Jennifer Sutherland
Privilege
The Westvaco plant in Williamsport
is closing. You wouldn’t know that,
it’s something the poem tells you,
just as the poem will have to explain
why it matters. The expectation being,
of course, that this is an unqualified
good, the factory shutting down means
the river runs clear again, not that
anyone will notice, filling out
the unemployment forms, in a living
room if they’re lucky, or in a church
basement. Then the men will gather
at Luke’s. I’ve been there, I ordered
a Stella I think it was and the bartender
winked and handed me a Budweiser.
I spent a week there in 1994, the biggest
asbestos trial in local history gearing up
to start, and I interviewed most of the men
and quite a few of the women. The difference
was the men were either dying or they
were too young to have worked the mills
when it was still in use. The women
got it from the laundry, husbands
and fathers brought the dust home
on their overalls, even in their lunch
pails. You shook it out, one of them told
me, while we were taking a break
and she was catching her breath, collapsed
a little in her floral wingback chair.
Twenty other lawyers milling around
on the porch, waiting for her lungs to dry
out enough to continue. We kept a clean
house, she tells me and leans back.
A week later she was dead. I got good
at guessing how much time they had, all
based on the angle of the shoulders.
As the cancer thickened the mesothelium
it made them throw their shoulders back.
Some of them felt around behind them
like there might be wings back there,
like the wings were too heavy
and when they found nothing
on their backs they looked surprised. I was there
to gather what they knew so it didn’t die
with them and I did my job, even when one
of the good ol’ boys slid a bar napkin down
the marled oak bar to where I was sitting:
BITCH, somebody wrote, in black marker.
I left a $20 on it. Once, after a very long afternoon,
lawyers all around an old man’s bedroom, Ernie –
that was his name, his real one, no point
altering it now because what good would that
do, either you tell the truth or you don’t,
if you understand at all what the truth is –
Ernie started choking on the fluid in his lungs.
Everybody left the room fast. His daughter
dialed 911 on a slimline
phone. He turned to me and looked
and he told me something and I don’t owe it
to you or anyone to tell you about it.