The Board Took My Badge Before It Checked The Closing List

Conrad Voss fired me while I was drawing a birthday candle beside the Kake freight run.

"Leave the route book," he said. "Company property."

"The load sheets are yours. The birthday book is mine."

He held out his hand anyway.

It was eight forty on a wet Friday in September. Outside our Juneau hangar, rain ran down the wheels of an empty cargo cart. At four, Alder Reach Air Cargo was supposed to merge with North Channel Freight. Someone had already ordered a cake.

I was forty-one, a Native American woman of Tlingit heritage, with brown skin, dark eyes, and black hair streaked with gray at my temples.

For sixteen years, I had worked as a cargo-flight scheduler. I knew which loads could share a flight, which freezer needed medicine before food, and which dock hand would answer before sunrise.

I also knew birthdays.

Ruth in Kake was May ninth. Ben in Hoonah was January twelfth. Esther in Angoon was October third. I could remember a route by the person waiting at its far end.

The candles in my book helped. The official schedule used airport codes and pounds, as it should. My book reminded me why.

Conrad Voss was a white American man of fifty-seven, with silver hair, pale eyes, and a neat beard above the collar of his navy suit.

He had been board chair for three years. Until that morning, he had called me our village expert when guests could hear him.

"Your position is redundant," he said.

He set a board resolution beside Helen's folder. Four directors had voted to cut my job. My name appeared once, under staffing savings.

"Who is handling Monday's fish boxes?"

"The combined company has software."

"Software won't tell you Ben's forklift is down."

He smiled toward the human resources manager.

"Local relationships are replaceable, Lydia. We can't build a corporation around who remembers whose birthday."

The manager, Helen, looked at her folder.

"Your final pay will be processed. There is a separation offer."

She slid over a document with $6,200 on its first page.

On page four, the release covered claims by me and any business I owned.

I put it down.

"I need to review this."

"It expires at noon," Conrad said.

He had stopped smiling.

I removed my badge. I set down the hangar key and the little key to the supply cabinet. Then I placed the current load sheets beside Helen's folder.

"The revised milk weights are in the shared schedule. No dangerous goods are waiting for approval. The pilot still makes every dispatch decision."

"We understand aircraft," Conrad said.

"I was telling Helen."

She wrote it down.

At my desk, I packed my mug, reading glasses, and birthday book. I left every company record where it belonged.

Inside the book's back cover was a blue card. On it I had written three words: Assignment requires Lydia.

Under that was the file number for Tide Ledger Logistics LLC.

Conrad saw the card.

"You'll give the buyer whatever route material it needs."

"Have its lawyer send a request."

"Don't make this unpleasant."

I closed the book.

Tide Ledger had started four years earlier, after two carriers changed service and our freight bookings fell between them. The Saltglass Regional Cooperative needed one booking desk that could deal with more than one carrier.

I had built that desk at my kitchen table.

Alder Reach later won the main lift agreement. My separate business kept the cooperative's exclusive booking contract. The arrangement was disclosed, voted on, and renewed. The board minutes named me as the owner.

Conrad had received copies.

He preferred the version where anything near his airplanes belonged to him.

In the parking lot, I called Farah Rahman.

"They fired me," I said.

"As an employee?"

"Yes. They also want a release from any business I own."

"Did you sign?"

"No."

"Good. Send me the offer. Then go somewhere warm."

Farah represented the cooperative. She did not represent me, and she always kept that line clear.

I took a booth at a cafe near the airport and ordered tea. From my personal account, I sent her the separation offer and my own signed contract copies.

Then I called Ruth.

"Your freight is still booked," I told her. "There may be a change in the desk handling it."

"A change or trouble?"

"I'm finding out."

"Find out before my clinic fridge runs empty."

At ten fifteen, Helen called. She asked where I had stored the cooperative account password.

"That belongs to Tide Ledger," I said. "Alder Reach gets the carrier reports through its own account."

There was a pause.

"Conrad says all of this was included in the sale."

"Ask him for the signed assignment."

The cafe window shook as a plane climbed through the low cloud. I watched until the sound thinned away.

At eleven, a woman carrying a leather folder stopped beside my booth.

"Lydia Williams? I'm Mara Bell, counsel for the buyer. Our closing list says you owe us a signature."