For six years, my older brother took credit for getting me hired at the cheese plant and bragged about the $500 referral bonus he used to buy a smoker. At my 29th birthday dinner, I told Dad another factory had offered me a lead mechanic job paying $8 more an hour. Dad pointed his napkin at me and said, “Be grateful. Your brother’s the only reason the plant hired you.” Donnie looked me straight in the eye and nodded.

2,000 pounds of cheese went in the dumpster and Donnie walked into the shift supervisor’s office and said the line had a mechanical problem that maintenance didn’t catch. Swede had worked on Line 4 that night. Swede got the write up. Swede, who’d been at that plant 31 years with a perfect record. He came into the shop the next afternoon, sat down on a bucket, and didn’t say anything for about 10 minutes.

Then he said, “Well, guess I’m getting old.” That’s when I went and got the maintenance log. Every repair on line 4 that night was written down with the time and the part. The machine was running perfect. The only thing that hadn’t been done was the cleaning, and the cleaning sheet had Donnie’s initials on it as done at a time when the camera showed him in the breakroom eating a sloppy joe.

I walked the log into Ernie’s office and put it on his desk. Ernie read it. He picked up his phone, called the shift supervisor, and said, “Pull Nyberg’s write up.” Then he hung up and looked at me for a long time. “You know whose initials those are?” He said, “I do. You want me to do something about it?” I said, “I want you to do something about Swede.

The rest is your plant.” Ernie opened his bottom desk drawer just a little so I could see it was full of folders. “Your brother’s got a drawer,” he said. “Most people get a folder. He’s got a drawer.” He shut it. That night, Donnie came by the shop. I figured he’d be embarrassed. He wasn’t.

He said, “You didn’t have to go to Ernie. Family handles things in the family.” I said, “Swede’s my family on this shift. You handled it fine. You handled it right on to him. He called me a rat for about a month. Then he told my parents I’d thrown him under the bus to look good for the boss. And dad said, “That’s not how we do things, Sam.” My aunt Mij, my dad’s sister, told me later that Dad repeated that at church like it was a Bible verse.

Around that same time, I met Bruno Casper. Bruno ran maintenance at Hilltop Packaging, a much bigger plant over in Stevens Point about 45 minutes from my place. I met him at a parts show in Wausau. He bought me a hot dog and asked me what I did. A few months later, he took me to lunch and slid a letter across the table. Lead mechanic, dayshift, about $8 more an hour than Mill Creek and a real shot at running his whole department someday.

I told him I’d think about it. He said, “Think as long as you want. Doors open.” I put that letter in my glove box and didn’t take it out. People ask me why I didn’t jump. It’s simple. I liked Mill Creek. I liked Ernie.

I liked Swede even when he was grumpy, which was most of the time. The supervisor job was coming and the drive to Stevens Point in winter is 45 minutes of roads that like to throw you in the ditch. And honestly, I knew what would happen to line four if I left. I never once lied for Donnie or signed his sheets, but I was the reason that line made its numbers, and I knew it.

I just never said it out loud at a family dinner. I figured someday somebody would notice. That brings us to the birthday, May 31st, a Saturday. My mom always does birthdays at their house in Medford, and she always asks what I want, and I always say fried chicken because my mom’s fried chicken could end wars. Mashed potatoes, corn, green bean casserole with the crunchy onions, and a big jar of sun tea on the counter with a lemon in it.

It was me, Mom, Dad, Donnie, his wife Amy, and Aunt Mij. Amy’s a school secretary in Marshfield. She’s nice. She’s organized. She has a label maker and I once saw her label the label maker. I’ve always liked her. I’ve never understood her taste in husbands.

Aunt Mij is 71, Dad’s older sister, a widow with a Buick and no filter. She once told me she comes to every family birthday to make sure somebody in this family has a good time. Usually, it’s her. We were about halfway through the chicken when mom asked, “So, how’s work going, honey?” And I don’t know why I said it. Maybe because it was my birthday and I’d been thinking about it in the truck.