Beckett Changed The Locks While My Earmuffs Hung Inside The Door

The new key slot shone like a gold tooth in our old blue door.

I tried my key twice. Behind me, a lobster truck rattled toward the harbor. A gull stood on the foundry roof, pulling at a strip of tar paper.

My grandfather's knitted earmuffs hung on their usual nail inside the window.

I called Beckett.

"The lock's wrong," I said.

"The lock is new."

Through the glass, I saw him leave our little office. He took his time crossing the floor.

I was a white man of thirty-seven, with pale gray eyes, a crooked nose, and brown hair clipped short above a beard dusted with bronze filings.

My name was Silas Keene. I restored foghorns and cast bronze parts in Rockland, Maine. That morning, I had dressed for work, with a clean diaphragm wrapped in a dish towel under my arm.

Beckett Shaw opened the door just wide enough to stand in it.

At forty, Beckett was a white man with a smooth tan, neat blond hair, and a bright smile he checked in dark windows.

He wore a new wool coat. Last week, he had told me we could not afford clean furnace filters.

"We've reached a change in direction," he said.

"We've got a horn due Thursday."

"I mean the business."

He handed me a sheet on our letterhead. EMPLOYMENT ENDED appeared above my name.

"I'm half the company," I said.

"You got an hourly check. I carried the lease. I found the money."

"We both signed the operating agreement."

"You can argue about that with someone who bills by the hour."

His smile held. Mine had never come easily, which now seemed useful.

I had let him take the front room because he liked talking to customers. He had let me take the heat and dust because I liked getting things right. Somewhere along the way, he had begun calling that arrangement ownership.

Behind him, our three apprentices stood beside the sand mixer. Mara had her lunch bag in both hands. Eli still wore his bike helmet. June looked down at the floor.

"Did you tell them there's no work?" I asked.

"There's a sale. Harbor Fold Development wants the patterns for its hotel lobby. One hundred twenty thousand dollars for the heritage package."

He said it as if he had invented our history.

The wooden patterns stood along the back wall. They shaped the sand molds we used for bronze horn bells and valve bodies. Some had curved ribs as thin as my little finger. My grandfather had spent half his life making them.

"The patterns aren't company property," I said.

"They were here when I leased the building. Everything here was part of the opportunity."

"An opportunity isn't a bill of sale."

He looked past me toward the road.

"Take your personal tools Friday. The buyer's truck comes Monday."

I set the wrapped diaphragm on the step.

"That belongs to Orla. Don't put it in your package."

"Everything belongs to someone, according to you."

That was the first true thing he had said.

My grandfather had put little brass plugs into the patterns, down where wet sand would not wear them away. Each plug held a number and a tiny three-notched mark. He kept the matching numbers in a brown register.

When I joined Beckett three years earlier, I had brought a list of those numbers to our signing meeting. Beckett had complained that I was making a simple deal take all afternoon.

I remembered the scratch of his pen.

"My earmuffs," I said.

He took them off the nail and handed them over with two fingers.

"You still need those things?"

I tested every horn wearing them over my proper ear protection. The faded green wool did little useful work. It reminded me to finish the useful work first.

I tucked them into my coat.

Across the street, Orla Kavanagh climbed from her truck. She was sixty-one, an Irish American maritime conservator, and she trusted a measured surface more than a pleasant voice. She had been bringing work to my family since I was a boy.

"Why is my horn sitting on a doorstep?" she asked.

Beckett began his speech about direction.

Orla picked up the diaphragm and checked its edge.

"Did Silas lap this?"

"Yes," I said.

"Then I'll take it with me."

She turned to me. "Do you need a ride?"

"Home. I need a book."

Beckett laughed softly. "Try one about business."

I heard the lock catch behind him.

In Orla's truck, I pressed my thumb into the worn wool. Granddad used to tap a pattern three times before lifting it, listening for a loose joint. He had taught me that a thing could look sound and still be coming apart inside.

My phone lit before we reached the corner.

It was an email from Beckett, copied to the developer: FINAL INVENTORY APPROVAL REQUIRED BY NOON TOMORROW.