First time I was asked, it was the day of the vote. Walked out the firehall and some kid from the local paper asked me what I am. That was easy, I thought, and I told him I was a press operator.

Next day, same situation.

Me and Jay had had enough and had just left the meeting. Union had brought in some guy from CareerLink that’s supposed to help us figure out how to be middle-age with two car payments, a mortgage and two kids looking at college, without sticking a gun in our mouths.

He stood up front of the banquet hall, big guy behind a black polo shirt, and asked us, “Did they let you keep your insurance?”

We all laughed at him and Tom from maintenance yelled, “What do you fucking think? They got trucks up there right now packing up the presses. Like they’re gonna let us keep our insurance.”

“This ain’t gonna help nobody,” I said to Jay, and was honestly probably more worried about getting to our buddy Eli, who’d skipped the bulllshit to get face-down drunk, and Darla, his girlfriend. I was thinking of what trouble I might get myself into. We walked out and this time it was a guy from the county paper asking us the same thing: What are you?

He meant, like the boy before, if we were maintenance or quality control or on the extrusion line, but what I said was,  “I dunno,” because I didn’t.

I pulled my shoulders up and looked at Jay. Thought about saying: I’m a man; Steelers fan; a Methodist, but only go on Christmas, because that’s what I still was. Then I said, “I dunno. You can tell him whatever the hell you are, Jay, but I guess I’m not nothing no more.”

We started walking toward my truck and the college-learned motherfucker yelled at us, while we got our backs turned, mind you, “What do you think’s gonna happen?”

I turned and I said, “Well, this is the last plant in a town built on plants and it’s shutting down. When you knock out the foundation of something, what happens? What do you think’s gonna happen?”

“How’d you guys vote?”

We started walking back toward him.

“They wanted to jump us up from paying nothing on health insurance to paying half.  They wanted to cut our dental, vision. They wanted to cut our incentives. And I’ll show you our incentive schedule. I’ll show you my pay stub. That’s money right out of my pocket. All that and a whole mess of other stuff. How do you think we voted?”

The kid couldn’t have been more than 20. Didn’t know nothing about incentives; parents probably paid his insurance.

He scribbled on a skinny pad and looked up when I stopped talking.

“They told you they’d shut it down if you guys didn’t pass a contract, right? That didn’t factor into your decision?”

“They’ve bluffed a hundred times on a hundred contracts before. They weren’t gonna rip money out of my pocket on account of a bluff.”

“What about you?” He nodded toward Jay. Jay looked up and over at me. He started to say something, but I knew he didn’t want to have to. “We were all in this together,” I said and we walked to the truck.

We got in and after our doors clanked shut, Jay asked, “Going to CareerLink?”

“We’re gonna find Eli. Why the fuck would we go to CareerLink? That guy’s an asshole.”

We pulled on to Main Street, drove down it, looking up at the foil Christmas trees tied to the lampposts. They’ll take a man’s job just soon as they can, won’t they? I thought. Fuck if it’s Easter or Cinco de Mayo or whatever they fucking do in Mexico where our jobs are going. Or even fucking Christmas.

“Because we ain’t got jobs,” Jacob said.

“That’s what unemployment’s for.”

“Because we’re forty-five. And we ain’t got jobs.”

“We’ll get Eli and go to CareerLink. That make you happy?”

Most people just assume me and Jay are brothers. Sure I think I’m better looking, am a little taller and he wears glasses,  but beyond that, we pretty much look the same. Brown hair. Blue eyes. But mostly through the face. We’re thin there. The bones under our eyes make shadows down to our jaws. He doesn’t see it, but without the glasses, we’re brothers. Grew up together, too, side by side in the trailer court. That don’t help, neither. Always together. Neither of our parents ever around; we’d sleep over wherever they weren’t. Only problem is when you’re broken down into a pair that way,  people seem to assume one of you’s the smart one and the other not. That one of you’s a dummy. Which is unfortunate for Jay.

I can pinpoint the very moment when the world made that decision for him.

About the only adult interaction we had as kids was his granddad. Grampie would sit on the porch of Jay’s trailer and moan and strum out old Hank Williams tunes. And since he was the only adult we seen, he supplied our only adult expectations. And for Grampie, that was learning the guitar. He decided the summer between our second and third grades that that would be his project. To teach us little shit hounds how to play, to give us some worth. And he knew how to motivate, too. Each time, after he gave us a nod and a passing grade, Grampie would stand and take the Red Man pouch from his back pocket, unfold it and tell us to hold out our lips. He’d take a pinch from the pouch, poke it down between our gum and lip and just about soon as he did, Jay would stick his head between the railing, coughing and spitting his guts into the weeds beneath.

He started us first week with the D, easiest chord he knew, needed just the three fingers, close together. Took us both all week, but by Saturday we’d both got it.

Each week a new chord and more chew. Jay even got to like it, and everything was fine till we got to the G, which for Grampie was of the utmost importance; the way he played it, it started out Hank’s “Why Don’t You Love Me?”

It was a long summer and being how we was at the end, I could handle the G just fine. That’s cause I had the biggest mits in the third grade, mind you. But Jay, he’d get his arms all wrapped round the body and the neck, trying to get all the leverage he could. He’d stretch, pinkie down on the top, reaching with the pointer, hand contorting like arthritis, and you could see the cramp coming half ways cross. Grampie would kneel long as he could, one hand supporting the guitar for Jacob, but that low string just rattled against Jay’s pointer; the skinny, high E slicing into the pinkie. Grampie would stand and the guitar would rattle, clank, roll and crash to the porch, and he yelled, “Goddamnit, Jacob. How you expect to play any goddamn good songs? How you expect to do anything in this shitty little life if you can’t do the easiest parts? Why did God give me such a goddamned dumb grandson?”

And that was it. He was marked.

Because when a boy’s grampa’s willing to say it about him, it’s gotta be true. And we heard it.

We were around the house, practicing on the porch, and we heard Grampie, not a week later, out in the driveway drinking Carling Black Label with some other old fat man. The man asked him,“How’s your grandson, how’s Jacob doing? What grade’s he up to?”

And Grampie answered, “Don’t matter. Boy’s got Down Syndrome, some fucking thing.”

And to be fair he didn’t always look the smartest. It was the glasses, thick enough he looked like he was underwater. And he always moved his lip and his nose under them like he couldn’t figure things out. But other than needing to hurt his feelings once or twice, I never said anything about it. I knew better, of how smart he was or wasn’t. I was more apt to copy his homework.

But when he heard Grampie, he took the guitar from me. It was in my hands and he pulled it out. Held it around the neck, and because it was Grampie’s he started swinging. Knocking it against the wood of the porch, and sending out a hollow call each time. Swung so hard his glasses fell, and I could see he meant to break it – he wouldn’t. Scratch it to hell maybe, but the Gibson was solid and Grampie caught and beat his ass before he could – and I could see what he meant to say. That, if that’s what you think I am, if that’s what you really think, that’s what I can be.

We were heading to the Anchor, to Eli and Darla. He’d skipped the meeting altogether in favor, he said, of getting a head start on unemployment.

Eli was taking it hard. He was 20 years younger than us. Could’ve gone to college, but knew he’d end up making more money on the line. So that’s what he did. Lost that bet.

He was facedown behind a wall of empties when we got there. Was a soap opera on TV, and a jukebox playing  Hank overtop it, like the world ain’t changed since Gampie’s time.

And Eli was singing, “That means he’s lost the will to live. I’m so lonesome I could die.” He always sung it wrong.

His girlfriend, Darla, was on the other side of him, playing on her phone.

It boded well that he was near passed out.

Jay and I walked toward them, and as we pulled out our seats, somebody pushed a chair out from a table behind, and said, “Well here comes the brain trust that voted our economy outta town.”

I turned round, threw my hand up, and said, “Can it Buck. Who’s gonna put the borough truck into a power pole if you’re here.”

Buck was a fat man, white mustache, round glasses, head of the borough streets crew. He was sitting with Albert, who should’ve been driving the plow truck presently, and who, at the time, could hold only one eye open.

“You think it’s funny,” he yelled. He was up now, leaning on the table. “But you’ve fucked us. Fucked us all.”

“What the fuck do you care? It’s gonna snow every year, Buck. We’re always gonna need a plow monkey.”

“Not if there ain’t no town.”

“Ah, fuck you,” I said and turned around.

Eli was still singing and was definitely crying. There was a puddle from the slobber and the crying, filling up the space between his head and arms.

“It’s gonna be alright,” I told him, and patted his back.

Darla wasn’t looking up from her phone, but she said, “I gotta get to work.” She was snapping her gum. “And Sir-Drinks-a-Lot isn’t doing me any good.”

No hesitation, I stood, slapped Eli again, and said, “Don’t you worry, I got this.”

Eli just kept singing as we walked and Jay just shook his head.

“Don’t worry, you two,” I said. I was walking backward now. I pointed at Buck. “I’ll be back. Don’t you miss me too much.”

I was parked behind the bar in a space I liked, cause, between the bar and the Dumpster, there’s enough cover you could do just about whatever you needed to. I jumped in the truck and she jumped in the truck and I turned the key so the radio came on and, when I turned, her mouth was already on mine. And my hand was up her back and working her bra and no matter what happened that day, no matter if I was unemployed and an absolute fuck-up, I had this girl with long dark hair and thick lips, skin smooth cause it ain’t gone through the extra 20 years mine has, tattoos up and down her pale skin. I didn’t know what they were supposed to mean because I never had to ask. Because even if I was married, Maggie was at home with her big ass feeling bad for me for losing my job. And even though I wanted to play guitar for a living, when you have kids when we did, that don’t matter. And even though Darla is near married to my good buddy Eli, he’s a drunk and don’t understand what she wants. She wants a man that can make that G chord, any chord really, and make it the way that makes her weak. He don’t have that. And Maggie don’t even know to want that. And Darla, she wanted it so bad that up her side she had a fret board tattooed. I would wrap my arms round her and get my fingers on it and pretend I was making the sounds she needed. I was making an E on her and humming, “Hear that lonesome whippoorwill.” And I could feel the sound in the wetness of her mouth.

And that’s when the crash came. My eyes were open and the windshield was gone, and in its stead the static of snow and wind. And there came something more. And it hit my face and my face felt raw.

“What the fuck, man?” Eli yelled. He was staggering, hunched over, barely standing, trying to find something else to throw. “What the fucking fuck?” He was still crying like he’d never stop.

I jumped out with my hands up and yelled, “Take it easy, man. Everything’s OK.” And he bullrushed me. Put his shoulder just under my ribs and took me down. I wasn’t breathing. Couldn’t. He was hitting me. First few landed where the rock did too and were numb. Tried to move him but he was as heavy as a truck. Darla was crying and I couldn’t see. Couldn’t move him. Couldn’t hit him. I stopped trying and that song started playing. ‘The midnight train is whining low.’ Then he was gone. And I just lay there.

Tried to laugh it off, but just coughed and rolled to my side, laid there till Jay grabbed my hand, pulled me up. Leaned me on him and helped me limp to the stoop behind the bar and sat me down. I leaned, filled my hands with snow and pushed it against my face, let the cold soak in. I looked at Jay. My eyes were closing up, seemed to close up around him. He was just shaking his head like he hadn’t stopped. Wasn’t saying nothing. Just looking at me and shaking his head.

“How’d we fuck things up so bad?” I said. I found a hunk of ice and put it against my eye. “Before the vote, hell, a week ago, we were set for life.”

Still didn’t say nothing. I just assumed we were gonna sit there and just think. Because when you and somebody are in the same boat, what’s there to talk about? So I stopped talking.

About soon as I decided that, he says, “We didn’t fuck up anything, Abel.” Still shaking his head. “You fucked up.”

“How’s that?” I said. Thought maybe he’d misheard me or the other way around.

“You fucked up.”

“What?” My head shot back.

“You fucked up.” And he stood. “You fucked up.” And he pointed. “I didn’t ever fuck up.” I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand. He could see that. He said, “I voted for the contract, Abel. The dumb brother voted for the contract.” He pointed at his chest with his thumbs.

“We ain’t brothers,” I said.

“Because even if we didn’t have fucking gravy incentives, and full dental, and all kinds of shit ain’t nobody else got, we’d at least have fucking jobs. We didn’t fuck up, Abel. You. Fucked. Up.”

You know, I never asked him. Not on our smoke break. Not when that young asshole reporter asked us. Not that day before the vote, when the union reps brought us in and told us what they knew. A group of us was standing out front of the firehall after, hanging around a case of beer on my tailgate, each one cracking one open. And each one of those assholes was saying it’s a bluff because they wanted it to be. None of them even considering asking Jacob. Looking past him like he wasn’t there. Me included.

He doesn’t care how I voted, that’s not why he’s not talking. I was only one of 117 assholes that got it wrong.

He won’t talk because I was one of 117 assholes that just assumed he couldn’t know better. That looked past him like he was some kind of dummy.

That’s why he won’t talk.

Because I looked at him the same as everybody else. Like I didn’t know who he was.

Caleb Stright writes nonfiction as managing editor of The Record-Argus in Greenville,Pa., and fiction, which has appeared in Alice Blue, MFA/MFYOU, Fourpaperletters and others. Living, working, and studying in the Rust Belt — he has degrees in creative writing and professional writing from Carnegie Mellon — he writes about all topics pertaining and his novel projects at http://cstright.wordpress.com.