The Chairman Sent Me Out With My Old Stock Folder

Wallace Creel lifted my pear box from the conference table with two fingers.

"Whose little lunch is this?"

"Mine," I said.

He set it on a chair by the door. The lid came loose. One white slice fell against the hinge.

I was a small Korean American woman of seventy-two, with silver hair pinned above my neck, brown age spots on my hands, and square glasses held by a blue cord.

My name was Youngsook Bae. At North Quay Cold Storage in Duluth, I kept the receiving records. Forty years of delivery slips had passed across my desk. I knew which ink faded in freezer air and which drivers signed before they counted.

Wallace had been our chairman for eleven weeks.

Wallace was a broad white man of fifty, with sandy hair brushed straight back, pink cheeks, and a smile that showed his upper gums.

"We need this room for the grown-up math, Miss Sunshine," he told me.

I looked at the place card our company secretary had put beside my box.

YOUNGSOOK BAE. RECORDS.

"Helen asked me to bring the old benefit files."

"And you did. Gold star."

He took the folder from my hand.

Three visitors stood near the window. Behind them, lake fog covered the lower end of the hill. One held a leather case. Another had the proposed merger agreement under her arm.

Wallace turned toward them.

"This is our elderly lady who files the delivery slips. She remembers when ice came on a wagon."

I had started there in 1986. The ice had come through pipes.

Nobody laughed very hard. That made his smile wider.

"I need my folder back," I said.

"Helen can return it after the meeting."

"The green folder is yours. The brown one is mine."

He glanced down. Two folders lay under his hand.

"Ah. Your souvenir collection."

He had seen the brown one during a records move the week before. Inside were stock certificates with old gold borders. He had asked whether I wanted them framed.

I had told him they were still active.

He had called me "our little treasure hunter."

Now he slid the brown folder toward the door.

"Take your keepsakes, dear. We have a company to sell."

I picked it up. Then I fitted the lid onto my pear box. I peeled a pear each morning with one narrow knife, turning the skin off in a long strip. My hands still did that work well.

"Will the merger vote still be Thursday?" I asked.

His smile thinned.

"That depends on people staying in their lanes."

I went back through the loading hall. Dock Three smelled of wet wool and frozen onions. A truck from the Iron Range waited while our receiver checked a broken seal.

"Did they settle the pension thing?" he asked me.

His name was Len. He had worked nights for twenty-eight years.

"I wasn't in the room long enough to hear."

He held out a letter. It said his promised monthly payment would be "subject to final transaction terms."

"Subject to what?" he asked.

"May I copy this?"

"Please."

At my desk, I put his letter under the clear blotter. The desk shook when a loaded forklift passed on the other side of the wall.

I opened my brown folder.

The first certificate had cost me $12,000 in earned pay. In 1986, a compressor had failed during a hot week. Our founder needed cash to save the stock in three rooms. I had agreed to take twelve hundred preferred shares instead of the wages he owed me.

It had been a frightening choice. I had rent and a son who needed winter boots.

I kept the signed wage conversion beside the certificate. I kept the terms behind both.

Over the years, other early holders had sold me their shares. Some wanted a new roof. One wanted to move near her daughter. Each sale had a price, a receipt, and a recorded transfer.

Wallace had looked only at the gold borders.

At noon, Helen came down carrying the green folder.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Did they read the benefit papers?"

She looked toward the hall before she answered.

"He said old promises weren't part of the sale."

I closed my pear box without eating the last slice.

"Helen, has anyone changed the preferred share register?"

"No. Why?"

"Please keep it that way."

After she left, I called the lawyer whose office stood above a bakery on Superior Street.

"Saira," I said, "I think it's time to read the old terms aloud."

She did not ask whether I was sure. She asked what time I could come.

Before I left work, I turned to the page I had marked with a delivery-slip tab years earlier.

At the top, in plain black type, were the words: RIGHT TO ELECT TWO ADDITIONAL DIRECTORS.