The Red Ledger Listed Launches The Annual Report Had Missed

Owen put the ledger on a clean piece of packing paper.

“These were given to me as treasurer,” he said. “I didn't take them from his office.”

“Tell Lena that, too.”

He nodded and opened it.

The first pages held ordinary bills. Gravel: $486. Handrail repair: $735. Trash service: $64 a month during the busy season.

Then came copies of invoices from Haskell River Guides to tour groups. Each showed a separate $12 landing fee for every guest, below the price of the guided trip.

“Why were these in your packet?” I asked.

“I asked how to match deposits to launch charges. He gave me these as examples. Then he said I was making the job too hard.”

There were twelve invoices. Their landing fees alone came to $2,268.

The association's annual report for that same year listed $2,880 in total launch income.

Owen had marked the deposit dates beside that figure. None matched the twelve invoices closely enough to explain them. He had left a question mark in the margin, then another on the next page. Nobody had answered either one.

“Maybe there were only twelve groups,” I said.

Owen looked at me.

We could hear Corbin's trailer backing toward the landing through my open window. He launched groups four mornings a week in summer.

“We still have to prove it,” I said.

“That's why I brought paper.”

Lena made copies and sent a request for complete records. Owen signed a statement saying when he had received the packet and why he had kept it. Then he took his originals home.

On the nineteenth day after notice, Corbin finally supplied an account.

It was one page.

Three years. Total landing income: $8,640. Total maintenance spending: $6,270. Balance: $2,370.

At the bottom, he had typed “Reviewed And Approved By President.”

There were no bank statements. No guest counts. No household payments. No copies of invoices.

“That isn't an annual itemized account,” Lena said. “It's three numbers wearing a coat.”

She asked again for the underlying records.

I returned to work. A customer from Sisters needed her canoe before a family trip, and arguments did not pay the light bill. I fitted a new inwale section, checked the grain, and brushed away one thin cedar curl from an earlier job.

The phone kept ringing.

One caller canceled an estimate. Another asked whether the city had closed my shop.

“Who said that?” I asked.

“A man from your association.”

I explained that the shop was open. I saved the voicemail from the canceled job and wrote down what the second caller told me. I could prove a missed estimate. I could not prove what a stranger had heard unless he was willing to say it himself.

That afternoon, Mara brought a screenshot from the neighborhood email list.

Corbin had written that “a tenant's claim to waterfront ownership” put everyone's summer access at risk.

Below it, he had offered household passes at $240 if paid by Friday.

Mara folded her arms.

“He sent this after getting the document?”

“Yes.”

“Then he doesn't get my money.”

She replied to the whole list with a copy of the free passage clause. She used no insult. She asked which recorded amendment had changed it.

By evening, fourteen neighbors had asked the same question.

Beatrice read the email at my packing table.

“Nothing makes a long answer harder than a short question,” she said.

Corbin did not answer it.

Instead, the secretary received a demand that she remove Mara from the email list. She refused and sent the demand to the other directors.

There were five seats on the board. Corbin held one. The others had let him run landing matters because he said he understood the old agreements.

Now two directors asked for a special meeting.

Lena advised me to attend with copies, keep my comments brief, and avoid telling the board what to decide about its own funds.

“What if he shouts?” I asked.

“Let him use his minutes.”

On the morning of the meeting, I found a fresh notice taped to the workshop door. My fine had grown to $525 with “continuing violation charges.”

I sent a photo to Lena. Then I took it down without tearing it.

At five, I washed varnish from my hands, put on a clean shirt, and set my papers in the blue box.

A woman I did not know stopped at the open door.

“Nathaniel Tallchief?”

“Yes.”

She handed me a packet and said I had been served.

The first page named Haskell River Guides as plaintiff. Corbin wanted the court to protect his commercial launches and award him at least $25,000 for my alleged interference.