivable and payroll. She’d gotten her degree thirty-five years ago from a business school and was pulling her hair out, trying to keep up with Jason’s demands that she computerize her domain ... yesterday. Seated across the table, as far from her as possible was Mark Attlee, the only hire Jason had made in the last year. Mark was fresh out of Carnage Mellon. Mark knew computers and was having the time of his young life bringing Carter Cutlery from the 19th century to the 21st century in what looked to be record time.
Assuming he ... and Mary ... and the rest of us ... survived the trip.
But for now, we waited.