My Partner Changed The Loft Lock Before The Fleet Came In

The key went into the new lock, but it would not turn. Behind the door, a loom ran for three beats and stopped.

Russell had always stopped it too soon. The last row needed time to settle.

I knocked with my net shuttle. Three light taps, the way I checked the hollow handle for cracks.

Russell opened the door as far as the chain.

“You should have called, Noelani.”

“I came to work.”

“That's what we need to discuss.”

I was Noelani Palakiko, forty-two, a Native Hawaiian woman who repaired fishing nets for a living. I had brown skin, a broad face, and black hair streaked with silver that I wore in one thick braid.

My hands had more small scars than my face had lines. I could find a bad knot by touch in complete darkness. A tight knot felt hard all around. A false one had a soft place, like a promise with a hole in it.

Russell Fenwick had pale skin, sandy hair brushed flat over a thin spot, and a wide smile that showed one crooked front tooth.

He was forty-seven, white, and born in Massachusetts. We had worked together for six years. He called every captain his oldest friend. With people who needed their pay on Friday, he watched the clock.

“The arrangement has run its course,” he said.

“What arrangement?”

“You helped. I paid you cash. Let's leave it friendly.”

I looked past him at the stairway. Our repair loft sat above a bait storage room near Gloucester's working waterfront. Wet rope scented the steps. Someone had left my rubber apron on the lower rail.

“You told the fleet that?”

“People asked why you weren't on the schedule.”

“You made a schedule without me.”

His smile stayed in place.

“The ledger is gone, Nola. That roof leak took the whole back shelf. No sense fighting over things nobody can prove.”

Only my uncle called me Nola. Hearing Russell use it made my fingers close around the shuttle.

Water had ruined the daily work ledger two weeks before. I had spread the pages under a fan. Dates washed into blue clouds. Russell had watched from the stairs and asked whether I had copies.

I had said the job tickets were dry.

He had never asked about anything else.

A gull landed on the rail outside. Below us, a delivery truck backed toward the fish houses. Its warning beep filled the silence.

“Where are the memberships?” I asked.

“Don't start with that club stuff.”

“It's a cooperative.”

We had formed it after two small repair shops closed. Captains put in membership money, and I brought the machines. Russell found the loft and handled calls. On the first day, all nine of us ate chowder from paper cups between the empty racks.

I remembered him raising his cup.

“Nobody works for scraps here,” he had said.

Now my apron lay outside the door.

“I arranged every delivery in this place. Those machines came through me.”

Behind his shoulder, I could see the corner of our largest net-making loom. It could make plain net panels all day. It could not shape a worn trawl mouth or tell sound twine from brittle twine. That was my work.

“Delivery isn't payment,” I said.

He took the apron from the rail and held it through the gap.

“Your things. I boxed the rest.”

I accepted the apron. He shut the door before I could ask about the box.

Outside, Captain Ada Pike stood by her pickup with a folded repair ticket.

“Russ says you're taking time off.”

“Russ changed the lock.”

Her eyes moved to my key.

“My stern panel's promised for Friday. We sail at four.”

“I know. Forty-eight meshes across, heavier twine at the corners.”

She looked down at the ticket. Those notes were not on her copy.

“He says there's a new man coming.”

“Ask him who.”

I walked away before anger made me say something I would have to explain later.

My uncle Kanoa Akana waited at his kitchen table with two mugs. Like me, he was Native Hawaiian, and we were the only two of our family living on Cape Ann. At sixty-five, he had retired from marine rigging, but his hands still tested every chair before he sat.

He listened while I told him. He did not interrupt to tell me what I should have done.

“He thinks the water ate everything,” I said.

Kanoa glanced toward the cupboard where I kept a waterproof shuttle case.

“Water gets the things people leave loose.”

“I should have spoken up sooner.”

“You spoke. He counted on nobody listening.”

My phone rang. Zora Fields's name filled the screen. Our cooperative's accountant did not call on Mondays unless something failed to add up.

“Are you sitting?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Russell sent me a closing inventory.”

“For the quarter?”

“For a sale.”

I set my shuttle beside the mug.

“What sale?”

“All four looms. He's advertising collection Friday.”

She paused, then spoke more softly.

“Noelani, he listed himself as the sole owner.”