The Administrator Stopped the Recital to Take Away My Keys

The first child had reached the hard part of her solo when Nolan Voss stepped into the aisle and pointed at me.

"Before we go on, district property needs to be secured."

I sat beside a stack of empty instrument cases. One had a split handle I had sewn with orange thread. Under the stage lights, that little row of stitches looked like fire.

I was fifty-nine, an Irish American woman with pale skin, a broad face, and gray curls I pinned above my ears.

I worked sixteen hours a week as the traveling instrument librarian for Bellwether School District, which served a patch of roads outside Oxford, Mississippi. I checked out clarinets, horns, and flutes. I counted mouthpieces. I fixed battered cases with thread bright enough to show where my work began.

Nolan was forty-six, a white American man with smooth blond hair, a square jaw, and a polished smile that never reached his light eyes.

That night, he wore a blue suit and carried a red folder.

"Deirdre O'Shea," he said. "Please give the officer your keys."

The girl onstage lowered her clarinet. Her last note hung in the room without a place to land.

"What is this about?" I asked.

"Twelve instruments removed from surplus stock. The district has filed a theft complaint."

His voice carried to the back row. He liked it that way. At staff meetings, he had people stand while he read their mistakes aloud.

"Those instruments are on loan," I said.

"They were sold April twenty-first."

I looked at the red folder.

"May I see the serial numbers?"

"This isn't a counter at your little library."

The officer was a young woman with a tired face. She kept her voice low.

"Ma'am, let's speak outside."

"Am I under arrest?"

"No. I've been asked to escort you from the building."

I placed my keys in her hand. Four building keys, one van key, and a small brass tuning fork. Nolan reached for the ring before she could put it away.

"The fork is mine," I said.

He smiled harder.

"We'll sort ownership later."

Someone near the wall lifted a camera. I heard a chair scrape. Then I walked past the students whose instruments I had cleaned the week before.

Outside, May rain had darkened the sidewalk. Beyond the parking lot, the red clay bank ran down toward a ditch full of brown water.

The officer gave me a complaint number on a white card. Nolan handed me a suspension letter.

"Unpaid, pending review," he said. "Your last check will reflect actual hours."

I made $19.50 an hour. My rent was $780. He knew both figures from the hardship form I had filled out after my water heater broke.

"You could have called me into your office."

"Parents deserve to see us act."

He opened the red folder. The page was headed SURPLUS DISPOSITION, LOT 7. Twelve instruments. Sale price, $240. Collection date, April 21.

I saw clarinet C-1846. Flute F-2091. Alto saxophone A-7730.

My stomach settled in a strange, cold way.

I knew those numbers.

"Who signed the receiving line?" I asked.

He closed the folder.

"You mend handles, Deirdre. Let the office handle records."

For eleven years, the office had made me keep records. Each traveling loan had two signed sheets, made with carbon paper. The blue sheet stayed in the school cabinet. The yellow sheet stayed with the route custodian until the instrument came home.

I was the route custodian.

My yellow sheets were in a steel cash box under my sewing table. The written route policy allowed that. Nolan had signed the policy himself when he wanted to stop paying for evening trips back to the office.

I had nearly thrown away that cover memo once. Instead, I had tucked it beneath the carbon pad.

"I need a copy of your list," I said.

"Your hearing notice will include it. Don't contact the families."

He went back inside. The officer returned my tuning fork before she followed him.

I stood under the awning and listened to the recital start again. The girl took her solo from the beginning.

At home, I washed my hands before touching the yellow sheets. Grease from case hinges could blur old carbon marks.

All twelve loans had gone out April 14. All were due June 2. Every sheet carried a serial number, a parent's signature, and mine.

I laid them across the kitchen table in number order.

Then my phone lit up with a message from a number I didn't know.

It held a photograph of the surplus list, taken close enough to read.

Below it were six words.

Don't Let Him Collect Your Copies.