Vernon Pike Hung A Red Tag On My First Real Job

Vernon Pike laid a short piece of cable on my lunch wrapper and said I had almost killed somebody.

The grease from my sandwich touched the wire. He pushed it closer with one finger.

"You put that in the lift," he said. "Tell your boss why."

We stood in the old Alder Bath House, uphill from Central Avenue in Hot Springs. Its tubs were gone. Soon, twelve apartments would fill the rooms where people once paid to sit in hot water.

No one lived there yet. The lift had stayed locked out since we started work.

I was a twenty-four-year-old Iranian American man with brown skin, thick black curls, and a narrow face that still made people ask for my supervisor.

I was also the youngest maintenance apprentice at Juniper Lift Service. My probation ended in nineteen days.

Vernon Pike was a broad white man of sixty, with pale eyes, a red neck, and silver hair combed flat over his scalp.

He was the county elevator inspector assigned to the housing project. His red tag could stop our work. He liked to hold his pen over a form until someone started to sweat.

"That's a loose piece," I said. "Where did you get it?"

"Listen to him," Pike told my boss. "Already working on an excuse."

Luis Ortega looked from the wire to me. He had trained me to check a brake twice and explain a fault once. That morning, he seemed unable to do either.

Pike tapped the label wrapped around the cable.

"Approved lot number. Wrong wire. Counterfeit. Your apprentice signed for it."

My name was on the delivery sheet. So was Pike's. He had been there when the reel arrived three days earlier, checking the county's new doors.

"We should open the rope hatch," I said. "Count the strands on what's actually installed."

"You don't touch evidence after I catch you."

He said it loudly enough for the tile crew to stop working.

I folded the clean edge of my lunch wrapper over my sandwich. In its margin, I had drawn a worn door roller and three small arrows. Drawing faults helped me find where motion went wrong.

This fault needed arrows, too.

The cable on his sheet had six outer strands. The cable Luis and I had installed had eight. I had counted them before we set the first wedge socket.

"The lab needs to see that piece," I said.

Pike smiled.

"An apprentice wants a laboratory. That's new."

The independent assay had cost me $286.40. I had paid because the reel's paper label looked too fresh beside its wet wooden flange. Luis had approved the test, but our office had not yet paid me back.

Tessa Bell had come to the site, taken samples, and sent the tested return section back in a sealed bag. That bag sat in a steel cash box beneath my bed. Its courier receipt was folded inside my training book.

I had paid for the test. I controlled the release of my retained sample. Pike had never asked whether a nervous apprentice might keep anything worth having.

"I want the source of that piece written down," I said.

"You want to keep your job?"

Luis spoke at last.

"Arman. Office."

Inside the old towel room, he shut the door.

"He's claiming you changed the cable after I left Thursday."

"We finished Thursday at three. You checked every termination."

"I know what I checked. I don't know what he has."

He slid a form toward me. It put me on unpaid suspension while the company reviewed a safety complaint.

At $18 an hour, a week away meant $720 gone before taxes. My rent was $840. I had $391 in checking.

"Sign here," Luis said.

"For receipt or agreement?"

He looked tired. "Receipt."

I wrote, Received only. I dispute the allegation. Then I signed and asked for a copy.

Outside, Pike held my lunch wrapper. He studied the roller sketch as if it were another charge.

"This is why boys get hurt," he said. "Doodling when they ought to listen."

"Please give that back."

He dropped it into a trash can.

I waited until he walked away. Then I lifted it out by a dry corner. The cable had left a dark crescent across my drawing.

On the bus home, I called the lab.

"Tessa Bell, please. It's Arman Farhadi. Job Alder."

The woman at the desk put me through.

Tessa listened without a sound while I explained the red tag. Then her voice changed.

"Don't open your return bag," she said.

"I haven't."

"Good. Bring the receipt tomorrow. There's something else you need to see."

"What?"

"Someone brought us a second sample under your name today."