Doug opened his mouth, and for once in his life nothing came out. Across the table, Sheila put down her pinot with a hand that would not stay still. “Arnold,” she said, in the bright cracked voice of a woman who has been caught on the stairs, “my brother Gordon has nothing to do with this. Gordon has always been a model of integrity.” Mr. Pfeiffer looked at her with great courtesy. He said, “Sheila, I have the invoices.” He had indeed. There was a second folder under his chair.
He passed the folder to Kevin, who had said nothing since his question. Kevin opened it, read it, and handed it quietly to me. I am not a woman who understands numbers, but I understood that. A page of figures, a stamp of the poultry plant, and the line item that had canceled the repair: Deferred maintenance savings, sixty one thousand dollars. A signature at the bottom. Gordon Hale. Beside it, in the small precise hand of my brother, a note: Approved. Do not discuss. D.
The room was silent. The waitress, who had come to the door with a tray of coffee, took one long look and backed out. I looked at my brother. I had known Doug for sixty seven years. I had held his hand at the funeral of our father and bandaged his knee when he fell off his bicycle. He sat with his big hands flat on the tablecloth, not meeting my eyes, a man in a good suit and a green and gold tie, and the cake in front of him said CONGRATULATIONS in cheerful frosting.
A man who goes back into the cold room for strangers has already answered every toast ever raised against him.
“Sixty one thousand dollars,” Mr. Pfeiffer said quietly. “That was what a cracked ammonia line cost to repair. I have thought about it for three years. Two boys, nineteen, pulled out of a cold room by the supervisor, with their lungs burning, because somebody wanted to save the price of a used pickup truck.” He turned to Kevin. “Young man, I did not recognize you when I came in. But I know your face. It is on a photograph the twins keep on their refrigerator, and I have been looking for you for a long time.”
Kevin said it was nothing. Mr. Pfeiffer said it was everything. He rose from his chair, slowly, a tall bent man leaning on a cane with a silver handle, and he did something I will never forget. He took Kevin by the hand and held it, in front of the entire supper club, and said in his old founder voice, “Thank you.” Then, to the astonishment of all, he turned to the rest of us and bowed his head. The whole room, even the bartender, stood up.
The investigation took eight months. Federal safety inspectors, the same ones who had written the original citation, found that the poultry plant had canceled eleven repairs in four years, and that nine of them had gone through the same office. Gordon Hale resigned in March. He was charged with willful violation of safety standards and fraud, and pleaded guilty to both. He is serving three years. Doug was dismissed from the paper company in disgrace, without his pension bonus, two weeks after the retirement dinner of which he had been so proud.
Sheila did not speak to me for a year. I did not mind. The lake house in Door County was listed in June, and the luxury car went back to the lessor. At church in September, she came and sat in the pew behind me and cleared her throat. She said, “Lorraine, I owe your son an apology.” I said that she did. She said, “I do not know how to give one.” I told her to begin with the word sorry and see what came after. She wept into a tissue. It was a start.
Mr. Pfeiffer, who held the majority of the shares in the paper company he had founded, took back control in the spring. He was eighty seven, and the newspaper noted that he appeared to have grown younger. He named a new president, a woman from Appleton, and he created a new position in the company, which he wrote out with his own pen on the stationery: Director of Plant Safety. He asked Kevin to take it. Kevin said no twice. The third time, Mr. Pfeiffer said, “Son, I will outlive you if I have to. Say yes.”
Kevin said yes. He wears a gray suit now, a little uneasily, and a hard hat on the floor of the plant, and he walks the lines every morning with a clipboard and a flashlight. In his first year he repaired thirty two valves that nobody had looked at since 1998. He sends the twins a card every Christmas, and they send him one in return, with a photograph of two tall young men in graduation gowns, holding up a diploma between them like a trophy.
At the next family dinner, Mr. Pfeiffer sat at the head of my table, in my kitchen, eating my pot roast with great appreciation. Kevin sat on his right. When the dessert came, the old man lifted his glass of water and said, “To the supervisor of line three, who went back for them. And to his mother, who raised a man.” We did not drink to chickens. But I will tell you, the drumsticks were excellent.
