Ben (The Sherwood)

I was disappointed for sure, but I understood. I would tell her every day that I loved her if necessary until she trusted me.

**

My first day back at work was a tired one. I explained to Tim that Asia had shots yesterday. She was back on track as far as sleeping and only getting up every three to four hours. He clapped me on the back.

“Welcome to fatherhood,” he told me. “You think you’ve licked one thing and something else pops up.”

“Thanks,” I told him.

“Coming to the Operations Meeting?” He asked.

“Just grabbing my reports. I’m right behind you,” I told him.

My brain was scattered through the meeting. My focus was on the woman who was still sleeping in my bed when I left for work this morning. Disa had a shift tonight so I wouldn’t see her when I got home.

We would have nights like this. She usually worked four nights a week and Thursday, Friday and Saturday night were included in that most times. That was nearly a full-time job without working another day for my dad which she did.

That is when I realized that Tim’s boss, Jake Hanson was speaking to me. “Sorry, Jake. What was the question?”

Jake was single and intended to keep it that way like some other men I knew in the Hatfield family. He rolled his eyes at me. “Hatfield, I was asking about the key performance indicators on the new process you implemented recently.”

I moved aside several papers and read off the results of the last two weeks. Our productivity had improved at least seventy-five percent, on the floor. I can’t say mine had but everyone else was doing a bang-up job.

The quality control indicators were good as well. We hadn’t made more mistakes even though we were moving more product through the plant.

“That’s great news. We have a new contract in the works with Helmut-Harker. I need to be able to show them we can handle their orders. Your work on the production process, improving productivity is just the shot in the ass we needed. They will be impressed.”

He was arrogant. Cocky. He was me, ten months ago before a nineteen-year-old girl told me she was pregnant with my child. I hadn’t lost my edge. I hadn’t lost my drive to be better at work. To achieve and set my sights higher and higher but I had lost the cockiness. I liked myself a lot better now.

“I guess the kid hasn’t ruined you,” Jake declared.

My instinct was to lash out. She was my daughter, not just a kid that he referred to with derision. I smiled instead and replied, “No, Asia hasn’t put a dent on my ability to be a good production supervisor here, Jake.”

“Good man,” he replied. He ran his hands through his hair and let it fall back into place. Casey Martin, our receptionist/his secretary practically swooned. I rolled my eyes staring down at the papers in front of me.

One day, god willing, Jake wouldn’t learn his lesson about life wrapped up in a nineteen-year-old girl who had tricked him. It was a painful way to learn you aren’t all that and not fair to the child involved.

**

On Saturday morning, even though she was exhausted Disa dragged herself out of bed and came to the trailer to stay with Asia, so I could meet with Samson Hallows about establishing custody of my own daughter.

Jasmine had been gone for three weeks. No one had heard from her in that time and we didn’t know where she was. Besides being Jenny’s boss, Samson was a friend of my father. He handled all his affairs including his personal ones for him and his kids. Me, another kid needed help.

He had been there for Walker too when he was arrested not that he listened to him. Walker spent five years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. It still baffled me that he wasn’t willing to listen to legal advice or Dad before he gave up five years of his life to prison and three more to supervised probation. Eight years of his life gone that could never be recovered but now, he had my sister Danni and a daughter that he adored. Life was good for Walker right now.

I gave my girls a goodbye kiss and headed into town. Sherwood was like every other small town. It had a center where most businesses were thriving because the next town was twenty or more minutes away but those businesses couldn’t employ the entire town so there were many who lived here and drove long distances, or they lived in poverty because they scrounged for work.

Dad’s pub was at the end of town, overlooking the river. Boaters had a place where they could pull up to the docks and come inside. Ike’s was well known around the tri-state area to many boaters on the Ohio River. The food was good, but the atmosphere was the most important part of it.

Dad had maintained the original feel of the pub from sixty years ago complete with initials scratched into the tables of lovers long gone. Pictures hung on the wall. Some of our family, some of the townspeople. Dad felt a sense of community far greater than he did to his family.

Getting him away from that pub required a marriage, birth or death. It was almost an impossibility which was part of the reason that his marriage had ended to Rachel. He could never put her first.

I tended to be like him and recognized that about myself. I was working on changing. I drove through town and saw people I had known for years, since I was a small child. They were standing on the street corner shooting the breeze and I knew that I was where I belonged.

Sherwood might be poor. We didn’t have the most popular restaurants. We didn’t have large grocery stores and department stores, but we had heart and it had taken me twenty-eight years to come to the realization that there were many things important in this life like my family and my friends. Disa and my daughter, Asia.

My job was not consuming me as it had. I still performed far above expectations and I had goals for advancement, but it would not consume me any longer. After the meeting yesterday, Tim had clapped me on the back as we walked back to our offices. He told me he was proud of me.