Travis Changed the Shed Lock Before the First Hard Frost

The new padlock was red. That bothered me before anything else did. I had spent twenty years teaching people to keep bright paint away from copper seams, and now a red lock hung on my own repair shed.

My key went in halfway.

Behind me, a pickup rolled over the gravel. Nell Mercer leaned out beside two buckets of feed.

"You open yet, Keoni? I came about my syrup pan."

"So did I," I said.

I was a broad Native Hawaiian man of seventy-one, with brown skin, silver hair tied at my neck, and a pale burn mark across my left wrist. I repaired maple evaporators and brazed copper for people along the valleys outside Elkins, West Virginia.

I had come east with my late wife thirty-eight years earlier. She taught school. I learned which mountain roads froze first and which sugar camps needed repairs before the sap began to rise.

Travis Gant opened the side door.

Travis was a lean white man of forty-six, with sandy hair clipped close, a narrow mouth, and work shirts that always looked newly pressed.

"We talked about this," he said.

"We talked about hiring another helper."

He looked past me at Nell.

"He's been mixing things up. I own the mobile forge. He keeps forgetting."

Nell lowered her window another inch.

"I asked about my pan."

"Tuesday," Travis said. "I'll call you."

It was already Thursday.

Through the open door, I saw the forge under its canvas cover. It rode on a short, heavy chassis with four iron wheels. Its blower had a cracked wooden handle I had shaped to fit my hand.

The shed was rented by our company, Laurel Bend Copper Service. Travis and I each owned half. He handled bookings and bills. I handled heat, seams, and the things people brought us because they could not afford new ones.

Three years earlier, that had seemed fair.

"Give me the door key," I said.

"Take a week. Think about retirement."

"My tools are inside."

"Company tools."

He said it quickly. A practiced answer.

Nell stayed until he shut the door. Then she got out and stood beside me.

"You want me to call somebody?"

"Not yet. Keep your receipt."

She touched my sleeve.

"I keep every receipt."

At home, I filled my chipped white mug, forgot to drink, and sat until the coffee went cold. Then I wrapped both hands around it. My wife used to say I tried to warm my hands with thoughts.

The mug had one chip shaped like a small moon. I turned that chip toward me and thought.

Travis knew about the drawer beside my bench. Old quotes, welding gloves, greasy delivery slips. He had made jokes about it for years.

"Your whole filing system could catch fire," he liked to say.

He had never asked what I kept at home.

I opened the cedar chest under my bedroom window. Inside were our marriage papers, my wife's letters, and a blue folder sealed in a freezer bag.

The folder held the estate-auction bill for my forge.

I had paid $6,800 with a cashier's check fourteen years before Travis joined me. The bill named me alone. Beneath the price, the auction clerk had copied the chassis mark: RK-2176.

Most people looked for a plate near the blower. That plate was gone before I bought it.

The real number sat beneath the rear crossmember, hidden behind a sliding ash shield. I had cleaned it with a toothbrush the day I brought the forge home.

I touched the line on the bill.

"I remember that much," I told the empty room.

Then I called Odette Laurent.

She was fifty-nine, Haitian American, and the only independent bookkeeper I knew who could make a room shake by laughing. She checked our company books every quarter. Travis had canceled her last visit.

"He said you were going fishing," she told me.

"He changed the lock."

Her silence lasted long enough for me to hear a chair scrape.

"Bring your company agreement. Bring anything about that forge."

"You still have copies of the old equipment lists?"

"Keoni. I charge people to keep copies."

There was the laugh, big and rough, but it stopped quickly.

"Don't go back alone," she said.

Before I left, I checked the voice mail on our shared business line. My access still worked from my home phone.

A man's voice filled the kitchen.

"Travis, this is Dale at Valley Metal Recovery. I've got your Thursday load booked. Four pans first, balance next week. Need the owners' release before we process any copper."

He gave a price.

"Nine thousand one hundred eighty for the full lot, subject to scale."

I put down the mug without taking a drink.

Fourteen customer pans were supposed to be waiting for repair in that shed.

The message ended with a truck arriving at eight.