Whether or not that was true, an hour or so later a patrol car coasted down the street in front of the shipyard. The cop looked long at us as he passed then stuck his arm out of the car window, his hand in a fist. “Fuck ’em!” he yelled and we applauded, shouting the same back to him, to the sky, to the company president and any administrators inside. “What the hell?”

A short man I’d never seen before stepped out of the crowd and spoke.

“The police chief said half of their calls come from JeffBoat and the cops’re sick of their bullshit. JeffBoat’s on their own.”

The police in Jeffersonville had been working for two years without a contract and suffered from low wages and long hours much like us. All Tuesday and every day thereafter, patrol cars cruised by slowly, the officers raised their fists, honked and shouted support.