Kevin O’Grady, who used to work next to me in ultra-pasteurizing, said he didn’t believe in love at first sight, which I absolutely did despite all the messes I’d seen people make of their marriages, but he was dead-sure that JoJo and Tate fell for each other in the break room because it was the only place at the dairy that was quiet, plus it had gluten-free snacks for us and Road & Track for the guys. Some people had doubts about Kevin’s claim, since he had no romantic experience except for one disastrous date with Tina in Quality Control, but we did agree that the plush chairs in the break room created a definite fun, HGTV feel. Kevin said when Tate walked in and saw JoJo, it was like metal buttons snapping together.
I told Kevin I believed him, but I said it’d crush my heart if another marriage at the plant got shattered by a new hire because, you know, once a man and a woman exchanged the saintly vows, they were supposed to stay the course, no matter how many lustful hooks the opposite sex dangled in front of them. He pointed at my face with the milk fat meter he keeps in his shirt pocket. “Tabitha, you’ve got heavy cream on your glasses.” That embarrassed me, since I take pride in looking neat on the job, but I know Kevin is shy and doesn’t make conversation easily, especially with women, and it was his way of showing concern. After he left, I marched down to Sharon in PR, told her the story, and she said you know Kevin, he likes to exaggerate, but she said he was right about one thing: People have noticed that Tate’s face, which is always so serious, becomes childlike when he’s around JoJo.
It was late winter, with piles of crusted gray snow hanging on in the employee parking lot and the Wyoming spring so far off it felt like it would never arrive, and the week after Tate and JoJo met, Mr. Deacon brought her down to the loading bays. He said a marketing person needed to know every detail of the business and delivery was a good place to start. It was three in the afternoon, all the trucks had returned from their routes, and they were parked in slots, like boats at a dock. By the loading area, a part-timer in jeans swept leftover ice into a drain. Mr. Deacon, who wore his new jacket with “President, Deacon Dairy” on the breast, pointed at the nearest truck. “JoJo, I want you to go out on a run.”
“That’s just what I was thinking.” She wore high heels and a purple silk scarf over her jacket, which we found pompous, since nobody who worked at the dairy wore silk and heels.
“How about if you get up early this Friday and make the rounds with one of our veteran drivers?” Mr. Deacon took off his glasses and wiped them with his handkerchief. He was seventy-two and facing cataract surgery, but he kept hoping that clean glasses would help him see better.
“I’d love to,” JoJo said.
No one knew how she got assigned to Tate’s truck, but that was where they found themselves: at the Deacon loading docks at 3:30 on a freezing morning in late March, with plastic boxes of milk products, crates of ice, and boxes of eggs sliding down the metal rollers of the assembly line and into the backs of the idling vans. At the last minute, a driver trainee joined them. He told me that JoJo didn’t wear enough warm clothes and halfway through the route, Tate loaned her his Deacon Dairy fleece. The trainee also reported that when “Danny’s Song,” by Loggins & Messina, came on the truck radio, JoJo and Tate did a high-five and said it was their favorite song, which we took as a bad sign because how many people who barely knew each other would high-five over “Danny’s Song?”
Tate’s wife, who had the most gorgeous hair of any female at the dairy and worked in accounts receivable, heard about the milk run from a friend in maintenance, who got it from the trainee. A few days later, we heard that Cherie said to her best friend, who worked across from her: “Tate has a cold, but it’s the first one he’s never complained about.”
They were sitting in the business office, reconciling accounts and guessing who Mr. Deacon would appoint to the Bonus Committee. Everyone at the plant wanted to serve on the B.C. because you got to decide who got extra money. Cherie stood and watched the milk trucks turn into the driveway and make their way to an open slot. She’d told us, more than once, that knowing her husband had done his work and was returning to the plant filled her with a kind of peace she didn’t feel anywhere else. It was the peace of a job well done and the security of food on the table. It was the peace of family and love.
Marla had given Cherie a few yards of red wool to make a telltale for Tate’s antenna, since the milk trucks were identical and she could never tell which one was his. She turned away from the window and looked at the family photo on her desk. She bit her lower lip.
“How’re the boys?” Marla said.
Cherie shrugged.
“Everyone okay?”
“More or less.” Tommy, her nine-year-old, was tall and reedy and had to wear a back brace due to scoliosis. He’d recently graduated to nights-only with the device, but his first sleepover was coming up and he was in a panic. Kip was seven, pudgy and lethargic, and had been diagnosed with a tree nut allergy. He carried an Epi-Pen and had almost died on the way to the ER the previous Halloween after sneaking a Reese’s Cup. Danny, who was five, had Cherie’s lush auburn hair and was the family athlete, but he’d recently started erupting into terrible tantrums. The week after Tate and JoJo met, he tried to stab his oldest brother with a pencil.
The Bonus Committee was scheduled to meet the first Monday in April, but the skim milk valves had a pressure problem, so Mr. Deacon had to postpone it. By then, he’d appointed Tate and JoJo to the committee, which alarmed us because we knew what that meant. Deacon Dairy was a family operation and there weren’t any secrets. If you served on the B. C., you got to hear Mr. Deacon, who was the best boss in the county, talk about employee children with cystic fibrosis and grandparents with dementia. You got to hear about bad car loans, delinquent mortgages, and gambling problems. People said serving on the Bonus Committee made them feel closer to their colleagues and, by extension, to their fellow committee members. I knew this because Kevin O’Grady and I overlapped one spring on the B.C. and I learned that his father had fallen for a typesetter at his newspaper, the same as my father, except Chief’s home-wrecker was a secretary at his abrasives plant. As Kevin and I were leaving our last B.C. meeting, I got up the courage to ask him how old he was when his father strayed.
He slipped his beard net back on and looked out the window. “Why do you want to know that?”
“I was thirteen when my father left.” I paused by the door that led down to the bottling floor. “Depending on how old you were, I might know a little bit about how that feels.”
He shook his head. “Nobody knows how I feel.”
I took his remark to mean that he wanted someone to know how he felt, but I knew enough not to say that. I put on my hat. “Were you around the age that I was?”
“Seventh grade.”
By this point, the love between Tate and JoJo had split the dairy into thirds, roughly. The first third, who tended to work in processing and minded their own business, ignored the goings-on. Who were they to get involved in other people’s lives? When asked how could they not see that Tate and JoJo were in love, these people said: “I’m too busy for company games.”
The middle group noticed but took a live-and-let-live position, which was the stance they took on every issue, except for wanting to go to plastic because of the number of glass bottles we’d broken in production. This made me mad because I had a perfect record when it came to breakage and how dare non-production people tell us what to do. This crowd said if Tate wanted to pursue his love for JoJo, it was his right, consequences be damned.
The last group — my group — knew that the love was wrong. No one had the right to tear a marriage apart. Cherie and Tate had exchanged vows at their wedding, which quite a few Deacon people had attended, including Kevin O’Grady and me. (I sat next to Kevin at the reception at the VFW and asked him to dance, three times, because I know that what happened to his parents’ marriage hurt him deeply and the least I could do was show him that hope still existed. No matter what, there was always hope.) As for temptation, come on now: every couple weathered lustful urges. But it was the fate of the children that brought out my strongest feelings. What kind of person would jeopardize the wellbeing of the children?
Two weeks after JoJo went on Tate’s milk run, as Cherie was printing a batch of spreadsheets, she said to Marla: “You know, before I had children, I felt sorry for the parents of kids with problems.”
Marla put down the braided cable hat she was knitting. “I was awake for two hours last night. I couldn’t remember where I put Tony’s inhaler.”
Cherie studied the parking lot to see if Tate had come in, but she didn’t see the red telltale on his truck antenna. She turned to Marla. “I’d love my boys no matter what, but their problems make me love them even more.”
April unfurled with rain, then sleet, and then a brutal heat wave smothered the valley. JoJo convinced Mr. Deacon to add soy milk to the product line, and things seemed to quiet for a time, but then the tension jumped back up when Tina, in Quality Control, told me that Cherie and Tate had a fight about the Bonus Committee, which still hadn’t convened because Mr. Deacon’s grandson had heart surgery and he flew to Seattle to help his daughter. The rumor was that Cherie had told Tate he couldn’t serve on the B.C. and he’d said he could do what he wanted. Harsh feelings were expressed, mostly about JoJo but also about the speeding ticket Tate had gotten in the Camry the previous week. For a truck driver, this was terrifying. Cherie finally gave in.
But she fought back. She started meeting Tate with a thermos of coffee and a corn muffin when he returned from his route. On Fridays, when little Danny wasn’t in daycare, she brought him to watch the bulk milk hauler pull into the lot and hook up its pipe. One Friday, when Tate was behind schedule, JoJo came out to the parking lot with a basket of ice cream cups. “Would you like one?” she said to Danny, pulling out a bright red cup and a wooden spoon.
“What is it?” the innocent boy said.
“It’s our latest product.” JoJo leaned close and gave Danny a chuck on the chin. She was wearing a loden green pants suit and low heels. “Try the Red Velvet.” JoJo put the cup in Danny’s outstretched hand. “It’s my favorite.”
“Come along now,” Cherie said, leading her son away.
Cherie sat next to her husband at staff meetings and didn’t let him out of her sight in the parking lot. She enlisted two of her friends in HR to keep an eye on JoJo. All this took a toll on her, especially her hair, which had been one of her best features but now looked tired and crunchy, like saw grass after a frost. Cherie’s change in hair didn’t go unnoticed: some people whispered — not us, never us — that when a woman in her thirties, who didn’t undergo chemo or have thyroid problems, went from thick, lush hair to hair that looked as if it would crack, it was so, so sad. One person said Cherie’s hair was crying.
The love between Tate and JoJo took a toll on the three boys as well, though it was unclear whether the stories about the boys were rumor or fact. It was rumored that Tommy was being teased in school about his back brace. It was rumored that Kip had another encounter with tree nuts and had spent two nights in the hospital. And little Danny — this was a fact — had a tantrum so terrible at daycare he was suspended for a week, which daycare never did. Other, more fantastic rumors were bandied about, and we worked hard to dispel them, since it was not true that Tate had rented an apartment or that JoJo was seen out at the Loaf N’ Jug buying a six-pack when Tate walked in.
Mr. Deacon convened the Bonus Committee on May 5th in his office. He handed out half-pints of strawberry milk — JoJo’s latest idea — and got his spreadsheets in order. JoJo and Tate sat across from each other while Mr. Deacon and Daryl, the business manager, sat at either end of the table. Mr. Deacon shut his door, but he raised the shade so people could see in.
“The first person I’d like to discuss is Clint Hochman,” he said, squinting at his papers. He explained that Clint’s sister had moved in with them and his wife had taken a job at the far end of the valley.
Daryl, who had a handlebar moustache, grunted. He said Clint had forgotten to pay the dairy’s gas bill and it’d cost the company a pile of money. He took a vicious bite of his beef jerky.
Mr. Deacon ignored him and talked about Clint’s excellent attendance, the new roof he’d just put on his garage, and his sister’s Parkinson’s. Over Daryl’s objection, the committee gave Clint a $2000 bonus.
Tate finished his strawberry milk. “This is great,” he said to JoJo. “I’ll push it on my route.”
She smiled coyly.
Mr. Deacon rubbed his glasses with the bottom of his shirt. “Next up is Carmen Valentine.”
Daryl’s moustache twitched. “Not again.”
Mr. Deacon frowned and said things had changed for Carmen. Her husband had taken up with an old flame and was filing for divorce. The Valentines had two boys, four and six, and it was not known who would get custody, since the father was a person of interest in a recent robbery.
“I bet it was that hold-up out at the Loaf N’ Jug,” Daryl said. “Is Carmen still living at her father’s?”
“He’s been moved into a nursing home. Carmen is staying with her cousin, but that’s temporary.” Mr. Deacon took off his glasses and stared at his spreadsheet. “She’s cleaning coffee shops from three to six a.m. I overheard her say a few days ago: ‘Where does a person find daycare at three a.m.?’”
Daryl finished his beef jerky with a savage bite. “People make their beds. They need to lie in them.”
Mr. Deacon said Carmen was a top employee and shouldn’t have to be in a state of panic at three in the morning. Daryl coughed insolently and said Deacon Dairy, in case anyone hadn’t noticed, wasn’t a charity. Mr. Deacon put his glasses back on and asked Daryl if he knew what it was like to grow up in a home where the father had left, the bank account was empty, and the mother had to hold the family together. The room went silent. Out in the hall, Cherie’s friend Marla walked by. Mr. Deacon turned to Tate. “You lost your telltale.”
“Excuse me?”
“That piece of red yarn on the antenna of your truck. I don’t see it anymore.”
Tate nodded. “I did.”
Mr. Deacon walked over to his desk drawer and took out several yards of thick blue yarn. He came back to the table and put the threads of wool in front of Tate. “Here you go.”
Tate took the blue yarn and, according to Tina, who was the fifth member of the B.C., stared at it with an intensity beyond words.
JoJo and Tate were quiet for the rest of the meeting, Daryl seethed, and Carmen got $4000. The following Monday, JoJo had a week of vacation. When she returned, she announced that she’d accepted a biotech job in Salt Lake. We celebrated down in production and Cherie came to work with a new hair style. Mr. Deacon planned a farewell party for JoJo, but it was at lunch, so all the drivers missed it because they were out on their routes.
A week later, Tate came down to production and told us he had some news, but he’d only tell us if we kept it a secret. We were still angry at him for putting his marriage in danger and didn’t want to talk, but he kept pestering us, even though he could see the bottles backing up.
“Go on,” my sister said. “Tell us.”
Tate wiped what looked like a dab of butter off his shoulder. “I was driving through downtown, on my way back to the plant, when I stopped at the corner of 19th and Warren.” He nodded at Wendy. “You know that block?”
“By the Crooked Cup?” Wendy reached behind her, adjusted the dial that regulated the speed of the line, and the belt slowed. On the far side of the room, old Mr. Kincaid yelled at her.
Tate’s eyes opened wide. “I saw Kevin O’Grady coming out of The Crooked Cup with a woman wearing a red baseball hat with white ear flaps. He gave the woman a kiss and folded down her flaps.”
My sister and I glanced at each other. I shook my head no and said Kevin didn’t even drink coffee, so why would he be at the Crooked Cup.
“It was Kevin, all right,” Tate said. “I didn’t recognize the woman, but it was him.”
“That’s a lie!” I stamped my boots on the cement floor.
He laughed. “Fine. Don’t believe me.”
I told Tate that Kevin wouldn’t do that. I said he was too shy to talk with women and I was the only female he could talk to. Didn’t Tate remember his wedding reception at the VFW, when I was the only person Kevin danced with? But all the time I was yelling at Tate, I couldn’t stop seeing Kevin kiss a woman wearing a red baseball cap with white ear flaps.
He brushed off my comments and said there was no doubt: it was Kevin.
“You’re lying!” I yelled. “Stop spreading lies and leave us alone!”
That was when Wendy told Tate he’d said enough and she led him out of our area. When she came back, I was standing by the rotary capper and crying like a middle school girl. She gave me a long hug, since she understood why I was upset, and then she reminded me that work was the best way to distract a sad heart, and, when I was ready, she was going to turn the line back up to full speed. I said go ahead, she gave me another hug, and she told me crying was okay, in fact it was actually good when nothing else could be done, but try not to get tears on the bottles.
Image by ROBIN WORRALL on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
His short plays have been read at venues in New Bedford, MA, Newburyport, MA, Independence, KS, and Aylsham, UK. The Radio Theatre Project, St. Petersburg, FL, produced his short play “Saint Rita.” It can be heard on SoundCloud.
He has written a memoir about conducting Quaker Meeting among prison inmates and a novel about a young woman’s search for her father’s murderer during the Great Depression. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife. They have three children.
- The Bonus Committee - June 13, 2025