I couldn’t tell if this fella was drunk or not. He was damn clear about him not tellin’ me his name, that’s for sure.
“Shhhh…” he kept sayin’ to me, with his finger pressed hard against his face from nose tip to the bottom of his chin.
Apparently, the City boys hired this guy way back when to run some kind of a pretreatment wastewater program.
“I was in charge of all the doings and regulations for the industrial-plant wastewater discharge in town,” he said between swallows of beer.
“Really…” I replied, before trying again with, “…uhm, I didn’t catch your name there pal…”
“Shhhh” he interrupted again.
So my nameless friend’s job was to make sure that the water being “discharged” from Boise was not toxic and dangerous before it made its way into the river. And come to find out that y’alls’ main drinking water intake is located in Columbia City, just downstream from all this discharge. Knowing all of this, my new friend wanted to do his job as best he could, but something happened along the way.
”Damn right something happened along the way,” he said staring at me angrily. “They told me to break the law, that’s what happened along the way, they wanted me to use fake water-samples and then cover-up the real data in my records.”
Suddenly, I was gulpin’ my beer between his sentences as he went on.
”I wanted no part of it, I just wanted to do my job, and they punished me for trying to do my goddamn job,” he said while lookin’ at me for any kind of sign of empathy. “Hell they wanted me to go to counseling, the bastards. Like I was crazy or something!” I thought I detected a slur but he continued right back on point. “They gave me the worst job performance reviews they could, makin’ up this supposed bad stuff I did.”
And eventually they suspended him without pay. And this week, they beat him in Circuit Court.
“That’s some tough shit there Sam…or what was it again…?”
“Shhhh” he repeated, lookin’ around in every direction from his barstool. “Best you weren’t even talking to me pal; these guys have threatened to get me, ya know?”
“Sounds like the City-boys sure didn’t want you around if you weren’t gonna play ball,” I told him.
“Let me tell you somethin’ pal,” he began with this fierce look in his eyes. “Ya better not have that glass of water with your dinner here in town. And, oh yeah: better get yourself one of them expensive water filters too.”
“That’s some real bullshit there…er, John was it?”
“Shhhh…”
And I thought I had it bad with the Longview loadin’-dock foreman.
-Tom
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